Harry Potter And The Teenage Angst Monster

(Long and SPOILER filled, for both the 6th movie and the 7th book so watch the heck out)

It's a tricky thing, adapting a book into a movie. Particularly one that's been read, analyzed, dissected, fought over, and devoured millions of times over. You keep it too tightly to the book and it would no doubt be long and dry. Go too far off base and you hear the unending outcry of an angry horde of rabid fans from across the globe. It's basically a no-win situation, if you discount the huge piles of money that you're being paid.

I think that overall, though, I'm in the camp that likes it when things are switched up. My favorite of the Harry Potter movies is Alfonso Cuarón's take on Prisoner of Azkaban, and I think it's mostly because the movie doesn't try to copy over the book word for word (like it seemed the first two tried to) and it didn't just try to get all the set pieces of the story in (like the 4th seemed to). There was a story that was told, and even though the denouement exposition scene was probably too much, it felt like a standalone decent film.

David Yates is obviously taking a long-term approach with parts 5 through 7A & 7B that doesn't really fit any classification. He's taking a sort of half-and-half approach to adaptation that you can only try when you know you're going to have the continuity of the films in place. Because just like 5, 6 really doesn't stand on it's own as a great film. Don't get me wrong, it's almost endlessly entertaining. For a movie that runs over two and half hours, keeping my attention that high and engrossed throughout is a great triumph. But he's obviously taking the long view on the series as a whole, and is okay with making the 6th installment fun, but ultimately incomplete. And if the currently leaked plans for the first movie of the seventh book are accurate, this will continue to the end.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing (cohesion rarely is), but it's not what I would have done. We'll get into that later, but let's for now have a small discussion on how much I enjoyed this one.

My primary joy in this movie was the strength of acting, which is the highest it's been in an HP movie thus far. Particularly Emma Watson and Tom Felton, who brought up the level of their games significantly from Part 5. I could spend a few hours gushing over Watson, but mostly because I was terrified that after that Order of the Phoenix disaster, that she would drag this movie straight down, as Hermione has such an arc to get through in Half Blood Prince. But she pulls it off with room to spare. Felton adds some umph to Draco's story, and the decision to reveal a lot more about the vanishing cabinet directly was a very smart decision.

Plus, Michael Gambon as Dumbledore finally puts it all together for this movie, and just in time as he could have easily been the make or break piece of the puzzle. (This was sidestepped by the directing decisions, but we'll get to that). I wasn't on board with his acting style for part 4 at all, but by 5 I could come around to it, and in 6 he has real pathos - he obviously cares for Harry, and is doing a delicate balancing act that is nicely highlighted in some of the more subtle bits of his acting.

I also greatly enjoyed the little liberties that were taken with the book - I loved getting rid of the tedium of the Dursleys and instead getting the off-beat diner scene instead. That's the exact kind of thing I'm looking for in a movie adaptation - reverence to the spirit of the book, but not slavish devotion to the recreation of the text. I was less pleased with the added attack on the Weasleys' house, but that's more the plot nerd coming out in me than an actual complaint. The scene itself is incredibly well-done, it just raises so many canon questions that my brain starts flailing internally.

And just like for the last movie, lets stop and take a paragraph to revel in the glory that is Luna Lovegood. It's such a perfect bit of casting, and she's played so delightfully, I want an entire movie just about her and Harry having little adventures together. I loved the way she was integrated into the movie even better than in the book - her finding Harry on the train was economical and well thought-out, and she gets some great lines floating in and out of her various scenes. I can't say enough good things.

My last bit of gushing comes for the Horcrux reveal scene - which seems crazy, as it's something that I kind of hated in the book. Textually, when Harry gets the Slughorn memory, all it does is confirm Dumbledore's expectation of what is going on (basically the sum reveal is that he's expecting 7 horcruxes). This is similar to the movie, but Gambon is able to ham it up a little, and give it some gravitas. And then the bit that I didn't expect - the really nice foreshadowing for Book 7 - Dumbledore's explanation of how the dark magic leaves its traces, only to have Harry himself get hit with a bolt Voldemort when he touches the ring. Because he's got the dark traces inside himself, right? Since he's a horcrux too. And while they're a little overdone, I love the ambiguity of Dumbledore's lines that follow, about how he can't destroy the horcrux himself, and again he's going to have to ask too much of Harry. Because he doesn't really say which horcrux he's talking about, does he? Whatever, maybe I'm reading too much into it, but let me have my delusions, I think it's amazingly well done.

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But back to the idea of adaptation. I understand what the director is doing here - he's going for the larger picture. The fifth movie sets the adult portion of the Harry Potter arc in motion - introduces the main characters and themes, but doesn't resolve much of anything. The sixth movie carries that through, raising the stakes by staying so close to the character-study side of things, rather than getting bogged into the deepening past plot. The opposite sides weighing in - the normal teenage life beset on all sides by the darkness - it makes sense when you're building to the overall conflict that will be Harry, Ron, and Hermione cutting ties to complete their mission in the next movie, and then the eventual grand conclusion where everything comes back together in the final one.

So taking this into account, I can see why the cuts were made where they were, and why the additions were necessary. It's a four movie payoff, nothing too immediate. See: Mrs. Weasley's long tear-stained reaction shot to Bellatrix burning down The Burrow. Can't even imagine what that might be leading up to a few movies down the road, no?

Or the cutting of all the other Voldemort memories: While it's all great backstory, it ultimately has little to do with the matters at hand in the story they're telling. How they'll nail down the horcruxes in the next parts is irrelevant to the set up the Half-Blood Prince is setting up. And for that matter, keeping the fight for Hogwarts at the end of HBP would introduce and remove the threat too quickly and too hollowly for the theme to continue (unless they re-added Bill and Fleur, which would be just too much.)

The only part I don't necessarily understand is the removal of the funeral, and the astronomy tower discussion put in its place. The new scene fits the theme well, but then so would the funeral. And had they carried the funeral to the expected conclusion, having Harry do his little homage to Spider-Man and dumping Ginny at the end would complete the natural arc of story nicely, and provides the ramp into the next movie. Instead we get a sort of soft fade out on the reflections of how the kids have grown up.

These are all things I can rail against, but don't see the need. It's a great entry into the series, and as a whole I think they'll acquit themselves nicely, particularly when viewed in the series as a whole.

A Book Post for My Own Benefit

So a few days back, Erin made a post about the Science Fiction and Fantasy section of The Guardian's '1000 Novels Everyone Must Read' series. Despite the fact that I think the entire process is completely ridiculous, I do love a good list of recommended science fiction, since my blind forays into the science fiction and fantasy sections of the library almost always end in terrifying disappointment and/or talking spirit wolves.

So, as a sort of exercise in keeping these things easily at my fingertips, and a chance to write up a little short form review of each, I'm making up a list of the books on the list I've already read, the ones I've tried to read and given up on, and the ones that I plan on reading in the coming days.

Plus as a bonus to myself, since we're still so early in the year, I'm going to make it my goal to get through the whole 'Planning to Read' section by the end of the year. Goals are awesome.

(Everything below the cut, because lord knows no one needs to read this whole thing)



Already Read
Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Everyone's read it, so it's doubtful I could say anything important. Hilarious and unique, some of the most inventive prose and stories around. Pure love.

Isaac Asimov: Foundation - Almost certainly the driest book on the list. I made it through the trilogy, but it was almost a chore. Starts well and then fades, but still a classic.

Clive Barker: Weaveworld - Cliver Barker was basically the author of an entire phase of my high school reading life that I entitled: Super Weird Fantasy Time. This actually came out when I was in college and so the bloom was a little off the rose (I look back at some of his early stuff with total incredulity), but it's actually a pretty damn good book. I was shocked to see it on this list, though.

Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Read it for a paper in college, thought it was about as boring as you could get, and yet it's beautifully written and eminently quotable.

Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - My favorite book in the entire world.

Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - Brilliant, but overlong. So many asides and subtle bits of humor it's astonishing. It was great to dig through once, but I don't think I'll ever bring myself to pull it off the shelf again. It's just too daunting.

Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves - Pure style and one of the scariest books I've ever read at times. That said, it thinks itself more important than it is, and some of the semiotics stuff is just filler. Still a great, great read.

Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum - Picked this up based on its cover in the library in Orange of all things. Probably the book I was most proud of reading back in high school.

Neil Gaiman: American Gods - So good that I read it through twice, back to back. I don't think I've ever done that to a single other book. Still the best Gaiman thing to ever happen, in my opinion.

William Gibson: Neuromancer - Groundbreaking, but I read it way late in my science fiction career, so it seemed outdated. Still important to read.

William Golding: Lord of the Flies - Read it for high school. Respect it, but it makes me sad.

M John Harrison: Light - One of the only books I've ever read based on an author recommendation on the cover (it was Neil Gaiman, actually) and was completely blown away. One of my favorite novels in recent times.

Aldous Huxley: Brave New World - Read it for high school (twice) and college (once). I guess I'll never understand the allure of this book. Sorry.

Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House - Genuinely scary. I always forget how much I like Shirley Jackson's writing, and then when it's brought up, I'm almost at a loss for words.

Stephen King: The Shining - Probably the best written of King's earlier stuff. Second scariest, behind It. I've probably read this book at least 5 times. It's crazy good.

Toni Morrison: Beloved - My second favorite book that I was required to read at SMU (First: The Things They Carried). Such an interesting and unique story, and brilliantly written. It also holds the distinction of being the source of the worst grade I ever got on a paper in college (B-), despite the fact that I still think my analysis was spot on.

Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler's Wife - I've talked about this before: I don't know if it was just my mental state, or the story, or the writing, but I straight up cried like a baby for the last 80 pages of this novel, and was an absolute wreck afterward. Enough so that I refuse to go back and read it again. So, I guess that counts as an endorsement?

Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club - Ugh, lord save me from overly-stylized writing. Actually, not as bad as I'm probably projecting. I remember liking some of the trickier passages. But on the whole, I sort of wanted to punch this book in the face.

Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space - In my mind this is the golden standard for all books in the Space Opera genre. Long and deeply engrossing, interesting characters, and a wholly realized and brilliant universe. I was so so so pleased to see this on the list.

JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - I get why it's on the list. It's still, by far, my least favorite of the series.

Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses - Read this back as a senior in high school for one of the final papers for AP English, when we were allowed to choose whatever we wanted. It's interesting as hell, but I think most of it went right over my head.

Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry: The Little Prince - Read it for French class. It still makes me sad, just thinking about it. I don't know why.

Mary Shelley: Frankenstein - Easily the best 'classical work' on the list, in my opinion. I love the way this story reads.

Dan Simmons: Hyperion - Oh man, I was so in love with this book when I read it. But I still haven't read any of the sequels, and the plot twist/cliffhanger ending of this book still haunts me. But yeah, should totally be here; it's one of the best pieces of science fiction I've ever read.

Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash - The most bad-assed science fiction book ever. It's lost its luster a bit in my mind, but no one can doubt the way it zips along, and just grabs you by the collar.

Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Ugh, I was not a fan.

Bram Stoker: Dracula - Eh. I read it just so I could say that I read it. I didn't really see the allure.

Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court - Probably my favorite Twain book of all. So interesting, and it keeps that Twain style that is so unique. Never takes more than two sentences to know exactly who the author is with him.

HG Wells: The Time Machine
HG Wells: The War of the Worlds - I read both of these together for the same assignment in high school. They're both good, but dated.

Tried and Gave Up

Greg Bear: Darwin's Radio - I have people who swear by Greg Bear the same way I swear by Alastair Reynolds, but I couldn't get more than 40 pages into this book.

Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange - Tried to read to so that I could say that I'd read it, and was completely thrown off by the prose so hard that I returned it practically the next day.

Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma - I loved Jpod with a fiery passion. Hey Nostradamus was brilliant and interesting. Girlfriend in a Coma made me want to kill myself before I was halfway through with the book. Stopped and never looked back.

Frank Herbert: Dune - This is on two lists, because I tried and then gave up in high school, but I've had so many people lately bring this book up that I'm determined to go back and finish it off.

Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon - I remember picking this up for a comparative literature essay my freshman year, but I don't think I ever finished it. I certainly barely remember any of it if I did. But I have no desire to revisit it.

Cormac McCarthy: The Road - By far the book that the most people have recommended I read. I've tried several times - it's just the bleakest thing in the world. I can't make it, guys. Sorry.


Planning to Read
Nicola Barker: Darkmans
Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls
Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle
Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Joe Haldeman: The Forever War
Frank Herbert: Dune
Henry James: The Turn of the Screw
PD James: The Children of Men
Richard Matheson: I Am Legend
Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle - I have had this on request at the library for 3 months. I'm going to have to break down and just buy a copy, aren't I?
Christopher Priest: The Prestige
José Saramago: Blindness
Kurt Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse-Five - Ha, this isn't on the list, but it was mentioned in there, and I've been meaning to read it for ages.

Hiding the Nerd at Christmas

So, every Christmas, people always ask you what you want as a gift. I have learned that it is a very good idea to have a short list of small items available in mind for this question, just waiting to be unleashed. Because if you don't, they will invariably fall back on their previous knowledge of things you have expressed a fondness for in the past. And before you know it your entire apartment will be filled with beavers in various shapes and forms, until they're the only thing you can see when you walk in.

And no one wants that.

But this year I don't know what has happened - every time I find something that I might want for Christmas, it is always almost too inherently geeky to even bring up in polite company. I don't think that I've gotten more nerd-like this year, it's just that my normal mainstream interests haven't come out with anything good lately.

So now I'm at a crossroads - do I hand over a list of completely off-the-wall things that I want, which will most certainly be doubly embarrassing (first, whenever the person doing the gifting has to buy it, and second whenever I get it and jump around like the gigantic nerd I am), or do I try to whittle down the list to the most mainstream of items and be less enthused with the resulting gifts that come across? Such is the burden of the mid-level-middle-class-20-something-nerd.

Anyways, this is all just a carefully crafted screen so's I can make a list of all the nerdy things that I've seen lately that I really want. Because lists are fun.

In order from least to most nerdy:

DVDs:
Wall-E - Because I am the biggest nerd for Pixar movies, just holding it in my hand will probably result in nerd drool. (Also a 2 out of 10 on the nerd/geek scale. It's a pretty popular movie, after all)

Bring it On - Because it's my favorite movie in the entire world, and I've lost my copy. I have the case, but no disc. It causes me near daily pain, but I can't bring myself to buy a new copy, since it must be here somewhere, right? (A 2.5 out of 10. Not a nerdy movie, but my level of devotion to such a bad movie is certain to release high levels of awkwardness)

Books:
Alastair Reynolds - House of Suns

Charles Stross - Halting State

Neal Stephenson - Anathem

(At least a 7 out of 10 across the board - all three are ranging sci-fi/fantasy. Although I think the Stephenson at least is pretty mainstream-ish. Still, books at the holidays - always geeky.)

Things That Are Like Books:
Cable and Deadpool - Comic Collections - So it's come to this, eh? Actually buying comics. I don't even know. But this series is great, and pretty hilarious, and I want a hard copy of it. What? Don't judge. (9 of 10 - to get this you almost are required to walk into a comic book store. We're reaching the upper levels of nerd here.)

Runaways - Dead End Kids - Because I cannot find a bookstore that stocks Runaways anymore, and I refuse on principle to go to the comic books store near my house, so I haven't been able to read the last 3 editions. (9.5 of 10 - because just like above, only add another 0.5 because Joss Whedon is involved.)

Other Things That are so Nerdy It's Hard to Categorize:
Brick Poster - I'd like to think that I'm starting to get old enough that I could move beyond movie posters. But no, not really. I badly want one of these cutout posters that they did for the release of Brick before they all disappear. I've linked the Brain one because he was my favorite, but there are like 5 different ones, and they're all pretty cool. (8 of 10. Cult movie + obscure fan item + level of dedication required to get it = more geeky than a sci-fi book, but less geeky than comic collections.)

