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counteragent shot some scenes from the pilot with female Sam and Dee and male Jess. She has pictures up. Her Dee is gorgeous and is now my genderswap Dee forever in my head. She should join the Girls on Film, who do this a bunch!Tags:
counteragent shot some scenes from the pilot with female Sam and Dee and male Jess. She has pictures up. Her Dee is gorgeous and is now my genderswap Dee forever in my head. She should join the Girls on Film, who do this a bunch!Mainstream pop-culture/remix-savvy media: have a Woody Allen supercut.
Fandom, specifically![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thingswithwings: have a manpain supercut.
The bonus meta post is well worth reading, and to my mind bears some eerie similarities to the reasons given by Jeff Koons for why he copied fashion photos in his painting Niagara, reasons which led a federal court to find that he was engaged in fair use. Asthingswithwings points out, there were dozens of examples to choose from without thinking hard, and that's what makes this such a useful commentary. Also, I like excluding John Crichton for the reason given!
Fandom, specifically
thingswithwings: have a manpain supercut.The bonus meta post is well worth reading, and to my mind bears some eerie similarities to the reasons given by Jeff Koons for why he copied fashion photos in his painting Niagara, reasons which led a federal court to find that he was engaged in fair use. As
thingswithwings points out, there were dozens of examples to choose from without thinking hard, and that's what makes this such a useful commentary. Also, I like excluding John Crichton for the reason given!rachelmanija points to a big Kindle book sale, including The Prince of Tides. I can't improve on her blurb: "I have an enormous, slightly guilty fondness for this lush, engrossing, and utterly cracktastic Southern Gothic epic about a family whose eccentricity, dysfunctionality, and mental illness goes so far over the top that it reaches the stratosphere. The movie doesn't really do it justice. Contains some racist characters, rape, self-harm, and many other disturbing things. Also contains some really excellent food porn." I would add: the dinner party scene alone defines Crowning Moment of Awesome for me.Tags:
I blame jetlag for my fight with the LJ posting interface just now, anyway. On my United flight out to San Francisco, they tried to serve me Diet Coke Light (labelled in Italian). Betrayed! I even popped the first can and took a sip before I realized; the taste brought me right around. I know most people don’t taste much of a difference between the brands/sugar substitutes, but unless it’s Diet Coke with aspartame I’m not drinking it.
( Stephen King, Megan Whalen Turner, Camille Bacon-Smith )
( Stephen King, Megan Whalen Turner, Camille Bacon-Smith )
Seen on Freecycle today: stuffed prating dog. Turns out it was a typo for “praying,” but I’d be into a prating dog, at least as long as I could turn it off.
( Ilona Andrews, Daniel Abraham, musical history, cars, lawyer-novelists )
( Ilona Andrews, Daniel Abraham, musical history, cars, lawyer-novelists )
I decided to write up a list of vids I never get tired of, trying to limit myself to one per fandom except SPN, which means a large number got excluded. It’s also interesting to see which from my old recs post have become “rewatch a lot” vids. I’m definitely trending to faster cuts, but I still love my emo porn.
( Angel, BSG, Chuck, Dark Angel, Doctor Who, Farscape, Firefly, Heroes, Highlander, Iron Man, Legend of the Seeker, Multi, QAFUS, RPV, Smallville, Star Trek TOS, SGA, Supernatural, X-Files )
( Angel, BSG, Chuck, Dark Angel, Doctor Who, Farscape, Firefly, Heroes, Highlander, Iron Man, Legend of the Seeker, Multi, QAFUS, RPV, Smallville, Star Trek TOS, SGA, Supernatural, X-Files )
Hello from the newly named Rivkave (it pronounces much better than it writes; maybe "Riv-cave," along the lines of "Bat-cave"?). I've been slacking on the reading, but I still have some reviews in the hopper. One humor and three sf this time.
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
Yeah, not as enticing as "Girls, girls, girls" -- or really, given my assumed audience, "boys, boys, boys." But I have many more books than boys (and I'm not sharing him). Fantasy and science fiction.
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
Confidential to MS( Read more... )
Today was no-tax day, which made me a very happy woman at Ann Taylor.astolat and our friend G. convinced me to buy a cream silk coat, almost completely useless and fragile but only $25, down from $200. NYC-goers, the Ann Taylor on 80th St. has an incredibly big sale section, with nice stuff. Meanwhile, the bookstore may have my books Tuesday, for my class that started last week, and I can already tell that teaching four days a week is going to be tough. Teach tomorrow? Didn't I *do* that already?
