Book/Movie Recs, as of 9/30/08
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 08:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
retsukoIn books/comics:
Death Perception, by Victoria Laurie
What I normally read for entertainment and fluff did not disappoint in either category and this time the stakes were made surprisingly high by the main character having psychic visions of her S.O.'s imminent and painful demise. Add to this a more clearly developed side character who had been in the background in previous volumes but pushed her way to the front of the narrative, and it was a pretty damn entertaining read. And, best of all, there was a happy ending. So, yay! (Generally speaking, I try to save up books like these for times when I'm feeling a bit cowed by longer tomes and want tidy, absolute shades of good and evil for the characters. That kind of storytelling style may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it is nice sometimes.)
The Terror, by Dan Simmons
If you had presented me with this volume back in, say, August and told me that I would read and love this book with a fierce passion, I would have peeked at the plot summary on the jacket and gazed back at you with the arched eyebrow of O RLY? Now that I have read this book, I am so glad that I didn't do the eyebrow thing in the first few chapters and stuck out the story to the somewhat grim yet utterly fascinating conclusion. Books like this remind me why I'm in the book club I'm in; they shake up my comfy, ingrained reading habits and point out that when all is said and done, it's story that trumps everything, even genre and gender.
The Terror is Dan Simmons's imagining of the lost Franklin Arctic expedition of 1842. Simmons has done all kinds of exhaustive research and it shows in the writing--the prose is dense with detail, like making your way through a hedge maze constructed by a slightly math-obsessed gardener. And, in almost every instance, the research pays off and doesn't bog the story down. If anything, the details about the ship's construction, rations and the Arctic lend an underlying gravitas and sense of unease to the book from page 1.
My initial hesitancy about this book stemmed, mainly, from my not having a penis. This is a guy's guy book; there is only one major female character and she literally doesn't have a voice: the men in the book call her Lady Silence. All the characters, for good or ill, are men, and very much men of their time (shown in their attitudes and speech.) And as a female reader of 2008, I don't have a lot of reasons to relate to this situation. But therein lies the beauty of the book. I started out thinking, why would any man choose to go on this dangerous and foolish journey?! and ended up realizing that for most of the men in the story, it was the only choice that they ever got to make about their destinies, and that most of them lead lives tightly constricted by societal expectations. That understanding made me a lot more open the characters and all of a sudden, I felt very loyal to them--even as they made their way through the Arctic, towards their impending deaths.
The characters in the book are stalked by a monstrous creature that the men on the ships simply name "The Terror", angering their captain who (not unreasonably) points out that The Terror is the name of their ship, and to name the monster the same thing is to invite bad luck. Bad luck also abounds in the form of tinned food going bad (I don't want to think about what the research on that topic turned up), frostbite and scurvy (likewise on the ewww! factor of the research), and the threat of eventual starvation and death, whether from the conditions they're in, or the monster itself. What the monster turns out to be, I don't want to say, because it was not something I was at all anticipating. In fact, the last quarter of the novel went by so fast because I was gripped by this insane desire to know what the hell was going on, who the hell might survive, and whether justice would be meted out or not. I was not disappointed.
Anyway, if the book's 600-page length puts you off, just tune in during the middle, for the account of the Christmas celebration on the ice. That sequence alone is worth the price of the entire book, and part of me wants to see it made into a horror movie... and another part of me fervently doesn't.
Janes in Love, by Cecil Castellucci
And, completely different from the previous two books in this entry, the latest offering from Minx. I enjoyed the first Janes book very much, and while I enjoyed this second one, I felt like the writer stretched the elements of the plot a bit thin. I do have to give her props for addressing a question I had in the previous book: how can four women who are so obviously different from one another get along perfectly, all the time? The question is definitively answered in this book, and the answer is not entirely satisfactory to me, but it does generate lots of conflict for the characters to overcome. The most compelling part of the story (as it was with the first book) is main Jane's struggle to decide on the role art is going to play in her life, and the role she is going to play in Art. When Jane talks about, and plans, her performance art, the book soars along happily. When she's worrying about the boys she likes, not so much.
