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newnumber6Long overdue for one of these. Let's start with books, then move on to TV and movies, and finally, snacking.
Finished: A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge (reread)
Okay, I've read this more than a dozen times already, and many of them while I was in the habit of writing up whatever I read for my LJ, so what else is there to say? This time I was reading it with an eye to preparing myself for the long-overdue sequel that just got released. Either way, I still love it.
Finished: Under the Dome by Stephen King
Stephen King's latest (well, latest that I've read or had much interest in reading), is a high-concept idea, about a small town that is enclosed in an impenetrable (aside from allowing a little airflow, and light and sound) force field by forces unknown.
Overall, I enjoyed it. King keeps up a pretty good pace, and it's fun to explore the idea and some of the consequences of it with him. There are some big flaws, which I'll explore in the spoilery section (which will be a little more spoilery than most of the times I do this... while I won't be revealing big secrets I'll be speaking in general about how certain plotlines ended).
The big question with King is always the ending. He does some great stories, but has trouble ending them in a satisfying way. In this case, there are two versions of the problem - the human level stories and the big idea. But to discuss that, we need to start the spoilery part of the review where we'll also go into some of the other flaws.
Normally I'd expect that King would succeed on the ending for the human drama, and trip up on providing a decent explanation/resolution for the Dome itself. Surprisingly, it's the reverse. His explanation for the Dome and what happens, while not perfect, at least succeeds on something of an emotional level. On the other hand, throughout the book, I never feel any of the human threads, and particularly human threats, came to a satisfying conclusion. People do awful things to each other or are set up as being total nemeses and you're expecting some satisfying epic confrontation, and then wind up dying (or not) far distance from each other from events that suddenly crop up. Similarly, a lot of time is spent on building up to something happening, and either it happens and is completely irrelevant in terms of the bigger story, or it just never does. So on the whole it feels unsatisfying in a lot of ends.
Other problems... it could be me, that I'm out of touch (or that it's more regional variation), but whenever King writes teens nowadays, it doesn't ring true, it feel like he's 10-20 years out of date in terms of slang and interests, with the exception of an incongruous reference here and there that might be up to date (speaking of, he did to a shoutout to Runaways writer Brian K. Vaughan, with one of the teen characters being described as having an addiction to his graphic novels). A little similarly, his treatment of the Internet continuing after the Dome is in place feels a little hinky (they dome doesn't let anybody tunnel under it to get in, and power lines get cut, but buried structures like internet cable get uninterrupted?)
Also, a couple of times, King makes use of (or overuse of) two of my disliked writing gimmicks. The first one, is magical prophecy, with certain characters getting visions of the future. It seems to happen far too much for my tastes. If it was a couple characters, or in a few very specific situations, I could be okay with it, but he made a whole plot thing about it where I don't think it was really needed. The second is a few instances where he wrote from the perspective of an animal, and did it as though "oh, it's just like a human except not quite as smart", and in one case had an animal basically getting telepathic messages from a ghost to alert its owner to something... and the worst part of it, the whole outcome of it was another of those fizzled plot threads where it didn't really seem to have much impact on the ending. IMHO, those scenes should have been completely cut.
A few cases of sexual violence and weird sexual depravity for the sake of horror were, while I don't think they were necessarily out of place (it is a horror novel and designed in part to show how bad people can get put under unusual stresses and with no accountability), were still somewhat distasteful.
And one final non-spoilery complaint. If you are going to go to all the trouble of including a map at the start of your book... MAKE SURE IT MATCHES THE BOOK ITSELF. On several occasions, the town (and therefore the Dome) is described as being shaped a little like a sock. So, naturally, we get a map of a square/rectangular area with no indication on whether this is a subset of the dome, or the dome is a subset of it (the dome itself is unmarked). Only a few landmarks are pointed out, and often when I looked up a road that was mentioned in the book, so I could see where some events were happening in relation to others, no such road was on the map, so either it was under the dome but not on the area of the dome the map covered, or it was in the area of the map but just left off as unimportant. It was INCREDIBLY frustrating. I'd rather have had no map and just have to guess at everything instead of being teased with the prospect of having an idea of where everything takes place and not really having any clue.
