2666 has been requested by someone at the original library it came from. I'll have to bring it back on Saturday unfinished.
2666 has been requested by someone at the original library it came from. I'll have to bring it back on Saturday unfinished.
The film was disappointing. Still liked it though.Quoting Mara (view post)
So I mooched it from you. I couldn't resist having Mara's Atonement in my collection. Val will be excited too.
Go buy it.
2666 has been requested by someone at the original library it came from. I'll have to bring it back on Saturday unfinished.
I'm not going to sign it. Stop begging.
...and the milk's in me.
A personal note would be icing on the cake. I AM begging.
I'm not sure I've salted enough crazy into my recent posts, so I'm going to talk about owning multiple copies of books.
Not only do I own multiple copies of books, but while culling a few boxes of my collection last night, I found that I couldn't part with any of the multiples.
Sometimes my reasons made sense.
SELF: Well, I have two copies of Evelina. I guess I could-- no. This old, beat-up one has all my notes in the margins, while the pretty shiny one is better annotated. I need them both.
Sometimes... not so much.
SELF: I have two copies of An American Tragedy. That's such a fantastic novel. I should read it again. I wonder if anyone has wishlisted it?
I check bookmooch, and as far as I can tell, nobody has ever requested or sent the book, ever.
SELF: Self, I am flabbergasted. THOSE JERKS. They don't deserve my additional copy of An American Tragedy. SCREW THEM.
...and the milk's in me.
Mailed! I sent all the books the cheapest possible way (media mail) and so I'll be interested to see how long it takes.
I hope people don't generally spend much on postage. I hate being the cheap one.
...and the milk's in me.
I just picked up my copy from the local library. It's quite large! Fortunately, my semester is just about over, so I should have enough time in the next three weeks to read it.
2666 has been requested by someone at the original library it came from. I'll have to bring it back on Saturday unfinished.
And this thread has reminded me that I still have my colleague's copy of The Master and Margarita. I brought it with me to the Caribbean, but found it wasn't the best choice for a beach read. (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency fit that bill just fine.)
Skimmed through the last 100 pages of World War Z. Never got any better. Blech.
Now reading The Neverending Story by Ende.
My short-term memory has betrayed me.
I just now-- not an hour ago-- perused the bookshelves at the store while buying some envelopes, and there was a book I was going to check on amazon and bookmooch to see if it's any good.
And now I can't remember the name.
It had a taupe cover with a black ink drawing of a balloon (passenger balloon) and the back said it was a steampunk book. Some plot about dead orphans.
HELP!
...and the milk's in me.
When I type things like "steampunk dead orphans" into google, I always worry that some day I'm going to be accused of a crime and they're going to search my computer for incriminating things.
...and the milk's in me.
The Affinity Bridge?
No... but that looks vaguely awesome.
...and the milk's in me.
How about The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt?
That's it! Way to out-google me, sir.
...and the milk's in me.
Glad I could help.
Oh! I forgot to give my thoughts on Pride & Prejudice & Zombies.
I have to say that I really enjoyed it. Grahame-Smith has a number of interesting things he does with the plot. The way it was described to me-- as being P&P verbatim, with zombie scenes added in-- isn't exactly accurate. His variations took several forms:
*He used and abridged the original work. In my opinion, the weakest part of the book were his abridgements. They weren't huge, but as I reader I was keenly aware when he was "summing up" as opposed to laying out the story as Austen wrote it.
*He added ultraviolent zombie mayhem. This worked exactly as you would expect.
*In order to add the ultraviolent zombie mayhem, Grahame-Smith had to change the entire outlook and moral culture of the book. He did this with a surprising amount of skill and humor. Women of that age were supposed to be "accomplished," i.e. know how to paint and speak French and play the piano. Theoretically, it is understandable that if England was in a war with the undead, the "deadly arts" would become something that women would be expected to learn. Instead of being sent to Paris to learn how to embroider, they are sent to Japan and China to learn how to rip the still-beating heart out of a ninja. And eat it. (No joke, Lizzie does that in the book.)
*He's a funny guy, that Seth, and one of the things that he does regularly in the novel is to raise the subtext to... well... text. For me, this was the most laugh-out-loud part of the entire book. To hear Mrs. Bennet say aloud exactly what single women should expect out of life, or have Mr. Bennet explain exactly what he wishes would happen to his wife, is gobs of fun.
*He added bodily function jokes. Yawn. The women in the book are always raving about going to balls. Well, did you know that balls can also mean testicles!!??!! Humor.
For the most part, Grahame-Smith did an excellent job understanding the nature of the characters. Lydia is perfectly and absolutely Lydia, whether she is flirting with an officer, or forming the Pentagram of Death. I mean, if Lady Catherine De Burgh in the original novel had had an army of highly skilled ninjas, wouldn't she have sent them after Lizzie? Of course she would.
The author seems to align fighting skills with pre-existing intelligence and moxie instead of whether or not we like the character, so while Lady De Burgh and Darcy are both skilled warriors, Charlotte Lucas and Bingley are not. It works, with the exception of Mary, who makes absolutely no sense as a character in the new book. I'm not sure he knew what to do about her.
The book does have some weaknesses in style and execution. Sometimes I felt like I could hear the author thinking that we hadn't had a zombie battle in awhile. Sometimes the transitions were jarring and stretched.
Still, overall, I would recommend it for a light, fun read. It is really, truly funny. I laughed and laughed. I also learned a great way to set a trap for a zombie. I'll give you a hint: it involved cauliflower.
...and the milk's in me.
this weekend is LA festival of book. i'm very excited. there will be panels in which mediocre authors make appearances and discuss stuffs. what never fails to amaze me is that how intelligent all those middle-tier writers can be. last year i attended a discussion by four or five female writers whose work i was quite familiar with so i knew they were not that good. and the way they talked about post-modernism, structuralism, psychoanalysis, semiotic, was very impressive.
"Over analysis is like the oil of the Match-Cut machine." KK2.0
Movie Theater Diary
I'll definitely be using this when I finally cave and buy a Kindle. Thanks for the link.
For anybody with an iPod/iPhone, download the book reading application Stanza. You can use it to browse that site and download the books there directly for reading.
Movie Theater Diary
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
by Wallace Stevens
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
Wishful thinking, perhaps; but that is just another possible definition of the featherless biped.
Love that Stevens poem. My students, however, hated it with the heat of a thousand suns.
I'm loving The Neverending Story. So much different than the film. I'm 160 pages into a 400 page book, and already everything from the movie (almost, anyway) has already happened. I have no idea where it's going now. That's exciting.
I finished The Yiddish Policemen's Union last night. I wasn't exactly wowed. The whole conspiracy plot got way out of control. It was always better when focusing on the smaller character interactions. Too many intermingling traumatic pasts. It all rang false. And too many twists and turns. I know it's a mystery novel, but jeez. I've heard his others are better. It just happened to be the one featured in a book store and I hadn't read anything by him so I picked it up. I really like Wonder Boys the movie, so maybe I'm not done with him. But I'm certainly not going to be going out of my way to read more.
Wishful thinking, perhaps; but that is just another possible definition of the featherless biped.
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