Book and Movie post.
May. 11th, 2005 07:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_dividedWelcome people who have friended me in the last two weeks! why You all live between the 100th and 150th East Meridian: Malaysia (2), Singapore (1), Australia (2), the Philippines (1). Odds are 1 in 15,000!
Ummm I haven't written any requests yet. This is because
1) Writing is a form of stress relief
2) I have no stress to relieve this week
Next week will be different, ohhh yes. In the meantime, I have new books!![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
falxumbra and I went to Barnes and Noble last Saturday and I am tragically weak against bookstores; also V lent me a few more (she says she doesn't mind losing them, but I still salute her for her courage).
Warning: those with a low tolerance for YA fantasy need not read any further.
Villains by Necessity, Eve Forward
It's silly, it's predictable (there are six main characters and six mystic objects HMM I WONDER WHAT WILL HAPPEN), you can identify all the characters with “the”s (the thief, the assassin, the sorceress), it's in third-person limited with a change of view every paragraph, there are stupid in-jokes like when they go to the Diamond Tower and the apprentice wizards are all playing some game with dice and figurines--in short, it's a tabletop RPG. And still one of the best fantasy books ever. Too bad it's out of print.
A hundred years ago Good triumphed over Evil, and I mean really triumphed: people are nicer, the days are longer, the sun is brighter, everything is growing and nothing is dying. You'd think this would lead to a grisly Malthusian death (overpopulation!), but instead there's going to be a Buddhist transcendence to pure light kind of end of the world. Six evil people who don't like this idea team up to stop it. I think I like this book because I've always wanted a good excuse to cheer for the villains, and “they're saving the world” is a pretty darn good excuse. Also! V did requestfic for it because she's a better person than I am.
Castle in the Air, Dianna Wynn Jones
It's fun, it reads quickly, it does that weird thing where the characters have all undergone personality changes somewhere between the first and second books. DWJ once again doesn't bother explaining the magic system, probably because it isn't exactly magic if you have to follow rules all the time. And again, the characters are basically good but they don't make being good their first priority. She's much more economical in this book than in Howl's Moving Castle--absolutely every scene in the first half is revealed as significant in the second. Together with the totally happy ending this makes events seem almost too neat. It's clever, though.
Also! The main character is an excellent liar and the book is vaguely Arabian (in other words I loved it).
Shibumi, Trevarian
This book should get its own entry, that's how awesome it is. You know the way most political thrillers mention historical events, geopolitical events, and it's only to add interest to the story and none of the implications are ever considered? This is why the only thrillers I can read are the dated ones, because it really bothers me when major current world crises are reduced to color commentary. But Shibumi spends so much time going into implications that it doesn't really get to the plot until the last hundred pages or so.
Shibumi is the story of Nicholai Hel: born in Shanghai to Russian aristocracy in exile, a mathematical genius with mystic powers, he played Go in Japan during the second world war, worked as a cryptographer for the American embassy during the reconstruction, speaks six languages including Basque, and is currently the world's best assassin and lover. As V said, it's a story about how cool he is, but honestly who wouldn't want to read about someone like that. XD although I was a little fed up with him by the last hundred pages; the passive-aggressive machismo became too much for me. (For someone who supposedly has no need to prove himself--“The French driver's infantile recklessness often annoyed him, but not so much as the Italian driver's use of the automobile as an extension of his penis, or the British driver's use of it as a substitute”--Niko spends an awfully large amount of time ridiculing uncultured Americans with his superior manners at fancy dinner parties. Sorry, Niko, but you fail at Shibumi.)
V, I don't think the book is anti-Western. I think Nicholai Hel is anti-Western, and he's more anti-Industrial Revolution than anything else. XDD but the author is definitely anti-stupid people-it's the only thing all of the characters have in common-and Travarian's idea of “stupid” is, I suspect, a little broader than most. (The other thing all of the characters have in common is hating Arabs. What's up with that? Unless it's more of Niko being aristocratic because the Arabs were merchants before anyone else.)
Wizard's Holiday, Diane Duane
I think I'm too old for this series. Not for the writing-it's written well, maybe with a lit too much unconscious American slang, and with a high technical level because (unlike DWJ) in Diane's world magic follow very strict rules and is even described as a “more fundamental science” (all of the spells sound like something out of a TI-81 instruction manual). For the philosophy. I swear my eyes rolled right out of their sockets.