Still, overall, I liked it and might read it again sometime, but probably not for a few years at least. Apparently there is already a miniseries adaptation in the works for one of the US cable networks, and I'll probably watch it, too, if nothing else there are a couple of cool visuals that would be fun to see actually visual.
Finished: The Clockwork Rocket by Greg Egan
You might remember me ranting on this book before... not the book itself, which had a novel premise that really intrigued me, but rather the price in a bookstore, compared to what was listed on the jacket. But my interest in the book outweighed my rage, especially when I found the online price was quite reasonable (almost half the bookstore price), so I broke down and ordered it.
The concept that interested me was exploring a world essentially based on a single change in the fundamental equations of geometry, a plus sign turned into a minus sign. We were promised a world where plants get energy by creating light, and where if you travelled fast enough time would stop on earth while generations passed for you. Those ideas still hold, but it got a little more complicated. I was expecting a more-or-less human society to explore these strange properties, but instead Egan created an alien race that was very different in many ways. I was disappointed at first, but eventually got into it.
The book's not perfect, though. In particular, I think it was written for somebody a lot smarter than me. I wanted the science to be a bit of a backdrop, invisibly informing the world and letting us look at it from the perspective of someone who took it for granted. Instead, we got some of that, certainly, but there was a lot of long and highly technical explanations, with charts, graphs, and diagrams, of how the science worked (some of the characters being scientists who are discovering these ideas themselves or teaching them to other scientists in class), things like how light looked to observers or geometry interacts with time. And although I struggled hard to grok them at first, eventually I started to glaze over and pretty well skip them without even trying to understand, and just trying to grasp what key point they were getting across.
On the whole I'm not disappointed I read it, but it wasn't what I wanted, either. A tiny bit more spoilery (nothing big but might ruin the joy of discovery of how the world and people work through the narrative) behind the cut about the good parts and bad
As I said above, I was expecting a more-or-less human society, with maybe the minimum required difference for the world to work (and one of the cool features of the whole intellectual exercise is that a lot of it DOES work fine for having a normal society). Instead, we got a weird society of partial shapechanger, who can modify the number of limbs they need and write by raising symbols on their skin, pressing them to ink, and pressing it to paper. And figuring out how this differed from us was a bit difficult at first, but then I did kinda get into it and the stories of the struggles of the main characters in their society and dealing with the gender politics (The woman dies giving birth by division/fission, usually to two sets of two children (one male, one female in each set). The male of each pair not only raises the children of the female, but also causes the pregnancy/death and can force it on their 'co-stead'... and, since their traditional role is being a father, the men sometimes want to get on with raising the next generation while the woman doesn't necessarily want to die to produce it), there's a whole set of societal taboos and struggles based on it. The main character, born without a corresponding male (something that's probably about as rare as having twins is in our world) is given a bit more opportunity than the farm life she was born into and goes to school and eventually becomes a scientist and becomes aware of the big threat that the book is based on.
There's probably where the book starts to break down, not just because of the amount of science and charts and graphs that get up, but once the clockwork rocket of the title becomes the focus, I don't know, it just seems to lose a lot of the narrative power. And it really shouldn't, because part of it is about the potential of building a new society on their generation-ship, and yet... I don't know, I just wasn't as interested.
This is listed as book one of a series, so the ultimate question is, would I read book 2? I think I would, but barely, and I wouldn't buy it new in hardcover, I'd be willing to wait for paperback or if I could find it used for a good price.
