According to some website that analyzes your blag's writing and such other nonsense, I'm a 36-50 year old woman.
I don't know whether to laugh maniacally or cry, cry, and cry some more.
17.9.10
14.9.10
Book Review: Scott Pilgrim
Maybe it's a bit of a copout to review the entire Scott Pilgrim saga in one, rather than by book and individually, but let's be honest - they're short enough and filled with enough spreads and great action that you can easily read all six books in one sitting in an afternoon. So is it really cheating when reading the whole series would take less time than a third of an average Stephen King doorstop?
I think not, good sirs and madams. Besides, the movie came out last month, and even though it did horrible in the theaters, I'm getting that bad boy on DVD as soon as it comes out.
Because, you see, I love the Scott Pilgrim books.
For those who don't know anything about the series, it follows the story of 23 year old unemployed slacker, Scott Pilgrim (rating: awesome) as he meets a girl who very literally skates through his dreams. This girl is one Ramona Flowers, a mysterious American with a hidden past and plenty of emotional baggage. (This baggage is most often illustrated by the appearance of one of her seven evil exes, determined to destroy Scott for trying to date their former love.) But then, Scott isn't free of his own multitudinous suitcases of emotional turmoil.
What I think I love most about this series is the stellar fusion that O'Malley creates. It combines everything pop culture, everything indie, and everything international into this blend of surrealism and real emotion. From Scott's crappy indie band to the ridiculous trappings of a video game made flesh, from O'Malley's clearly manga-influenced style to a thoughtful meditation on how we remember relationships versus what actually happened, Scott Pilgrim has a little bit of something for everyone.
Was it perfect? No. But was it one heck of a good ride for six beautifully illustrated and brazenly plotted books? Yes. Oh, yes.
Final verdict: Adore it
And check out the movie, too. It's not quite as good, but some of the changes from page to celluloid were effective (such as condensing the action into a few weeks rather than over a year) and Edgar Wright has arguably captured the sentiment and feel of a comic book made film better than anyone since Rodriguez's seminal Sin City. At any rate, time spent with Scott Pilgrim is not time wasted.
25.6.10
Book Review: Justin Cronin - The Passage
There was a moment in The Passage when my reading of it went from quality enjoyment to "Oh my, I really cannot put this down."
I can't tell you exactly when that moment was (I'd wager a guess it was right around page 200), but I can tell you that not enough books do that to me. Even books that I would gladly say I adore are usually ones where, if something different were to come along, I could put it down for a few days and come back. This is true of nearly everything I read.
Not so with The Passage.
I've read plenty of dystopian, post-apocalyptic literature in my day, and thought I had read the true apex with two vastly different novels: the thin, taciturn and claustrophobic The Road by Cormac McCarthy and the expansive, verbose and vast The Stand by Stephen King. These, too, were books that had captivated me and demanded my attention; any other books in the genre, while many were good, seemed to pale in comparison to these two giants.
However, The Passage holds its own in a bout with those two, and has the benefit of not being done - it's the first book in a proposed trilogy, and after debuting at #3 on the New York Times Bestseller list last week, it's almost sure to be followed by the sequels - and I couldn't be more excited for the prospect of delving back into this world.
Without giving too much away, the novel deals with a man-perfected virus designed to create super soldiers that gets loose - creating a sea of vampire-like creatures. However, there is one little girl who may have the answer to this horrible question, and it tells the tale of the FBI agent who vows to protect her.
And then the novel jumps a century ahead, and amidst the temporal and tonal shift, things really get going.
If you're a fan of post-apocalyptic literature, do not hesitate to pick up a copy of this book. And even if you're not, pick it up anyway. The thing I liked the most about it is the ways it's not like a Stephen King book - because, for all his talents in creating a story, Mr. King is not the best author. Mr. Cronin, however, is a very talented literary writer, and weaves an amazing story with a stellar prose style. This novel is utterly captivating.
Final verdict: Adore it
This is the best new fiction I've read in a long time. I was trapped in the world this book created for three days, and I've only now been able to surface for air. It's a fascinating novel, and one that demands attention and deserves every bit of it.
I can't tell you exactly when that moment was (I'd wager a guess it was right around page 200), but I can tell you that not enough books do that to me. Even books that I would gladly say I adore are usually ones where, if something different were to come along, I could put it down for a few days and come back. This is true of nearly everything I read.
Not so with The Passage.
