Annihilation, by Peter Athans. Second to last in the War of the Spider Queen...uh...septology? The sixth book, anyway. It wasn't my favorite out of this small shared-setting/multiple-author series (that's still the first book), but it's not the worst, either. The writing is good, the action is solid, the themes and tropes that make this series interesting (questions of theology, alternate societal rules, gender issues) are prodded along a little. I think this novel suffered from being the penultimate book, in that it sets up a lot, but doesn't do as much in and of itself because of that. Still, a very solid showing, and it definitely made me look forward to the conclusion.

In honor of the World Cup - balls! You heard me.

Madagascar, with voices of various famous people. Fun! As much as it's kind of a random animated animal movie, I suspect there's a lot in here to be done with close-reading a solid semantic structure out of it. One thing that would depend upon, however, would be deciding what one wanted to work with the animals as representing, which is so broad of an availability as to almost be daunting. One could go mainstream and have the animals be a direct analogue for some social group, say, or go esoteric and make some moral comment on vegetarianism. Or concentrate on the lemur techno. Which I need an mp3 of, because it's stuck in my head. I like to move it move it. I'm dancing, in my head. Oh! And there was a hilarious American Beauty reference, which I was remarkably slow in getting.