Penny Arcade Print - I'm not going to try and defend this one, it may very well be the most geeky thing on the list. Buying a physical print of a webcomic strip, that's about being a geek?It's almost meta levels of nerd, going on. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I've come incredibly close several times to just buying one for myself for no reason. And the only thing that's stopped me so far? Because I can't decide which one I would get. I need help. (For the record: it's between this one & this one right now.) (10 of 10, no question)

Allomantic Metal Decals - I don't think I can even explain this one. So, they're like stickers? Of mystical symbols? From an obscure fantasy series that I'm (more than) mildly obsessed with. I don't even know what I'd do with them, but man do I want them. (15 of 10. Is that enough?)

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Well it feels nice to finally get all that nerding off my chest. Now to track down some holiday cookies and find out where I stashed all my Christmas lights. This house is not gonna decorate itself.

Your Consumer Whore Report for September

Have a huge pile of disposable income that you need to get rid of really fast?

If so, today's your lucky day because I just happen to have a huge pile of things that you should really want to buy. I know that I do.

1. Who Killed Amanda Palmer - Absolutely awesome new album from Amanda Palmer, i.e. the voice of The Dresden Dolls. When you buy the preorder right now, you get a free electronic download of the whole CD and a couple of bonus tracks, so there's instant gratification for your purchase that will come later in the month. It's like two purchases in one! It also helps that I love the entire album with reckless abandon, now that I've had a couple of days to listen to it a few times. It's weird that I picked up The Dresden Dolls because of Amanda's association with Regina Spektor, since I can't think of two more opposite types of piano girl singers. There's no polish with Palmer, but the emotion she packs into her songs overcomes any limitation you might expect.
   
   
2. Zoe's Tale, John Scalzi - I'm pretty sure I've gone over (at length) my love for the Old Man's War series, and for that matter my general love of Scalzi's writing (see Elsewhere links for his blog). This latest installment is more of the same, following a parallel storyline to the last book in the series (Last Colony) that fills in a lot of the blanks from that book, while telling a compelling story on its own. I have my list of quibbles with the book, almost all centering around Scalzi's skirting of some serious action scenes towards the end of the novel, but on the whole it's a great companion to the series, with an entirely unique voice. I dug it a lot. Now I just wish I had hard cover copies of the original trilogy, because now my collection looks a little lopsided on the bookshelf.
   
   
3. Dallas is about to receive an embarrassment of riches in terms of live music this fall. Just off the top of my head in the next two months: The Swell Season (AKA:the girl and the guy from that awesome movie Once), The Fratellis (my absolute favorite new band I heard this year), Ben Folds (on his new album tour), A new Hotel Cafe Tour (with Ingrid Michaelson again AND Meiko), Sara Bareilles (doing her own show this time), and Kings of Leon (with We Are Scientists(!!), the real reason I want to go to that show).
   
   I can't even fathom how much money it would take to see even half the shows I want to. And this is after Steel Train cancelled their Dallas stop.
   
   
4. In the video game world, Spore came out this week, and it's taking every willpower molecule in my body to not run to the store right now. I have spent far, far, far too much of my freetime just playing with their creature creator (which you can download for free. Because the first hit is always a giveaway. Then when you're hooked, that's where they get you. It's like cocaine, in a way). I'm dreadfully afraid that owning the full game would ensure I didn't see the light of day for until November.

And you know what? I'm just gonna stop right there because I'm practically drooling over all of these purchases that I want to make, and listing anymore is going to drive me right over the edge into poor consumer choices that you make when the industry you're employed in is folding like a bad hand in poker.

But don't let that stop you. Shop, my peoples, shop!

Love of Consumerism/Hate of Situation

Today I love:

• Vampire Weekend and Jenny Owen Youngs' Batten the Hatches, the two albums I got this weekend. I've had them both on repeat on my iPod for 2 days straight and still can't stop listening. Of particular note: Youngs' Voice on Tape, a song which I cannot get out of my head, and frankly don't even want to.
• This bag of Hershey's Hugs in my hand, who's dual chocolaty goodness is the only thing keeping me alive at this point.
• Brandon Sanderson. Particularly these two books of his, which are just amazing, and easily qualify as the best fantasy writing I've come across in the last 5 years. Have you ever been so into a book that you couldn't sleep until you finished it? That was me with the second one. Except not only would I not go to sleep, I wouldn't physically put the book down - carrying it with me as I took out my contacts, brushed my teeth, ironed my clothes for the next day. . . I was completely unconscious of this fact too, until I was actually in bed about to turn out the lights for the night when I realized I was still reading a book. So good. Also, as an offshoot of this.
• Tor Books, who sent me the first of those as a free eBook, as part of some sort of literary promotion. It was definitely a worthwhile gamble on their part, as it got me to go out and immediately acquire the second book in the series less than 30 minutes after finishing the first, so good on them. They also keep sending another book each week. Which is sweet, except for the fact that the last two they sent me I already owned. Along with the respective sequels for both books. I guess I'm just already too deep inside their demographic. Still, LOVE.

Today I Hate:

• My throat, which has swelled shut for unknown reasons. There is fiery pain whenever I swallow, and croaking noises whenever I try to speak. Do you understand how that might inconvenience someone who's job it is to answer the phones all day?
• Dallas drivers, particularly the Honda Accord who tried to sideswipe me on the way into the office this morning. Because he didn't feel like obeying the giant flashing yellow arrow indicating a lane closure until he was actually at said arrow, and then mistakenly assumed that he had right-of-way to take over my lane since his was gone.
• And also the BMW in my parking garage who tried to run me down once I was on foot, by driving 30 mph in an enclosed garage, while on his cell phone, driving the wrong way down a one way lane, and then veering into the parking spot I was standing in, waiting for his distracted, reckless ass to pass.
• Additionally, a small note to the driver of said BMW - if you are doing the three things noted above (speeding down the wrong way of a one-way lane while on a cell phone) and you try to root around in your passenger seat, resulting in a swerve that almost kills a pedestrian, when you slam on your breaks to stop, please don't honk your horn and yell angrily at the pedestrian. Because in case you didn't notice, it was your negligent ass that was wrong, and had it not been for the car dodging ability of the guy walking, he would now be plastered on your windshield. Particularly considering that your oh-so-amazing response time with those breaks had you shuddering to a stop three feet past where he was standing. That would be why he was able to look at you through your passenger-side window, with a look that indicated he was ready to drag you out of the car and beat the crap out of you, despite his generally non-violent persona. Christ.

If it's okay with everyone else, I'm just going to call this day a draw and hide in my living room until first light tomorrow. I'm pretty okay with the balance I've struck.

Long Form Review - The Golden Compass

(Note: Usually movie reviews are pushed to the sidebar, but my thoughts on this movie filled up way too much of it. Which means it really needs its own entry. Vague and specific spoilers abound.)

The Golden Compass - Short Form: A good movie with above par action and acting, that is limited by its story in a very significant way. Also, armored bears! (RAWR!, etc.)


This movie is an object lesson that shows that the eternal debate on whether movies are better/worse than the books that they're based on is utterly useless. Because this movie is a near perfect retelling of the book (Or more accurately, all of the book but the ending. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.) and it is completely hamstrung as a movie because of that.

I would go so far as to say that it's one of the most faithful adaptation of a book into a movie that I've ever seen. Virtually nothing is changed, good or bad, from exactly how the entire plot is presented in the book. When the book had extended scenes of pure exposition, the movie paused the action to have some old British people yammer on for a while. When the book introduced the mythology of witches out of the utter blue without explanation or reason, so went the movie. When the book freaking rips off the jaw of an armored bear and then snaps its neck... well you see where I'm going with this. (Aside: As soon as I realized that they were following the book so closely, I could not wait for the bear fighting scene. And I was not disappointed. That was awesome.)

What I'm getting at, is that book purists should be theoretically thrilled by the adaptation. With the exception of a copy/replace job on every instance of "Church" with "Authority," very little was excised from the meat of the book. Only the flow of the movie suffers - to save time (not a long movie by any means) they often cut from pivotal scene A to pivotal scene B without resolving how they got from A to B. The director never lets the story down to save on length.

