Happy Legal Drinking Age to me
Jan. 13th, 2006 07:16 pmWoke up today with a small but completely legal hangover. Happy Friday 13th, everyone! And a happy legal drinking age to me. *toasts*
Appologies missed comment replies; I've spent the last couple weeks loathing computers in general and the feeling is only just starting to pass. In the meantime, some more book (and videogame) blogging.
Suikoden IV
The promised long-ass RPG. V, you were completely write about this[1]. Somehow I am still playing and have made it to the recruitment phase of the game, although I'm not sure why or how. Whose bright idea was it, anyway, to design a battle system that encourages auto-attack while also forcing a random battle every three seconds, against the same three enemies, in the same featureless stretch of ocean? If I were Kowloon I'd spare the Southern Islands just to spare myself the pain of constantly fending off malicious sting rays, jellyfish, and kelp.
[1]This = RPGs you can buy used for under $15.
Catspaw by Joan D. Vinge
A re-read. I love this book, it really does have everthing -- not just Cat, the "Street punk. Psion. Telepath." promised by the blurb on the back, but also corporate intersteller politics! Incest! Drug abuse! Cybenetics! Kinky telepathic and telekinteic sex! Orgies! Torture! Cutting-edge performance art! Aliens! Half-aliens! Gay former prison buddies! And just when you start to wonder whether "cyberpunk" can be properly applied to a book which only references computers occasionally, a virtual reality network where Combines (Company Clans) roam as semi-aware consciousnesses with their own distinct personalities. ( Read more... )
Also, sex. A roomate asked if this was my version of the trashy romance novel, and you know what? It totally is. The book has problems -- Cat gets off much too easily for mistakes that should, according to the worldbuilding, be more serious -- but in this case I am too busy being entertained to care.
The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
"Boston, 1865. A series of murders, all of them inspired by scenes from Dante's Inferno. Only an elite group of America's first Dante scholars -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendall Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and J.T. Fields -- can solve the mystery." A fun book. I just read a short story about Lowell -- more correctly, about a grad student struggling to write his PhD on Lowell while secretly resenting him -- but that Lowell and this Lowell are nothing alike. This one is much more cuddly. XD ( Read more... )
On the other hand everyone quotes poetry at everyone else, and the dialogue is wonderfully, believeably smart.
Empress Orchid by Anchee Min
Tzu Hsi's story, told from her perspective. Reading this, I suffered a severe case of double vision. Are the author and I talking about the same Tzu Hsi, here? The last Imperial Mother, the Western Empress? The evil plotting ignorant seductress who single-handedly brought down the Qing dynasty? Not that I've ever believed all that, but. In this story she's a competant administrator. Sort of weird. ( Read more... )
I liked Empress Orchid, most of the time. It's an easy read and all the major players are accounted for. My biggest complaint is that there's too much time wasted describing objects -- a carved table with inlaid pearls the size of marbles, Orchid's favorite dragonfly hairpin. I used to eat this sort of thing up, but now it just bores me. Honestly I have textbooks that are more entertaining.
Quick movie reviews:
Brokeback Mountain: good
Chronicles of Narnia: bad
I'd say more except there's cake. XDXDXD later!
Appologies missed comment replies; I've spent the last couple weeks loathing computers in general and the feeling is only just starting to pass. In the meantime, some more book (and videogame) blogging.
Suikoden IV
The promised long-ass RPG. V, you were completely write about this[1]. Somehow I am still playing and have made it to the recruitment phase of the game, although I'm not sure why or how. Whose bright idea was it, anyway, to design a battle system that encourages auto-attack while also forcing a random battle every three seconds, against the same three enemies, in the same featureless stretch of ocean? If I were Kowloon I'd spare the Southern Islands just to spare myself the pain of constantly fending off malicious sting rays, jellyfish, and kelp.
[1]This = RPGs you can buy used for under $15.
Catspaw by Joan D. Vinge
A re-read. I love this book, it really does have everthing -- not just Cat, the "Street punk. Psion. Telepath." promised by the blurb on the back, but also corporate intersteller politics! Incest! Drug abuse! Cybenetics! Kinky telepathic and telekinteic sex! Orgies! Torture! Cutting-edge performance art! Aliens! Half-aliens! Gay former prison buddies! And just when you start to wonder whether "cyberpunk" can be properly applied to a book which only references computers occasionally, a virtual reality network where Combines (Company Clans) roam as semi-aware consciousnesses with their own distinct personalities. ( Read more... )
Also, sex. A roomate asked if this was my version of the trashy romance novel, and you know what? It totally is. The book has problems -- Cat gets off much too easily for mistakes that should, according to the worldbuilding, be more serious -- but in this case I am too busy being entertained to care.
The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
"Boston, 1865. A series of murders, all of them inspired by scenes from Dante's Inferno. Only an elite group of America's first Dante scholars -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendall Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and J.T. Fields -- can solve the mystery." A fun book. I just read a short story about Lowell -- more correctly, about a grad student struggling to write his PhD on Lowell while secretly resenting him -- but that Lowell and this Lowell are nothing alike. This one is much more cuddly. XD ( Read more... )
On the other hand everyone quotes poetry at everyone else, and the dialogue is wonderfully, believeably smart.
Empress Orchid by Anchee Min
Tzu Hsi's story, told from her perspective. Reading this, I suffered a severe case of double vision. Are the author and I talking about the same Tzu Hsi, here? The last Imperial Mother, the Western Empress? The evil plotting ignorant seductress who single-handedly brought down the Qing dynasty? Not that I've ever believed all that, but. In this story she's a competant administrator. Sort of weird. ( Read more... )
I liked Empress Orchid, most of the time. It's an easy read and all the major players are accounted for. My biggest complaint is that there's too much time wasted describing objects -- a carved table with inlaid pearls the size of marbles, Orchid's favorite dragonfly hairpin. I used to eat this sort of thing up, but now it just bores me. Honestly I have textbooks that are more entertaining.
Quick movie reviews:
Brokeback Mountain: good
Chronicles of Narnia: bad
I'd say more except there's cake. XDXDXD later!