Evidence of the need for a Twelve-Step program to cure Pretension.
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Hello. I'm Yorick, and I'm pretentious.------------------------------------------- ----------
Hello, Yorick.
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++You get the idea.
And I wanted to show a little higher in the lists.
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The ideal is a medium coffee and three shots of espresso with a splash of cream: less milk than a latte, isn't watered down like an Americano, and isn't bitter beyond swallowing like straight espresso. The caffeine is just to keep the head aches away.
I'm not as unique as I think I am. That's a bitter pill.
The only reason this wasn't amazing (5*) is that I have to leave room for books even more amazing than this.
It's like Memento meets House of Leaves meets Girffin and Sabine.
And Raw Shark Texts is some kind of play on words with Rorsc...
I was given a free Audible audiobook copy of this title for an honest review.
This book according to the stars, is pretty good. It reads like a Twilight Zone episode, and I really like Twilight Zone. Will, the title character finds a Magic Eight Ball in a hole-in-the-wall used bookstore/novelty shop. He buys it for nostalgic reasons and races out of the store because the clerk creeps him out.
At first it seems like a normal kids' toy, but soon, its answers start having more direct impact / connection with Will's world. After that, things get weird and ominous. It drew me into the story. Like watching a horror movie, I found myself thinking the equivalent of, "Don't open that door!"
It's an entertaining read. I can't really say more about the story without leaving spoilers. If you like stories that were in The Twilight Zone, you'll like this book. If you really don't know anything about The Twilight Zone, let me say that the book is mysterious, eerie, and is a look at what a normal person might do under unexplainable circumstances. You might not want to read it alone at night. Or maybe that's the best time for a shiver!
I was given a copy of this audiobook for free for an honest review.
Where Loyaties Lie by Rob J. Hayes, narrated by Matthew Jackson.
Pros: Exciting story with gripping (and grasping!!!!) characters. The sea is salty, the battles are brash and bashing. The characters are conflicted. The sex is part of the plot, not merely gratuitous.The actions moves from plans to battles and negotiations. The protagonist Drake is mixed in his actions, yet he is following a prophecy that was passed along by his brother. His brother also sends a woman with magical powers to watch his back. Keelin Stillwater didn't really want to follow Drake, but the circumstances seem to give him no other choice. So he does. They are pirates, so they both do exciting piratical deeds, but they both try to live with themselves. So like many a contemporary situation, "it's complicated"--which is definitely good.
Cons: I'm not really over-joyed at the Narrator. Matthew Jackson's voice keeps taking me out of the story into noticing his accents and projecting volume. There is graphic sex. I think it manages to stay outside porn, but it's close. Imagine scenes from the movie Flesh and Blood with Rutger Hauer and Jennifer Jason Leigh, except fewer minutes in the acts themselves. This will be off-putting for some listeners, and a feature for some listeners. The last negative to mention is that this is book one of a two book series. It ends with two and possibly three cliff hangers. While the book is very good, it is not stand alone. Not even a little bit.
Still, this reader / listener will be getting book two to continue the story.
City of Girls is great, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. Nevertheless, I am such a push-over for narrators--reliable or unreliable--that I like the main character / narrator even though I might have second thoughts about her in real life. And she wouldn't care a pin about my opinion in real life either. So that's me sorted!
I was given a free ebook version in exchange for an honest review. I liked it so much that I bought the audiobook from Audible.
But this book is worth your time and your book credit. The narrator is lively and contrary and full of life, both in spite of and because of choices that she makes. The people she knows and comes into contact with are interesting and convincing. Even though some of the issues addressed in the book are informed by a current mindset philosophy, I find them convincing because it's happening in pre- and post WWII New York theater environment. So things that might seem unconvincing happening among residents of Levittown, PA, seem more than plausible in New York at the time.
Vivian Morris (in her 90s) receives a letter from a young woman, asking her what Vivian was to her father. Thus, the reader is hooked into discovering what Vivian was / is to the young woman of the letter and her father. All the rest of the adventures and descriptions--most of which have nothing directly to do with the mysterious father--are shared in answer to that letter. On the one hand, that's a writing gimmick. In this case, it works well and doesn't feel as artificial as it sounds.
Through story events Vivian shares her developing philosophy of life, love, and human existence: convincing without seeming didactic or preachy. This book is worth your time and pays off in hours of enjoyment.
This novel is a thriller with a time travel twist. North's narrator, Harry August, doesn't travel in time using technology, but some unexplained phenomenon of his person sends him back to his own birth after his death. Every time. And each time he gets sent back to his own birth to re-live his life, he remembers the events of his previous life. Others exist in the future and in the past with this same looped-life quality. Because their lives overlap slightly--one person being a child when another person is old--they can send messages up and down history.
The problem occurs when one of these multi-lived people decides to change history and brings technological advances into existence earlier than they normally arrive. Then he starts killing permanently others with returning lives who would oppose him.