Finished: A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge (reread)
Another multiple reread while I was preparing for Children of the Sky. Deepness doesn't (at least, as far as I can determine so far) directly relate to Children, DitS and FutD connect by virtue of being in the same universe and having one character in common, but take place thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of years apart in a whole different part of the galaxy. But again, I've read it so often that there's not much to say. I will say this, although I probably wanted to see more of the world/area of the galaxy of A Fire Upon the Deep (although don't get me wrong, I'd love to see a sequel to Deepness in any number of possible plot threads and would buy the hell out of it), Deepness provided more surprises and emotional gut-punches that I still feel every time I read it.
Started: The Children of the Sky by Vernor Vinge
Started: Dark Light by Ken Macleod
Okay, that's it for book foo, time to move on to TV and movies...
TV, of the continuing shows, well, plenty are still holding my attention but not wowing me, and a few are trending towards losing all my interest (Supernatural, I'm looking at you. I spent half the last episode silently screaming BULL&%# because of the crap you pulled in the episode before), only The Walking Dead still gets me excited to see it every week (although it's dragging on compared to last year, I think they could have done more this number of episodes in... and seriously, can that extended search end already?).
Of the new shows?
Person of Interest: Lost my interest with the second episode. Well, really with the first, but I thought I'd give it one more just in case it suffered from pilot-itis.
Terra Nova: I'm watching, but I don't think I'd care if everybody in it except the grizzled camp-leader got eaten by tyrannosaurs. And it was only 2 episodes in before they pulled out an old SF plot that every show eventually does when it gets old, so I don't have high hopes for it to get better. If they do a 'time loop only one person remembers from loop to loop' (a la Window of Opportunity, Cause and Effect, and of course, Groundhog Day) episode this year, I'm out.
Once Upon a Time: For the life of me I can't imagine why they approved this, aside from 'the people from Lost did it'. Nor can I imagine it succeeding, but apparently it's already been picked up for a full season so apparently my imagination's lacking. It seems pretty cheesy overall, especially the fairy-tale-flashbacks, and where it isn't cheesy, it's often dull. I'm still watching, but right now it's in the 'watching a train wreck' spirit. But I'm trying to keep an open mind, maybe they'll win me over.
Grimm: It's... okay. I want to like it more than I do, given that the producers did Angel, but the lead's a little flat and the plots feel a little weak so far. The reformed Big Bad Wolf character is pretty much the only reason I watch. But I'll keep watching for a while longer.
I think those are the only new ones I tried. If I left one out, it's probably because I just didn't care.
So, let's move on to movies. Superhero movies, specifically. Recently I've watched:
X-Men: First Class: Quite enjoyed it. It wasn't perfect (Emma Frost in particular was TERRIBLE), and some of the choices of mutants used and lack of attention to continuity or character rankled (the minor details and inconsistencies don't matter so much, but I don't think it's out of place to want, say, Havok to actually be Scott's brother in an X-men movieverse and not some random mutant in the 60s) but overall, I thought it was a lot of fun, and certainly better than X-3, which should just be completely ignored.
Captain America: The First Avenger: Captain America is one of those characters I never really cared for. But I figured I'd give the movie a try. And, it was fun, for what it was... I certainly enjoyed it, but at the same time, if it's not the kind of movie where, if I died just before seeing it, I'd say "Damn, I didn't get to see Captain America!". Wait, that just describes my expectations... well, if I knew my reaction in advance, then I certainly wouldn't. Okay, how about this. If a magic genie came to me and offered me, not even one of my big wishes, but something of moderate value, in exchange for wiping all my memories of seeing the movie and a magic spell preventing me from ever watching it, I would probably take that deal. It was fun but kind of forgettable.
One minor problem was that the movie ended pretty much exactly where the only thing I find interesting about Cap begins - the 'man out of time, adjusting to a modern world' aspect. I would have loved that to be half the movie, but I know that's meant for the sequels and Avengers and probably would have objectively weakened the movie overall.