Much, much fiction to review. In the meantime, don't wait; read Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others now. Every so often, but not nearly often enough, a book comes along that reminds you why you fell in love with sf in the first place. Chiang's won the Hugo and the Nebula and the Campbell and a bunch of other stuff, on the basis of six stories (the seventh is new in this collection), and there's good reason for it. His "what if"s leave me with a sense of wonder and amazement, both at his ingenuity and the vagaries of the human spirit he portrays. The last story, about technology that can remove our ability to recognize beauty in human faces, but only in faces, to decrease appearance-based discrimination, just blew me away.
Today was no-tax day, which made me a very happy woman at Ann Taylor.
astolat and our friend G. convinced me to buy a cream silk coat, almost completely useless and fragile but only $25, down from $200. NYC-goers, the Ann Taylor on 80th St. has an incredibly big sale section, with nice stuff. Meanwhile, the bookstore may have my books Tuesday, for my class that started last week, and I can already tell that teaching four days a week is going to be tough. Teach tomorrow? Didn't I *do* that already?Much, much fiction to review. In the meantime, don't wait; read Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others now. Every so often, but not nearly often enough, a book comes along that reminds you why you fell in love with sf in the first place. Chiang's won the Hugo and the Nebula and the Campbell and a bunch of other stuff, on the basis of six stories (the seventh is new in this collection), and there's good reason for it. His "what if"s leave me with a sense of wonder and amazement, both at his ingenuity and the vagaries of the human spirit he portrays. The last story, about technology that can remove our ability to recognize beauty in human faces, but only in faces, to decrease appearance-based discrimination, just blew me away.
Tags:
I had an amazing fannish day, including more promised cliche-fic and a reviewing of Pirates of the Carribean in which the greater-than-average-intelligence of the script was more clear than on first exposure. Unfortunately, I have yet to do anything about my faculty presentation on Tuesday, and I really need to circulate a paper first thing Monday, so it will be a busy Sunday. Of course, that's not going to stop me from writing the truly awful cliche-fic that staggered out from the deepest recesses of my brain like the bastard child of Frankenstein's monster and the Swamp Thing.
But first, a lot of books, most about history:
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But first, a lot of books, most about history:
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John Keegan, Daniel Handler, Smallville tie-in, The Recruit, and Evanescence’s Fallen coming up. Then I get myself in trouble. If you want better-thought-out words, just stop reading after the reviews.
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
Also, NGIP (nearly gratuitous) -- my beloved Z made me a Watchmen icon! Someday I've just got to give Lex a cat named Bubastis.
I love sports movies, though I can't stand sports, and Poolhall Junkies is basically a sports movie. Though there's no uplifting training montage, which is really the best part of a sports movie.
Anyhow, it was pretty funny in parts, though somewhat incoherent. The pool was often fun to watch; the central character starts off so good that it's hard to understand how he could ever lose, though the movie fixes that in a Hustler-like plot turn.
Christopher Walken IM'd in a performance that was nonetheless eyecatching. He had the best line in the movie: upon being taunted about a one-in-a-million shot that won him a bet, with the taunter saying he couldn't ever make that shot again, he says, "I don't have to make it again. I just made it now!"
Good point.
The movie also confirmed what I'd thought for a while: MR is cute and all, but when he's with hair, he does nothing for me. He's just another frat boy with a charming smile and a glint of contempt in his eye for anyone taken in by it.
Jennifer Government by Max Barry: Go read this book. It's a two-days-from-tomorrow story about a world in which corporations rule -- to the extent that one's last name is taken from one's employer -- and Nike stages gang-like hits on customers to promote its new sneakers. And that's just the beginning. The coincidences pile on pretty high, but the plot moves fast enough that it's forgivable. And I'm just a sucker for tough-guy dialogue in new settings (Anita Blake, anyone?), like "You're pretty confident for a guy whose antivirus software depends on buffer overruns." Well, in context it's a great line, and literature does the tech-suspense better than movies, where staring at a screen and waiting for a printer is hard to dramatize, as in that last Tom Clancy/Harrison Ford movie.
Also, the title character, with a barcode on her cheek and enough baggage to fill a cargo hold, is just plain fun.
Go read this book.
