Reading in the dark
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Kestrell" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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10:43 am
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Books read in April
1. The Memory of Whiteness by Kim Stanley Robinson (1985) [scanned myself]
One of my favorite science fiction novels, in which music meets physics to create a synesthetic experience of space and time. Poetic prose, trippy images, and Machiavellian plots--what's not to like? Also, and oddly I had forgotten this, the protagonist is a blind musician. While he does have artificial eyes, a cool feature is that they are not perfect in that way that science fiction likes to render all prosthetics, but instead only give the musician a limited degree of low vision.
In the world of Kim Robinson's Mars trilogy, Memory of Whiteness is set after the Mars trilogy although Robinson wrote this right before he began the trilogy.
2. Mad Bad and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors by Lisa Appignanesi (2008) [scanned myself]
Discusses the history of madness in women from the early nineteenth century through the present, with a focus on exploring how tied up the mind doctors were in not only diagnosing but transforming these patients into "star patients" who helped to make these doctors famous. I use the phrase "star patients" because not only, as the author points out, is there some transference from the doctor to the patient regarding what he desires in his ideal patient, but because many of the female patients discussed were themselves famous, from Mary Lamb to Virginia Woolf to Sylvia Plath (a slight disappointment was the lack of any mention of Caroline Lamb, who seemed referenced in the title, as she described Byron as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know," although the same could have been said, perhaps, of herself).
One of the truly disturbing threads is how male doctors linked creativity, or any mental exercise at all, particularly reading, with mental instability in women. These women were often given enforced "rest cures" --not to mention, often highly addictive drugs-- in order to prevent them from doing anything, period. Lots of fascinating information about the connections between women's writing and madness, such as the real-life doctor portrayed in the story "The Yellow Wallpaper."
Very readable prose, good starting place for the subject.
3. "Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight" from _Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences_ by Ursula K. Le Guin (1987) [Bookshare.org]
I Read about this story in _Coyote At Large_ and really can't believe I've managed to miss it all these years. A young girl is stranded in the desert after being in a plane crash and is temporarily adopted by Coyote. Fun feminist myth plus wacky eyeball humor--highly recommended.
4. Bats at the Beach by Brian Lies (2006)
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) alexx_kay read this one to me--it was a Christmas present from him--and it is just a really fun book with lots of very witty rhymes and pictures portraying some fun-loving bats. The author does a lot with the pictures, including the fact that he includes different types of bats.
You can hear Daniel Pinkwater and one of the NPR hosts reading this book and describing the pictures here
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5507234
--stick around through the end and you'll hear a few verses of Jimmy Durante singing "The Day I Read a Book."
5. _The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature_ by S.T. Joshi, editor (2000) ]scanned myself]
6. _The Modern Weird Tale: A Critique of Horror Fiction_ by S.T. Joshi (2001) [scanned myself]
I admit, I only heard about S. T. Joshi from mssrcrankypants at the 2007 Readercon http://www.readercon.org ,
since it is difficult for me to hear about small and/or indie press books, as they tend to not get a lot of publicity. Better late than never, though, and I was really excited to have an annotated edition of Lovecraft's _Supernatural Horror in Literature_, as it is one of the best books on horror, made even more valuable by Joshi's footnotes and bibliography.
As for Joshi's _Modern Weird Fiction_, it put into words some of my niggling sense of annoyance with a lot of contemporary horror, mostly in the fact that much of it seems to be mainstream fiction dressed up in cliched dimestore Halloween costumes. Don't read this unless you want your critical appreciation of horror heightened.
( scarecrows, space opera, a bit of snark and more below cut )
Current Location: aerye
Current Mood: bookish
Current Music: birds twittering
Tags: books, reviews
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02:10 pm
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Book review: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
block quote start
I'm a senior at Cesar Chavez high in San Francisco's sunny Mission district, and that makes
me one of the most surveilled people in the world. My name is Marcus Yallow, but back when
this story starts, I was going by w1n5t0n. Pronounced "Winston."
block quote end
As is obvious from the very first paragraph of _Little Brother_, Cory Doctorow's new book
begins with a bang and pretty much keeps up the pace straight through to the very end of the
story.
Marcus and his friends are typical teenagers in a not-too-distant future. They worry about
dating, getting into college, and how to skip class and not get caught. Then one day they
are caught in the wrong place at the wrong time when a 9/11-style terrorist attack occurs in
San Francisco and they, along with many others, get picked up in a Homeland Security sweep.
Marcus soon finds himself under constnat suspicion and surveillance by his own government,
even as he begins to ask himself and others, including the adults around him, why he is
being forced to conform to a culture of fear or risk being labeled unAmerican.