The reader learns the hard-knock wisdom that Harry August picks up in his serial lives and waits to find out if August will be killed permanently by the Other who is trying to manage human history and destiny through his own lives.
This is an exciting read, even if a much less exciting review.
This book is very good--action, suspense and favorite characters.
Action--fights on a small enough level to follow individuals--space ship takeovers, urban fighting in defended and booby-trapped buildings, and cargo "truck"-jackings gone sideways.
Suspense--will the characters be caught or will they succeed? Will they die? Will they Die AND succeed? The reader in the moment is kept guessing.
Favorite characters--Anton Zilwicki, Victor Cachat, and others from the Crown of Slaves segment of the Honorverse are all here doing their characteristic mannerisms; dangerous, insane plans; and forlorn hope actions. The one exception to known character similarity is Andrew Artlett who acts younger yet more thoughtful than his appearance in Torch of Freedom.
In any case, there's a lot to love in this volume and a reader's favorite villains to hate as well--from bit-part slavers to (literally) evil genius father & sons.
Full four stars from me! The only thing that kept it from being five stars for me is that (as other reviewers of the David Weber Honorverse books have complained about a couple of other titles) is that in this book several paragraphs are taken word for word or nearly from the second book in the Saganami Island series, Storm from the Shadows. Since the scene takes place in both books, it's understandable, if not justifiable. I found it only a little disconcerting.
Nevertheless, for readers who enjoy the Honorverse or for readers who just enjoy good space / spy / military adventure stories, this is a four-star read that they will want to dive into. Like a number of individual books in a series, it may not be the best volume to jump into from a standing start, but it does read well on its own, and for first time readers, the repeated paragraphs won't even be noticed, because they fit perfectly in this story.
Drake pours on the adventure and gives readers an excellent time.
The Sea without a Shore by David Drake is the latest (#10) in the Daniel Leary / Adele Mundy space navy series. Drake keeps things fresh in this adventure of the duo in the Cinnabar Navy--RCN as all the insiders call it. Because this is one of a series, and because the author has said he tries to make it possible to start the series from any one of the books, this book has some passages that readers familiar with the series will either welcome as familiar friends or feel some level of annoyance with the repetition of stuff they already know. Mine was the familiar friends reaction.
David Drake (as his author's note explains) takes earth minor historical events and recasts them as a plot framework for Leary & Mundy to work through in different planets and star systems. It's a technique that works very well for me. The author is able to take his characters through multiple adventure scenarios without becoming repetitive (except in as much as some have found the explanations of the Matrix or Leary or Mundy's personal history repetitive, as mentioned above).
In this book, they are not acting as official RCN members. They escort the son (formerly a ne'r do well, but now reformed) of Adele's civilian boss to a planet where there's a revolution going on, where the son hopes to find a buried treasure to help his side buy weapons and win the revolution. They don't know if there really is a treasure, but they set off to help--with Adele having a related secret mission that she doesn't share with Daniel or anyone else!
In one sense, it's a well-known pattern for fans of the series--Daniel & Adele are given a nearly impossible mission, Daniel thinks up a bold and sly plan, and Adele gets normally inaccessible information and fools the opposition. This may sound simple and mundane, especially after nine previous novels in the series, but once again, for me, Drake pours on the adventure and gives readers an excellent time.
I've read all his books in the Leary & Mundy series more than twice! and I expect to do the same with this volume.
This book stands on its own, but as you've no doubt read in other reviews / previews, it's also a mashup of Twelfth Night and The Importance of Being Earnest. Related to Oscar Wilde's personal issues, and the masquerade / hidden (sexual) identity in Twelfth Night, All Men... has alternate sexuality as plot points. None of it is "R" rated, I think, but perhaps a strong PG-13.
Readers with tenaciously held convictions regarding traditional sexuality may be more or less offended. Readers with less concern with those matters will not be bothered.
The story involves Violet Adams who wants to attend the premier science institution, Illyria College, where only men are accepted as students. She pretends to be her brother (the names of the character and the college are deliberate, not to say obvious allusions to 12th Night). All Men of Genius is not a pioneer after 12th Night using sexual disguise as a plot device. For example, in the first Alanna book in the series by Tamara Pierce, the plot point is exactly the same with all the complications involved for a teen girl trying to pass as a teen boy.
Along side the difficulties and confusions of Violet's progress in science academics is also the couples / mating "rituals" in an alternate Victorian England. This too, is well done. Like much of science fiction, it speaks to issues of today's culture through a lense of an alternate time.
The struggles involved in invention, discovering and fighting an elitist scientific club's plan to take over England and then the world provide page turning thrills. Many readers will finish quickly to appeaase their desire to discover "what happens next".