I love sports movies, though I can't stand sports, and Poolhall Junkies is basically a sports movie. Though there's no uplifting training montage, which is really the best part of a sports movie.
Anyhow, it was pretty funny in parts, though somewhat incoherent. The pool was often fun to watch; the central character starts off so good that it's hard to understand how he could ever lose, though the movie fixes that in a Hustler-like plot turn.
Christopher Walken IM'd in a performance that was nonetheless eyecatching. He had the best line in the movie: upon being taunted about a one-in-a-million shot that won him a bet, with the taunter saying he couldn't ever make that shot again, he says, "I don't have to make it again. I just made it now!"
Good point.
The movie also confirmed what I'd thought for a while: MR is cute and all, but when he's with hair, he does nothing for me. He's just another frat boy with a charming smile and a glint of contempt in his eye for anyone taken in by it.
Jennifer Government by Max Barry: Go read this book. It's a two-days-from-tomorrow story about a world in which corporations rule -- to the extent that one's last name is taken from one's employer -- and Nike stages gang-like hits on customers to promote its new sneakers. And that's just the beginning. The coincidences pile on pretty high, but the plot moves fast enough that it's forgivable. And I'm just a sucker for tough-guy dialogue in new settings (Anita Blake, anyone?), like "You're pretty confident for a guy whose antivirus software depends on buffer overruns." Well, in context it's a great line, and literature does the tech-suspense better than movies, where staring at a screen and waiting for a printer is hard to dramatize, as in that last Tom Clancy/Harrison Ford movie.
Also, the title character, with a barcode on her cheek and enough baggage to fill a cargo hold, is just plain fun.
Go read this book.
Tags:
Patricia Briggs, Dragon Blood. As melymbrosia said, this sequel to Dragon Bones isn’t as good. Dragon Bones told the story of Ward Hurog, the heir to a small but important part of a kingdom. Because Ward had feigned stupidity to avoid his brutal father’s wrath, he had a hard time proving himself fit to rule when his father died. In Dragon Blood, everybody understands that Ward’s a good, competent guy, and so the interesting conflict is gone. The story just sort of plods along. It also bothers me a bit that the homosexual characters are all bad guys (the exception, who really wants to be sleeping with his wife rather than another man, is a victim of molestation and dark magic to bind him to the bad guy, and so I’m thinking he doesn’t count). This isn’t really fair of me, because I don’t think Briggs is homophobic and I don’t think all gay/bi characters have to be good, but it just makes me nervous.
Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan books include one in which a man is coerced into sex with other men, by drugs and not magic, but it doesn’t bother me so much because many of the characters are comfortable with polymorphous perversity. The patriarchal Barrayarans aren’t generally, but they’re backwards folks being dragged into the fiftieth (or whatever) century by the recently reestablished contact with other worlds, some of which are very strange, to Barrayarans and to us. I like Bujold’s style. She has a real gift for putting heroic quips in characters’ mouths, and when a bad guy’s head is cut off, his last words are “You can’t --“instead of a complete sentence. There are very few Evil Overlords about; indeed, one of the things I liked most about Diplomatic Immunity, the most recent book in the series and also the most recently written, is that the bad guy is really clever, thinks of lots of fallback plans, and is not easily defeated at all. Go space opera!
Buffy the Vampire Slayer script books are up to Season 2, vol. 3 of 4 now. They’re great to have around, because the writing is fantastic, but it’s sad that the typos and spelling errors haven’t been corrected. Sure, I’d like insight into the process, but that’s a little too much insight. Exception made for the direction “FITE! FITE! FITE!”
The West Wing Script Book, by contrast, has six chosen episodes, rather than a complete set. The scripts have much less direction to the actors than the BtVS scripts, though both are dialogue-intensive. It turns out that I like reading BtVS scripts better, because the actors on WW are relatively more important to my enjoyment of the dialogue than the actors on BtVS.
Steven Brust, The Paths of the Dead is set long before the time of Vlad Taltos (pronounced Taltosh), one of the best characters in modern fantasy. Vlad will be a human thief in an elvish world, though the elves call themselves human, which is a great detail. Anyhow, this book purports to be a history of a time before Vlad, but it turns out that I only like Vlad. Well, I like Sethra Lavode, a sorceress who will know Vlad later in life and who plays a role here, but the style of the book made me sick. It’s a conscious decision by Brust to write in a slow, precious style, where the characters constantly repeat themselves and engage in other verbal tics that often end with “I hardly think I have been asking anything else for the last hour!” when a questionee finally restates a question asked a page ago. That it’s conscious doesn’t make it tolerable. Apparently, Brust intends to write at least one more book in this manner, and I doubt I’ll buy it even in softcover. I want more Vlad! People who want a great fantasy world with a funny, engagingly flawed protagonist should check out Jhereg and the other Vlad books, which are being reissued in double editions, or To Reign in Hell, Brust’s spectacular version of Paradise Lost. But skip this one.
Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, Federation is the book with the hilarious ramming scene, of which I was reminded by the latest Star Trek movie. The ramming scene is as great as I remembered, complete with Geordi calling up from Engineering, asking what just happened, and, upon getting the response, asking “No, really, what just happened?” The rest of the book didn’t move me much. It’s a Zefrem Cochrane story, crossing over between TOS and TNG, and it’s been Jossed (Gened?) to hell and back by one of the TNG movies. I can’t really recommend it unless you’re a real fan of Zefrem. Or, you know, books in which one spaceship rams another.
Which is actually a good transition to C.S. Forester, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower. It’s evident why the Hornblower books are often cited as predecessors of Star Trek & similar spaceship-heavy worlds; the resource constraints, risks and human psychology at sea transfer easily to space. This book, which chronicles Hornblower’s earliest days at sea, is good clean fun, though chock full of British prejudices towards the French and the Spanish. Hornblower is a little too self-deprecating for my tastes, though he gives good angst.
Elizabeth Moon, The Speed of Dark, is a fascinating, unpredictable book about an autistic man in the midterm future, forced by his penny-pinching company to choose whether to take a treatment that may cure his autism but that may (also) destroy him as he exists now. Moon creates a plausible world, with bureaucratic and legal rules that ring sometimes disturbingly true, and the narrator is incredibly interesting. He does have a Temple Grandin-like feel (Moon has an autistic child and apparently did a ton of research) and the story makes his constraints, and his choices, feel real and important.
And now, the first lines/paragraphs meme, in no particular order. These are books I reread, which is as good a criterion as any:
( Read more... )
melymbrosia said, this sequel to Dragon Bones isn’t as good. Dragon Bones told the story of Ward Hurog, the heir to a small but important part of a kingdom. Because Ward had feigned stupidity to avoid his brutal father’s wrath, he had a hard time proving himself fit to rule when his father died. In Dragon Blood, everybody understands that Ward’s a good, competent guy, and so the interesting conflict is gone. The story just sort of plods along. It also bothers me a bit that the homosexual characters are all bad guys (the exception, who really wants to be sleeping with his wife rather than another man, is a victim of molestation and dark magic to bind him to the bad guy, and so I’m thinking he doesn’t count). This isn’t really fair of me, because I don’t think Briggs is homophobic and I don’t think all gay/bi characters have to be good, but it just makes me nervous.Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan books include one in which a man is coerced into sex with other men, by drugs and not magic, but it doesn’t bother me so much because many of the characters are comfortable with polymorphous perversity. The patriarchal Barrayarans aren’t generally, but they’re backwards folks being dragged into the fiftieth (or whatever) century by the recently reestablished contact with other worlds, some of which are very strange, to Barrayarans and to us. I like Bujold’s style. She has a real gift for putting heroic quips in characters’ mouths, and when a bad guy’s head is cut off, his last words are “You can’t --“instead of a complete sentence. There are very few Evil Overlords about; indeed, one of the things I liked most about Diplomatic Immunity, the most recent book in the series and also the most recently written, is that the bad guy is really clever, thinks of lots of fallback plans, and is not easily defeated at all. Go space opera!
Buffy the Vampire Slayer script books are up to Season 2, vol. 3 of 4 now. They’re great to have around, because the writing is fantastic, but it’s sad that the typos and spelling errors haven’t been corrected. Sure, I’d like insight into the process, but that’s a little too much insight. Exception made for the direction “FITE! FITE! FITE!”
The West Wing Script Book, by contrast, has six chosen episodes, rather than a complete set. The scripts have much less direction to the actors than the BtVS scripts, though both are dialogue-intensive. It turns out that I like reading BtVS scripts better, because the actors on WW are relatively more important to my enjoyment of the dialogue than the actors on BtVS.
