Life as We Knew It - read this one at Indian Garden while in the Canyon. Had a few hours to kill, and The Girl had brought it along as a YA read, so I buzzed through it in the afternoon.Great read, emotional rollercoaster (just have something in my eye, I swear), really gripping story. One I'd recommend to anybody.
Plus it's a quick read, too.
Basics of the story - comet hits the Earth and moves the moon into a closer orbit (sure, the science up to there is a bit far-fetched, but it's the only science that truly requires suspension of disbelief) causing all sorts of disasterous results. We focus on a teenage girl writing a diary and trying to deal with the catastrophies that change the entire world.
Great use of the main character's diary as our way into her thoughts. It's only in the very last episode of the tale that the author forgoes the diary as the story-telling device.
Outstanding book...highly recommended...
Middlesex - The Girl and I had fifty-some hours in the car on the way to and from the Canyon, so we loaded up with three - tried for five, but the uploads didn't work on the other two - audio books for the trip.This finest of the ones we managed to hear was easily this one.
Middlesex is an outstanding novel, telling the tale of Calliope Stephanides and how he came into being. Calliope opens the tale with the very forethright explanation the he was born as a girl but came to become a man during his teenaged years. He then immediately heads into his familial past to tell the tale of how his genetic anomaly came to be, examining the complex relationship between his grandparents, both carriers of the recessive trait that wouldn't come to full fruition for three generations but that was already a part of their Greek village's heritage and lore.
From there, Cal - as he comes to be known - follows the twists and turns - marvelously exploring how each of us is as much a product of chance as of genetics - of his family through the burning of Smyrna, the growth of the auto industry of Detroit, the founding of the Nation of Islam, bootlegging during prohibition, the creation and eventual downfall of an immigrant fortune, and the sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies.
In the process, Eugenides has crafted the great American novel as completely as I have ever seen, wrapping the tale of one family through an amazing breadth of America's spirit and identity - racial, historical, spiritual, economic - allowing us to understand so very much more than how one young girl found that she had a crocus somewhere between what the girls and the boys each had.
--- spoiler warning - Lakes, highlight the below passage to read ---
The tale drifted a bit for me during the Nation of Islam portion, feeling a bit forced - especially with the revelation of the true identity of the speech-maker, but the rest of the book is near perfect.
--- spoiler over, c'mon back ---
WW Hulk: Front Line - I'm all down with the parts of World War Hulk that I've read yet, and this is no change.The six-issue tie-in series tells the story of people - two reports and a police officer, primarily - who are on the ground in NYC as the Hulk destroys a fair portion of their city. The artwork is fittingly more realistic, more gritty than was that of the main line, and the tales much smaller, showing how these people would be affected by the destruction going on around them.
Great addition to the main tale.
Signs - Ok, it's a movie from M Night Shyamalan so it's got a big twist somewhere toward the end, right?--- spoiler alert all over the place ---
Nope.
Nothing coming here.
The thing that you think is going to happen just sort of happens while the main character - Mel Gibson's preacher man - gets his faith back because things work out in the end.
Snorefest...
Of course, I knew about the aliens and the water before the movie even started, so I guess there wasn't much for him to tell me.
--- spoiler's done ---
Sure, the filmmaking well done, and it's pretty and all, but it's frickin' boring.
Snoozefest...
Joker's Last Laugh - blech...neat cover, crappy story...artwork is inconsistent (lots of different artists throughout)...
the story is stupid...
the plot holes are massive...
the collection is to be avoided...
Coraline - Neil Gaiman's Coraline has been adapted into a graphic novel by P Craig Russell (of Kent, OH and of "Sandman: Ramadan").Take a look at one of the pages here.
A more-nearly-perfect match of author and artist could likely not be made as Russell has worked with Gaiman in illustrating a number of the writer's tales. Here Russell takes the words of the Coraline novella and illustrates them in a wash of pale colors and providing a horrifically scary image of the Other Mother, the villian of the tale.