Green Lantern: Okay, I think the reviews I heard trashing it are probably a little over the top (except perhaps if it's by die-hard fans), but at the same time, there definitely was something missing, and at the same time they seemed to try to cram too much. I think the movie would be better served without a lot of the setup (we don't really need a lengthy explanation of who formed the Green Lanterns, what Parallax is, and so on at the beginning, we can learn it along with the character), a threat that isn't the "ultimate threat to all green lanterns ever" or taking place mostly off Earth.
Batman: Year One (animated): Well-produced, I think, but at the same time it felt like 'just another Batman origin story'. Possibly because other such stories borrowed heavily from it. I've never read the original book/series, so there was no joy of seeing it come to life. But all in all? If we had to do another Batman animated movie, I'd have skipped Year one and have squeed much more to see Batman: No Man's Land adapted. Or heck, even just Cataclysm - Batman vs an Earthquake. Really, practically anything that includes some of the characters like Spoiler, Cassandra Cain, Oracle, and to a degree, Huntress, rather than JUST the characters from the beginning of the lore over and over and over and over and over and over again.
And I think that's it. Again, if I saw any other movies, they obviously didn't make much of an impression.
And finally, snacking. Every year, President's Choice (the 'store brand' that somehow became a national brand) seems to introduce a couple new brands of chips. I found one of my favorites (greek, with feta and olive) this way, so unless they sound vile, I always want to give their new ones a try. This year they seem to have "Peppercorn Steak" and, in their slightly less fancy variety "Loads of" (where they claim to offer far more seasoning on their chips than average chips), "Jalapeno Poppers", basically Jalapeno and cheese.
The first is a little better than I expected. I probably won't put it into regular rotation, but I think I would eat it again. The second is a bit more complicated. It's certainly good, for jalapeno chips, I'll give them that... I'll probably eat them again from time to time (They're not as good as kettle-cooked jalapeno ones, but better than jalapeno-cheese Doritos). However, the problem is, they talked a really big game about how hot and spicy it is. In fact, they had FIVE chili-peppers in a row and the words "Scorching Hot" on the bag. And it just... wasn't. It was a two chili-pepper heat at best. They are making a mockery of the chili-pepper rating system for hotness. It undermines the whole system when you do that.. So because I was expecting an intense experience and just got a mild pleasurable one, I have to consider myself disappointed.
Finished: A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge (reread)
Okay, I've read this more than a dozen times already, and many of them while I was in the habit of writing up whatever I read for my LJ, so what else is there to say? This time I was reading it with an eye to preparing myself for the long-overdue sequel that just got released. Either way, I still love it.
Finished: Under the Dome by Stephen King
Stephen King's latest (well, latest that I've read or had much interest in reading), is a high-concept idea, about a small town that is enclosed in an impenetrable (aside from allowing a little airflow, and light and sound) force field by forces unknown.
Overall, I enjoyed it. King keeps up a pretty good pace, and it's fun to explore the idea and some of the consequences of it with him. There are some big flaws, which I'll explore in the spoilery section (which will be a little more spoilery than most of the times I do this... while I won't be revealing big secrets I'll be speaking in general about how certain plotlines ended).
The big question with King is always the ending. He does some great stories, but has trouble ending them in a satisfying way. In this case, there are two versions of the problem - the human level stories and the big idea. But to discuss that, we need to start the spoilery part of the review where we'll also go into some of the other flaws.
Normally I'd expect that King would succeed on the ending for the human drama, and trip up on providing a decent explanation/resolution for the Dome itself. Surprisingly, it's the reverse. His explanation for the Dome and what happens, while not perfect, at least succeeds on something of an emotional level. On the other hand, throughout the book, I never feel any of the human threads, and particularly human threats, came to a satisfying conclusion. People do awful things to each other or are set up as being total nemeses and you're expecting some satisfying epic confrontation, and then wind up dying (or not) far distance from each other from events that suddenly crop up. Similarly, a lot of time is spent on building up to something happening, and either it happens and is completely irrelevant in terms of the bigger story, or it just never does. So on the whole it feels unsatisfying in a lot of ends.
