I was confused in the beginning of this book. The author seemed critical of organized religion, specifically Catholicism. The way he describes the Bishop, actually every time he refers to the Bishop, he shows how self-important the man is, how much he cares about power over his people, how he is of lower intelligence than the other characters. Knowing as I read this of Mr. Card’s comments on homosexuals, these things confused me. But, then I noticed how the author treated the people who ran the school: The Children of the Mind of Christ. These people were wise and kind and understanding, and much more likable. So my theory now is that Card is a religious man, he just doesn’t like the Catholic church. Okay, I just checked and according to the internet he’s a Mormon.
Now on to the actual book: I really enjoyed reading this. It’s been a few weeks since I finished Ender’s Game, and I was missing Ender a little bit. In this book Ender unwraps the mystery of an alien race, heals a broken family, and starts another war—he’s a very busy 2000-year-old man.
I was wowed by the science-y stuff in here, like relativistic travel. Here’s the deal: when you set out for a planet that’s 20 light-years away, you will not reach that planet for 20 years. But, because your ship is traveling at “relativistic speeds” to you only a few weeks or days have passed. Ender and his sister have been planet-hopping, with Ender acting as a Speaker for the Dead, and with Valentine continuing her writing, usually writing histories of the planets they encounter. At the book’s opening, Ender and Valentine are only in their 30s, while back on Earth 2000 years have passed since they left. I just think that’s cool and confusing at the same time.
I don’t think that this series is going to make me suddenly interested in the science fiction genre, but I am very eager to see what happens to Ender and gang next
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
The Invisible Wall
The Invisible Wall by Harry Bernstein is very similar to Angela's Ashes but slightly less depressing. (Where Angela's is bleak, Wall is kind of charming) After a few weeks of reading almost being a chore (see the post about 100 years of solitude for more info on that), this book was such a relief! I freaking deserved a book as easy and pleasurable as this after that horror.
"Early in the morning, when it was still dark, you would hear people going to work in these mills, their iron-shod clogs clattering over the cobblestones with a sound and a rhythm that was like a symphony."--I just love Bernstein's writing.
OH! Another thing I love: characters that beg me to hate them. So many times I wished I could reach in the book and slap Harry's sisters or kick his father.
Bottom line: great, easy, enjoyable piece of work.
Friday, September 12, 2008
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Or: a bunch of crazy shit happens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Hundred_Years_of_Solitude
A brief explanation of "crazy shit": incest, dead babies, prophecies, beastiality, "three thousand dead and thrown into the ocean", flying carpets, 30 men named aureliano, 15 men named jose arcadio, flying naked bald chicks, the 180-year-old lady named ursula, an old man lives a few years tied to a tree and everyone's okay with this, the marriage of a 13-year-old girl and a 3o-year-old man (and her later death via "exploding blood"), carniverous ants, and the word "solitude" every 2 or 3 sentences.
Note to self: never read again, avoid rest of author's books as if just looking at them will cause eye cancer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Hundred_Years_of_Solitude
A brief explanation of "crazy shit": incest, dead babies, prophecies, beastiality, "three thousand dead and thrown into the ocean", flying carpets, 30 men named aureliano, 15 men named jose arcadio, flying naked bald chicks, the 180-year-old lady named ursula, an old man lives a few years tied to a tree and everyone's okay with this, the marriage of a 13-year-old girl and a 3o-year-old man (and her later death via "exploding blood"), carniverous ants, and the word "solitude" every 2 or 3 sentences.
Note to self: never read again, avoid rest of author's books as if just looking at them will cause eye cancer.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
No Country for Old Men
It’s a pretty good movie. I had a problem with it, which I’ll explain more below, but for the most part, I liked it.
The movie opens with Tommy Lee Jones narrating. He tells a very long story about being a law man over some very good shots of what is probably Texas, but since this is a movie they probably had to fly all the way to Sweden or something. (I do not care enough to google it. It really probably is Texas. Or Arizona. It’s a desert of some sort.) I love these opening shots and immediately the movie had my attention. I was determined to like it just based on these:
They introduce the “bad guy” right off. For the longest he doesn’t have a name, so I just thought of him as “chili bowl” (based on his haircut) and by the time they gave us his name, chili bowl was already cemented in my brain. His real name is Anton Chigurh (pronounced sugar), and he’s a killer, a good one, and also a bit of magician, which is one of the problems I had with the movie. I’ll get into that later. Chili bowl likes to kill people with a “captive bolt pistol”, that makes a wonderful sound when it goes off, which you will hear many many times throughout the movie. They LOVE to punctuate silent, suspenseful scenes with loud noises. It gets tedious after awhile. Oh, and the captive bolt pistol (by the way, I cheated and wiki’d the movie just so I’d know what that was called) is also very handy at blowing out lock cylinders. Chili bowl is totally insane, which they decide to demonstrate right off with the patented “crazy eyes” technique:
So basically the story is a guy (Llewellyn Moss) played by Josh Brolin stumbles upon a drug deal gone WAY wrong in the desert. He finds some money, takes some of the dead Mexicans’ guns, and goes home and the rest of the movie happens.