But the problem is, the story doesn't translate overly well into a movie. Yes, the action is extraordinarily well done and thrilling, but the whole story has too much of a measured pace and far too much required backstory to be super effective. The book worked because it had time to set up the idea of daemons and the rules involved, and then to build up the world and the mythology around the alternate timeline. The movie has no such luxury - resorting to condensed character traits in single lines of dialogue, clunky expository speeches in place of long conversations, and bizarre announcements of intent. It all just comes off as awkward.

The worst example of this is the entrance of the witch, who literally seems to serve no purpose to the story whatsoever except to act as a deus ex machina device for the ending. And while it sort of is in the book as well, the witches perform a larger function in the book (keying in on the prophecy - the one thing that was cut from the movie that it really could have used), which makes their use less egregious in book form. In the movie it was akin to having a wizard appear midway through your plot for no other reason than the fact that you'll need some magical reinforcements in about 20 minutes.

Don't get me wrong, it's a good movie, but it could have been much better had they took a cue from other really successful adaptations (e.g. the Lord of the Rings writers) and how they adapted the sources to fit their needs. Because really, the LotR books are a perfect example of an awesome story that would be terrible in movie form.

Follow along: In the book version of Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo's decision to leave his home and go on to Rivendale on his little ring adventure is about 8 months long, both in planning and execution, with liberal stops along the way to meet magical creatures and get eaten by old trees. It would be utterly boring to watch that play out on a screen, despite how nice a travelogue and expository device it was to set you up in the mythology.

So what did the writers do? Cut all the dithering about and made it compelling to watch: race against time to escape dark riders, picking up friends as they go along, taking up maybe a week of total time, most of which is entirely offscreen.

Similarly in the case of The Golden Compass, I think it could have easily been adapted in a similar manner. Take some liberties with the source material to make it flow better. Don't be afraid to cut a scene or two of exposition to make time for other scenes to end naturally before jumping to the next item on the list. Fill in the exposition naturally with reasonable asides in those scenes, and trust the audience not to miss things. Done properly (like in LotR) literary purists won't whine (too much) and your movie benefits by being more cohesive.

Or alternatively - since you planned on pissing off the purists anyways by ending the movie TWO CHAPTERS BEFORE THE END OF THE BOOK, why even care to follow the story so closely?

Seriously, the ending is the best part of the book! (Bear fighting excluded, obviously) You even put the goddamn foreshadowing of the end right there in the movie ("It says I'm bringing him what he needs."). It's like you're trying to purposely enrage people who read the book. Yeah, yeah, no one likes a downer ending in a kids' movie, but guess what? It's not a kids' movie any more than it is a kids' book. Mature themes abound. Stick to your guns or go home.

Grr. Don't mind me. I really did like the movie. I just hate squandered potential.

Because I Like to Talk About Books, Dammit

WARNING: The following post is about books. Not just books, science fiction books. It will probably be super boring. You have been warned.


So, it seems that I love any book from the science fiction section, right? I mean, whenever I babble on about a book it's usually something sci-fi like, right? Aliens and what have you. This is actually a misconception - I really only love well written science fiction. But I willingly wade through huge piles of sci-fi crap that I never mention in order to get to it.

There are plenty of different types of bad science fiction.

There is the poorly written stuff, which you usually see in your movie and video game tie-ins. The kind of stuff that relies on branding to sell, rather than story or any competency with the English language. (Your Warcrafts, your Star Treks, your *shudder* Halo tie-ins)

Then you've got your poorly framed stuff, where the universe makes no sense or contradicts itself, or there's too much deus ex machina/"A Wizard Did It" explanations, or over-exposition on the universe with no good character correlation... really there are tons of different ways that this comes up. But it boils down to not immersing the reader properly into your world. This is not always a vital component of science fiction, you can write a good book without explaining the universe you're in, but more and more I find this to be the big hitch in my enjoyment of a novel.

Separate but equal to that, you've got the authors who have a perfectly explained universe, but can't write a convincing character or conversation to save their life (or their book). This is a rarer form of bad, usually if someone has enough of a handle on a scenario to map out a whole unifying theory for the entire world they can also imagine realistic ways for people to act within it, but it's still common enough to put on the list.

The last category is the hardest to define and the most nebulous, but it mostly has to do with intent and storytelling. Why are you telling this story and more importantly why should I care? This is less of a science fiction issue than an overall fiction issue - if the reader doesn't care about the story, or isn't invested in the outcome, there's no reason to keep reading, even if it's perfectly constructed.

In my mind sci-fi has a layer added on to that - not only must the story be compelling, it should have some reason for this alternate setting. Which, I'll admit, is only a gripe of mine. You can have a traditional novel (say, murder mystery or detective novel) that is just set in some sci-fi setting, but in most all cases it comes off as annoying, pretentious, or unnecessarily confusing. (This is not a condemnation of those sorts of books as a whole, though. Turning a genre on its ear can be interesting in its own right. Just more often than not it plays out as a gimmick rather than a conscious plotting choice that has meaning to the novel.)

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Now that I've already written a full post complaining about bad science fiction, I get to the reason behind this whole line of thinking - I just finished a set of three novels by John Scalzi: Old Man's War, The Ghost Brigades, and The Last Colony. These are my precise definition of great science fiction.

It's a trilogy of sorts - each book is set in the same universe but would probably work equally well as stand-alone novels. They do share various characters and follow an over-arching plot, though, so where they really excel is in the sum of all three books taken together.

Each book manages to avoid all those pitfalls above:

- they're delightfully well-written,
- have a clear, concise, and uniform universe that is introduced as naturally as possible (only the slightest out of place chucks of clunky exposition),
- with honest-to-God unique characters who have realistic dialogue,
- and a clear sense of purpose and drive for each novel that sucks you into the story and keeps you engaged.

The storyline follows a future where humans expand out into the galaxy and find it teeming with life. Life that mostly wants to destroy humanity to keep all the available real estate to themselves. The humans decide to go with the flow and attempt to wipe out everyone else too and get to colonizing.

The first two books are military novels (borrowing brilliantly from the Heinlein school of writing in the most direct way possible) that follow the new super-human soldiers who act as the front line against all the alien races, while the third is mostly a political story that builds on the plots developed over the course of the first two books. So you get plenty of action and alien killing, plenty of pathos (as the universe is a very easy place to die in), and plenty of humor as all the protagonists keep a relatively happy and witty outlook in the face of all the horrors they're up against.

This does not sound groundbreaking in general, but it's just refreshing to find the formula done so well, and carried out through three full books. They immediately get a spot on my shelf right next to the Ender series as a go-to quick and fun read.

But the real reason I'm so up on these books is because they're so eminently accessible to just pick up and read. I wouldn't have a second thought recommending them to anyone, even if they aren't a science fiction fan per se. A lot of that comes from the writing style - each book has a keen sense of humor and drama without so much of the extra baggage that you so often see with hard science fiction.

See, I can love and dig into a book like Charles Stross' Accelerando, but I wouldn't dare send anyone near it that wasn't fully on board with pushing through a very difficult read in order to reap the rewards. You've got to focus and parse through not just the writing style, but the constant shifts in tone, time, and technology. Conversely, these books still tell a great story but do it without making it feel like work.

Relevant, helpful disclosure: I devoured these books. Read all three of them in a span of three days, getting though The Ghost Brigades and better than half of The Last Colony from noon to ten at night on the second day. And then reread Old Man's War a few days later so I could discuss it with someone who had just finished it.

The ease of the writing and the compelling way the story is paced make it a chore to put down the books, which is the last hallmark I need to recommend them universally as a great entry point to science fiction. Because, even within the ridiculously small subset of people who read for fun, I think there's a bias against science fiction. Most people compare the whole genre to broccoli - you like it or you don't. But the real comparison should be to a whole food group - you may not like broccoli, but there is surely something in the Fruits and Vegetables Section that you enjoy.

I may just be spouting nonsense (as usual), but whatever, I really, really enjoyed these books and urge anyone to try them out. Who knows, maybe you have latent geek tendencies just waiting to spring forth.

You All Knew It was Coming - Epic Potter Post

Mm, Internet. Tastes so good.

The seclusion was successful (totally unspoiled to the end), so I can't complain too much about 4 days without email. It was even vaguely liberating... but I don't plan on doing it again anytime soon.