This book was lame. It had two parallel storylines and they were both lame-one came out of nowhere, the other ended in the same kind of Buddhist transcendence Villains by Necessity was trying to avoid, and it was never really explained why this was a happy ending. All of the new characters were aliens and none of them had real personalities. Sorry, DD, but a making your sentient tree upset about the salad bar and “anime elf-prince” slightly spoiled but with a heart of gold does not count.
This is the seventh book in Duane's “Yound Wizards” series and they've been getting worse since book three. I'm not sure why I'm still reading. (And then I read the preview for book eight and it's about dark energy and the expansion of the universe ldkfjas I'm never going to escape this series am I.)
And this is way overdue: Movie meme fromb_hallward
Number of movies you own: Around 20 DVD and 30 VHS, not counting anime. That's how many I bought for myself; if you also count the movies that belong (communally) to my family, but that only I like, the number doubles.
Last movie you bought: A League of Their Own, for a friend who likes Madonna. For myself…Bend it Like Beckham? (Women's sports! This is really a coincidence.)
Last movie you saw: Kung-fu Hussle. (Ridiculous but fun.) Before that, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (Fantastic! No complaints!) Before that, Blind Shaft. (Decent social commentary, terrible movie.)
Five movies you watch often or that mean a lot to you:
1. Sneakers. It's a Robert Redford ensemble heist movie with government conspiracies and scrabble. How could this not be my favorite movie?
2. The French Connection. I love love love the chase scene.
3. Snatch. Another crime-themed movie, ahaha. Heist is my favorite film genre. If I were the type to memorize lines from films, I'd probably memorize lines from this one.
4. Sliding Doors. Not a crime flick! But actually I like it for the same reason: it's got a million pieces that all fall together at the end. Also, alternate universes are really cool.
5. Fantastic Planet. You know how little kids find one movie to watch over and over and over? This was mine and my brother's. It's, ummm, really bizarre. Hand-drawn French animation about aliens who keep miniature humans as pets.
Movie you've always wanted to see: M.
Five people you want to see do this meme:
atimson
fledermauskid
svz_insanity
biggersandwich
yasminm
And anyone else who watches as many movies as I suspect they do.
Ummm I haven't written any requests yet. This is because
1) Writing is a form of stress relief
2) I have no stress to relieve this week
Next week will be different, ohhh yes. In the meantime, I have new books!
falxumbra and I went to Barnes and Noble last Saturday and I am tragically weak against bookstores; also V lent me a few more (she says she doesn't mind losing them, but I still salute her for her courage). Warning: those with a low tolerance for YA fantasy need not read any further.
Villains by Necessity, Eve Forward
It's silly, it's predictable (there are six main characters and six mystic objects HMM I WONDER WHAT WILL HAPPEN), you can identify all the characters with “the”s (the thief, the assassin, the sorceress), it's in third-person limited with a change of view every paragraph, there are stupid in-jokes like when they go to the Diamond Tower and the apprentice wizards are all playing some game with dice and figurines--in short, it's a tabletop RPG. And still one of the best fantasy books ever. Too bad it's out of print.
A hundred years ago Good triumphed over Evil, and I mean really triumphed: people are nicer, the days are longer, the sun is brighter, everything is growing and nothing is dying. You'd think this would lead to a grisly Malthusian death (overpopulation!), but instead there's going to be a Buddhist transcendence to pure light kind of end of the world. Six evil people who don't like this idea team up to stop it. I think I like this book because I've always wanted a good excuse to cheer for the villains, and “they're saving the world” is a pretty darn good excuse. Also! V did requestfic for it because she's a better person than I am.
Castle in the Air, Dianna Wynn Jones
It's fun, it reads quickly, it does that weird thing where the characters have all undergone personality changes somewhere between the first and second books. DWJ once again doesn't bother explaining the magic system, probably because it isn't exactly magic if you have to follow rules all the time. And again, the characters are basically good but they don't make being good their first priority. She's much more economical in this book than in Howl's Moving Castle--absolutely every scene in the first half is revealed as significant in the second. Together with the totally happy ending this makes events seem almost too neat. It's clever, though.
Also! The main character is an excellent liar and the book is vaguely Arabian (in other words I loved it).