First of all, I get distracted by words like shiny objects or the exclamation, "Squirrel!" I was walking along and I saw the phrase, "100 years ..." and then I was past it.
Although I confess, I have not read the book, the first thing that came to me as I thought on the flashed phrase was "100 Years of Solitude." Then I thought of plays on that title--100 Years of Attitude, 100 Years of Certitude, etc.
So I looked for a rhyming dictionary online to help me come up with other amusing word mash-ups to see what meanings might result. RhymeZone rhyming dictionary at http://www.rhymezone.com/ is woefully inadequate. I'll just say it. Even if you ask it to search for near rhymes, if finds fewer words that I can think of off the top of my head.
The WriteExpress Online Rhyming Dictionary at http://www.writeexpress.com/online2.html works much better and came up with words I was expecting to see, including one syllable words that you could add to a phrase as well as the three syllable words that fit exactly into stress and rhyme pattern of solitude. Oh. And another spoof title thought up by a colleague: 100 Years of Running Nude.
Gene Wilder's short novel (176 pages) The Woman Who Wouldn't is an amusing and tender tale about a musician who has a break down during a concert and subsequently goes to a sanatorium in Badenweiler, Germany. The story takes place in 1903, includes visits with Anton Chekhov who is there dying of consumption.
Without writing any spoilers, I can only say that the book has a lovely sentimental touch. Some may indeed find it ultimately too sweet, but it pleased me and made me cry. Interestingly enough, it even has a couple of sex scenes, but they're not pornographic nor erotica in nature. I think that's a little difficult to pull off. They are also intrinsic to the story; short as the book is, extra- gratuitous words aren't really there.
If we have to give it stars, I'd say 3 out of 5. It's worth reading. I'm doubtful that I'd read it a second time--not because it was bad, but because I've done that now. And part of the impact of the book is in going through for the first time and experiencing it as it develops. But be fair: I don't read many mysteries a second time either and they're perfectly fine reading the first time.
Finally, if you have the chance, listen to the audio book read by Gene Wilder himself. As both an actor and the author, he catches everything just right with his voice.
I heard this tune and knew it was trying to be heroic/tragic/epic. I looked up the translation of the lyric (I could get, "Come here Marie" and knew that fliegen had something to do with flight, but that was about as far as my German language aptitude could get me on my own). While I was looking, I also found a video on youtube.
The music is admittedly bombastic, but I find that to be one of its charms. In someways, this is a musical version of "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold. Of course it's a good deal different, written years apart in different languages. But the emotion, the angst is spot on between them two.
It reminds me how silly I am when I'm all angsty and lonely. I still am angsty and lonely, but I know it's silly to look at. :-P
--German from lyric site, translation by google--- Hans Hartz - The White doves Are Tired Infos Info Interpret: Artist: Hans Hartz Hans Hartz Album: - -- Songtext-Nummer: Lyrics number: 61931 Eingesendet: Submitted: 02.12.2005 Einsender: One person: ErichG ErichG
Videos Videos Für Hans Hartz - Die Weißen Tauben Sind Müde von Hans Hartz wurden noch keine Videos gespeichert. For Hans Hartz - The White doves Are Tired by Hans Hartz were no videos.
Komm her Marie ein letztes Glas, ---Come here Marie one last glass, genießen wir den Augenblick, --------we enjoy the moment, ab morgen gibt’s statt Wein nur Wasser. From tomorrow, there's only water instead of wine. Komm her und schenk uns noch mal ein,--- Come here and gift us again, soviel wird morgen anders sein ----so tomorrow will be different Marie die Welt wird langsam blasser. ---Marie the world is slowly faded. Die weißen Tauben sind müde, ---The white doves are tired, sie Fliegen lange schon nicht mehr. ---they fly long, not more. Sie haben viel zu schwere Flügel; ---You've spent too heavy wings; und ihre Schnäbel sind längst leer,--- and their beaks are long empty, jedoch die Falken fliegen weiter, ---However, the hawks fly further, sie sind so stark wie nie vorher; ---they are as strong as never before; und ihre Flügel werden breiter, ---and its wings are broader, und täglich kommen immer mehr, ---and daily more and more nur weiße Tauben fliegen nicht mehr. ---only white doves fly no more.
Bleib doch Marie, ---Stay but Marie, der letzte Rest reicht für uns beide alle mal. ---the last remaining enough for both of us all times. Ab morgen gibt’s statt Brot nur Steine, ---From tomorrow, there's only bread instead of stones, komm her und schenk uns noch mal ein, ---come, and gift us again, denn so wie heut wird’s nie mehr sein; ---because as today's will never be more; Marie die Welt reist von alleine. ---Marie travels the world on their own. Die weißen Tauben sind müde, ---The white doves are tired, sie Fliegen lange schon nicht mehr.--- they fly long, not more. Sie haben viel zu schwere Flügel; ---You've spent too heavy wings; und ihre Schnäbel sind längst leer,--- and their beaks are long empty, jedoch die Falken fliegen weiter, ---However, the hawks fly further, sie sind so stark wie nie vorher; ---they are as strong as never before; und ihre Flügel werden weiter, ---and will continue their wings, und täglich kommen immer mehr,--- and daily more and more nur weiße Tauben fliegen nicht mehr.--- only white doves fly no more.