I've read plenty of dystopian, post-apocalyptic literature in my day, and thought I had read the true apex with two vastly different novels: the thin, taciturn and claustrophobic The Road by Cormac McCarthy and the expansive, verbose and vast The Stand by Stephen King. These, too, were books that had captivated me and demanded my attention; any other books in the genre, while many were good, seemed to pale in comparison to these two giants.
However, The Passage holds its own in a bout with those two, and has the benefit of not being done - it's the first book in a proposed trilogy, and after debuting at #3 on the New York Times Bestseller list last week, it's almost sure to be followed by the sequels - and I couldn't be more excited for the prospect of delving back into this world.
Without giving too much away, the novel deals with a man-perfected virus designed to create super soldiers that gets loose - creating a sea of vampire-like creatures. However, there is one little girl who may have the answer to this horrible question, and it tells the tale of the FBI agent who vows to protect her.
And then the novel jumps a century ahead, and amidst the temporal and tonal shift, things really get going.
If you're a fan of post-apocalyptic literature, do not hesitate to pick up a copy of this book. And even if you're not, pick it up anyway. The thing I liked the most about it is the ways it's not like a Stephen King book - because, for all his talents in creating a story, Mr. King is not the best author. Mr. Cronin, however, is a very talented literary writer, and weaves an amazing story with a stellar prose style. This novel is utterly captivating.
Final verdict: Adore it
This is the best new fiction I've read in a long time. I was trapped in the world this book created for three days, and I've only now been able to surface for air. It's a fascinating novel, and one that demands attention and deserves every bit of it.
19.6.10
Book Review: Stieg Larsson - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
I would say my sentiments at the international popularity of this book series would best be described as shock.
Not because they're not good books, because the trilogy is really quite fine (the first two books especially, the third less so - but we'll get to that in a bit), but because it's a series with such ardent feminist and anti-establishment viewpoints. Moreover, the violence and abuse portrayed in these books is very, very ugly. Those aren't usually the types of books that sell very well.
And yet, these posthumously published works keep racking up the sales.
I was a little late to the bandwagon, purchasing the first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in early March of this year. And, to be honest, the first hundred pages were a hard read - too plodding and boring. (The film adaptation, which I recommend immensely, was far better in this regard - perhaps even better than the book altogether.) But eventually, I got the hook in the gut and devoured both it and its sequel, and waited with bated breath for the unintentional end of the story.
Thankfully, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest passes on the four chapters of starting plod that the first two had, beginning right where The Girl Who Played With Fire left off - our heroine, Lisbeth Salander, has just been found clinging to life by our erstwhile protagonist, Mikael Blomkvist. Regrettably, the antagonists also lived through the harried end of the second volume, and the action ramps up from the get-go.
I won't go further into the plot for fear that someone might read this and have it spoiled, but let me say this: despite the fact that it didn't have the slow buildup, this last book just seems to lose steam in the end. There's too much talking, and not enough action. Moreover, Hornet's Nest seems the most loosely edited of the three novels - it peters off in the end, and it's impatience that kept me turning pages, rather than genuine suspense.
Some of the subplots are good, like Berger's harassment at the daily paper she's left Millenium for - but then they ended too easily and too quickly. However, many of the new characters are faceless, personality-less interchangeable bit parts, with none of the depth of the characters we already know. And one more thing - does Mikael HAVE to bed every woman he meets? It's getting ridiculous.
Simply put, it feels like a middle novel, not a series ender - and it would have been, had Larsson stayed in the land of the living. But it was not to be, and regrettably, a great series ended on just a good note.
Final verdict: Explore it (just because you'll want some resolution after the crazy ending of The Girl Who Played with Fire)
Not because they're not good books, because the trilogy is really quite fine (the first two books especially, the third less so - but we'll get to that in a bit), but because it's a series with such ardent feminist and anti-establishment viewpoints. Moreover, the violence and abuse portrayed in these books is very, very ugly. Those aren't usually the types of books that sell very well.
And yet, these posthumously published works keep racking up the sales.
I was a little late to the bandwagon, purchasing the first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in early March of this year. And, to be honest, the first hundred pages were a hard read - too plodding and boring. (The film adaptation, which I recommend immensely, was far better in this regard - perhaps even better than the book altogether.) But eventually, I got the hook in the gut and devoured both it and its sequel, and waited with bated breath for the unintentional end of the story.
Thankfully, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest passes on the four chapters of starting plod that the first two had, beginning right where The Girl Who Played With Fire left off - our heroine, Lisbeth Salander, has just been found clinging to life by our erstwhile protagonist, Mikael Blomkvist. Regrettably, the antagonists also lived through the harried end of the second volume, and the action ramps up from the get-go.