Steven Brust, The Paths of the Dead is set long before the time of Vlad Taltos (pronounced Taltosh), one of the best characters in modern fantasy. Vlad will be a human thief in an elvish world, though the elves call themselves human, which is a great detail. Anyhow, this book purports to be a history of a time before Vlad, but it turns out that I only like Vlad. Well, I like Sethra Lavode, a sorceress who will know Vlad later in life and who plays a role here, but the style of the book made me sick. It’s a conscious decision by Brust to write in a slow, precious style, where the characters constantly repeat themselves and engage in other verbal tics that often end with “I hardly think I have been asking anything else for the last hour!” when a questionee finally restates a question asked a page ago. That it’s conscious doesn’t make it tolerable. Apparently, Brust intends to write at least one more book in this manner, and I doubt I’ll buy it even in softcover. I want more Vlad! People who want a great fantasy world with a funny, engagingly flawed protagonist should check out Jhereg and the other Vlad books, which are being reissued in double editions, or To Reign in Hell, Brust’s spectacular version of Paradise Lost. But skip this one.
Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, Federation is the book with the hilarious ramming scene, of which I was reminded by the latest Star Trek movie. The ramming scene is as great as I remembered, complete with Geordi calling up from Engineering, asking what just happened, and, upon getting the response, asking “No, really, what just happened?” The rest of the book didn’t move me much. It’s a Zefrem Cochrane story, crossing over between TOS and TNG, and it’s been Jossed (Gened?) to hell and back by one of the TNG movies. I can’t really recommend it unless you’re a real fan of Zefrem. Or, you know, books in which one spaceship rams another.
Which is actually a good transition to C.S. Forester, Mr. Midshipman Hornblower. It’s evident why the Hornblower books are often cited as predecessors of Star Trek & similar spaceship-heavy worlds; the resource constraints, risks and human psychology at sea transfer easily to space. This book, which chronicles Hornblower’s earliest days at sea, is good clean fun, though chock full of British prejudices towards the French and the Spanish. Hornblower is a little too self-deprecating for my tastes, though he gives good angst.
Elizabeth Moon, The Speed of Dark, is a fascinating, unpredictable book about an autistic man in the midterm future, forced by his penny-pinching company to choose whether to take a treatment that may cure his autism but that may (also) destroy him as he exists now. Moon creates a plausible world, with bureaucratic and legal rules that ring sometimes disturbingly true, and the narrator is incredibly interesting. He does have a Temple Grandin-like feel (Moon has an autistic child and apparently did a ton of research) and the story makes his constraints, and his choices, feel real and important.
And now, the first lines/paragraphs meme, in no particular order. These are books I reread, which is as good a criterion as any:
( Read more... )
Because I'm a sick puppy, I googled "big gay alien," and 9 of 10 nonduplicative entries were about Clark Kent. The 10th was about Jar-Jar Binks. Make of that what you will.
Warning: lots of books ahead. What I've been reading (aside from copyright casebooks):
The AFLAC Duck v. Tim Hagan for governor: the district court just issued its opinion, saying that Mr. Hagan could continue to use his "TaftQuack" commercials, which accuse the current governor of "ducking" the issues and feature a Taft-headed duck saying "TaftQuack," which apparently sounds a lot like "AFLAC" and the quack of the AFLAC duck. Right result, but the court is seriously, seriously confused about the difference between copyright and trademark law. In that it doesn't get that there is one. In that, I suppose, it's like many ordinary folks, but a federal judge should know better.
Churchill: A Study in Greatness, by Geoffrey Best. I bought this biography because "A Peace to End All Peace" left me wanting to know more about this Lion of England, but I didn't want a really huge book. My mistake. While this short biography is informative enough in a general way, for reasons of length and/or copyright it doesn't include nearly enough of the words of the great man himself. Best maintains, I'm sure correctly, that Churchill was a great writer and speaker. But he rarely ever shows that. He even paraphrases, rather than quotes, Churchill's famous statement that "If Hitler invaded hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." Churchill is a fascinating character, but you might do better with a slightly longer, more quote-y book.
Borders of Infinity, Lois McMaster Bujold. Well, all you guys who wrote in about "A Civil Campaign" were right. Bujold knows how to write good space opera with a bit of wince in it. Her heroes do what's right, but sometimes that's not the reason they're doing it. "Borders" is really three previously-published short stories, connected by a framing narrative that doesn't really explain the reason the first story should be lumped in with the second and third. But that's okay, because each novella is interesting and fun.