Other problems... it could be me, that I'm out of touch (or that it's more regional variation), but whenever King writes teens nowadays, it doesn't ring true, it feel like he's 10-20 years out of date in terms of slang and interests, with the exception of an incongruous reference here and there that might be up to date (speaking of, he did to a shoutout to Runaways writer Brian K. Vaughan, with one of the teen characters being described as having an addiction to his graphic novels). A little similarly, his treatment of the Internet continuing after the Dome is in place feels a little hinky (they dome doesn't let anybody tunnel under it to get in, and power lines get cut, but buried structures like internet cable get uninterrupted?)
Also, a couple of times, King makes use of (or overuse of) two of my disliked writing gimmicks. The first one, is magical prophecy, with certain characters getting visions of the future. It seems to happen far too much for my tastes. If it was a couple characters, or in a few very specific situations, I could be okay with it, but he made a whole plot thing about it where I don't think it was really needed. The second is a few instances where he wrote from the perspective of an animal, and did it as though "oh, it's just like a human except not quite as smart", and in one case had an animal basically getting telepathic messages from a ghost to alert its owner to something... and the worst part of it, the whole outcome of it was another of those fizzled plot threads where it didn't really seem to have much impact on the ending. IMHO, those scenes should have been completely cut.
A few cases of sexual violence and weird sexual depravity for the sake of horror were, while I don't think they were necessarily out of place (it is a horror novel and designed in part to show how bad people can get put under unusual stresses and with no accountability), were still somewhat distasteful.
And one final non-spoilery complaint. If you are going to go to all the trouble of including a map at the start of your book... MAKE SURE IT MATCHES THE BOOK ITSELF. On several occasions, the town (and therefore the Dome) is described as being shaped a little like a sock. So, naturally, we get a map of a square/rectangular area with no indication on whether this is a subset of the dome, or the dome is a subset of it (the dome itself is unmarked). Only a few landmarks are pointed out, and often when I looked up a road that was mentioned in the book, so I could see where some events were happening in relation to others, no such road was on the map, so either it was under the dome but not on the area of the dome the map covered, or it was in the area of the map but just left off as unimportant. It was INCREDIBLY frustrating. I'd rather have had no map and just have to guess at everything instead of being teased with the prospect of having an idea of where everything takes place and not really having any clue.
Still, overall, I liked it and might read it again sometime, but probably not for a few years at least. Apparently there is already a miniseries adaptation in the works for one of the US cable networks, and I'll probably watch it, too, if nothing else there are a couple of cool visuals that would be fun to see actually visual.
Finished: The Clockwork Rocket by Greg Egan
You might remember me ranting on this book before... not the book itself, which had a novel premise that really intrigued me, but rather the price in a bookstore, compared to what was listed on the jacket. But my interest in the book outweighed my rage, especially when I found the online price was quite reasonable (almost half the bookstore price), so I broke down and ordered it.
The concept that interested me was exploring a world essentially based on a single change in the fundamental equations of geometry, a plus sign turned into a minus sign. We were promised a world where plants get energy by creating light, and where if you travelled fast enough time would stop on earth while generations passed for you. Those ideas still hold, but it got a little more complicated. I was expecting a more-or-less human society to explore these strange properties, but instead Egan created an alien race that was very different in many ways. I was disappointed at first, but eventually got into it.
The book's not perfect, though. In particular, I think it was written for somebody a lot smarter than me. I wanted the science to be a bit of a backdrop, invisibly informing the world and letting us look at it from the perspective of someone who took it for granted. Instead, we got some of that, certainly, but there was a lot of long and highly technical explanations, with charts, graphs, and diagrams, of how the science worked (some of the characters being scientists who are discovering these ideas themselves or teaching them to other scientists in class), things like how light looked to observers or geometry interacts with time. And although I struggled hard to grok them at first, eventually I started to glaze over and pretty well skip them without even trying to understand, and just trying to grasp what key point they were getting across.