I won't go further into the plot for fear that someone might read this and have it spoiled, but let me say this: despite the fact that it didn't have the slow buildup, this last book just seems to lose steam in the end. There's too much talking, and not enough action. Moreover, Hornet's Nest seems the most loosely edited of the three novels - it peters off in the end, and it's impatience that kept me turning pages, rather than genuine suspense.
Some of the subplots are good, like Berger's harassment at the daily paper she's left Millenium for - but then they ended too easily and too quickly. However, many of the new characters are faceless, personality-less interchangeable bit parts, with none of the depth of the characters we already know. And one more thing - does Mikael HAVE to bed every woman he meets? It's getting ridiculous.
Simply put, it feels like a middle novel, not a series ender - and it would have been, had Larsson stayed in the land of the living. But it was not to be, and regrettably, a great series ended on just a good note.
Final verdict: Explore it (just because you'll want some resolution after the crazy ending of The Girl Who Played with Fire)
16.6.10
Book Review: Kurt Vonnegut - Cat's Cradle
I know it's very cliché to like Kurt Vonnegut these days. (Actually, scratch that - it's cliché and hipster to like Slaughterhouse-Five, and only because of that one line every smelly hipster photoshops onto their tacky, unattractive rubbish photos - "Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt". It's a nice sentiment and all, but they're missing the point entirely. But these are hipsters - what else is new? But I digress.)
So maybe it's NOT that cliché to like Vonnegut. At any rate, I've recently started devouring his oeuvre, starting with Slaughterhouse-Five (hey - I was reading it as a seminal anti-war novel, not to please some inner dirty hipster), and moving to Breakfast of Champions, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, and right now I'm in the middle of Mother Night. But the one I've most recently finished is Cat's Cradle - and what a ride it was.
Like so many of Vonnegut's works, it's hard to classify. Part science fiction, part post-apocalyptic morality tale, part comedic farce, and part message of spirituality, you're never quite sure what to make of it until you get to the last page, put the book down, and are trapped in thought for the next however-long-until-you-absolutely-have-to-function-as-a-human-being-again. You walk away from it part pessimist, part pragmatist, and part Bokononist. I found every page of it filled with nuggets of wisdom regarding human relationships, human foibles, and just plain old human stupidity.
It's a story of a writer, who stumbles upon the story of the father of the atomic bomb and his three children, each of which has a terrible secret legacy unwittingly handed down by the father, and each of which is rife with their own problems. But it's so much more than that - Vonnegut creates an entire religion in the mouth of the prophet Bokonon, as well as weaving the most bleakly beautiful vision of the destruction of the world I've yet read.
It is hard for me to pick a favorite Vonnegut book - from the time-spinning of Slaughterhouse-Five to the Unamuno-channeling visit between himself and Kilgore Trout in Breakfast of Champions, but I think Cat's Cradle may take the prize. It's a painfully funny book.
Final verdict: Adore it
I really do love Vonnegut, and not just because I'm going to be attending the school he taught at in a couple of months. Between him and Phillip Dick, a truly horrible and horribly plausible future is presented - one that overflows with dreariness and joy, simultaneously. They are, in my humble opinion, the two most important American writers of the second half of the Twentieth Century, and Cat's Cradle is as good an example of Vonnegut's power with the imagery and savagery of the English language as any other.
So maybe it's NOT that cliché to like Vonnegut. At any rate, I've recently started devouring his oeuvre, starting with Slaughterhouse-Five (hey - I was reading it as a seminal anti-war novel, not to please some inner dirty hipster), and moving to Breakfast of Champions, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, and right now I'm in the middle of Mother Night. But the one I've most recently finished is Cat's Cradle - and what a ride it was.
Like so many of Vonnegut's works, it's hard to classify. Part science fiction, part post-apocalyptic morality tale, part comedic farce, and part message of spirituality, you're never quite sure what to make of it until you get to the last page, put the book down, and are trapped in thought for the next however-long-until-you-absolutely-have-to-function-as-a-human-being-again. You walk away from it part pessimist, part pragmatist, and part Bokononist. I found every page of it filled with nuggets of wisdom regarding human relationships, human foibles, and just plain old human stupidity.
It's a story of a writer, who stumbles upon the story of the father of the atomic bomb and his three children, each of which has a terrible secret legacy unwittingly handed down by the father, and each of which is rife with their own problems. But it's so much more than that - Vonnegut creates an entire religion in the mouth of the prophet Bokonon, as well as weaving the most bleakly beautiful vision of the destruction of the world I've yet read.