I picked up the book first thing Saturday morning (pre-orders are for fools, yo. Target had enough copies to build a fort) and by 6:00 that afternoon I was done, stopping my reading only to get an additional Dr Pepper or go to the bathroom.

My full, crazy, and rambling review is below the cut (and chock-full of so many spoilers that your brain will explode). In general though: Tons of love. A brilliant end to the series that managed to be touching and awesome and ridiculous all at the same time. My hat goes off to Rowling, along with my full apologies for ever thinking that she couldn't pull the ending off without messing something up.

Okay, complete thoughts below. Seriously, don't click until you've read the book.


Firstly - check out my track record on predictions! I give myself 10 out of 17, allowing for a little leeway on exact wording. And check out the Snape line! Hot, right? I'm so impressed with myself, even if it was pretty obvious.

Anyways.

So I can properly gush in a second, let me get my annoyances out of the way first:

Lupin & Tonks, both dead?! Offscreen? No. No, no, fuck no. I was pretty sure Lupin was a goner from the second that he named Harry godfather (I mean come on, foreshadowing) but Tonks was just overkill. She got maybe one line in the whole book, never did a single thing, and then *boom* dead. That was really the only part of the entire book that I can't get behind.
My poor dead, Lupin. Nevar 4get!

Other, lesser annoyances:

• The ridiculous ret-con of Harry's invisibility cloak. Yeah, it makes you completely invisible, except when Moody's eye can see through it, when the Marauder's Map can still track you, and Mrs. Norris can sniff you out. *eyeroll*
• Halfway through the book, Hermione being all "Oh, I've never done a memory charm," when she's already sent her parents to Australia with completely new identities, not remembering they've ever had child. In-book continuity, much?
• Jesus Christ, that epilogue. That was the worst, worst, worst thing in the world. Fanfiction-y in a way that almost hurt. Let's not tell me what happened to Luna, or what Harry and Hermione decided to do after school. No, let's have Harry use his children as insane memorial devices. No pressure, child who is named after the two greatest heroes of the wizard world in the last 100 years. Gross. (Also - Scorpius? To borrow an apt line from the 90's - Gag me with a spoon.)

And really that's it, in terms of annoyances. Let the gushing commence!

• Neville! No, really, Neville! Takes over for Harry when there's no Harry in Hogwarts (with Luna and Ginny as his Ron and Hermione, respectively), gets the holy crap beat out of him, leads the revolution, and then kills Nagini by pulling the sword of Gryffindor out of the Sorting Hat, while his head is goddamn on fire. Sweet zombie Jesus, the wait was worth the payoff. I *heart* Neville so much. And he's the Herbology professor!
  
• Luna! Fulfilled my prediction down to the exact letter - "continues to be awesome." I'm not saying that you're a bad person if you don't love her, except that you totally are. Her speech at Dobby's funeral was the most perfect thing in the world...
  
• ...except for the epitaph that Harry put on his tombstone. Seriously, nothing in Harry Potter has ever made me cry (not Cedric, not Dumbledore, not even Sirius), but that entire Dobby scene had me weeping like a child. He dug the grave himself! And they gave him clothes! Christ, I'm misting up right now. I cannot believe it, I never even liked his character all that much.
  
• Just pretty much everything in the book once they make it back to Hogwarts (the Lupins excepted obviously): The teachers just going off (McGonaggal leading a charging pack of desks down the hall!), all the students (Oliver Wood!) coming back to kick some ass, Kreacher and the house-elf revolution, Percy and his reunion, Ron and Hermione and their wild make outs when he defends elf rights...the list could go on forever.
  
• She gets her own bullet point: Molly Weasley and her NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH! Just delightful. Quite possibly the only thing that could have been as satisfying as Neville finishing her off. And since Neville already got his moment, I'll easily give this one to her. Kick Ass.

Various other bits that aren't gushing, but things that I really liked:

• Lupin and his early-book breakdown. As I've said a million times in the past, I think Lupin is the most interesting and tragic figure in this whole mess of a universe. Check it: as a child, he becomes a werewolf and is totally shunned. He gets a break and gets into Hogwarts and gets four true friends. So he's happy for roughly 7 years. Almost immediately afterwards, has three of those friends killed and the fourth sentenced to life in prison for killing and betraying the others. Spends the rest of his life hating him and living again shunned by the world. 15 years later finds that 4th friend was innocent and is reunited with him... only to have him die less than a year later in a brand new war against the same foe.
  
  I mean, the guy is basically the living embodiment of the grief of the first war. And suddenly he starts going through it all again in the second war. After he loses Sirius, he is forced underground to work with the werewolves, and he's even more persecuted than before. Even his love interest is almost impossible for him, since he already knows what the potential costs of the war are.
  
  While they are waiting for everyone to come back to The Burrow after the early Death Eater attack, you get that he is finally losing it, and rightfully so. Then you get his complete breakdown with the announcement of the son. It was all incredibly well handled and truthful and in-character. Vicious, but real stuff.
  
  Then of course she goes and kills him and breaks my heart, but whatever. He got to come back with James, Lily, and Sirius in Harry's March to Death. That was at least comforting, since he's all reunited with them and whatnot.
  
  But really, doesn't his life just make you want to cry? Rowling really worked him over, I think harder than anyone.
  
• Man, Dumbledore is stone cold, isn't he? I mean, "Go ahead and betray Harry's departure date. I don't care if people die." All while all the while telling Snape "Why don't you whine some more about being a double agent, ya pansy! Just remember you're doing it for Lily and do your damn job." Top it off with "Oh yeah, so I totally knew Harry has to die to get rid of Voldemort, I'm aiming a human weapon right now so how's about you get off my back about it" and suddenly I'm less confident that Michael Gambon's crazy angry Dumbledore from the movies isn't so far from the mark. Harsh, yet awesome.
  
  (Aside, I love that Rowling was able to get in her usual 'Chapter where Dumbledore explains everything' even though he's already dead.)
  
• And just so I address it, the Snape thing was nicely drawn. That's a good use of foreshadowing for once, and his whole storyline is understandable, if not necessarily sympathetic. To a degree you just want to shake him and be all "She picked someone else, man, pull yourself together," but at the same time it's very 'Awww' too.
  
• While the early middle of the book did tend to drag, (we wander the countryside and don't have a clue what we're doing) I really liked the level of desperation that it started painting, and it carried well through the rest of the book. I always find tone to be the hardest part for Rowling to manage (you go from drama to comedy so fast most of the time it's hard to keep the curve) but she nailed it nicely in this one.
  
• And on that note, the Deathly Hallows business + Dumbledore and Grindlewald backstory should have been far too much extra stuff for the book to handle. And yet, I really think it fit together so well, I can't find anything to complain about. Maybe it's just the euphoria of the initial ending of it all, but I'm really impressed with the whole book.

Jesus, I'll stop there for now. Really I could just go on for days.

Final Words: A great series. Not literary, not groundbreaking, but great in its own right. I don't think I could be more pleased.

(Eww. What's with all this love? I feel kind of dirty.)
(I can't end on that. Seriously: Fuck that epilogue.)
(Okay, that's better.)

Harry Potter and The People Who Are Giving Me A Goddamn Aneurysm

We're still 3 good days out from the release of the last Harry Potter book, and already there are so many spoilers out in the world that I've had to enact my doomsday scenario earlier than expected. I was spoiled for book six with approximately 100 pages left in my first read through, and the horror still haunts me. This will not happen again. Even if it means that I become one of those unibomber-type hermits for the next 6 days.

If you're trying to reach me by email, you'll fail, since that was how I got hit last time. Ditto for message boards and blogs. In fact, I've cut all of the Internet out of my life altogether. The only way I'm able to post this guy is through the ingenious use of my history bar, and after this I'm not opening a browser until I've finished the book unless required by my job or God.

I'm actively considering a ban on text messages also, just to be entirely safe, but think that might be a little overboard. At the same time, though, I'm not overly concerned with what people think. It's all good fun, and I've put an intense number of man hours reading the books, discussing them, dissecting them, and watching movies full of horrible child actors based on them. Yeah, I'm ridiculously over-invested but the release of the last book is only going to happen once. Bring on the isolation, I say. I can stand to look (be) crazy for a week to satisfy my fandom urges.