On the whole I'm not disappointed I read it, but it wasn't what I wanted, either. A tiny bit more spoilery (nothing big but might ruin the joy of discovery of how the world and people work through the narrative) behind the cut about the good parts and bad
As I said above, I was expecting a more-or-less human society, with maybe the minimum required difference for the world to work (and one of the cool features of the whole intellectual exercise is that a lot of it DOES work fine for having a normal society). Instead, we got a weird society of partial shapechanger, who can modify the number of limbs they need and write by raising symbols on their skin, pressing them to ink, and pressing it to paper. And figuring out how this differed from us was a bit difficult at first, but then I did kinda get into it and the stories of the struggles of the main characters in their society and dealing with the gender politics (The woman dies giving birth by division/fission, usually to two sets of two children (one male, one female in each set). The male of each pair not only raises the children of the female, but also causes the pregnancy/death and can force it on their 'co-stead'... and, since their traditional role is being a father, the men sometimes want to get on with raising the next generation while the woman doesn't necessarily want to die to produce it), there's a whole set of societal taboos and struggles based on it. The main character, born without a corresponding male (something that's probably about as rare as having twins is in our world) is given a bit more opportunity than the farm life she was born into and goes to school and eventually becomes a scientist and becomes aware of the big threat that the book is based on.
There's probably where the book starts to break down, not just because of the amount of science and charts and graphs that get up, but once the clockwork rocket of the title becomes the focus, I don't know, it just seems to lose a lot of the narrative power. And it really shouldn't, because part of it is about the potential of building a new society on their generation-ship, and yet... I don't know, I just wasn't as interested.
This is listed as book one of a series, so the ultimate question is, would I read book 2? I think I would, but barely, and I wouldn't buy it new in hardcover, I'd be willing to wait for paperback or if I could find it used for a good price.
Finished: A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge (reread)
Another multiple reread while I was preparing for Children of the Sky. Deepness doesn't (at least, as far as I can determine so far) directly relate to Children, DitS and FutD connect by virtue of being in the same universe and having one character in common, but take place thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of years apart in a whole different part of the galaxy. But again, I've read it so often that there's not much to say. I will say this, although I probably wanted to see more of the world/area of the galaxy of A Fire Upon the Deep (although don't get me wrong, I'd love to see a sequel to Deepness in any number of possible plot threads and would buy the hell out of it), Deepness provided more surprises and emotional gut-punches that I still feel every time I read it.
Started: The Children of the Sky by Vernor Vinge
Started: Dark Light by Ken Macleod
Okay, that's it for book foo, time to move on to TV and movies...
TV, of the continuing shows, well, plenty are still holding my attention but not wowing me, and a few are trending towards losing all my interest (Supernatural, I'm looking at you. I spent half the last episode silently screaming BULL&%# because of the crap you pulled in the episode before), only The Walking Dead still gets me excited to see it every week (although it's dragging on compared to last year, I think they could have done more this number of episodes in... and seriously, can that extended search end already?).
Of the new shows?
Person of Interest: Lost my interest with the second episode. Well, really with the first, but I thought I'd give it one more just in case it suffered from pilot-itis.
Terra Nova: I'm watching, but I don't think I'd care if everybody in it except the grizzled camp-leader got eaten by tyrannosaurs. And it was only 2 episodes in before they pulled out an old SF plot that every show eventually does when it gets old, so I don't have high hopes for it to get better. If they do a 'time loop only one person remembers from loop to loop' (a la Window of Opportunity, Cause and Effect, and of course, Groundhog Day) episode this year, I'm out.