Here’s what I hated: in the beginning Llew is hunted by chili bowl and the other Mexicans. (note: chili bowl works for one dude, the Mexicans represent the other side). They find him pretty easily, but you’re given a really good reason for that—a transmitter in the money. However, when Llew finds the transmitter and takes it out, chili bowl is still able to find him. So is Woody Harrelson, (works on chili bowl’s side, but they’re not exactly teammates.) That jump from psychotic bad guy to psychic bad guy was weird. Stopped the whole flow of the movie for me, because I just kept wondering how chili bowl knew where Llew went. Also, when Llew finds the transmitter, he IMMEDIATELY starts to get paranoid about being followed. He’s sitting in his hotel room, in the dark, holding his gun, when this happens:
Total cliché scary movie moment. Again, I was taken out of the movie to ponder how perfect it was that 5 minutes after Llew finds the transmitter a creepy silhouette stops outside his door. AND THEN!! 10 minutes of silence-filled scenes of the door, Llew, the gun, the door, the gun, and then Llew again ends with the aforementioned air gun thing blowing the lock off the door, resulting in a nice jump and little shriek from myself. THANKS, COEN BROS. THANKS FOR THE FREE HEART ATTACK. AGAIN.
Llew escapes to Mexico, only to be found not only by chili bowl, but also Woody. I still can’t figure out how both of them knew he’d go to Mexico. I have GOT to read that damn book.
OH and funniest scene in the entire movie goes to Beth Grant, who plays Llew’s mother-in-law. The actress herself has a nice twangy southern accent, and she’s playing this spunky old bitch and I just love it.
“I always seen this is what it’d come do. Three years ago I previsioned it. Three years ago I said them very words—‘no’ and ‘good”. Here we are, 90 degree heat, I got the cancer, and look at this….not even a home to go to. We’re goin’ to El Paso, Texas. Do you know how many people I know in El Paso, Texas?”
"That's how many."
Llew’s wife had the cherry role in this movie: the only actor in the entire film to be in scenes with all 3 main players: Llew, chili bowl, and Tommy Lee. Her last scene is my favorite—it’s with chili bowl. It’s a REALLY good scene.
All I’ll say about the ending is that it wasn’t what I expected, but knowing the formula for every movie isn’t fun anyway. Being surprised was good.
The movie opens with Tommy Lee Jones narrating. He tells a very long story about being a law man over some very good shots of what is probably Texas, but since this is a movie they probably had to fly all the way to Sweden or something. (I do not care enough to google it. It really probably is Texas. Or Arizona. It’s a desert of some sort.) I love these opening shots and immediately the movie had my attention. I was determined to like it just based on these:
They introduce the “bad guy” right off. For the longest he doesn’t have a name, so I just thought of him as “chili bowl” (based on his haircut) and by the time they gave us his name, chili bowl was already cemented in my brain. His real name is Anton Chigurh (pronounced sugar), and he’s a killer, a good one, and also a bit of magician, which is one of the problems I had with the movie. I’ll get into that later. Chili bowl likes to kill people with a “captive bolt pistol”, that makes a wonderful sound when it goes off, which you will hear many many times throughout the movie. They LOVE to punctuate silent, suspenseful scenes with loud noises. It gets tedious after awhile. Oh, and the captive bolt pistol (by the way, I cheated and wiki’d the movie just so I’d know what that was called) is also very handy at blowing out lock cylinders. Chili bowl is totally insane, which they decide to demonstrate right off with the patented “crazy eyes” technique:
So basically the story is a guy (Llewellyn Moss) played by Josh Brolin stumbles upon a drug deal gone WAY wrong in the desert. He finds some money, takes some of the dead Mexicans’ guns, and goes home and the rest of the movie happens.
Here’s what I hated: in the beginning Llew is hunted by chili bowl and the other Mexicans. (note: chili bowl works for one dude, the Mexicans represent the other side). They find him pretty easily, but you’re given a really good reason for that—a transmitter in the money. However, when Llew finds the transmitter and takes it out, chili bowl is still able to find him. So is Woody Harrelson, (works on chili bowl’s side, but they’re not exactly teammates.) That jump from psychotic bad guy to psychic bad guy was weird. Stopped the whole flow of the movie for me, because I just kept wondering how chili bowl knew where Llew went. Also, when Llew finds the transmitter, he IMMEDIATELY starts to get paranoid about being followed. He’s sitting in his hotel room, in the dark, holding his gun, when this happens:
Total cliché scary movie moment. Again, I was taken out of the movie to ponder how perfect it was that 5 minutes after Llew finds the transmitter a creepy silhouette stops outside his door. AND THEN!! 10 minutes of silence-filled scenes of the door, Llew, the gun, the door, the gun, and then Llew again ends with the aforementioned air gun thing blowing the lock off the door, resulting in a nice jump and little shriek from myself. THANKS, COEN BROS. THANKS FOR THE FREE HEART ATTACK. AGAIN.