Air, Issue 2
I don't have too much to say here, except that I am glad I bought the issue, and I'm really curious where the narrative will go next. Also, having a villain survive a plane crash and come back horribly disfigured might sound hopelessly James Bond-ian, but it totally works here--the level of menace is palpable and I fear for the main character, Blythe, not having enough information to properly deal with the situation she's about to find herself in. When does Issue 3 arrive?!
In movies:
Burn After Reading
This was a determinedly odd movie, starring some incredibly good actors who appear to be enjoying themselves immensely. The best of the film is Brad Pitt's character, a vapid gym rat who boogies to his iPod while he's supposed to be staking out of the house of the man he's blackmailing. Tilda Swinton and John Malkovich are amazing and hard to look away from, but the characters they play are nails-on-chalkboard caliber awkward.
Son of Rambow
From the people who made the film version ofThe Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy comes a film about a lonely little boy whose family is in a restrictive religious movement, Rambo: First Blood, and Britain in the 1980s. And, miraculously, it all works. The story is interesting, well acted, and thoughtful, sentimental but never maudlin. I was genuinely happy for the characters at the end, and even feeling a little more well-disposed to characters who I'd initially taken a dislike to. A good Netflix movie, well worth seeing on video.
The Duchess
Costumes! Keira Knightly! Ralph Fiennes! Decadence! Off-kilter sexual relationships years before I thought that sort of thing would happen and be tolerated by polite society! Scandal! Ostrich feathers! In summary, I enjoyed the film, despite its blatant Oscar-baiting. Knightley and Fiennes do give great performances, and the costumes are, in fact, simply astonishing. The story was so outlandish that we went straight to a bookstore after the movie and I bought the biography it was based on, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (by Amanda Foreman). And already there are all sorts of juicy details and tidbits that the filmmakers didn't include, but should have. (I should add here that the book itself is pleasantly readable, and not at all turgid or dull, for a historical biography.) So, all in all, it was a good viewing experience, and it lead me to something even more engrossing; a win-win situation.
Andon TV on Hulu:
Heroes: I hadn't been really into Heroes so far this season until Episode 3, where there were all sorts of sharp writing, great plot twists, and entertaining set dressing. Keep it up, Heroes! I like this sort of thing and I want to like you!
Death Perception, by Victoria Laurie
What I normally read for entertainment and fluff did not disappoint in either category and this time the stakes were made surprisingly high by the main character having psychic visions of her S.O.'s imminent and painful demise. Add to this a more clearly developed side character who had been in the background in previous volumes but pushed her way to the front of the narrative, and it was a pretty damn entertaining read. And, best of all, there was a happy ending. So, yay! (Generally speaking, I try to save up books like these for times when I'm feeling a bit cowed by longer tomes and want tidy, absolute shades of good and evil for the characters. That kind of storytelling style may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it is nice sometimes.)
The Terror, by Dan Simmons
If you had presented me with this volume back in, say, August and told me that I would read and love this book with a fierce passion, I would have peeked at the plot summary on the jacket and gazed back at you with the arched eyebrow of O RLY? Now that I have read this book, I am so glad that I didn't do the eyebrow thing in the first few chapters and stuck out the story to the somewhat grim yet utterly fascinating conclusion. Books like this remind me why I'm in the book club I'm in; they shake up my comfy, ingrained reading habits and point out that when all is said and done, it's story that trumps everything, even genre and gender.
The Terror is Dan Simmons's imagining of the lost Franklin Arctic expedition of 1842. Simmons has done all kinds of exhaustive research and it shows in the writing--the prose is dense with detail, like making your way through a hedge maze constructed by a slightly math-obsessed gardener. And, in almost every instance, the research pays off and doesn't bog the story down. If anything, the details about the ship's construction, rations and the Arctic lend an underlying gravitas and sense of unease to the book from page 1.
My initial hesitancy about this book stemmed, mainly, from my not having a penis. This is a guy's guy book; there is only one major female character and she literally doesn't have a voice: the men in the book call her Lady Silence. All the characters, for good or ill, are men, and very much men of their time (shown in their attitudes and speech.) And as a female reader of 2008, I don't have a lot of reasons to relate to this situation. But therein lies the beauty of the book. I started out thinking, why would any man choose to go on this dangerous and foolish journey?! and ended up realizing that for most of the men in the story, it was the only choice that they ever got to make about their destinies, and that most of them lead lives tightly constricted by societal expectations. That understanding made me a lot more open the characters and all of a sudden, I felt very loyal to them--even as they made their way through the Arctic, towards their impending deaths.
