Book Semi-Recs, as of 4/19/12 (With a side of movie crazy)
Thursday, April 19th, 2012 01:38 pmI've read two books lately that were bursting with amazing ideas and great language, but both of which fell strangely flat about two thirds of the way through. I'm hard pressed to understand why: in both cases, I was highly invested in both the plot and the characters; there was some top notch writing in each as well. But Zoo City (by Lauren Beukes) and Swamplandia! by Karen Russell left me feeling... a bit cold and wrung out, not at all what I expected after their dynamite beginnings and middles. ( Read more, with spoilers. )
On an utterly unrelated note,![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
yebisu9 and I caught In Time on DVD a few weeks ago. After the movie was over, we had a long and involved conversation about said movie's dystopian economy and how it made absolutely no sense at all. The premise--that time is money and the poor live on a day-to-day basis--is an intriguing one, but the execution was flawed at best. The prices were off on everything: a cup of coffee cost three minutes, up from the previous day's two? A bus ride that lasted an hour cost two? A stay in a swanky hotel for one night cost two months? The people in this dystopian future had apparently never heard of seconds, or simple laws of micro- and macro-economics. The whole moral of the story was incredibly belabored and, on the whole, too overdone for our tastes. In recalling it since, I've only thought about the ludicrous price schemes and wondered why, other than the obvious, plot-necessitated reasons, the people didn't rebel sooner.
On an utterly unrelated note,
yebisu9 and I caught In Time on DVD a few weeks ago. After the movie was over, we had a long and involved conversation about said movie's dystopian economy and how it made absolutely no sense at all. The premise--that time is money and the poor live on a day-to-day basis--is an intriguing one, but the execution was flawed at best. The prices were off on everything: a cup of coffee cost three minutes, up from the previous day's two? A bus ride that lasted an hour cost two? A stay in a swanky hotel for one night cost two months? The people in this dystopian future had apparently never heard of seconds, or simple laws of micro- and macro-economics. The whole moral of the story was incredibly belabored and, on the whole, too overdone for our tastes. In recalling it since, I've only thought about the ludicrous price schemes and wondered why, other than the obvious, plot-necessitated reasons, the people didn't rebel sooner.