( continued below cut )
Current Location: aerye
Current Mood: radical
Current Music: 1776 soundtrack
Tags: books, coryd, media studies, politics, reviews
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09:31 am
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Book reviews: new books by Elizabeth Hand, Walter Jon Williams, and more
There is a new edition of Green Man Review online
http://www.greenmanreview.com/whats_new.html
and I have four reviews in it:
_Charles Williams: Alchemy and Integration_
http://www.greenmanreview.com/book/book_ashenden_charleswilliams.html ,
Elizabeth Hand's _Bride of Frankenstein_
http://www.greenmanreview.com/book/book_hand_brideoffrankenstein.html ,
_The New Weird_, which made me question what the purpose is of all those extras editors are so fond of stuffing into anthologies nowadays
http://www.greenmanreview.com/book/book_vandanmeers_thenewweird.html
and
_Implied Spaces_ by Walter Jon Williams, which made me a new convert to Williams's writing
http://www.greenmanreview.com/book/book_williams_impliedspaces.html
Current Location: aerye
Tags: books, reviews
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05:32 pm
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Book review: Zeroville by Steve Erickson
Definitely a five star book, and a must-read for anyone in love with movies.
It's 1969, and in the days immediately following the brutal murders committed by the Charles Manson family, a young man in love with movies shows up in a still-reeling and paranoid L.A. The Hollywood he has come to find, however, is a thing of the past, the silver and golden ages of movies already mostly forgotten, and the god-like beings who created the movies--and the city itself--are either dead or dying, only to be replaced in the cultural imagination by lesser mortals.
As Vikar, the young protagonist of the story, wanders about the city like a punk Parsifal, however, he slowly meets other bizarre characters who love the movies as much as he does. Through their passionate discussions of why movies continue to matter, readers get a variety of perspectives as to the almost mystical pull of film, from the romantic to the political to the sometimes very real necessity for escapism. Along the way, the idea of the auteur, the single genius who produces films, is challenged in favor of movies as a collaborative result of the work and imagination of many people, including the fans who often bring their own individual interpretations to the significance of the film.
Other reviews have made a lot of Zeroville's many references to movies and real people, but the reader doesn't need to get the references to get the story and, indeed, since Vikar sees movies through his own peculiar lens, you may not even recognize the movie he is referencing when it is described. For instance, Vikar often mistakes comedies for horror movies, and horror movies for comedies. His weird take on classic movies trashes the pretentiousness of film theory and instead recasts over-analyzed films as something strangely new and fantastic.
Here is an example of one movie as Vikar perceives it (read below the cut if you want the movie identified):
In another movie, a private eye fell in love with the blonde he was hired to follow. The blonde was haunted by past lives and the memory of once having committed suicide by flinging herself from an Old California mission steeple; when she described the steeple, the private eye recognized it, and told her she had seen it not in any past life but this one. But it was the private eye who didn't know the truth, a truth he
could never suspect.
Through Vikar's surreal perceptions of movies, classic movies are recast as modern myths. As Vikar picks up ideas about movies from other characters, he splices it all together to form his own mythology of movies, a mythos which sees movies as not being merely "classic" or "timeless," but as a sort of collective dream outside of space and time altogether.
( the movie Vikar describes is... )
Current Location: aerye
Current Mood:  impressed
Current Music: The Playground wers.org
Tags: 2008, books, movies, reviews
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05:30 pm
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Movies: Against All Flags +Stranger Than Fiction
The weather this past weekend seemed to encourage staying in and watching movies, and I was lucky enough to accidentally pick two very good ones.
Saturday: "Against All Flags" (1952)
This was left over from my pirate birthday party and, while I vaguely remembered it being one of my favorite pirate movies, it had been so long since I viewed it that I couldn't remember why I liked it. It soon became apparent that one of the main reasons it stands out is that the film not only offers Errol Flynn, but also Maureen O'Hara, and O'Hara as a female pirate captain, no less. There is also an ingenue who follows Flynn around looking lovelorn and appearing at really inopportune moments, and Anthony Quinn playing the baddie (Quinn also played a pirate captain in one of my other favorite pirate movies, "A High Wind In Jamaica").
A fun pirate movie with some unexpected swashbuckling from O'Hara, and generally fast-paced with more than the average amount of amusing dialogue.
Sunday: Strranger Than Fiction (2006)
I picked up this DVD on sale months ago, but in truth the cover is uninspiring, and gives no hint that it is based on a very witty script with lots of elements that the science fiction fan will probably love.
Harold Crick (Will Ferrell--yeah, yeah, I know, just ignore that part) is an IRS auditor very attached to his routines until he suddenly finds that a strange female narrator (Emma Thompson) is telling him things he would rather not know about himself--and his future. Once he has realized that he is a character in a story, however, Harold--prompted by his discussions with a lit professor who quotes Italo Calvino at him--becomes desperate to figure out what kind of story it is and how to get to the happy ending.