For now my obsession can fuel me the way the regular Internet usually does.

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Now for the fun part that makes me look as foolish as possible: Predictions!

(Crazy tons of spoilers for everything up to the last book to follow)

I'm always so, so wrong about these things:

• For OoTP, I was 0 for 8 on predictions, including my sincere expectation that Prof. McGonaggal was going to turn out evil, despite how much I loved her. I also picked Dumbledore going down in this one.
• For HBP, it was 1 for 10, and the only right thing I had was Prof. Snape teaching Defence. Things I missed: who the big death would be (I had odds on Hagrid), Draco's plot (which makes me wince, since I predicted the exact opposite of what happened), and even who Harry would date (I know! How obvious was that? I'm so bad at this!)

Anyways, since it's the last book and all, I going to go with the full-on rundown, and then I'll come back on Sunday and be nice and chagrined about how off I was.

Predictions (going from Most Boring to Most Interesting)

• Voldemort dies. (Obviously.)
• Nothing of interest will happen to the Dursleys (since I couldn't care less either way. Although I wouldn't mind some cosmic justice for Dudley).
• Ron and Hermione will survive, and ride off into the sunset together. Although I wouldn't put it past Rowling to take the Buffy sort of route and somehow horribly disfigure Ron (a la Xander and the worst scene in television history).
• Also, Hermione and her House Elf Liberation Front better play some sort of significant role in the plot, or I will be bitter at all the wasted space that storyline took up.
• Filch will bite it, probably defending the school, after finally being able to cast a spell.
• Peter Pettigrew will die saving Harry from Fenir with his silver hand, thus completing his story arc. Also, I'd just like to say thank you to JK Rowling again for not having him kill Lupin in the same manner. Because that was my greatest fear in life from the end of the 4th book until she debunked that particularly convincing theory. I love Lupin so much.
• Draco will survive, and I suppose turn good. Frankly, I want Harry to kill him and be done with it (I see no redeeming characteristics about the boy) but I'd be shocked if that's the route she takes.
• Hagrid - Dammit, I'm going to say that he dies, despite the evidence to the contrary. Have you noticed that I don't like Hagrid? I think Rowling has put enough effort into Grawp that she could bump off Hagrid to make Harry's plight that much worse and still have a giant around to help the good cause.
• In a similar vein, Norbit the dragon will make a dramatic return to help Harry (because I've seen the book cover and I like the idea).
• Snape will die helping Harry kill Voldemort, turning out to be a secret quadruple agent working on the good side. This is also against my wishes, since I think Snape ultimately being evil straight through would be bad ass, if completely illogical.
• (Aside: I really like the theory that Snape was in love with Lily, and her death was the ultimate reason he turned from the dark side. It fits how Dumbledore was convinced of his innocence, what with him being so full of that ree-dik-U-lous obsession with love.)
• Most of the Weasleys will make it through, but I assume Percy will get smoked pretty early on. I'm saying right now, she had best not mess with Fred & George, although I have my fears. Those little throwaway lines about the Prewitts in book 5 sound like doom for F&G to me. But I'm easily spooked.
• Ginny will continue to kick a lot of ass, but I'm very much on the fence about her survival. I think I'll go with Lives.
• Characters who are not allowed to die and must only have good things happen to them: Luna, Neville, and Lupin. You don't touch my favorites, dammit. Neville gets revenge on Bellatrix, but doesn't kill her, and goes on to teach Herbology at the school. Lupin and Tonks get to live happily ever after, since he's already the most tragic character in the whole story and deserves something good. Luna continues to be awesome. That's it, I will brook no discussion at all. LA LA LA, I'm not listening!
• Harry kills Voldemort, and lives. And I really hope that the book ends with something that parallels the first book - someone toasting Harry as "The Boy Who Lived." (The alternative is just wicked depressing)

Whew! Can you tell I'm obsessed? Don't worry, I'm sure I'll take down the list in shame before the weekend is up.

Also, omigosh, isn't it all so exciting?

Good Lord, I'm such a dork.

Bitter in Advance

Guys, I am in the worst mood today. All it took was my iPod freezing up first thing this morning, and now I'm useless for the rest of the day. All morning long, people have been doing stupid or annoying thing all around me, and I feel justified getting more and more angry. In fact, I just yelled at a telemarketer (who completely deserved it, just to be clear) and felt profoundly more bitter when I hung up. This is not a good state of affairs.

By the time the commute home comes around, I'll probably be at the point where I road rage someone right off a bridge or something.

In order to stave off the waves of bitterness, I present you a book meme. Because I like making other people suffer along with my boring eccentricities. (via 50 Books)

Five most recent books you've bought for yourself:

1. Penny Arcade Vol 4: Birds are Weird, Jerry Holkins & Mike Krahulik
2. Dress Your Family in Denim and Corduroy, David Sedaris (so I can finally return Devon's copy)
3. Different Seasons, Stephen King
4. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling (preorder, natch.)
5. Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden

Five books you've most recently given other people:

1. Great Cookies: Secrets to Sensational Sweets, Carole Walter
2. The Joiner King, Troy Denning
3. Assassination Vacation, Sarah Vowell
4. Invitiation to the Game, Monica Hughes
5. Revelation Space, Alastair Reynolds

Five most recent books you've loaned other people, and their status:

1. Shalimar the Clown: A Novel, Salman Rushdie (still on loan from being on loan to me from the library)
2. Harry Potter and The Sorceror's Stone, J.K. Rowling (still on loan)
3. A Home at the End of the World, Michael Cunningham (returned)
4. Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris (returned)
5. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (returned)

Last five books you looked at on Amazon/Chapters/Powell's/etc.:

1. Specimen Days: A Novel by Michael Cunningham
2. The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell
3. Grand & Humble by Brent Hartinger
4. The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel by Michael Chabon
5. The Wheel of Darkness by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Top five books on your "to read" pile:

1. Century Rain, Alastair Reynolds (I will finish you yet, dammit)
2. Fragile Things, Neil Gaiman
3. The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon
4. Glasshouse, Charles Stross
5. Old Man's War, John Scalzi

Bottom five books on your "to read" pile:

1. Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco
2. Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson
3. Empire, Orson Scott Card
4. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Bill Bryson
5. A Beautiful Mind, Sylvia Nasar

Mm, all that talk of books now has me at least 22% less likely to kill someone on my way home. Books really do enrich your life.

Restlessness on Review Friday

With the move now officially in full swing (we pick up the keys/gate openers on Tuesday) I am starting to feel the sway of complete wanderlust. So be on the lookout for a complete site redesign over the weekend. The place may be down for a day or so whilst I get everything organized.

Or I'll get lazy and never actually get around to uploading all the changes.

Either way.

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Short review day, because I have no attention span at all right now.

Books

Lisey's Story, Stephen King - I have such a disconnect when I read Stephen King books. Despite their tendency to run wildly long and go absolutely off the wall in terms of crazy plot devices, I almost always come out satisfied. After the very fun departure that was Cell - just a straightforward zombie horror-fest - this book is much more standard late-career King, very much in the vein of Insomnia or Bag of Bones. That is: widow(er) discovers deeper meaning/horrors in their now-dead spouse's past, leading to violent/horrific events in the present.

It's very well done (and better written than usual for King, by a good margin) although the seams tend to show a little bit in the structure of the plot. The whole book runs in continual flashbacks of the "Oh I remember something horrible from the past that I had repressed" variety, which can get old really fast. Especially when the thing you are remembering is someone telling a story. A flashback of a flashback of an 8 year-old child's narrative stretches my reading mind to near the breaking point.

But like I said, very well done and well written. So while you see exactly where the story is going (he actually give you the ending around page 100 but couches it so that you've pushed it out of your mind by the time it comes around) you don't mind the trip.

World War Z, An Oral History Of The Zombie War, Max Brooks - Seriously, just let that roll off your tongue a couple of times. An Oral History of The Zombie War. There is practically no way that this book could be bad. Until you start reading it and realize that it is a much more difficult task to manage than you thought.