Once Upon a Time: For the life of me I can't imagine why they approved this, aside from 'the people from Lost did it'. Nor can I imagine it succeeding, but apparently it's already been picked up for a full season so apparently my imagination's lacking. It seems pretty cheesy overall, especially the fairy-tale-flashbacks, and where it isn't cheesy, it's often dull. I'm still watching, but right now it's in the 'watching a train wreck' spirit. But I'm trying to keep an open mind, maybe they'll win me over.
Grimm: It's... okay. I want to like it more than I do, given that the producers did Angel, but the lead's a little flat and the plots feel a little weak so far. The reformed Big Bad Wolf character is pretty much the only reason I watch. But I'll keep watching for a while longer.
I think those are the only new ones I tried. If I left one out, it's probably because I just didn't care.
So, let's move on to movies. Superhero movies, specifically. Recently I've watched:
X-Men: First Class: Quite enjoyed it. It wasn't perfect (Emma Frost in particular was TERRIBLE), and some of the choices of mutants used and lack of attention to continuity or character rankled (the minor details and inconsistencies don't matter so much, but I don't think it's out of place to want, say, Havok to actually be Scott's brother in an X-men movieverse and not some random mutant in the 60s) but overall, I thought it was a lot of fun, and certainly better than X-3, which should just be completely ignored.
Captain America: The First Avenger: Captain America is one of those characters I never really cared for. But I figured I'd give the movie a try. And, it was fun, for what it was... I certainly enjoyed it, but at the same time, if it's not the kind of movie where, if I died just before seeing it, I'd say "Damn, I didn't get to see Captain America!". Wait, that just describes my expectations... well, if I knew my reaction in advance, then I certainly wouldn't. Okay, how about this. If a magic genie came to me and offered me, not even one of my big wishes, but something of moderate value, in exchange for wiping all my memories of seeing the movie and a magic spell preventing me from ever watching it, I would probably take that deal. It was fun but kind of forgettable.
One minor problem was that the movie ended pretty much exactly where the only thing I find interesting about Cap begins - the 'man out of time, adjusting to a modern world' aspect. I would have loved that to be half the movie, but I know that's meant for the sequels and Avengers and probably would have objectively weakened the movie overall.
Green Lantern: Okay, I think the reviews I heard trashing it are probably a little over the top (except perhaps if it's by die-hard fans), but at the same time, there definitely was something missing, and at the same time they seemed to try to cram too much. I think the movie would be better served without a lot of the setup (we don't really need a lengthy explanation of who formed the Green Lanterns, what Parallax is, and so on at the beginning, we can learn it along with the character), a threat that isn't the "ultimate threat to all green lanterns ever" or taking place mostly off Earth.
Batman: Year One (animated): Well-produced, I think, but at the same time it felt like 'just another Batman origin story'. Possibly because other such stories borrowed heavily from it. I've never read the original book/series, so there was no joy of seeing it come to life. But all in all? If we had to do another Batman animated movie, I'd have skipped Year one and have squeed much more to see Batman: No Man's Land adapted. Or heck, even just Cataclysm - Batman vs an Earthquake. Really, practically anything that includes some of the characters like Spoiler, Cassandra Cain, Oracle, and to a degree, Huntress, rather than JUST the characters from the beginning of the lore over and over and over and over and over and over again.
And I think that's it. Again, if I saw any other movies, they obviously didn't make much of an impression.
And finally, snacking. Every year, President's Choice (the 'store brand' that somehow became a national brand) seems to introduce a couple new brands of chips. I found one of my favorites (greek, with feta and olive) this way, so unless they sound vile, I always want to give their new ones a try. This year they seem to have "Peppercorn Steak" and, in their slightly less fancy variety "Loads of" (where they claim to offer far more seasoning on their chips than average chips), "Jalapeno Poppers", basically Jalapeno and cheese.