I do have to say that Miles Vorkosigan (a dwarf) seems to see so much action with big and tall women that I'm reminded of "Humbug," in which a dwarf tells Mulder that he'd be surprised how many women find his stature attractive. Mulder's great response, of course, is that he might be surprised by how many men do, too. I'd like to see Miles's reaction to *that*.
Skimmed: Smallville tie-in "Strange Visitors." While I was bored by the VotB (Villain of the Book), the writing was pretty clean and enjoyable, and we got some Magnificent Bastard as a bonus.
Started to read but gave up in disgust: David Weber, Honor-something-or-other. Honestly, what is it with this guy? I started another book that his publisher put up for free, as a way of introducing readers to their back catalogue and, Baen hopes, getting them to buy new ones in the various series represented. Anyhow, the preachy narrative style bored me, and it was no different in the bookstore. I don't require dialogue within the first five pages, really I don't. I like Faulkner. But Faulkner didn't tell me up front who were the good guys and who were the bad guys -- I emphasize "tell," because there was precious little showing. I jumped about 2/3 in to see if anything changed, and there was more dialogue, but it was still all White Hat/Black Hat. Snidely Whiplash and Dudley Do-Right had more complexity of character. Also, apparently there's some sort of cat mentally bonded to the heroine, Honor Harrington. He's created a Mary Sue without even having real characters amongst whom to plop her down!
Anyhow, the Baen Free Library might be fun for anyone with some time to kill. As a matter of fact, it includes one of Bujold's novellas, "The Mountains of Morning," contained in "Borders of Infinity." There's also a Niven/Pournelle offering, some Mercedes Lackey stuff, and others of that ilk. James Schmidt's "Telzey of Amberdon," one of the early versions of what we now know as Lara Croft, was one of my childhood favorites.
Telzey's a Mary Sue too, but that's okay because I met her when I loved and identified with that kind of character. In fact, I think my first real break with Mary Sue came with Diane Carey's Star Trek books, where even I could tell that this nitwit girl/ensign/whatever-will-you-please-jus
Diane Duane's first book with Ael T'something, the Romulan commander ("My Enemy, My Ally"), and the one with the glass spider both skirted the Mary Sue borders (at one point, someone even says that Scott would marry the glass spider if only it were, um, physically possible), but she had such great stories to tell that I didn't mind. Her recent extensions of the Romulan books were, however, dreadful. I hope it's just the ennui of a writer dragged back into a universe she was finished with, but her most recent non-tie-ins have been bad, too. It's also quite possible that, given that I formed my emotional bond with her before puberty, the books were always bad, but I recently reread the Romulan attack on the Enterprise scene in "My Enemy, My Ally" and still thought it was nicely done. You can get "The Wounded Sky" for a penny plus postage and "My Enemy, My Ally" for $0.85 on Amazon, though you should really go through Bookfinder and see if you can't get it for less postage, because Amazon really squeezes there.
What will always be *the* Star Trek book for me (as in "*the* woman") is Barbara Hambly's "Ishmael." Itself a crossover with another Paramount series starring Mark Lenard, it's got amnesiac Spock in late 1800s Seattle, a crew desperate to find him back in the present day, Vulcan scholars, Klingon scholars, the physics of pool and the mathematics of blackjack, Uhura and Sulu drunk and telling silly stories, and so much more. Well, follow the link and you can see my and others' reviews. Also available dirt cheap!
Speaking of *the* woman, and I promise to stop rambling soon, did anyone else think that USA's "Case of Evil" was flawed at its foundation by the idea that Holmes could fall in love early in his career?
Warning: lots of books ahead. What I've been reading (aside from copyright casebooks):
The AFLAC Duck v. Tim Hagan for governor: the district court just issued its opinion, saying that Mr. Hagan could continue to use his "TaftQuack" commercials, which accuse the current governor of "ducking" the issues and feature a Taft-headed duck saying "TaftQuack," which apparently sounds a lot like "AFLAC" and the quack of the AFLAC duck. Right result, but the court is seriously, seriously confused about the difference between copyright and trademark law. In that it doesn't get that there is one. In that, I suppose, it's like many ordinary folks, but a federal judge should know better.