Emma Thompson plays Karen Eiffel, the narrator who turns out to be a real writer suffering from writer's block and Maggie Gyllenhaal is Ana Pascal, a radical baker who becomes the love interest.
It says something about the cleverness of the script and the visual effects that one of my favorite characters is a Timex watch. There is a lot of playing with structures narrative, temporal, and architectural: note the last names of the characters which are only some of the many references to mathematicians, scientists, engineers, artists, etc., and we're not even going to get into the numerous Beatles references.
Although the film was directed by Marc Forster ("Finding Neverland"), the real strength is a clever and intricately-plotted script written by Zach Helm who more recently wrote and directed "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium" (2007), a film which I am going to have to make a point of checking out.
Current Location: library
Current Mood: still giggly
Tags: movies, pirates, reviews, sf
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10:36 am
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Some holiday reading (and viewing)
Green Man Review just posted the annual Halloween issue
http://greenmanreview.com/whats_new.html
and it contains, aside from quite a bit about ballads, four book reviews, including my review of
Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"
http://greenmanreview.com/book/book_irving_sleepyhollow.html
and also my review of the new DVD of the BBC miniseries "Jekyll," which has a brilliant script written by Stephen Moffat
http://greenmanreview.com/film/film_jekyll.html
block quote start
The question of what distinguishes the men from the monsters is the preoccupying theme of "Jekyll," the newest film version of the Jekyll/Hyde story. While it still portrays the conflict that made Stevenson's story so powerful -- the dualities of being
a human animal, caught in the struggle between the civilized self and the animal instincts -- this version is also one of the smartest, funniest, romantic,
and yes, at times, creepiest, versions of this story I have ever viewed.
block quote end
Current Location: in the library with a travel mug
Tags: halloween, horror, reviews, writing
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02:07 pm
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Heroes Season 2 review: Why I will be boycotting this show from now on...
As far as sympathetic female heroes, there wasn't all that much going on last season, but there was just enough that I was willing to stick with the show, hoping that the producers and writers would decide to take their female characters--and their female audience--more seriously in the second season by improving the characterization of females on the show.
So this season's shows have smashed that hope like Godzilla stomping Bambi's brains out.
Fine, I probably could have lived with that, because I don't have very high expectations when it comes to t.v.
What ticks me off is that the producers and writers have taken what little positive female characterization there was and basically poured on the gasoline and then tossed a lit match on the pyre.
Honestly, I can't remember the last time, if ever, I felt personally insulted by a t.v. show, I mean, really, I don't typically take t.v. that much to heart--
( rant and spoilers )
Current Location: aerye
Current Mood:  annoyed
Current Music: www.wmbr.org
Tags: reviews, t.v.
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12:35 pm
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Review: The Winter's Tale, performed at MIT on Thursday, September 20
Thursday night alexx_kay and I went to a production of "The Winter's Tale" at MIT put on by students of
THE Cambridge University American Stage Tour (CAST)
http://castonline.org/
and while initially I had my doubts about how enjoyable it would be due to the various ambiguities of the play itself along with the fact that it was a student production, I can definitively state that this was an amazing production that demonstrated once again that these plays were meant to be experienced live, not just read.
Indeed, one of the aspects of CAST's production which made the play so much livelier than I expected was that the company exploited every possible moment for making the play come alive to the audience.
While it didn't occur to me at the time, this sense of liveliness was kicked off when we bumped into eanja and fabrisse before the show and then when we took our seats found ourselves sitting in front of xiphias and cheshyre, maintainers of the wonderful
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) bard_in_boston, virtual home of all things Shakespeare in the Boston area.
The play itself is, as I commented, a bit ambiguous in its categorization: while the theme itself is very dark--jealousy and the destruction it enacts not only upon individuals but upon families and social order--the play is often listed as a comedy, because nobody actually dies (thanks, Fabrisse). According to Marjorie Garber's book _Shakespeare After All_, Winter's Tale can be categorized as one of the late romances, along with Tempest and Midsummer's Night, and also as one of the triad of "jealousy plays" which include Much Ado and Othello. The players made a creative choice to highlight the comedic parts of the play while not downplaying the darker elements, the two main means for doing this being the use of puppets and the use of character/costuming references to Lewis Carroll's _Alice in Wonderland_.
Yet the use of children's toys and stories did not detract from the dark theme of jealousy and violence. As anyone who knows about the secret history of Punch and Judy can tell you, violence is woven through the oldest puppet plays. And as for stories, a winter's tale is a story told during the darkest part of the year.
( continued below cut )
Current Location: aerye
Current Mood: mercurial
Current Music: www.wmbr.org
Tags: events, mit, reviews, shakespeare, theatre
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09:42 am
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My review of Gary Braunbeck's Mr. Hands/Kiss of the Mudman
Green Man Review has posted my review of Gary A. Braunbeck's _Mr. Hands_, which also includes the wonderful story "Kiss of the Mudman," both part of Braunbeck's Cedar Hill mythos,
http://greenmanreview.com/book/book_braunbeck_misterhands.html .