Sieh dort Marie das leere Bett,--- Look there Marie the empty bed, der Spiegel unsrer großen Zeit.--- the mirror of our big time. Ab Morgen gibt’s statt Glas nur Scherben. ---From tomorrow, there's only instead of glass shards. Komm her und schenk uns noch mal ein,--- Come here and gift us again, den letzten Schluck vom letzten Wein, ---the last sip from the last wine, Marie die Welt beginnt zu sterben. ---Marie the world begins to die. Die weißen Tauben sind müde, ---The white doves are tired, sie Fliegen lange schon nicht mehr. ---they fly long, not more. Sie haben viel zu schwere Flügel; ---You've spent too heavy wings; und ihre Schnäbel sind längst leer, ---and their beaks are long empty, jedoch die Falken fliegen weiter, ---However, the hawks fly further, sie sind so stark wie nie vorher;--- they are as strong as never before; und ihre Flügel werden weiter, ---and will continue their wings, und täglich kommen immer mehr, ---and daily more and more nur weiße Tauben fliegen nicht mehr.--- only white doves fly no more.
Die weißen Tauben sind müde,--- The white doves are tired, sie Fliegen lange schon nicht mehr.--- they fly long, not more. Sie haben viel zu schwere Flügel; ---You've spent too heavy wings; und ihre Schnäbel sind längst leer, ---and their beaks are long empty, jedoch die Falken fliegen weiter,--- However, the hawks fly further, sie sind so stark wie nie vorher; ---they are as strong as never before; und ihre Flügel werden weiter,--- and will continue their wings, und täglich kommen immer mehr, ---and daily more and more nur weiße Tauben fliegen nicht mehr. ---only white doves fly no more.
Nearly everyone has something they learned or thought wrong as a child that they later discovered was mistaken. One of the things I had mistaken included the idea that boys and girls had different left and right arms. (When my mom was teaching me left from right, she'd be facing me, and we'd have opposite right arms and left arms. She never realized I didn't get it. Imagine my surprise when I got to 1st grade and saw while saying "The Pledge" that the girls placed their same hand over their hearts as I did mine.
The teacher explained when I asked her that every one's right and left are the same.)
Another idea I had wrong was the belief that one could only read a book once. Because then you'd read it. Other things were like that--if you thought didn't like a vegetable or some food, you'd have to try it, but once you tried it, you didn't have to eat it again. Or movies: once you'd seen a movie, then you'd seen it. You could remember it, talk about enjoying it, but you didn't go back. (Although one could play songs over and over and over again, which I did--which nearly drove my father to violence...)
One summer when I was reading through books like a paper shredder. Not that I tore or shredded them really, but I was just zooming through the pages and moving on. I played the same album while I read a book, and then I'd change the music when the book was over. I didn't really think much about it until I read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I enjoyed that book so much that it colored the album I was listening to. To this day, that music makes me think of reading Tom Sawyer. And when I was finished, I completely stopped and breathed a sigh: I had finished Tom Sawyer, and it was great and I could never read it again, because I had read it now.
There were so many things to see and to read (and still are, for all that) that I didn't even realize until years later that one could see a movie a second time or more if it was really good, and one could read a book a second or third time or more. What fun! What a surprise for me!
Since that discovery, I've read a number of books more than once, and a couple books as regularly as annually or bi-annually. But I've never re-read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I know I could. I've known I could for many years now. But that first reading was so perfect, so intensely sweet and irreproducible that if I did re-read the book, like a river, it wouldn't be the same book any more. Although concerning books I had been mistaken about not being able to read more than once, this one experience of reading I'm saving as the perfect one.
It is a disappointment to have bad taste sometimes.
I just watched Modest Mouse on PBS's Austin City Limits. I'm not a regular viewer, but I was surfing the channels to see what might catch my eye or ear and I came on this in the middle of a song. It was like a train wreck and I couldn't look away.
I know a number of people like the group, and I tried to see why. I think the rhythm & percussion are catchy. The pump organ one of them played added an interesting element to the total sound. Last night I watched the DVD of PBS's American Experience episode about the Original Carter Family, and I think the short phrases and repeated words of the Modest Mouse songs are distantly related to Old Timey folk lyrics.
In that sense, Modest Mouse is like extremely painful modern classical music: it's more intellectual/technical than pleasant. One is more likely to "understand" it or understand what they are doing than to enjoy it.