The idea is great - a pseudo-documentary of interviews with key figures in the carefully imagined near-apocalyptic war against the walking undead. There's enough room for juicy story that by the end I was absolutely amazed at how well he pulled the whole thing off. Because it really is fraught with peril - going overboard, losing the narrative in all the winding interviews, keeping the tone in-character as you shift. Except for what I saw as a few melodramatic missteps (the downed Air-Force pilot and the soap-opera worthy submarine story) the book is tightly focused on giving you the timeline, highlighting it with personal vignettes, and then leaving you to fill all the blanks in for yourself.

It even manages some genuinely touching moments, even against a ludicrous backdrop of zombies who neither breathe nor pump blood overrunning the entire world. Big time recommended reading.

Music

Mates of State - Bring it Back. I will not lie, I have never been a huge Mates fan. More appreciative than anything else, I'd never actually bought one of their albums, just listened to a few of their songs and was decidedly "Eh." But on a recommendation from my music advisers, I picked this one up and I'm much more on board now.

Catchy, lo-tech, what I swear is an organ/drums combo, it's all just very listenable. It's gone into my main rotation as a CD that can run uninterrupted straight through. Not going to win any awards, but I'll keep my eyes open for anything they do in the future.

Amy Winehouse - Back to Black. How weird is it that these two albums have near matching titles and I got them in the same week? Anyways, I refuse to gush about this CD like everyone else. I do love a good throwback song, though, and this thing is chock full of them. It's very much old-school Motown crossed with a lot of Billie Holiday torch standards, which is very refreshing. I like a return to old things I love made new.

That said, I'm not super big on the album. I do love a couple of the songs, particularly Rehab and the title track, but the sum total is a little boring to me. I feel like a little variety would have really helped keep me more interested. I dunno, I feel sort of bad for not liking it as much as I should.

Mika - Life in Cartoon Motion. Have I not written about this one before? I really feel like I have, because in real life I couldn't stop gushing about this CD for two months straight, but I don't see it in the archives. Oh well. I love this album so hard. I can't do a coherent review, so instead I direct you to the Amazon page, which has a fever-dream-induced editorial review which is much better than me at describing such things.

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God, that took way more concentration than I expected. Back to flailing in every direction!

Sorting Through the Books

Alternately titled: Wherein I Reveal Deep-Seated Prejudices and Rant and Rave like a Crazy Old Man

I am entirely enthralled by home-improvement shows on TV right now. Mostly because I'm moving in a couple of weeks and love the idea of hidden potential in ordinary spaces. I've spoken about my love of Sell This House recently, but the best place for me to get my fix (anytime that I'm jonesing, day or night) is the HGTV, a channel I previously didn't even know existed. But now that I have found it, I love it unconditionally. It could be 3:30 in the morning on a Friday, but you can tune in and watch some fool trying to update a bedroom by spackling a mirror to the front of his dresser. It is a flawless way to waste a couple of hours.

Also? Carpenters are wicked hot. (Not the point of this post)

My rant-filled issue is only marginally related to this, but it's the jumping-off point. One of the shows that HGTV uses as filler during the day is called Operation: Organization, or something similar. Basically, they find some poor homeowner who is a complete slob and then spend thousands and thousands of dollars to get their place all organized and classy. Until the second the cameras leave and they go back to their old slobbish ways, I assume.

It's sort of a cool show because the transformations are so dramatic. Since you start out with papers and crap everywhere, the end result is amazing. The problem I have is with one of the professional organizers that they use. They have a whole stable of go-to people (Flamboyant Asian Guy, Strict British Girl, etc.) but the most used one is a Type-A Woman who is super effective at getting shit done. She cuts through all the crap and gets things organized ridiculously quickly, with her specialty being convincing people to throw away/donate stuff that they don't really need. This ability speaks deeply to me because I am horrible about throwing anything away. I envy her power so hard.

My issue, though? She hates books. Hates them. Every time she starts the sorting process, the second they get to a book shelf she starts throwing as many books as possible into the donation pile. "If you've already read it, there's no reason to keep it around taking up space. Donate it to someone else who can get some use out of it." This is like her mantra.

Never has such an innocuous comment inspired such rage in me.

The worst was when she was working with this one family with three kids. Despite the fact that she had no problem keeping something like 4 chests full of lame toys, she totally took this mom to task for wanting to keep her books, even though she had already read them. When the mom said something like "Well, every one of these books I have read at least twice," the organizer looked all disbelieving and snorted "Well, you're not going to read them a third time, right?" All the while staring at the husband with a look that clearly said "How d'you get hooked up with this nutball?"

White hot rage. Made even hotter by the fact that this is a very common belief. If you've managed to get through a book once, there could never be a reason to go back again. Arg.

Books are meant to be read multiple times. They are not the sole entertainment medium in the world that is one-use only. No one ever suggests that once you've seen a movie or listened to an album you've gotten all the use you'll get out of it you'll ever need. DVDs, CDs, these things are collected in bulk by everyone. Why? Because you can get plenty of enjoyment from repeat uses.

The same is true with a book, too. There are books I own that I have read literally dozens of times. Are they less enjoyable in the later times? No less so than watching your favorite movie or listening to your favorite album years after purchase. The fact that people can't understand this just boggles my mind.

I guess I'm just completely out of step with the rest of the world on this issue. Because seriously.

No wait, actually it goes even deeper than that. Because I hear this constantly and every time I am left completely speechless.

"Well, I just don't read." (And it's a proud declaration, like a blow for human rights or something.)

Nothing in the world, short of telling me that your hobby is Mime, will make me discount your opinions faster than telling me "Oh, I don't read." Bullshit.

Okay, not bullshit, I'm perfectly willing to believe that you don't read. But, what? Seriously, what?

There is just no way I can relate to that. People who are all "I don't watch TV, it rots your mind," I can at least just silently roll my eyes at and move on. But reading? This is a fundamental sort of thing. I'm not even talking the snobbish sort of "You've never read Tolstoy?!" crap. I mean just reading - for enjoyment, for knowledge, for anything.

Lord knows I'm not the most literary person in the world (I just spent the entire weekend reading a 400 page novel about the oral history of the zombie war, for God's sake), but so much of my world-view is colored by the reading I have done. I don't understand how people can say that they've never read a book since high school, and even then they only did it because it was required. This is a level of disconnect that I don't understand at all.

I mean, I know that it is possible to be a well-rounded individual without a background in literature. There are very few things in the world that can only be picked up from a book and those things are even less likely to be real-world necessary. That said, dismissing an entire medium out-of-hand just drives me crazy. Why limit yourself like that? Yeah, some books are boring. Or poorly written, or full of words that you don't know. But there are tons and tons of things out there to read that are hilarious, or thought provoking, informative, or just wildly interesting. And your default setting is to ignore it all?

Why?

I just, ugh. See? Complete disconnect. What is going on there? Were you abused by the written word in your past? Was getting through A Separate Peace in sophomore year really that traumatizing? (Actually, if that's the reason, then I totally have your back. God, I hate John Knowles.) I don't understand and it's making my blood pressure rise trying to figure it out.

Yeah, okay, I've gone on my snob rant long enough. But there it is.

Really, you should read.

But even if you don't, please don't tell me. It makes my brain hurt. So much.

Erryday is Friday

(Note: I totally started writing this on Friday, so I'm still allowed to make it a multimedia review day. So there.)

My head feels like it is fourteen times its usual size. And since I have quite possibly one of the largest heads in the known world, you can understand why this is a bad thing.

The drugs, they do nothing. I'm thinking today might need to become a real-live sick day. I haven't had one of those in over 2 years. I'm pretty sure my available balance of sick hours at work stands somewhere around 160. I could contract the Ebola and have enough paid time off work to wait it out.

Anyways, before it comes to that, various bits of reviews, notes of interest, and other things to keep my mind away from thoughts of my brain exploding directly out of my ears.