Llew escapes to Mexico, only to be found not only by chili bowl, but also Woody. I still can’t figure out how both of them knew he’d go to Mexico. I have GOT to read that damn book.
OH and funniest scene in the entire movie goes to Beth Grant, who plays Llew’s mother-in-law. The actress herself has a nice twangy southern accent, and she’s playing this spunky old bitch and I just love it.
“I always seen this is what it’d come do. Three years ago I previsioned it. Three years ago I said them very words—‘no’ and ‘good”. Here we are, 90 degree heat, I got the cancer, and look at this….not even a home to go to. We’re goin’ to El Paso, Texas. Do you know how many people I know in El Paso, Texas?”
"That's how many."
Llew’s wife had the cherry role in this movie: the only actor in the entire film to be in scenes with all 3 main players: Llew, chili bowl, and Tommy Lee. Her last scene is my favorite—it’s with chili bowl. It’s a REALLY good scene.
All I’ll say about the ending is that it wasn’t what I expected, but knowing the formula for every movie isn’t fun anyway. Being surprised was good.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Ender's Game
I started reading Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card, a few days ago, because one of the writers over at cracked.com mentioned it. He made the book sound like it was an essential read for adolescents, and even though I'm nearing 30, I haven't been able to get into many books appropriate for my age lately. I LOVED Twilight, and I can't wait to read the rest of the series, but the book club book (Called Back To Memphis) was boring, Loving Frank--also boring. and A Hundred Years of Solitude seemed interesting, but I couldn't manage to get past the first few chapters. I'm hoping maybe Ender's Game will get some of them juvenile shit out of my system and I can move on to what all the other 30 yr old women are reading: Oprah's books, and I can go back to at least pretending I'm a grown-up.
I spent an entire WEEK on Loving Frank, and never made it more than 50 pages in, but I've been on Ender's Game for 2 days and I'm halfway through. It's sci-fi, which usually doesn't interest me, but it's also about an outcast, who's special, which is totally what every nerd believed themselves to be in school (whilst being bullied and whatnot). I have said that Twilight speaks to my inner little 14 yr old lovestruck girl, and now here's Ender, appealing to my inner little outcast dweeb.
One thing that really surprises me about Ender is how advanced the book is: the characters have "desktops" which are essentially laptops BUT THE BOOK WAS WRITTEN IN 1977. They have something they call "the nets", that they access with the desktops, where they can read articles, post articles, join or watch debates, and they even have videos on them. Sound familiar? Again, this book was written in 1977! I know they had computers then, I know they had an internet then, but I'm awed by the author's description of what is now our internet. Oh, and Ender plays a computer game that reminds me so much of any game we have now where you play a character who walks around a little world and does stuff. Were there computer games in 1977? Maybe the author was basing this on D&D and he just knew that this whole computer thing was going to take off one day and eventually D&D would make it there.
Because this is an old book, and I have a tiny library, I had to get it on interlibrary loan. I'm pretty sure my librarian said this was the only book in the series she could find, which means if it stays as good as it has been so far, I will be scraping together my meager finances to purchase the rest of them. I bet Amazon will have some used copies, which is good because although I love the book, I'm not too crazy about the author, thanks to: http://laist.com/2008/08/01/orson_scott_card_scifi_writer_will.php
I spent an entire WEEK on Loving Frank, and never made it more than 50 pages in, but I've been on Ender's Game for 2 days and I'm halfway through. It's sci-fi, which usually doesn't interest me, but it's also about an outcast, who's special, which is totally what every nerd believed themselves to be in school (whilst being bullied and whatnot). I have said that Twilight speaks to my inner little 14 yr old lovestruck girl, and now here's Ender, appealing to my inner little outcast dweeb.
One thing that really surprises me about Ender is how advanced the book is: the characters have "desktops" which are essentially laptops BUT THE BOOK WAS WRITTEN IN 1977. They have something they call "the nets", that they access with the desktops, where they can read articles, post articles, join or watch debates, and they even have videos on them. Sound familiar? Again, this book was written in 1977! I know they had computers then, I know they had an internet then, but I'm awed by the author's description of what is now our internet. Oh, and Ender plays a computer game that reminds me so much of any game we have now where you play a character who walks around a little world and does stuff. Were there computer games in 1977? Maybe the author was basing this on D&D and he just knew that this whole computer thing was going to take off one day and eventually D&D would make it there.
Because this is an old book, and I have a tiny library, I had to get it on interlibrary loan. I'm pretty sure my librarian said this was the only book in the series she could find, which means if it stays as good as it has been so far, I will be scraping together my meager finances to purchase the rest of them. I bet Amazon will have some used copies, which is good because although I love the book, I'm not too crazy about the author, thanks to: http://laist.com/2008/08/01/orson_scott_card_scifi_writer_will.php
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