Book/DVD Recs as of 6/16/08
Monday, June 16th, 2008 03:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
retsukoLots of reading!
The Pellinore series, Alison Croggon: As recommended to me by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
livyanne, these books were a lovely throwback to reading experiences I had as a kid, when books just slid by in a flurry of quickly-turned pages; details about food, wine, and song; and my steadfast loyalty to the main character. As an adult reader, I can see that Croggon owes a great debt to a variety of writers, from Tolkein and Lewis to LeGuin and Wendy/Richard Pini. (Although many of the concepts that had been borrowed from the afore-mentioned authors are common fantasy tropes.) It is a pleasure to feel the pull of the narrative beyond simple chapter-to-chapter conflicts. I'm excited to see what awaits our heroine and her friends in Book 3.
Burnout: The first book in Minx's releases for this year. I've blogged before about how much I liked the Minx line, and I am pleased to say this new book confirms my estimation of the quality of the books! Burnout is the story of Danni, a teenaged girl with adult-sized problems: her Mom has moved in with an alcoholic boyfriend who has a son Danni's age, Haskell (who Danni promptly finds herself falling over, despite the quasi-incest nature of her relationship to him.) The family (and I use that word loosely) lives in rural Oregon, where the great majority of jobs are in the logging industry. In an effort to impress her would-be boyfriend/step-brother, Danni follows him one night when he sneaks out of the house and discovers that he's an ecoterrorist, bent on stopping loggers from destroying his beloved forests by spiking the trees. This sounds like the making of an after-school special, but the story is nuanced and well-told, quickly rising above potential melodrama and going instead for deeper character development. What I really loved about this book was the way that the main character, and most of the other characters around her, changed through the course of the story, for better/worse. Human beings are not static; they are complex, changing, moving creatures, and Burnout captures that aspect of personality very well. Equally interesting is the fact that the narrative eschewed the happier ending that the other Minx books have gone with for a far more poignant and somber conclusion to the story that brings the book in a neat little circle. I really liked this book... and I hope others will be willing to give it a try.
Nightmare Inspector, V. II: There are more characters in this volume, which isn't necessarily a good thing. There are more convoluted stories in this volume, which isn't necessarily a good thing, either. This series still flirts with the XXXHolic rip-off status in the second volume, and I was about ready to throw in the towel on the whole thing when I got to a particularly amazing illustration that I had to stare at for a few minutes to take it all in. (The baku, dream eater, in its natural state, is a psychedelic, genderless creature with a cloak and claws.) Argh. I want this to get better, but I don't see the level of sophistication in it that would totally redeem it for me. I'll try one more volume, but that's it.
Some movie viewing:
For a movie about such an exciting subject, Jumper was somewhat dull. And if I had the power those characters had (teleportation), I sure wouldn't have squandered it on stupid things, like teleporting down the couch instead of getting up and picking up the friggin' remote. And if I had been chased by villains like Samuel Jackson (with goofy, goofy hair!), I would have dispatched them a lot more quickly, instead of leading them back to my ally's lair. It was a pleasantly diverting movie, but enough questions were raised that I felt kind of sorry for the characters, fenced in by bad screenwriting.
Viewing this movie causedyebisu9 and I to have a conversation about Hayden Christian's acting ability: yebisu9 maintains that he has none (Star Wars), while I think that given the right script (Shattered Glass), he does well and isn't completely terrible. The jury's still out on this one.
The Pellinore series, Alison Croggon: As recommended to me by
livyanne, these books were a lovely throwback to reading experiences I had as a kid, when books just slid by in a flurry of quickly-turned pages; details about food, wine, and song; and my steadfast loyalty to the main character. As an adult reader, I can see that Croggon owes a great debt to a variety of writers, from Tolkein and Lewis to LeGuin and Wendy/Richard Pini. (Although many of the concepts that had been borrowed from the afore-mentioned authors are common fantasy tropes.) It is a pleasure to feel the pull of the narrative beyond simple chapter-to-chapter conflicts. I'm excited to see what awaits our heroine and her friends in Book 3.Burnout: The first book in Minx's releases for this year. I've blogged before about how much I liked the Minx line, and I am pleased to say this new book confirms my estimation of the quality of the books! Burnout is the story of Danni, a teenaged girl with adult-sized problems: her Mom has moved in with an alcoholic boyfriend who has a son Danni's age, Haskell (who Danni promptly finds herself falling over, despite the quasi-incest nature of her relationship to him.) The family (and I use that word loosely) lives in rural Oregon, where the great majority of jobs are in the logging industry. In an effort to impress her would-be boyfriend/step-brother, Danni follows him one night when he sneaks out of the house and discovers that he's an ecoterrorist, bent on stopping loggers from destroying his beloved forests by spiking the trees. This sounds like the making of an after-school special, but the story is nuanced and well-told, quickly rising above potential melodrama and going instead for deeper character development. What I really loved about this book was the way that the main character, and most of the other characters around her, changed through the course of the story, for better/worse. Human beings are not static; they are complex, changing, moving creatures, and Burnout captures that aspect of personality very well. Equally interesting is the fact that the narrative eschewed the happier ending that the other Minx books have gone with for a far more poignant and somber conclusion to the story that brings the book in a neat little circle. I really liked this book... and I hope others will be willing to give it a try.
Nightmare Inspector, V. II: There are more characters in this volume, which isn't necessarily a good thing. There are more convoluted stories in this volume, which isn't necessarily a good thing, either. This series still flirts with the XXXHolic rip-off status in the second volume, and I was about ready to throw in the towel on the whole thing when I got to a particularly amazing illustration that I had to stare at for a few minutes to take it all in. (The baku, dream eater, in its natural state, is a psychedelic, genderless creature with a cloak and claws.) Argh. I want this to get better, but I don't see the level of sophistication in it that would totally redeem it for me. I'll try one more volume, but that's it.
Some movie viewing:
For a movie about such an exciting subject, Jumper was somewhat dull. And if I had the power those characters had (teleportation), I sure wouldn't have squandered it on stupid things, like teleporting down the couch instead of getting up and picking up the friggin' remote. And if I had been chased by villains like Samuel Jackson (with goofy, goofy hair!), I would have dispatched them a lot more quickly, instead of leading them back to my ally's lair. It was a pleasantly diverting movie, but enough questions were raised that I felt kind of sorry for the characters, fenced in by bad screenwriting.
Viewing this movie caused
yebisu9 and I to have a conversation about Hayden Christian's acting ability: yebisu9 maintains that he has none (Star Wars), while I think that given the right script (Shattered Glass), he does well and isn't completely terrible. The jury's still out on this one.
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Date: 2008-06-16 11:47 pm (UTC)lol, Oregon and logging novel. :P
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Date: 2008-06-16 11:52 pm (UTC)Yeah, the Star Wars role wasn't great... but I can't help feeling that when he has the right script, he does quite well. Shattered Glass is a very well-done movie and has some terrific acting from him and other actors.
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Date: 2008-06-17 05:50 pm (UTC)So many gross misconceptions about my homestate. :P