I originally listened to Coraline as read by Gaiman, and the images in my head certainly don't match those that Russell has conjured and put to paper, but that doesn't make the adaptation any less impressive.
Coraline is one of the modern classics of young adult fiction, and this edition is a great addition to its lore.
X-Men: Die by the Sword - further proof that I should never try to read anything regarding the X-Men unless I know in advance that it's about a small enough part of the group that I understand them.I read it. There were other universes. Some guy in a zoot suit that kept changing colors and patterns was apparently the bad guy.
Characters I though I knew turned out to be ones I didn't know.
I have no clue what happened.
Nor do I care.
Justice League International - I hadn't realized just how many issues this series took to find its tone and footing, but in reading the introduction to the most recent collection, I saw that the authors and artists had no clue that they'd be helming the most successful DC comic of the time and that they didn't think they'd last more than a couple of issues because of the bwah-ha-ha tone that they were taking.It's a fun read, but it makes me want to read the next volume even more.
Luckily DC has collected these issues three times now.
C'mon, folks...
The Kite Runner - I didn't want to see this film and ended up getting it only because it was a flexplay "rental", and I'm all down with dropping $5 to find out how the chemistry works. (Still working on that last part, though it appears to work nearly perfectly.)The movie was well made, and again, I clearly had something in my eye - especially during the parts where the main character sends his friend away and then later realizes that the friend has passed away.
Tear-jerker...bit of a let-down in the final real as the confrontation and sneaking out of Afghanistan seemed to be too quick for the film's pacing, but the whole thing worked for the most part for me.
Must've been tough to be one of the child actors, however. Sheesh...
Let's go quickly from here because I'm getting bored with typing this...no links from here onward...
- Superman - Infinite City - neat, digitally drawn artwork...really fun visual style...pedestrian storyline with weirdo science problems throughout...pick it up and flip through...
- The Yiddish Policemen's Union - didn't at all go where I thought it was going to go...turned out to be a much larger scope of the tale than the smallish, village noir that I thought it was going to be...preferred Summerland, but this was pretty good...kinda wish I would've read it rather than listened, however, as there were lots of words I didn't know and still have no clue of how to pronounce
- Younder Mountain String Band: Mountain Tracks 5 - ok, two links because I'd already found 'em...least favorite of the series...good music, well played, just kinda boring...
- Wanted - oh, my dear lord...horrible...found myself laughing twice during big fight scenes or dramatic moments when I clearly was meant to be on the edge of my seat...physics be damned...plot be damned...it's all about the slo-mo...
- The Wire - we're five episodes in, and I'm hooked...the first couple of episodes were a bit slow, but they were setting things up...good stuff...
- Life Sucks - Clerks but with vampires...in modern LA...entertaining graphic novel...funny stuff with poignant moments mixed in...nice modern take on vampires living in the real world...
- Stevie Ray Vaughn - The Real Deal, GH vol 2 - nice cd...too many songs I didn't know, however...great "Life by the Drop", "Voodoo Chile", and "Shake for Me"...too reverential take on "Pipeline"...it's more SRV than I want...one cd of GH is enough for me... Neil Young - Chrome Dreams II - boring...a few highlights like "Ordinary People", but I think I've moved on from Neil for the most part...his last half dozen albums have been way too much alike...
3 comments:
Few Batman/Joker stories are better/as good as The Killing Joke. I wouldn't even try to read any after that.
I dig the way you're adding your spoilers to the blogging...works well.
Mr Echt - if we're going with stories purely Joker-driven, I might agree, but I'd put Dark Knight Returns up there and even higher if you think it's purely Joker-driven...and have you seen the recent rerelease/recoloring of Killing Joke? Interesting to see how much different the pages look with the new colors. And I dig your icon, by the way...only a few months left now...
Calen - always trying to help out the loyal readers
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