The first is a little better than I expected. I probably won't put it into regular rotation, but I think I would eat it again. The second is a bit more complicated. It's certainly good, for jalapeno chips, I'll give them that... I'll probably eat them again from time to time (They're not as good as kettle-cooked jalapeno ones, but better than jalapeno-cheese Doritos). However, the problem is, they talked a really big game about how hot and spicy it is. In fact, they had FIVE chili-peppers in a row and the words "Scorching Hot" on the bag. And it just... wasn't. It was a two chili-pepper heat at best. They are making a mockery of the chili-pepper rating system for hotness. It undermines the whole system when you do that.. So because I was expecting an intense experience and just got a mild pleasurable one, I have to consider myself disappointed.
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Date: 2011-11-05 07:17 pm (UTC)Thank you!!!
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Date: 2011-11-06 02:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-07 04:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-08 07:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-07 02:08 pm (UTC)Also recently reread Deepness In The Sky. I think, objectively, it is a better novel than Fire in every way, but that hasn't led it to displace Fire as one of my favorite SF novels. (I quite like Deepness, though, and I would totally read a whole series of Old Pham Nuwen Has Crazy Space Adventures.)
I've actually heard rumors that Joan D. Vinge (Vernor Vinge's ex-wife) is working on a Pham Nuwen-centric novel. I haven't read anything of hers in years, though I recall really liking The Snow Queen by her back in the day.
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Date: 2011-11-08 07:15 pm (UTC)I'd love to see more Pham Nuwen stories, either before or after Deepness (taking down the Emergent civilization could conceivably be a whole book, although perhaps retreading old ground that Deepness did, or if not that, his past is a wealth of adventures... they kept mentioning, but never quite elaborating on (unless they did and I forgot it) the Strentmannian Pogrom that he stopped using somewhat dubious methods, and that's ignoring all the possible adventures they just didn't reference).
I'd heard a similar rumor about Joan Vinge, specifically that she and Vernor discussed, after the fact, that one of her previous novellas (Heaven's Reach or something like that?) could well have taken place in the Zones universe, and after discussing it she had the idea of reissuing it in a new edition with a new novella including Pham Nuwen (which Vernor Vinge had approval on). So, not quite a whole novel, but still cool. Unless I misunderstood, misremembered, or was simply misinformed in what I read, of course.
Anyway, even though I have nothing against Joan Vinge's writing (I also recall liking the Snow Queen, as well as her Catspaw books), and I'd probably give it a try, the prospect feels me with the same lingering lack of enthusiasm as a comic continuation of my favorite TV show. Yeah, it's kind of cool, but I won't be able to shake the feeling that it doesn't "really count", even if Vernor Vinge has input and approval. Also, I heard Joan has medical issues that are making writing more difficult in recent years, so I worry it might never come to pass anyway.
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Date: 2011-11-08 05:31 am (UTC)I read Under the Dome not too long ago through some kind of online special for the ebook (think fictionwise was giving out 100% in matching store credit, which is like half-price and they have Asimov's and such)
But anyway I also enjoyed the pace of the book and was a bit upset by some of the more distasteful moments. I hated the big reveal, as did a lot of reviewers because really, that is your mystery? The big nemesis dying as he did I didn't mind so much in that at least that part had been built up a long time, but it really just took a ravaging toll on everybody involved. At least it didn't feel too padded with alcoholic musing or whatever.
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Date: 2011-11-08 07:28 pm (UTC)But with the nemesis, it felt like he wrote 80% of the book working up to some big climactic confrontation, and then when he got to the last 20%, realized that the OTHER part of the novel required half the people needed for that confrontation were also needed to be somewhere else where they weren't directly being menaced, and so just came up with something else last minute. I'm sure that's probably not literally true (there are elements of it that were built up long in advance), but it's kind of the way the disconnect felt to me. Or, alternatively, that he was making some kind of point of "yeah, but in REAL life, people rarely have that dramatic final confrontation with their archenemies and things don't tie up neatly and sometimes somebody just gets hit by a truck for no reason", which is certainly true, but still doesn't always satisfy when you do it in fiction.