The characters in the book are stalked by a monstrous creature that the men on the ships simply name "The Terror", angering their captain who (not unreasonably) points out that The Terror is the name of their ship, and to name the monster the same thing is to invite bad luck. Bad luck also abounds in the form of tinned food going bad (I don't want to think about what the research on that topic turned up), frostbite and scurvy (likewise on the ewww! factor of the research), and the threat of eventual starvation and death, whether from the conditions they're in, or the monster itself. What the monster turns out to be, I don't want to say, because it was not something I was at all anticipating. In fact, the last quarter of the novel went by so fast because I was gripped by this insane desire to know what the hell was going on, who the hell might survive, and whether justice would be meted out or not. I was not disappointed.
Anyway, if the book's 600-page length puts you off, just tune in during the middle, for the account of the Christmas celebration on the ice. That sequence alone is worth the price of the entire book, and part of me wants to see it made into a horror movie... and another part of me fervently doesn't.
Janes in Love, by Cecil Castellucci
And, completely different from the previous two books in this entry, the latest offering from Minx. I enjoyed the first Janes book very much, and while I enjoyed this second one, I felt like the writer stretched the elements of the plot a bit thin. I do have to give her props for addressing a question I had in the previous book: how can four women who are so obviously different from one another get along perfectly, all the time? The question is definitively answered in this book, and the answer is not entirely satisfactory to me, but it does generate lots of conflict for the characters to overcome. The most compelling part of the story (as it was with the first book) is main Jane's struggle to decide on the role art is going to play in her life, and the role she is going to play in Art. When Jane talks about, and plans, her performance art, the book soars along happily. When she's worrying about the boys she likes, not so much.
Air, Issue 2
I don't have too much to say here, except that I am glad I bought the issue, and I'm really curious where the narrative will go next. Also, having a villain survive a plane crash and come back horribly disfigured might sound hopelessly James Bond-ian, but it totally works here--the level of menace is palpable and I fear for the main character, Blythe, not having enough information to properly deal with the situation she's about to find herself in. When does Issue 3 arrive?!
In movies:
Burn After Reading
This was a determinedly odd movie, starring some incredibly good actors who appear to be enjoying themselves immensely. The best of the film is Brad Pitt's character, a vapid gym rat who boogies to his iPod while he's supposed to be staking out of the house of the man he's blackmailing. Tilda Swinton and John Malkovich are amazing and hard to look away from, but the characters they play are nails-on-chalkboard caliber awkward.
Son of Rambow
From the people who made the film version ofThe Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy comes a film about a lonely little boy whose family is in a restrictive religious movement, Rambo: First Blood, and Britain in the 1980s. And, miraculously, it all works. The story is interesting, well acted, and thoughtful, sentimental but never maudlin. I was genuinely happy for the characters at the end, and even feeling a little more well-disposed to characters who I'd initially taken a dislike to. A good Netflix movie, well worth seeing on video.
The Duchess
Costumes! Keira Knightly! Ralph Fiennes! Decadence! Off-kilter sexual relationships years before I thought that sort of thing would happen and be tolerated by polite society! Scandal! Ostrich feathers! In summary, I enjoyed the film, despite its blatant Oscar-baiting. Knightley and Fiennes do give great performances, and the costumes are, in fact, simply astonishing. The story was so outlandish that we went straight to a bookstore after the movie and I bought the biography it was based on, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (by Amanda Foreman). And already there are all sorts of juicy details and tidbits that the filmmakers didn't include, but should have. (I should add here that the book itself is pleasantly readable, and not at all turgid or dull, for a historical biography.) So, all in all, it was a good viewing experience, and it lead me to something even more engrossing; a win-win situation.
And
Heroes: I hadn't been really into Heroes so far this season until Episode 3, where there were all sorts of sharp writing, great plot twists, and entertaining set dressing. Keep it up, Heroes! I like this sort of thing and I want to like you!