That's what I mean about bad taste: after I thought about it, I could see a number of things Modest Mouse was doing, and I could see the folk music connection with their lyrics, but even though I know some people enjoy MM, I just can't make that next step myself.
On the other hand, Guided By Voices, the second band in the Austin City Limits show moved me to change the channel.
I didn't want any of you to think that I was going to talk about some book thief or other at our building.
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is a strange and moving book. The Narrator is Death, so that makes it different from standard realism from the start. The story takes place in a town outside Munich, Germany, during World War II. The events naturally include a lot of pain and death, and yet, because the narrator's style is friendly, matter-of-fact, it doesn't strike me as viscerally painful as say a movie version would be.
Some readers may not like the book's aesthetic distance from the horrors, although I found it close enough. Death announces "spoilers" through the book (unlike me in this review), and I think it helps the reader prepare somewhat for when events are actually related.
The story concerns Liesel from 10 through 14, mostly and her foster family, a friend named Rudy, the town Mayor's wife, a jew named Max, and the different effects WWII had on these people in Germany. It has everything I think a good story should have--excitement, some romance, some suspense, sadness, death (and Death), redemption and ambiguity.
I must admit it didn't take the top of my head completely off, but part of that may have been because I read it so gingerly: I have to ration my pain, and I didn't want to become crushed and devastated by surprise. (e.g. When I read Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis when I was in college, I was depressed for a week. Really. It was that good, and I was that depressed. For good or ill, The Book Thief didn't affect me like that.) Nevertheless, TBT is an excellent book, and I'd recommend it to anyone who is interested in the everyday obstacles and pain that some Germans had to overcome during WWII.
One final note: while the audio book is an excellent recording, there are line drawings of pages that Max made for Liesel, and if you don't have the book on pages, you don't get to see those illustrations.
I usually like Dustan Hoffman and Emma Thompson. Queen Latifah has been good in all the movies of hers I’ve watched. I’m not a big Will Ferrell fan, but this movie was one of the good ones.
I liked it so much that I naturally questioned my taste and went over to Rotten Tomatoes to see what they had to say about it. STF got 6.9 out of 10. The critics’ consensus quote was a little mean-spirited, I thought: “MOVIE CONSENSUS A fun, whimsical tale about an office drone trying to save his life from his narrator. The cast obviously is having a blast with the script, but Stranger Than Fiction's tidy lessons make this metaphysical movie feel like Charlie Kaufman-lite.”
Kaufman, you may know or remember is the writer of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and others.
"Tidy lessons" "Kaufman-lite"--these are deliberately pejorative. The consensus statement is fair to the overall comment from critics if they were mashed together. Some liked the whimsical tale, the cast having fun with the script and roles; some people felt annoyed with the movie's accessiblity. Because it wasn't dark, difficult, nor ultimately damaged, they devalued it.
Well, them and the horse they rode in on!
While I couldn't sit still in the last third of the movie just before the ending (I stood up and watched shifting from foot to foot. It was the decongestant, I think. Or maybe I was just edgy. But you can be as crazy as you want if no one's there--no matter what the voices are saying to the contrary), I thought it was a good ending. Perhaps not a great ending, but very, very good. I'll be watching this film again.
Some of my favorite things:
Emma Thompson is daring and perfect!! Ms Thompson is a pretty, perhaps even beautiful woman, but she's playing an frazzled author with writer's block, and her make up looks like splotchy no-make up. I love her twitches, her habits, and her red nose. She rocks! She dares to be scrungy and not sweet scrungy like a comic hobo or something. Her character is unattractive and makes you want to look away.
Dustin Hoffman is funny and eccentric (dare one say, as usual?). He plays literature professor Jules Hilbert who takes Harold Crick (Ferrell's character) seriously enough to try and figure out what kind of story he's being written into, and to see if he can discover who the author might actually be so that Crick can do something about it. And for Hoffman's character, literature is more important (if not sweeter) than life. After all the work Hoffman has done, though it's hard not to see some schtick from his other characters show up. The professor's detailed perfectionism towards literature seems heavily borrowed from Hoffman's Michael Dorsey from Tootsie.
Queen Latifah as the publisher's author assistant who is trying to get Karen Eiffel to finish her book has just the right amount of no-nonsense, humor, and caring. Because the character, Penny Escher, is so perfect in a serving kind of way, I wonder if some people or critics would find the character objectionable as a movie/literary descendant of the mammy character Hattie McDaniel used to play. In any case, I liked the character, and I liked Queen Latifah.
In the spirit of overthinking, what about those character names!!!??
Harold Crick
Karen Eiffel Ana Pascal
Penny Escher
even
Jules Hilbert (I didn't know, but I googled Hilbert, and there was a famous mathematician named David Hilbert who came up with some important concepts and theorems that have to do with finiteness and multidimensional space--which are quite beyond my capacity at this time.)