Shibumi, Trevarian
This book should get its own entry, that's how awesome it is. You know the way most political thrillers mention historical events, geopolitical events, and it's only to add interest to the story and none of the implications are ever considered? This is why the only thrillers I can read are the dated ones, because it really bothers me when major current world crises are reduced to color commentary. But Shibumi spends so much time going into implications that it doesn't really get to the plot until the last hundred pages or so.
Shibumi is the story of Nicholai Hel: born in Shanghai to Russian aristocracy in exile, a mathematical genius with mystic powers, he played Go in Japan during the second world war, worked as a cryptographer for the American embassy during the reconstruction, speaks six languages including Basque, and is currently the world's best assassin and lover. As V said, it's a story about how cool he is, but honestly who wouldn't want to read about someone like that. XD although I was a little fed up with him by the last hundred pages; the passive-aggressive machismo became too much for me. (For someone who supposedly has no need to prove himself--“The French driver's infantile recklessness often annoyed him, but not so much as the Italian driver's use of the automobile as an extension of his penis, or the British driver's use of it as a substitute”--Niko spends an awfully large amount of time ridiculing uncultured Americans with his superior manners at fancy dinner parties. Sorry, Niko, but you fail at Shibumi.)
V, I don't think the book is anti-Western. I think Nicholai Hel is anti-Western, and he's more anti-Industrial Revolution than anything else. XDD but the author is definitely anti-stupid people-it's the only thing all of the characters have in common-and Travarian's idea of “stupid” is, I suspect, a little broader than most. (The other thing all of the characters have in common is hating Arabs. What's up with that? Unless it's more of Niko being aristocratic because the Arabs were merchants before anyone else.)
Wizard's Holiday, Diane Duane
I think I'm too old for this series. Not for the writing-it's written well, maybe with a lit too much unconscious American slang, and with a high technical level because (unlike DWJ) in Diane's world magic follow very strict rules and is even described as a “more fundamental science” (all of the spells sound like something out of a TI-81 instruction manual). For the philosophy. I swear my eyes rolled right out of their sockets.
This book was lame. It had two parallel storylines and they were both lame-one came out of nowhere, the other ended in the same kind of Buddhist transcendence Villains by Necessity was trying to avoid, and it was never really explained why this was a happy ending. All of the new characters were aliens and none of them had real personalities. Sorry, DD, but a making your sentient tree upset about the salad bar and “anime elf-prince” slightly spoiled but with a heart of gold does not count.
This is the seventh book in Duane's “Yound Wizards” series and they've been getting worse since book three. I'm not sure why I'm still reading. (And then I read the preview for book eight and it's about dark energy and the expansion of the universe ldkfjas I'm never going to escape this series am I.)
And this is way overdue: Movie meme from
b_hallwardNumber of movies you own: Around 20 DVD and 30 VHS, not counting anime. That's how many I bought for myself; if you also count the movies that belong (communally) to my family, but that only I like, the number doubles.
Last movie you bought: A League of Their Own, for a friend who likes Madonna. For myself…Bend it Like Beckham? (Women's sports! This is really a coincidence.)
Last movie you saw: Kung-fu Hussle. (Ridiculous but fun.) Before that, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (Fantastic! No complaints!) Before that, Blind Shaft. (Decent social commentary, terrible movie.)
Five movies you watch often or that mean a lot to you:
1. Sneakers. It's a Robert Redford ensemble heist movie with government conspiracies and scrabble. How could this not be my favorite movie?
2. The French Connection. I love love love the chase scene.
3. Snatch. Another crime-themed movie, ahaha. Heist is my favorite film genre. If I were the type to memorize lines from films, I'd probably memorize lines from this one.
4. Sliding Doors. Not a crime flick! But actually I like it for the same reason: it's got a million pieces that all fall together at the end. Also, alternate universes are really cool.
5. Fantastic Planet. You know how little kids find one movie to watch over and over and over? This was mine and my brother's. It's, ummm, really bizarre. Hand-drawn French animation about aliens who keep miniature humans as pets.
Movie you've always wanted to see: M.
Five people you want to see do this meme:
atimsonfledermauskidsvz_insanitybiggersandwichyasminmAnd anyone else who watches as many movies as I suspect they do.