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Book Summary
The past few weeks have been a bunch of time spent on planes and, consequently, laid up with a bacterial infection. I had plenty of time to read. Here are the reviews I'm too lazy to write.
The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins: Picked up and finished THG a few months ago but didn't really get around to CF or Mockingjay until Kindle get. These are good. Surprisingly good. I say surprising because I'm not much of a YA person and I wasn't exactly thrilled about Uncredited White Battle Royale Ripoff, but when I got around to Catching Fire I liked it better than the first and I burned through it and Mockingjay pretty fast. I would've given them to my old students to read a few years ago but for knowing they'd have read them first themselves. If I were to pick out main weaknesses, I'd say clunky and low-grade writing style, pacing issues, and slight Haymitch deficiency in Mockingjay.
The Thief and The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner: These, on the other hand... err, well, contrary to popular belief, every time I pick up a book a lot of my friends like I say a little prayer that goes something like, "please let me get what all the fuss is about." It's really awkward being That Person all the time. That being said -- I don't really get what all the fuss is about. These both read like someone's first-step fantasy novel outline, the phase where they're still obsessed with their worldbuilding and haven't really realized nothing happens in them. I actually think Queen would've been better if it'd given in to its true nature as a trashy, hand-chopping, monarch-abducting romantic melodrama and had a lot more sex and violence, but obviously that wasn't going to happen, so... uh, I still don't really get what all the fuss is about. The potential was there, but at this stage I'm not entirely sure how these even made it to press.
Batman: Gates of Gotham by Scott Snyder and Kyle Higgins: Eh. Good art. Pretty good dialogue. Some potential in the plot, squandered by the ending. I dunno if I'm interested enough to recall further.
Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente: I'm a Valente fan, but I can probably say that if you're not a Valente fan you'd have a hard time getting into Deathless. Hell, I had a hard time getting into Deathless. I had faith in the author, though, and it ultimately paid off -- this is a pretty good magic-realist-ish meta fairytale adaptation about love and death and government and the Siege of Leningrad and shit, something like that.
Blackout / All Clear by Connie Willis: My favorite of all the stuff on this list, I think, and the ones I'm most likely to reread. They're more like one novel in two parts, kind of like ASoIaF is one incredibly long book in hopefully seven parts, and come to think of it I'd say they share some minor POV issues -- the peripheral POV chapters turn out to be relevant, but given all the POV chapters have a tendency to end on cliffhangers, you end up skimming the seemingly tangential ones going "I don't give a fuck about 'meanwhile, at the Wall,' what's happening to Tyrion?" Okay, back to the specifics of Blackout/All Clear, though. I had trouble getting past the timey-wimey time physics at the beginning of Blackout but once my belief was reluctantly suspended, I really got into the plot and by the end pretty much the only thing I was unsatisfied by was an element of the ending and a romantic element I thought was tacked-on, which were related. Overall the story was really engaging and fairly moving.
Passage by Connie Willis: Also good, although it left me wanting something else emotionally, I dunno, I think it might've been both a little ham-handed and a little too nice for its subject matter. A little tearjerking, also a little twee. I think I need a break from Willis, her worlds of endless academic-protagonists and Wonder Bread ethnicities are starting to get to me, like a whole packet of grape Nerds at once on Halloween night.
This post used to be titled "Media Summary" because I'm pretty sure I've watched more than one movie too, but I've forgotten what they were. Oh well. Oh yeah, I saw The Hunger Games movie and Titanic 3-D. THG was a pretty faithful adaptation of the book. The soundtrack is really good. Titanic 3-D is the movie Titanic, but in 3-D.
The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins: Picked up and finished THG a few months ago but didn't really get around to CF or Mockingjay until Kindle get. These are good. Surprisingly good. I say surprising because I'm not much of a YA person and I wasn't exactly thrilled about Uncredited White Battle Royale Ripoff, but when I got around to Catching Fire I liked it better than the first and I burned through it and Mockingjay pretty fast. I would've given them to my old students to read a few years ago but for knowing they'd have read them first themselves. If I were to pick out main weaknesses, I'd say clunky and low-grade writing style, pacing issues, and slight Haymitch deficiency in Mockingjay.
The Thief and The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner: These, on the other hand... err, well, contrary to popular belief, every time I pick up a book a lot of my friends like I say a little prayer that goes something like, "please let me get what all the fuss is about." It's really awkward being That Person all the time. That being said -- I don't really get what all the fuss is about. These both read like someone's first-step fantasy novel outline, the phase where they're still obsessed with their worldbuilding and haven't really realized nothing happens in them. I actually think Queen would've been better if it'd given in to its true nature as a trashy, hand-chopping, monarch-abducting romantic melodrama and had a lot more sex and violence, but obviously that wasn't going to happen, so... uh, I still don't really get what all the fuss is about. The potential was there, but at this stage I'm not entirely sure how these even made it to press.
Batman: Gates of Gotham by Scott Snyder and Kyle Higgins: Eh. Good art. Pretty good dialogue. Some potential in the plot, squandered by the ending. I dunno if I'm interested enough to recall further.
Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente: I'm a Valente fan, but I can probably say that if you're not a Valente fan you'd have a hard time getting into Deathless. Hell, I had a hard time getting into Deathless. I had faith in the author, though, and it ultimately paid off -- this is a pretty good magic-realist-ish meta fairytale adaptation about love and death and government and the Siege of Leningrad and shit, something like that.
Blackout / All Clear by Connie Willis: My favorite of all the stuff on this list, I think, and the ones I'm most likely to reread. They're more like one novel in two parts, kind of like ASoIaF is one incredibly long book in hopefully seven parts, and come to think of it I'd say they share some minor POV issues -- the peripheral POV chapters turn out to be relevant, but given all the POV chapters have a tendency to end on cliffhangers, you end up skimming the seemingly tangential ones going "I don't give a fuck about 'meanwhile, at the Wall,' what's happening to Tyrion?" Okay, back to the specifics of Blackout/All Clear, though. I had trouble getting past the timey-wimey time physics at the beginning of Blackout but once my belief was reluctantly suspended, I really got into the plot and by the end pretty much the only thing I was unsatisfied by was an element of the ending and a romantic element I thought was tacked-on, which were related. Overall the story was really engaging and fairly moving.
Passage by Connie Willis: Also good, although it left me wanting something else emotionally, I dunno, I think it might've been both a little ham-handed and a little too nice for its subject matter. A little tearjerking, also a little twee. I think I need a break from Willis, her worlds of endless academic-protagonists and Wonder Bread ethnicities are starting to get to me, like a whole packet of grape Nerds at once on Halloween night.
This post used to be titled "Media Summary" because I'm pretty sure I've watched more than one movie too, but I've forgotten what they were. Oh well. Oh yeah, I saw The Hunger Games movie and Titanic 3-D. THG was a pretty faithful adaptation of the book. The soundtrack is really good. Titanic 3-D is the movie Titanic, but in 3-D.
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BUT I REPLIED TO YOUR DW POST