Books

Accelerando, by Charles Stross - Quick! Take every single idea you have ever thought of about technology in the future, be it good, bad, or indifferent, and write them all down in a list on a single sheet of paper. No time for punctuation! Okay done? Congratulations, you have now written one page of Accelerando. Please now repeat step one approximately 400 times, never re-using the same idea twice, add in an occasional poorly-drawn character and/or bit of plot (oh, you know readers, they just love plot) and then stir until you can't remember why you started the book in the first place. And, bam, you're done!

Yeah, we're done.

Admirable book, with admirable intentions, but reading this book was like hacking away at a redwood tree with a plastic butter knife - you might eventually finish the job, but by the end will you really care?

Book of the Dead, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child - I know I must have said this several times before, but I love me some really cheesy suspense/horror. And nothing comes as close to perfection in that genre as these two authors. As a stand-alone book, this novel will not make a single lick of sense, as it is basically the second half of the already bloated Dance of Death, which was itself actually the second half of another book that I can't even remember the name of. The sum total of the trilogy is great, though. They use established characters (from a half-dozen other great genre books) so you don't have to worry about characterization because it's already built in, and instead get to work rocking out with a ridiculous series of exploits.

Yeah, the "shocking museum exhibit gala goes horribly wrong" bit is overwrought, but I got over it pretty quick. That said - Seriously, how many museum galas in this universe have ended in complete tragedy and multiple deaths? I count at least 3 or 4. And every single time the heroes warn everyone to stop, and every time the bureaucracy pushes the event through anyways. Is there no pattern recognition, people? Whatever, it was entertaining, that's all that matters.

JPod, Douglas Coupland - Several disclosures to start things off: I hated Microserfs for no real reason. Hey Nostradamus! was weird and really compelling, but still put me off. And I really hate when authors get all pretentious and do things like insert themselves into the story (see: King, Stephen) or mess around with fonts and word placement without any real reason (see: Danielewski, Mark - Only Revolutions).

Now that those are out of the way, I really dig this book. A lot. In fact, I read the entire 500 pages or so in a single day. Sometimes you just want to sit down with an incredibly quirky, completely unrealistic and improbable story and just ride it to the end. It's a really sweet (and gory) little book that just keeps ratcheting up the coincidences and jokes until it seems like the author got tired of typing. It was just fun and mindless and forgettable, and geeky enough to suck me in completely. Plus, I really tend to love books that randomly have strange lists for no other reason than the fact that lists are cool.

Movies

Breach - 1) Laura Linney is awesome and will always be awesome. 2) Chris Cooper is a really good and really underrated actor. 3) Ryan Philllllipe has got a giant knot on his forehead that might be the most distracting onscreen feature since Tom Cruise got that weird middle tooth thing corrected.

4) This movie was great, even though there was a very decided lack of action and a plethora of weird Catholic guilt all over the place. Might be a little too measured for my tastes, but in general I am way more of a fan of the thoughtful movie than the mindless one. A-.

Zodiac - And here we are again. Another really great (almost amazing) movie that pulls back from the action so hard that you're constantly left wondering when the other shoe is going to drop. I mean it's a serial killer movie and the guy directing it is the same dude who made Fight Club and Panic Room. In which several people were beaten with sledgehammers and Jared Leto was set on fire in one and had his face basically bashed in in the other. I was expecting more gore. But it is more thoughtful, more focused on how the killer affects those who are chasing him rather than his victims.

The ending really is something of a letdown, if only because the bottom just drops out of the movie. It fits well with the overall scheme - you're just waiting for a payoff that is never going to happen. Which, I guess, is what the whole movie was about, so bravo.

Whatever, Jake Gyllenhaal is so pretty and awkward and swoon.

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So yeah, that was my Spring Break week, lots of books and a couple of movies. I blew my entire monthly entertainment budget in abotu 5 days, so look for way more discussions about household events in the coming weeks, while I store up money like a squirrel with his nuts, for the long winter that will be my house moving experience.

Wow, that was a tortured metaphor. I better get out while I still can.

Pure Brain Dump

During a discussion recently with a friend of mine, I mentioned that I didn't really have any good topics to write about at the moment, just a whole bunch of little bits of junk that were sort of floating around in my head. And she gave me some very sage advice: write about whatever you want; it's your damn blog.

So yeah, word to the max. Commencing random bits of info.

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My latest obsession: How I Met Your Mother. A TV show. Not even just a TV show, a fixed camera sitcom. I don't know what has become of my tastes. But this show is the most hilarious thing on TV that is not The Office, and it's way less cringe-inducing, which makes it a lot easier to watch. I got the first season on DVD for Christmas and by conservative estimate I have watched it all the way through at least 5 times. There is a really nice level of rapport that the cast has working, especially by the end of that first season. And the new second season has really hit its stride, to the point where I consider certain episodes at the pinnacle of good TV. (I would never have thought anything could challenge Arrested Development's Pier Pressure as the best single episode of comedy I have ever seen, but HIMYM's Slap Bet is right there.)

I also have a wicked man-crush on Neil Patrick Harris, who is almost criminally funny in the role of the crazy womanizer.

The show almost went off the rails for me in the first season with the obvious parallels to Friends and the Ross+Rachael4Life issue with the corresponding characters here, but they managed to avoid the really bad pitfalls and come up with some great TV.

And now I'm on some sort of holy quest to convert every person I know into a watcher. This is exactly like Serenity/Firefly, but I think I'm a little less crazed on this one. You should watch it, though.

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Also for Christmas, someone (Frank) let me go wild in Borders books and I managed to pick up a nice pile of new Science Fiction, which I have been chewing through for over a month now, really enjoying some hardcore speculative future worlds. It's all from the very dense side of science fiction, the kind that normal people hate and that I absolutely love.

This is all to say that I am massively recommending the novel Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. It's the sort of book that I live for: hard science fiction with a realistic base, some really interesting ideas, and a payoff that doesn't completely suck (which is the problem I almost universally find with really ambitious science fiction). It's got a straightforwardness about the whole thing that I really respect - One day the stars disappear, the Earth is surrounded by some sort of shield that causes time on the planet to move incredibly slowly compared to the rest of the universe, and the main characters are left to deal with the fallout.

Even though it is structured in a stylized series of flashbacks, it manages it with such flair that completely forgive the trappings, where usually I would get tired after 3 chapters. And it doesn't hurt that the characters are surprisingly well written and sympathetic, something else that I tend to hate about sci-fi.

It really put me in the mind of Carl Sagan's Contact, which is pretty much the highest praise I can give to a book. It's not for everyone, but if you like this sort of thing, it's definitely the book to read.

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I've started up the World of Warcraft again. I know, so shameful. I have no reasoning or defense, other than the relative cheapness of the entertainment. Your average video game costs at least $30.00 and only offers you limited replay value. By sticking with this one, I'm only incurring about $14.00/month and not wasting money elsewhere.

Also, the new races and areas they added in with the expansion are just great - I've got a new Blood Elf up and running and my hunter has been pulled out of retirement for the long haul up to level 70. If there are any of you out there who still play, I'm on that there server called The Scryers, character name Rohr.

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New Musical Interest that I can't get enough of: Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not. I really enjoy me some up-tempo rock, and this album has it in spades. Classic exercise/running background music for me. And some of the songs are really sweet too.

I have almost nothing to add, except I really like British imports lately for some reason. I'm just a sucker for accents, I think.

(Other music related confession that ruins pretty much my entire life: I have that Daughtry CD on my iPod. And I sort of like it. A lot. I think I'm gonna go throw up now.)

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Went and saw Pan's Labyrinth over the weekend. Completely amazing. Almost impossible to watch at times - the violence is astounding on occasion, but the movie as a whole is astonishing and immersive. The fantastic elements are almost tame compared to the realistic elements of war, and when you combine it with the amazing acting the result is deeply affecting. I don't think I've walked out of a movie that charged...possibly ever. And I include in that my recent viewing of Children of Men, which I imagined would hold the title for a very long time. I also really dug the open-endedness of the conclusion. In fact, I probably would have liked a little more - some additional shades of gray might not have hurt.

A great movie, though. Top three of last year to be sure. Actually to break it down, my real top 5 movie list in terms of best movies I saw for 2006 (say if I ran the Oscars): Children of Men, History Boys, Pan's Labyrinth, Little Miss Sunshine, and Stranger Than Fiction.