As promised, even though we are in the midst of the Seattle Geekly Summer Vacation, we are not abandoning our listeners. First up, if you absolutely cannot go a week without hearing the sound of our voices then you’re in luck. If you listened to Episode #64 of our podcast you may remember hearing geek musician John Anealio talking about Functional Nerds, the podcast he co-hosts with author and blogger Patrick Hester. Well we leveraged having John on our show to crowbar our way into the latest episode of Functional Nerds and you can listen to it now on their website or download it through iTunes. We had a great time recording with Patrick and John and hopefully the results are entertaining. As a bonus if you listen all the way to the end you get a selection of the awesome “Skype drop” outtakes. Issues with Skype aside, it really was a pleasure to be on the Functional Nerds and hopefully we can return at some point!

In keeping with our Summer Vacation theme we have been doing a lot of serious lounging around. An integral part of lounging around in the summer is, as everyone knows, umbrella drinks. Many of Shannon’s close friends have nicknamed her “Mixmaster Shannon.” No, she’s not a DJ, but a fairly good, self taught bartender. After finding some Stoli Strawberry Vodka this week, we’d like to share one of her new recipes.

Makes 2-4 drinks

You’ll need:
A blender

Ingredients:
Frozen strawberries
Simply Lemonade
Stoli Strawberry Vodka
Baby lemons

Put 10-15 frozen strawberries in blender, the juice of 1/2 baby lemon, cover with lemonade, blend thoroughly. Add more lemonade to get to pourable smooth consistency if needed. Pour into 2-4 glasses. Add 1-2 shots of Stoli Strawberry Vodka per glass, top with more lemonade, serve.

It’s not all drinks and podcasts though, we’ve also been taking the opportunity to catch up on a little reading. Continue below the fold for reviews of Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay and Close Encounters of the Urban Kind edited by Jennifer Brozek

Fans of the Showtime TV series Dexter should be reading the source material the famed show comes from. Starting with Darkly Dreaming Dexter (2004), which is the origin for the entire first season of the cable program. 2005’s Dearly Devoted Dexter follows Dexter in his quest to blend in to normaility by exposing more about his and Rita’s relationship. In Lindsay’s third Dexter book, Dexter in the Dark (2007) Dexter deals with his “Dark Passenger” and gets a bit introspective while dealing with his upcoming nuptuals.

I’ve listened to all 3 Dexter books through unabridged audiobook, and I’ve enjoyed them thoroughly. Though the narrator of the audiobook, Nick Landrum, doesn’t have the apparent mischeviousness that actor Michael C Hall displays as Dexter, his narration is solid every time.

In Dexter in the Dark, Jeff Lindsay tries to set the “origin story” for Dexter’s “Dark Passenger” by delving a bit too deeply into ancient mysticism. Dexter experiences a loss in this book, which can be a bit jarring for fans of the macabre tv series, who enjoy the “always on” protagonist. The book deals with some development of some minor characters that will never air on the tv show, but could give that rabid Dexter fan just that more of an inner evil grin while watching. It’s hard to compare the books to the tv series, but if you enjoy the characters and the odd sense of right and wrong you really should be reading these. Even though I find Dexter in the Dark my least favorite of the series, it should still be read. I’m very excited to see that Lindsay’s next Dexter book, Dexter is Delicious will be out this September 2010.

We talked briefly about going to the book launch reading for Close Encounters of the Urban Kind in Episode #58 and since then I had been picking my way through the short stories one or two at a time but I finally had time to sit down and read the whole thing start to finish. One of the wonderful things about this collection is that reading it either way works amazingly well. Each of the twenty short stories works well as a stand-alone piece but as you read them all in sequence a larger over-arching story is revealed.

If you haven’t heard us talking about this book already, the theme of the book is re-telling urban legends but with an extraterrestrial twist work in. While that might sound kind of corny, once I got into the stories I found that the concept has been elegantly executed, staying true to the “flashlight in the face” campfire ghost story like quality of many of the original legends but adding a new level of artistry to the telling. Some of the stories take their inspiration well known legends, Jennifer Pelland’s story “Headlights” for example was inspired by the legend that many cars driving with their lights off at night are actually gang members undergoing initiation and they will kill the first person that flashes their lights at them. There is also a sprinkling of cryptozoology (“Two Out, Wendigo” by Rosemary Jones), local and regional legends (“Waterheads” by Ivan Ewart) and completely original ideas that keep the urban legend feel (“Racing Lights” by Eric Scott de Bie).

Editor Jennifer Brozek did an excellent job of selecting and arranging the stories in this collection. While there are certainly some stories that I enjoyed more than others there aren’t any that I didn’t have fun reading and watching the development of the larger plot arc that grows as the book progresses was a nice surprise. Close Encounters of the Urban Kind was published by Apex Publications and is out now.