It is hard for me to pick a favorite Vonnegut book - from the time-spinning of Slaughterhouse-Five to the Unamuno-channeling visit between himself and Kilgore Trout in Breakfast of Champions, but I think Cat's Cradle may take the prize. It's a painfully funny book.
Final verdict: Adore it
I really do love Vonnegut, and not just because I'm going to be attending the school he taught at in a couple of months. Between him and Phillip Dick, a truly horrible and horribly plausible future is presented - one that overflows with dreariness and joy, simultaneously. They are, in my humble opinion, the two most important American writers of the second half of the Twentieth Century, and Cat's Cradle is as good an example of Vonnegut's power with the imagery and savagery of the English language as any other.
Re-formulating this blag.
It's been months since I've posted anything on here, due to a general malaise with the whole idea of blogging. However, given the amount of increased writing Peter and I have been doing on that other blog of ours, it's sparked in me a desire to review other things.
Therefore, I suppose I'll turn this blog into another review site - one about the books that I've been reading lately. I'll be using a similar review scheme as in our other endeavors to keep things simple:
Ignore it: Books that are best left forgotten - ones not worth bothering with.
Explore it: Books I like okay, but aren't high up on the list of "Run Out and Buy".
Adore it: Books that are worth owning, praising, and remembering for a long time afterwards.
So anyway, that's what's to come from this thing. Hopefully I'll be good about updating it rather soon after finishing what I'm reading. And thankfully, I read enough that I should have pretty consistent opportunities to post here.
Therefore, I suppose I'll turn this blog into another review site - one about the books that I've been reading lately. I'll be using a similar review scheme as in our other endeavors to keep things simple:
Ignore it: Books that are best left forgotten - ones not worth bothering with.
Explore it: Books I like okay, but aren't high up on the list of "Run Out and Buy".
Adore it: Books that are worth owning, praising, and remembering for a long time afterwards.
So anyway, that's what's to come from this thing. Hopefully I'll be good about updating it rather soon after finishing what I'm reading. And thankfully, I read enough that I should have pretty consistent opportunities to post here.
12.9.09
Why you should be reading Gunnerkrigg Court.
I'm not really a webcomic kind of kid these days. There was a time that I followed quite a few of them, but most of the strips I followed just lost me after a while. There are a few that still merit weekly perusal - Dr. McNinja is the most bizarre ever (anything that involves Irish ninja doctors who now apparently ride unicorn-possessed rainbow bullet bikes, a sidekick who is a mustache-toting sharpshooter who rides a genetically-reconstructed velociraptor named Yoshi, and a gorilla for a receptionist - and that's not to mention a hair-eating resurrected Benjamin Franklin clone who becomes the Headless Horseman, robot Draculas to surf down from the moon, and CHAINSAW NUNCHUCKS - is good in my book), xkcd is as snarky as can be, and Dinosaur Comics is one of the most impressive uses of minimalistic, repeated art to tell a hilarious tale every day.
However, my favorite webcomic, without question, is Gunnerkrigg Court. It's an immersive tale with wonderfully crafted art, a compelling story with epileptic trees aplenty and mystery in buckets (this is the kind of comic that, every time it provides an answer to a question you have, simply results in seven more . . . so yeah). Antimony Carver is a distant, troubled girl who lives in and attends school at Gunnerkrigg Court, a wonder of technological advancement that is more than a little cryptic. Her best friend, Katarina, is vibrant, lively and wry. Her spirit-possessed toy wolf, Reynardine, is an erstwhile protector, but seems more menacing than he should be sometimes. Add to that a large cast of memorable characters, and it's simply got a lot going for it.
I recently purchased the first collected volume of Gunnerkrigg Court - basically, Annie's first year at school and all of her misadventures (which are legion). It was well worth my money, even though you can read the entire tale online - there's something gratifying about thumbing through a colorful, beautifully bound hardcover edition of the tale, rather than clicking 'next page' 300+ times. In the first volume, it's fascinating to watch writer/artist Tom Siddell's evolution as a storyteller - and, perhaps more impressively, his progress as an artist as both his characters and his tale develop deeper personalities.
For readers and non-readers of the comic alike, I recommend picking up the hardcover collection - it was splendid to peruse the first half of the story so far again - and I look with anticipation towards the upcoming second volume, to be able to reread the archives in one fell swoop. But if you don't want to drop twenty bucks on a worthy hardcover, you need to be reading this comic. It updates only thrice a week, and therefore doesn't require lots of attention; but I have a feeling that, if you start to read it, you will enjoy it.
It's simply the best webcomic out there these days.
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