It's a great book, I'm determined to read more of the Cedar Hill stories, and Braunbeck really impressed me with his willingness to write a strong female protagonist who is, herself, a bit monstrous, and not in the usual sex siren way most male horror writers get stuck o.
Note: This is a thought-provoking but grim story, especially for those who find stories about violence toward children hard to bear. It's also on Bookshare.org, though it was not I who uploaded it (I often wish Bookshare had a board where you could just post short questions like "Hey, whoever uploaded that book: we need to bookgeek!"
excerpt from my review:
The story the stranger tells, the story of "the terrible miracle" of Mr. Hands' origin, concerns the bond between a serial killer known as "Uncle Ronnie"
who haunted Cedar Hill a generation before and a woman named Lucy Thompson. The characterizations of Ronnie and Lucy turn the stereotypical horror trope
of unrelieved-evil male attacker and moral but passive female victim on its head as, ultimately, Lucy as well as Ronnie becomes complicit in the creation
of the monster, Mr. Hands. The bizarre alchemical marriage which results in the birth of Mr. Hands is described in an intensely metaphorical scene which
recalls both the birth of Frankenstein's monster and the traditional golem, itself born of fear, guilt, and vengeful fury. This scene, which comes literally
at the center of the story, recasts everything that comes before and after it, challenging many of the definitions of "monster" and reminding us that the
origins of the word monster meant "warning," and that the ancients carved images of monsters into the gates and doorways to holy or forbidden places. Braunbeck's
monsters serve a similar function, posted at the liminal space of story, warning us that, no matter how simplistically media images might reduce the stories,
people are far more complex than they appear on the surface, and empathy remains the one thing that separates humans from monsters.
Current Location: aerye
Current Mood: autumnal
Current Music: www.wumb.org
Tags: books, horror, reviews
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02:05 pm
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What I'm Reading: Books and book reviews
Going Ironside by Holly Black blackholly
http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/rrIronside.html
and
Bittersweet by Steve Berman mroctober
http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/rrBittersweet.html
from the Summer issue of The Endicott Journal of Mythic Arts, a.k.a. The Young Adult Mythic Fiction issue.
I was really struck by "Bittersweet," which features a young teen protagonist dealing with his conflicting desires regarding his relationship with his diabetic boyfriend. I found the image of the gingerbread boy, which combines the desires of wanting to be wanted but also wanting to run away form that desire, with all its implications for being consumed by another, to be, well, bittersweet, and I like the fact that the protagonist does not find any easy answers to that conflict.
The fall issue of Subterranean Online is also in the process of being posted, and it features the
audio book of the first five chapters of Charles de Lint’s new Promises to Keep.
http://subterraneanpress.com/index.php/magazine/fall2007/audiobook-promises-to-keep-by-charles-de-lint-read-by-yanni-kuznia/
Subterranean Press
http://subterraneanpress.com/#
is offering print copies of the completed short novel.
Also, in his newsletter mailed out earlier this week, Charles de Lint mentioned that there will be more aidiobook versions of his books coming out in the future: "...I've recently licensed five books to Blackstone Audiobooks. Titles include Widdershins, The Onion Girl, Moonheart, Memory and Dream
and Dreams Underfoot. It's too early to know the production schedule, but I'll get back to you when I have more info. I'm especially happy that some of my work will finally be available to visually impaired folks."
My reviews of Heather Shaw's chapbook _When We Were Six_ and Tim Pratt and Heather Shaw's zine, "Flytrap 7," is up at the newest issue of Green Man Review
http://www.greenmanreview.com/whats_new.html .
My review of Gary A. Braunbeck's _Mr. Hands_ and Tim Pratt's _Blood Engines_ have not yet been posted, but here a a couple
( sneak peecks of the reviews )
Current Music: www.wbos.com
Tags: books, reviews, writing
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11:36 am
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Review: the BBC's "Jekyll"
A couple of weeks back, alexx_kay and I caught about fifteen minutes of the first episode of "Jekyll"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/jekyll/
now being broadcast on BBCAmerica, with the U.K. release of the DVD of season 1 (six episodes) having occured earlier this summer (the U.S. release date for the DVD of Season 1 is September 18).
The show is a continuation of the original story, with the tag line "There's a new Dr Jekyll with an old problem... Mr Hyde."
A mere fifteen minutes was enough to incite lust in my soul, and yesterday alexx_kay and I hid in the air conditioning and watched the first three episodes.
It's a wonderful show, with a number of things to recommend it.