Churchill: A Study in Greatness, by Geoffrey Best. I bought this biography because "A Peace to End All Peace" left me wanting to know more about this Lion of England, but I didn't want a really huge book. My mistake. While this short biography is informative enough in a general way, for reasons of length and/or copyright it doesn't include nearly enough of the words of the great man himself. Best maintains, I'm sure correctly, that Churchill was a great writer and speaker. But he rarely ever shows that. He even paraphrases, rather than quotes, Churchill's famous statement that "If Hitler invaded hell, I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." Churchill is a fascinating character, but you might do better with a slightly longer, more quote-y book.
Borders of Infinity, Lois McMaster Bujold. Well, all you guys who wrote in about "A Civil Campaign" were right. Bujold knows how to write good space opera with a bit of wince in it. Her heroes do what's right, but sometimes that's not the reason they're doing it. "Borders" is really three previously-published short stories, connected by a framing narrative that doesn't really explain the reason the first story should be lumped in with the second and third. But that's okay, because each novella is interesting and fun.
I do have to say that Miles Vorkosigan (a dwarf) seems to see so much action with big and tall women that I'm reminded of "Humbug," in which a dwarf tells Mulder that he'd be surprised how many women find his stature attractive. Mulder's great response, of course, is that he might be surprised by how many men do, too. I'd like to see Miles's reaction to *that*.
Skimmed: Smallville tie-in "Strange Visitors." While I was bored by the VotB (Villain of the Book), the writing was pretty clean and enjoyable, and we got some Magnificent Bastard as a bonus.
Started to read but gave up in disgust: David Weber, Honor-something-or-other. Honestly, what is it with this guy? I started another book that his publisher put up for free, as a way of introducing readers to their back catalogue and, Baen hopes, getting them to buy new ones in the various series represented. Anyhow, the preachy narrative style bored me, and it was no different in the bookstore. I don't require dialogue within the first five pages, really I don't. I like Faulkner. But Faulkner didn't tell me up front who were the good guys and who were the bad guys -- I emphasize "tell," because there was precious little showing. I jumped about 2/3 in to see if anything changed, and there was more dialogue, but it was still all White Hat/Black Hat. Snidely Whiplash and Dudley Do-Right had more complexity of character. Also, apparently there's some sort of cat mentally bonded to the heroine, Honor Harrington. He's created a Mary Sue without even having real characters amongst whom to plop her down!
Anyhow, the Baen Free Library might be fun for anyone with some time to kill. As a matter of fact, it includes one of Bujold's novellas, "The Mountains of Morning," contained in "Borders of Infinity." There's also a Niven/Pournelle offering, some Mercedes Lackey stuff, and others of that ilk. James Schmidt's "Telzey of Amberdon," one of the early versions of what we now know as Lara Croft, was one of my childhood favorites.
Telzey's a Mary Sue too, but that's okay because I met her when I loved and identified with that kind of character. In fact, I think my first real break with Mary Sue came with Diane Carey's Star Trek books, where even I could tell that this nitwit girl/ensign/whatever-will-you-please-jus
Diane Duane's first book with Ael T'something, the Romulan commander ("My Enemy, My Ally"), and the one with the glass spider both skirted the Mary Sue borders (at one point, someone even says that Scott would marry the glass spider if only it were, um, physically possible), but she had such great stories to tell that I didn't mind. Her recent extensions of the Romulan books were, however, dreadful. I hope it's just the ennui of a writer dragged back into a universe she was finished with, but her most recent non-tie-ins have been bad, too. It's also quite possible that, given that I formed my emotional bond with her before puberty, the books were always bad, but I recently reread the Romulan attack on the Enterprise scene in "My Enemy, My Ally" and still thought it was nicely done. You can get "The Wounded Sky" for a penny plus postage and "My Enemy, My Ally" for $0.85 on Amazon, though you should really go through Bookfinder and see if you can't get it for less postage, because Amazon really squeezes there.
What will always be *the* Star Trek book for me (as in "*the* woman") is Barbara Hambly's "Ishmael." Itself a crossover with another Paramount series starring Mark Lenard, it's got amnesiac Spock in late 1800s Seattle, a crew desperate to find him back in the present day, Vulcan scholars, Klingon scholars, the physics of pool and the mathematics of blackjack, Uhura and Sulu drunk and telling silly stories, and so much more. Well, follow the link and you can see my and others' reviews. Also available dirt cheap!
Speaking of *the* woman, and I promise to stop rambling soon, did anyone else think that USA's "Case of Evil" was flawed at its foundation by the idea that Holmes could fall in love early in his career?
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