Stranger than Fiction has the straightforward emotional story of a guy trying to sort out his life and make it more meaningful than drudgery, it has a "chick-flickesque" love story, and it has tricksy details for those who want to overthink darkly. I think the critics who thought it was too simple didn't get the tricksy things. Myself, I'd give it an 8.9 out of 10!!
Not really a pimpernel, but it's a flower shot from my stock photos.
For the Reading Challenge this week I finished two of the books on my list. Some of the titles are bound to go more quickly than others, and in reading it's just as well to come out of the gates strong and worry about pacing one's self later.
The Elusive Pimpernel read very fast. It is an adventure book, and even though it's not terribly historically accurate, I don't know that it's any less accurate than the entertainments filmed by Oliver Stone, say.... (Before I go on, I'm compelled to do the word play stuff: If you misspelled the title The Illusive Pimpernel, it would still fit, but the meaning would be different. Then it would be as though this were a fable or a morality tale. Which it sort of is, but not. And if you separated the letters, The Elusive Pimp, Ernel, it would change entirely and be about some entrepreneur trying to stay out of the way of cops and mob bosses.)
The story takes place during the French Revolution. The Scarlet Pimpernel (an early incarnation of the superhero with a secret identity) is involved with his "League of the Scarlet Pimpernel" in saving aristocrats from the guillotine in France. Elusive is actually the third book in the series, and the best one is the first one, The Scarlet Pimpernel. It didn't seem to matter much that I had missed the second book (although if I read the second book, I'll know from a character in the third some of what happened in the second. But it's not like these are mysteries: as a reader, one knows that the Pimpernel will succeed, it's just a questions of how and how many close calls and inescapable situations he has to get out of first).
I think Marguerite (Sir Percy's wife) is a stronger character in the first book. She's still strong-willed and determined in this one, but even the villain notes that she's not behaving as the most clever woman in Europe this time. Anyway, The Scarlet Pimpernel is a good romp; and if one needs or wants another Pimpernel fix, The Elusive Pimpernel is exciting good fun.
Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos
This really is broken.
Broken for You is an award winner (Pacfic Northwest Bookseller Award, Quill Awards, and Washington State Book Award; it was also a TODAY Bookclub choice), but its plot summary may strike potential readers as something suitable for showing on Hallmark Network.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed getting to know the characters. They seemed real to me, even if the events had some strechy-circumstances / coincidences. The Seattle local color was very convincing. It was a relatively short book; it kept me turning pages and wanting more. Think of the kind of intensity Rowling creates in her Harry Potter plots, only with better characters and better writing style.
Broken for You is one of the few books that I wanted to keep reading all the time so much that I listened to parts of it on my MP3 player and then read pages when I could get back to them. One interesting phenomenon for me: I went through the ending twice: 1st time I read the pages, second time I listened to the last chapters on audiobook. When I read the pages, I was affected, but I didn't cry; when I listened to the last chapters, I couldn't stop crying in some parts.
Anyway, I give it a strong recommendation: Read this book!!
(Also in this post, I learned about span style formats and no longer using "font" or "font size")
The case of the missing books : a mobile library mystery by Ian Sansom
This is the first in a series of "mobile library mysteries." It has a sample chapter of the second in the series at the end of the book. TCotMB is worth the read, and fun in several ways. It's about libraries and books, some; it's about a stranger in a new place trying to make his way. It's about a mystery but not a murder. I'm glad I read it, but it does ask a bit from the reader.
First of all, the protagonist is not entirely sympathetic, as least as far as I was concerned. I liked Israel Armstrong usually, but not as much as I wanted to. And although the story is about a mystery (where have the library books all disappeared to?), it's also a bildungsroman to a certain extent--Israel is still finding himself. Which is a little different, but understandable in these times: if 50 is the new 30, then 30 could be the new 18; thus, finding one's identity/purpose/way at thirty instead of during or just after college age is plausible.
I think what may have saved me from disliking Israel Armstrong more than I did was that he means well, and a number of the people in the Irish villiage he goes to are even more quirky. Starting with him, the book has a number of stock characters and not quite stock situations. In tone / atmosphere it reminded me of the Vicar of Dibley television series, with an eccentric librarian instead of a woman vicar.
There's George, the capable, independent woman running the farm with little help from her grandda & her younger brother; there's Zenia, the pub-owner who is also fierce, capable and independent but who was in her past a most beautiful and dazzling woman; there's the single mother-waitress at the pub; there's the grizzled former driver of the mobile library who isn't sure Israel is worthy to run it. And there's the crafty but not really criminal council woman who makes Israel stay until the mystery of the missing library books is solved.