The script is written by Steven Moffat, who has written several of the most outstanding new "Dr. Who" episodes and who was also creator of the British comedy "Coupling." The dialogue is dead-on and often quite funny, but also does some very nice characterization, with most of the characters in teh cast revealing how everyone has their own "dark half."
James Nesbitt, the actor who plays the dual roles of Tom Jackman (the Dr. Jekyll character) and Hyde, is exceptional. While Hyde is himself, as a character, an over-the-top personality, Nesbitt never turns him into a clown. Nesbit's acting allows room for multiple interpretations of the relationship between Jackman and Hyde and, mirrored by the many twin and double references within the story, the relationship does not lose any of its psychological punch.
The effects are small and subtle but add intensity to the action: this would be a great show for theatrical sorts to study, as it relies on performance from its actors rather than technology for most of its disquieting moments.
Another notable aspect to this production is the number of female roles it offers, which go beyond the usual good girl/bad girl pairing which has been such a part of Jekyll/Hyde productions since John Barrymore decided the story was the perfect excuse for him to have two leading ladies instead of merely one.
As an added note, while poking around the Net, I found a reference to Jekyll fanfic in the early twentieth century
http://www.trickster.org/symposium/symp183.htm
--has anyone else run across such references, or can anyone suggest where I might find out more about such writings?
Current Location: aerye
Current Music: www.wumb.org
Tags: horror, reviews
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10:55 am
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Metagirl strikes again: 5 minute movie review of Sneakers
Last night alexx_kay hosted a movie night which featured a showing of the geek classic Sneakers, which came from my extensive collection of movies which include blind characters. I really love the actor who plays Whistler (the character is based on an actual phone freak who went by that name in the 1970s). The actor has a background in circus performance, including juggling, and I think one of the things he manages to do is convey an awareness of the body that does not rely on the sterotypical mannerisms used to shorhand blindness in film. Also, the actor has a really nice voice. Also, he has cool gadgets (I totally want the sound effects device he has), and he ways in which the character's perspective is used to see things the other characters doesn't is--mostly--very believable. I say mostly but it is possible that it is entirely believable, I myself have not noticed if I can detect sonar, although I can detect hums and other electronic sounds that others don't seem to hear, so maybe its possible.
But that's not what I came here to talk about. What I wanted to talk about was the use of sound and media in the movie. I realized that Sneakers has an almost 21st century aesthetic of using other media to frame the tone and the characters awareness of information as an almost live entity in the movie. First of all, the music used to convey mood in this movie is exceptional, not intrusive but barely operating on the conscious level. In addition, everything from games and toys to flyers and newspaper headlines fleetingly glimpsed on the street to Playboy is used to show something about the characters and the action (toys, for instance, can move quickly from being silly and amusing to threatening and dangerous). Low on special effects and high on dialogue, which is often used to convey suspense and anxiety, as when multiple characters begin to excitedly speak over one another whenever the main character has to make a high-pressure decision (this was an effect used in another media studies movie, His Girl Friday, which featured the romantic relationship between two newspaper reporters).
I highly recommend this movie to anyone interested in using speech and sound to convey character and action, but it is also one of my favorite media studies movies, not to mention, a geek classic.
So speaking of metageeking, I was excited to read this
http://syndicated.livejournal.com/riba_rambles/981859.html
and am currently trying to persuade alexx_kay to go with me.
Current Location: aerye
Current Mood: metagirl
Current Music: Mustang Sally
Tags: blindness, mediastudies, movies, reviews
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12:25 pm
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New Green Man Review includes new Lucy Snyder collection+the Summer Queen's address to her subjects
There is a new issue of Green Man Review up
http://www.greenmanreview.com/whats_new.html
which contains my review of las's
Lucy A. Snyder's short story collection, Sparks and Shadows: Stories and Poetry
block quote start
Is it wrong to love a writer for her zombies?....Lucy A. Snyder writes truly intelligent
horror that is both witty and political but her stories and poems tap the feminist potential of horror to illuminate the shadowy extremes of both love and hate.
block quote end
For something seasonal, I want to point out that this collection also contains a Wild Hunt story titled "The Dogs of Summer" which I really loved. For the rest of the review, go here
http://www.greenmanreview.com/book/book_snyder_sparksandshadows.html
Other notable reviews include
Charles Stross' _Halting State_
http://www.greenmanreview.com/book/book_stross_haltingstate.html
Brian Hinton & Geoff Wall's
Ashley Hutchings: The Guv'nor & the Rise of Folk Rock
http://www.greenmanreview.com/book/book_va_ashleyhutchingsbiography.html
and a very positive review of Joe Hill's _Heart-Shaped Box_
http://www.greenmanreview.com/book/book_hill_heartshapedbox.html
which I also really loved but agree with negothick is flawed in that the second part fails to sustain the power of the mythology Hill creates in the first half of the book. In my opinion, Joe Hill does for heavy metal what modern fantasists have done for traditional ballads, weaving the music into a mythos with its own archetypes and dark Muses.
