Book: Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Total Recall"

Best Read of the Year..... achievement on so many levels, and despite the scandal of recent years, you have to take your hat off to the man.
From a country on a losing side of the war, to the corridors of politics in one of the world's greatest nations, Arnie illustrates the power of having a dream to chase, and the tenacity to do the hard yards to get there.
A bit of a "how-to" book really, how to do good at body building, how to go to America, and succeed there. How to succeed in business, build an asset portfolio, not just get into movies but make it big time, and finally get to be Governator, with a lot of derring-do, learn as you go, and insight into all the paths of life he strode.

Movie: A Million Ways To Die In The West

Cant understand the bad reviews for this movie, been home an hour and still laughing.
The gags, I think, seem to cop the criticism, but its the whole situational comedy/farce thing that amused me, much like with The Lone Ranger.
The story's about a nerd doing all the wrong things to keep his girl, and being led to handle it right, and get to a totally more satisfying place. Don't we all wish..?
Often I asked myself where this movie was heading, then you get to see why, everything overdone for a purpose.
What makes the punchline of a joke is its coming out of left-field, and there was a ton of that in this movie.
All the lead roles were masterly done, and I'm sure gorgeous Charlize will still be in my head long after tomorrow.
I'm a big Seth MacFarlane fan, Family Guy, and Ted, the aforementioned critic cant even spell his name right.
11 out of 10.
Just the tonic I needed after a stressful work week.
Dont go see it if you're a prude.

Books: Couple of good reads here

Couple good reads Ken lent me:

Peter James "Dead Tomorrow", another Detective Roy Grace novel, starts off with a bod being dredged off the bottom of the English Channel and turns into a slickly written rush from several different perspectives to the central denouement involving human trafficking and organ harvesting.
The subject matter's a little on the gruesome side for me, but James paces this mystery extremely well with the approach from the different characters, so you can get through the 650 odd pages in nightly instalments with each segment neatly partitioned, and another thread resumed the next.
He also provides a good insight into what it'd be like to be a parent of an organ transplant candidate.
9 out of 10, and only missing the perfect score on account of the macabreness not being my cuppa.

CJ Box "Winterkill"
I've read a couple of Box's Joe Pickett yarns before, and for a long while into this book I had a sense of having already read it, but no, it turned out new read territory.
Ken passed this book on because we'd been through the Twelve Sleep County, Wyoming, on the US rides he organised for us Kiwi motorcyle tourers. We've done the trip in the summer, so its interesting to imagine the winter-scape that Box mostly writes about in his novels.
In this one, aside from severe snow-outs and mysterious killings, Joe deals with rampant bureaucracy, sovereign nationalists, and threat of losing an adopted daughter.
Joe's no super hero, just a capable ranger dealing with extraordinary circumstance, which makes the this particular genre an agreeable read.
8 out 10, good descriptive prose, storytelling a bit ragged round the edges in places.