So it was a fun read, and quick--I read through it in two and a half days--but at the end of the covers, I wanted a little more. I wanted it to be more fun, more mysterious, more endearing. As a first book in the series, it's rather like a television series pilot--a lot of future interactions and plot threads are set up. As a stand alone book, it disappointed me just a shade. And Israel Armstrong didn't think Life of Pi was a very good book nor that it deserved the award it won! That annoyed me, too. I'll read Life of Pi a third time before I read The Case of the Missing Books a second time! (I've already read LoPi twice, thank you very much.)
Known among book clubs as the author of Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan follows up on his fifteen minutes of fame with another book about how millions of years of evolution can’t be all wrong while 60 years of industrial farming development certainly may be. That is, once people have moved away from being their own hunter-gatherers, deciding what to eat becomes a trickier question than seems readily apparent to most consumers.
The strong points of this book are its lively presentation of information, both researched from sources and from personal experience; the interesting and sympathetic people—both industrial food source producers and non-industrial food source producers and a problematic hybrid of the two, large-scale organic food producers—that Pollan introduces to readers. Pollan’s humor and reasoned approach to his topic are also refreshing.
A weakness of the writing is that some phrases and words are repeated more than felt felicitous for me. Pollan identifies his sections of the book as he investigates the different paths that food might take from living entity to food on the table, but in his reporting, he sometimes makes some large leaps in geography and time back and forth through his experiences. The repetition of phrases and words and ideas gives the book an aura of being a collection of articles on this topic. Still, while this weakens the book if one is reading straight through, it also means that one could read in any one section and have a coherent presentation of Pollan’s ideas and discoveries about the topic(s) under consideration.
I listened to the recorded book (on CD), and I think the redundancy was helpful in that format (even though I noticed it and it disconcerted me enough that I had to examine what I really felt about the repetitions), because if I missed a point, he would remind the reader about it a little later on. (Not as a reminder, as such, but just in the course of bringing the same point to bear in another sub-topic.)
I’ll feel differently about what I eat from now on. I won’t necessarily stop eating over-processed foods based on unnatural uses of corn and corn by-products, but I’ll be more conscious when I do eat them. In any case, Pollan is persuasive without being strident and reasoned without being boring.
Kitsch: n. Postmodern kitsch is bad taste masquerading as irony. I think kitsch is fun and funny. For that reason, I have several pictures tagged as kitsch at Flickr. When I did a search among other Flickr members for pictures tagged as kitsch, some nature shots showed up--sunsets and seascapes--and one picture of a pony being fed something by a small girl reaching up. These pictures, however, the nature shots, are not kitsch. They may well be visual / artistic clichés, but given that they are more or less naturally colored and that the subject matter itself was natural not manufactured or created by some man-made act of industry, they cannot be kitsch.
I offer here these two pictures of similar subject matter: Above, the painting of a seaside scene found in a pasty shop in a landlocked English town. And off to our right, a seaside scene taken in actual Whitby on the Yorkshire Coast. While the subject matter is superficially the same, the painting is in bright, garish colours and adds the "ificial" to artificial (as opposed to adding the "art" to artificial, which is arguable at best). I found it fun to look at on my eyes when I was there and amusing on a couple levels, but I don't mistake my admiration of the painting or its placement for good taste. The idyllic scene at right with its shades of blue, tile roofs and lighthouse has all the elements of a typical sea view. Despite its being really like that, invoking fond memories of a better day in February than had any right to be expected, and not obviously ugly in its composition, it may be (probably is, but it's my baby and how can I say things against it?) guilty of cliché. It is, after all, the very type-ical-ness of the picture that makes it cliché.
But not kitsch.
I suppose kitsch that's repeated to the point of being a cliché would be a kitsché
This is fun. Amusing and yet at the same time causing one to be mindful.
This is my favorite font. (Comic Sans MS. In case the actual posting changes the font, [posting did change the font, but I put it back by editing the post here at Blogger] the first two text lines were in Verdana--a completely uninspired font as far as I can tell. Okay, Verdana does get some good marks for unassuming readability, but it strikes me as just a step or two away from complete invisibility. It's certainly not carrying any emotional weight.)
I was going to post solely from GoogleDocs because it has an obvious connection with blogger, but Zoho has a button to publish to one's blog as well, so I'll have to publish from both to see what happens. And which ever one gets published 2nd, I'll change to draft so that I can finish items 21 and 22 on the one post.
Concerning what I think: I think I'll have a too-strong coffee and some 2% milk. No. Ummm, I think that the collaboration and the take it anywhere features are great. I'm very pleased to have alternatives to offer patrons who might want to do word processing or might want baseball box scores in a spread sheet and yet don't have MicroSoft applications available at home. (And with MS whining, suing, and wheeling and dealing in the (tech) news about Open Source software violating their patents, I'm even more glad to show people these alternatives.)
I also think that I don't have a favorite between Zoho and Google Doc yet. I'll have to try doing more with each before I can settle on which one is really better. Although in terms of an Integrated experience, Google, Gmail, Blogger, and Google Docs and Spreadsheets are all there together. Zoho is a whole other account and log in.