Another review of potential interest is that of
Neil Hollands' Read On. . . Fantasy Fiction
http://www.greenmanreview.com/book/book_hollands_readon.html
which provides lists for teachers and librarians who are looking for suggestions as to what to read after Harry Potter.
In addition to the reviews is the annual Summer Queen speech to her subjects, this year composed by
Orla Melling.
http://www.greenmanreview.com/book/essay_summerqueen2007.html
Past Summer Queens have included Emma Bull with
Her Meditation on the Season,
http://www.greenmanreview.com/book/essay_summerqueen2003.html
Sharyn November with
Her Excellent Advice on Her Favourite Season,
http://www.greenmanreview.com/book/essay_summerqueen2004.html
and Jennifer Stevenson with
A Summer Queen Speech on The Joys of Summer.
http://www.greenmanreview.com/book/essay_summerqueen2005.html
Now I am off to don my Slytherin robes and go off with alexx_kay to see the new Harry Potter movie (is it just me, or are the odd-numbered ones better?).
Current Location: aerye
Current Mood: Slytherinish
Tags: books, harrypotter, reviews, seasons
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12:46 pm
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5 minute reviews: Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon +Soon I Will Be Invincible
Behind the Mask turned out to be the perfect choice for a Friday the 13 horror movie party: it's smart, weirdly funny, and full of quotable lines (hm, sounds like my favorite kind of fanboy...). The title character, Leslie Vernon, is a student of the slasher movie who himself aspires to going pro and he has agreed to allow a trio of grad students to film him as he prepares for his big night. The deconstruction of the slasher movie genre never gets tired or predictible, mostly because Leslie is alternately deadpan serious and goofily gung ho as he delivers his lectures on slasher studies. Like the Scream movies, Behind the Mask manages to use both humor and meta commentary to map out the territory and then take a hard left at Albuquerque. Smart scriptwriting and some smart acting, especially that of the interviewer's goofy camera men and the aging serial killer who is Leslie's mentor, contribute to the question of how other characters--and the viewer--become complicit in turning a monster into a myth. This is a must-view movie for the serious horror fan and for anyone teaching about the modern horror film.
_Soon I Will Be Invincible_ is another meta media experience, this one a book about supervillains and superheroes. The story is told from the viewpoint of two characters, the first being that of Dr. Impossible, an established supervillain with a long personal history of pitting himself against the forces of good, and Fatale, a new cyborg superhero who has only recently managed to arrive at the pinnacle of superhero professional success by being asked to fight with *the* superhero team, The new Champions. (In the downloadable audiobook version I read, the male and female voice actors did a nice job of developing these two characters without being overly hammy except, of course, where the role of Dr. Impossible called for such hamminess.)
_Soon I Will Be Invincible_ is overflowing with quotable Evil Overlord quips, and it could have been a cheap opportunity for self-indulgent monologuing, but it's more than just a pastiche. Grossman has written a book that demonstrates the intellectual and emotional appeal of comics, though you don't have to be a comics superfan to appreciate the ways in which this book plays with the tropes, from the origin story to the necessity of a nemesis to the dynamics of romantic relationships ("[E]ven supervillainesses would rather date a hero."). There is some very nice subtext about how the culture rewards those who support its political and economic agendas, while it pathologizes those who fail to conform.
This book makes a great summer read and a definite classic for the Evil Overlord-in-training.
Now I am off to finish reading Gary Braunbeck's _Mr. Hands_...
Current Location: aerye
Current Mood: Meta Girl
Current Music: www.wers.org
Tags: comics, meta, movies, reviews
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12:39 pm
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Classy zombie movie
issendi indulged my macabre sense of fun last night by watching a couple of horror movies with me, the more notable one being titled "Cemetary Man," a.k.a. Dellamorte Dellamore (1994). At the time I just noted--repeatedly--that the actor playing the protagonist had a *really* nice voice, but after checking out IMDB I find out that the actor was Rupert Everett, who plays Secondus in "Stardust" (2007) ( and also the voice of Prince Charming in "Shrek the Third," not to mention having played Algernon Moncrieff in the 2002 "The Importance of Being Ernest" and *happy sigh* played Christopher Marlowe in "Shakespeare In Love."
The movie had some amazing settings and cinematography, with many shots turning the cemetary into a fantasy world. There were also lots of hallucinatory dream sequences which may not have been dream sequences, and lots of ambiguity for interpreting the action (the grilfriend--sorry, that's supposed to be "girlfriend"--is just named "She" in the credits).
Although IMDB lists the tagline rather simplistically as "Zombies, guns, and sex, OH MY!!!", the screenplay was based on a novel by Tiziano Sclavi and actually had some bite to it. I said on a couple of occasions that there was a subtext about bureaucracy turning people into unthinking robots that could have lent itself to a thesis though, upon reflection, love and the desire to be considered valuable by men had pretty much the same effect upon the female characters.
block quote start
Francesco Dellamorte: [voice-over] I'm the watchman of the Buffalora Cemetery. I don't know how the epidemic started. All I know is that some people, on the seventh night after
their death, come back to life. I call them Returners, but frankly I can't understand why they're so anxious to return. The only way to get rid of them
once and for all is to split their heads open. A spade'll do it, but a dum-dum bullet is best. Is this the beginning of an invasion? Does it happen in
all cemeteries? Or is Buffalora just an exception? Who knows? And in the end, who cares? I'm just doing my job.
block quote end
All in all, it was the classiest zombie movie I ever saw, and I think I will have to get it on DVD for future viewing.
Current Location: aerye
Current Music: www.wmbr.org
Tags: horror, movies, reviews, zombies
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01:06 pm
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Book reviews disappearing from nation's newspapers
Kes: The book review sections were always my favorite part of a newspaper or magazine, and I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be a book reviewer. I always thought of a book reviewer as a sort of librarian at large, someone who had the opportunity to show others why a particular book was worth getting excited about. This is a sad trend, because the books of a community or town or city still seem to contribute so much to the distinct culture of a place, I can't really comprehend hwo shutting off that source of culture will affect communities and cities around the country.
Posted to the Book People mailing list
From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2007.
http://scout.wisc.edu/
June 1, 2007
Critics, authors and editors concerned over recent moves to eliminate
book review sections in nation's newspapers
Newspapers juggle book review sections in a time of change
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07128/784152-44.stm
The folly of downsizing book reviews
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-op-
connelly29apr29,1,3962449.story?coll=la-news-comment
Battle of the book reviews
http://www.calendarlive.com/books/cl-ca-bloggers13may13,0,4948424.story
CRITICAL MASS: The blog of the national book critics circle board of
directors
http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/
Salman Rushdie and Stephen Colbert discuss literary criticism
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Current Location: aerye
Current Mood:  sad
Tags: books, media, reviews
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09:55 am
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Book review: City of Bones by Cassandra Clare +new Green Man Review
Edited at 1:30 to correct the link to my review
Green Man Review has a new edition up
http://greenmanreview.com/whats_new.html
and it is an all book edition which includes
my review of the audiobook version of Cassandra Clare's _City of Bones_
http://greenmanreview.com/book/book_clare_graynor_cityofbones.html
in which I restrain myself from mentioning that I am totally in love with Simon, and that I always wanted a Simon of my own (see? I didn't mention those points in the review, but I did have to get it off my chest).
Other reviews include
Kelly Link's _Magic for Beginners_
Kage Baker's _The Sons of Heaven_, the finale in The Company series
http://greenmanreview.com/book/book_link_magicforbeginners.html
_The Cut of His Coat: Men, Dress, and Consumer Culture in Britain, 1860-1914_ by Brent Shannon
http://greenmanreview.com/book/book_shannon_cutofhiscoat.html
and _Ghostwalk_, an alchemical murder mystery by Rebecca Stott, (this is going on my to be read list)
http://greenmanreview.com/book/book_stott_ghostwalk.html
Tags: books, reviews, writing
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01:30 pm
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Book review: This Is PUSH: New Stories from the Edge edited by David Levithan
This Is PUSH: New Stories from the Edge edited by David Levithan (2007, Push)
Ever since I read David Levithan's exceptional _Boy Meets Boy_ (nopf, 2003) a few months back, I have wanted to read more of this author's work, so when I found that he had edited this recently released anthology of stories by other authors of Push (an imprint of Scholastic Books aimed at teen readers), I snapped up a copy. Despite the excellence of _Boy Meets Boy_, I thought that the overall quality of this collection would be similar to most such collections: it would be the usual grab bag of some good, some bad, and most merely passable stories.
I am happy to report that I was wrong wrong wrong: every story in this anthology represents quality work. While this consistent quality of _This is Push_ makes it difficult to distinguish any one story as "the best," Billy Merrell's "My Boyfriend Refuses to Speak in Iambic Pentameter" is, I believe, an instant classic and I would be surprised if it didn't show up on next year's Lambda Awards. This is an amazing little gem in the form of a play in blank verse that portrays the relationship between two teen boys and the struggle toward expressing emotion, which represent the teen struggle toward self-expression but also a defiance of social pressures for individuals to maintain a "don't tell" silent complicity in exchange for token acceptance. Iambic pentameter's classical roots in subversive speech have rarely, in modern poetry, been made so starkly apparent.
blank quote start
You think I speak like this because I can? Because without the beat there is no heart?! My form is not my structure, it's my mode: it's how I handle love
....I hope you sing —
but not because you think I want you to. Because you can't hold back, so much unsaid, because you've looked so deeply in my eyes that you can't see much else. Because instead of wanting your life the same, you realize that maybe it can never be again. And that's okay.
blank quote end
Other favorites are likely to be based, as mine are, upon personal preference, and there is a wide rang of storytelling modes to choose from. "Six Killers" by Markus Zusak is a story told from the perspective of a quirkily original goth teen who works as a gravedigger in a cemetary, while "People Watching" by Chris Wooding gives the classic first date story a fantasy spin.