#21 Google Labs test drive.
What worked: Music Trends seemed to work. It could be useful to know songs and artists in the top 20 (among GoogleTalk users. Of course it is an unidentified demographic beyond what assumptions one might make about GoogleTalk users--generally younger, techologically connected). But at this point it is merely another pulse check on pop culture rather than an authoritative information source. Google Trends worked, but if one's search terms are not popular enough to get a graph, it doesn't tell a person a lot about how many if any were searching on those term(s). It works, but I don't at this time see as much use for it as even Music Trends. Google Page Creator works, but I'm not entirely sure just what would make it better than a Wiki or a Blog--Wiki if one wants to constantly, regularly update bulletin board on Newsletter type information, Blog if one wants to update with continuous narrative as we're doing here. In someways, a Page Creator strikes me as very Web 1.something rather than Web 2.0 or higher. Google Voice Local Search and Google Accessible Search which seem self-evidently useful for those with abilities related accessibility issues are the exception; the other choices didn't pique my interest enough to even look to see if they worked. It's also possibly a failure in Marketing....
I've already mentioned above which ones I found potentially useful.
#22 Web 2.0 Awards. Before I move on to the actual award winners, let me note that Technorati took 1st and Bloglines took 2nd in the Blog Guide category. In a cursory glance, it seems that the user interface made the difference between 1 and 2. In my own experience, I've been a little disappointed in Technorati because I've claimed my blog, allowed as I think Technorati to have access, and yet, when I search for words in my own blog that I know are in the post(s), it comes back with nothing found. Technorati has also been slow or unknowing about when I update my blog, even though I send it a separate ping from time to time.
I did change the spelling of my blog's web address, and I had to delete my original claim and re-claim the new spelling. So I wonder if that has caused connect problems between the blog and Technorati. But when I had to do an analogous procedure on Bloglines, it found me (back) right away. (In a note of sadness, I should have announced it before I did it, because I had been "watched" by 15 subcriptions on Bloglines before the address change, and now I'm being watched by only me. :-( )
The awards I looked at were the top 3 in the Books category. I can understand why Lulu.com got 1st--it's a place to self-publish on the web and sell one's "intellectual property." As the cut quote from the SEOmoz interview says, "“The ultimate goal for Lulu was to become a digital marketplace, like a mix of eBay and Amazon.com, a place for people to monetize their intellectual property instead of stuff.” ( Read our interview with Lauren Parker, PR Manager, Lulu --link to their interview) (While we're at it, I think "monetize" is needlessly jargonistic. The PR Manager is trying to impress people with the stuffy word instead of a more direct word. Points off for stuffy diction, as far as I'm concerned.)
I know Biblio.com is very cool for finding books you didn't know you could find again. But I'm not sure why it beat Alibris which does essentially the same thing. (I used Alibris to find the very first chapter book that I remember reading myself. It was $25 plus shipping, but it was worth it.) I read the paragraph at zeitgeist#award-selection page of the Awards site, but it didn't really give me a clear understanding of "what were they thinking?!" I suppose one thing is that some of their expert web site judges this time included marketers, so naturally they'd have an impact in award choice.
For my ranking of the three in books, I'd switch LibraryThing which I find completely addictive like Flickr with Biblio.
I just finished Un Lun Dun a couple hours ago. I found it engaging from the beginning. I think Mieville has done some really interesting things in his book. It reminded me of a lot of other other books, but in a good way. A laundry list:The first and most obvious is Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman the whole UnLondon of Mieville is very like Gaiman's London Below. Richard Mayhew becoming invisible to people in London Above because of his association with the people from below is like Deeb being nearly forgotten by her family and friends while she's away because of phlegm.
I did think it was too bad that Zwazzy was so quickly essentially written out of the novel (that's an admittedly a bad writing choice--similar to what Orson Scott Card does with the real estate agent in Homebody.) Nevertheless, Deeb is like Sophie in Howl's Moving Castle,--she's not the one who's supposed to be the hero/savior, but she's the one whose intelligence and bravery solves things anyway.I thought the Wraithtown was a lot like the City of the Dead from Brockmeier's A Brief History of the Dead. It was especially similar given that people either go to Wraithtown or sometimes go straight to the other place. UnLondon is also like Narnia in that one route to get someone there may not work to get back there the next time.
Finally, in a really far reach, Un Lun Dun is like Watership Down in that each of the characters on the good team contributed their part. I don't know that I'll read ULD every other year and get teary-eyed like I do with Watership Down, but Deeb will definitely be in my list of strong, clever, admirable female characters along with Sophie from Howl's, Coraline from Coraline, Lyra from the Dark Materials Trilogy, Thursday Next, Ruth Thomas from Stern Men and others.