The story I fell in love with, however, is Christopher Krovatin's "Ginger," in which a young girl has a crush on a red-headed punk boy who hangs out in her father's used record store. The characters are smart and believable and did I mention smart? (Up to now, I had not really thought about the idea of the "first date book," even though I have one of these stories myself.)
Having fallen in love with Christopher Krovatin's writing, I went looking for other works by him, and was pleased to find he wrote a book titled _Heavy Metal and You_ (Push reprint edition, 2006), which features a protagonist who spends the story explaining why he loves heavy metal, a story idea I find particularly appealing after having read Joe Hill's _Heart-Shaped Box_, which got me thinking about the mythic and narrative possibilities of metal music. Krovatin also has a new book coming out titled _Venom_, but I have not been able to locate any information about it.
Whether you are a fan of YA fiction or not, _This is Push_ is an outstanding collection of short stories, and I recommend it strongly to anyone who craves the experience of falling in love with some new writers.
Current Location: aerye
Current Mood: bookish
Current Music: something folky
Tags: books, reviews
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09:41 am
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An interview with Cheryl Hagedorn, author of the new mystery, Park Ridge: A Senior Center Murder
Recently I wrote a review
http://kestrell.livejournal.com/353838.html
of the new mystery by Chicago-area author Cheryl Hagedorn set in a senior citizen activities center.
Cheryl also answered some interview questions for me, including her thoughts on why the first reaction to the idea of a murder at a senior center is the assumption that it must be a dark comedy.
1. When I first read the description of Park Ridge: A Senior Center
Murder at the book site
http://www.booklocker.com/books/2637.html
I assumed it was a dark comedy about senior citizens turning the
tables on an over-controlling eldercare staff. The book site
provides this synopsis of the book:
block quote start
Four elderly pinochle players at the neighborhood drop in center
decide to whack the overzealous activity boosters.
block quote end
I understand that a number of other people reacted the same way when
they first heard the description of your book. Could you suggest why
so many people first thought a story that features a murder in a
senior citizen center would be rich material for a dark comedy?
Cheryl: Actually, there are five murders. The first is committed in the heat
of the moment but the others are plotted out by the pinochle players. One of the reviewers said that the thought of four elderly grandpa and grandma-types sitting around a card table planning on
how to kill the people that aggravate them was really funny stuff.
That response came as a real surprise to me. I never intended to write comedy, although I've been told I'm funny, as in peculiar, not humorous. I thought I'd written a dark, disturbing novel. I think
the problem is that younger people, and maybe it's not just them,
have a hard time believing that senior citizens can be enraged.
2. Your book seems to use the mystery as an opportunity to explore
relationships between family members, caregivers and their clients,
older people and younger, and couples. Was this an intentional
writing strategy on your part? Do you feel mysteries as a genre
offer opportunities for exploring relationships?
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Current Music: www.wumb.org
Tags: books, reviews, writing
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02:02 pm
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Book review: Park Ridge: A Senior Center Murder by Cheryl Hagedorn
Park Ridge: A Senior Center Murder by Cheryl Hagedorn (2006)
Available in accessible PDF format at BookLocker
http://www.booklocker.com/books/2637.html
Note: I will be posting an interview with author Cheryl Hagedorn on Friday, May 18.
The _Park Ridge: A Senior Center Murder_ book site gives the book the following description: "Four elderly pinochle players at the neighborhood drop in center decide to whack the overzealous activity boosters" and, I admit when I first read this synopsis of Cheryl Hagedorn's new mystery, I mistakenly assumed that it was a dark comedy about senior citizens turning the tables on an over-controlling eldercare staff (something along the lines of "Heathers" set at a senior citizen center).
_Park Ridge_ is a very different mystery than the one I was expecting. It is a story full of surprises, but the most notable surprise is that the author chose to create a mystery which goes beyond cardboard cutout characters and instead chose to write a mystery which exposes many of our cultural stereotypes about people over the age of sixty. _Park Ridge_ demonstrates one of the lures of mystery fiction: it's ability to show us how mysterious we can be to one another. As the Chicago area author replied when I asked her if she felt mysteries as a genre offered opportunities for exploring relationships, "[W]hat's more mysterious than relationships."
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Tags: books, reviews
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