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Whew! And next week I have a presenter coming, and the last three classes are student presentations, so I really only have four more classes to create materials for. Unfortunately, I'm prepared in reverse order: I'm done with the materials for the very last class, halfway with the one before that, and almost totally unprepared for the one two weeks from now. Today we did an exercise involving a fake product and critiqued and designed advertising for the product. I hope it was okay for the students; I thought it might be a nice change of pace, and I did get more overall participation, which has been a concern of mine.
Okay, now for the weekly book review: Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign. This book, evidently part of a series about the Vorkosigans, a clan from a patriarchal, militaristic planet, centers on the romantic trials and tribulations of Miles Vorkosigan, a dwarf and important political figure, and his clone brother Mark. I felt I got enough background on the series that I could understand what was going on without being bored by the exposition. The lead characters are people, with quirks and annoying habits (though some of the bad guys are caricatures). Several sequences, including most notably a dinner party at which things go spectacularly wrong, made me laugh out loud. At the gym. And I'm an easily embarrassed type, so making me laugh out loud in public is high praise.
So why do I feel uncomfortable about praising this book? It's very well-written. I think the trouble is that everything moved too neatly, as if on greased skids. At the end, Miles achieved romantic and political triumph all at once, and there was great rejoicing. Now, Rivka, you're saying, do you mean that a complicated plot should be poorly resolved? No, but ... it's not just that the ending was tied up with a pretty bow, but that at times I felt like I was watching a really intricate Rube Goldberg contraption without the uncertainty about whether the thing would work. True, I was surprised by some of the details of the dinner party, yet it was clearly The Dinner Party at Which Things Go Wrong. And then there was the obligatory Bug Butter Fight (don't ask).
Basically, I'm complaining that Bujold followed the rules too well. Having introduced a gun (or bug butter) in Act 1, she ensured it was fired in Act 3. And she did that with numerous subplots. All of them were entertaining. Their simultaneous resolutions did not require too much coincidence, because she'd set it up that way at the beginning. Just -- nothing about the resolution surprised me, or made me think that the characters had failed a moral test or changed through experience. They'd moved forward on that great chessboard called life, yet they were still fundamentally the same, albeit Miles had more self-knowledge.
What this means is that my standards for "really satisfying book" involve more moral ambiguity and risk, I think. I *liked* that Anita Blake slowly became a sociopath over the course of Laurell Hamilton's series, though I'm not sure I want to read more of her adventures unless and until Anita does something about that. Susan R. Mathews, James Alan Gardner, David Brin and the like offer space opera plus, and Bujold's book is really really good space opera, full stop. I will certainly read more of her books -- good genre writing is rare enough -- but I doubt I'll be slavering in anticipation for the next one the way I am for the authors named above.
There's No Sex in Your Violence
Now, on to my real obsession: Smallville. Thamiris said a lot that I agree with about Clark acting like Jonathan's image of Lex, which suggests that it's also (at least in part) Clark's image of Lex.
I also agree that Clark's rebellious side was pretty tame except when it came to spending other people's money. For example, borrowing a friend's car with permission was not overly evil -- Rebellious!Lana just up and stole the keys when she was all Nicodemused. Clark's covetousness was the really bad part of him. This is interesting because concentrating his wrongdoing on filthy lucre meant that he wasn't a sexual threat to anyone, despite his ogling. By contrast, Nicodemus!Pete did have a bit of the sexual threat vibe with Chloe (and Hyena!Xander had a lot of sex in his violence, to take a Buffy example of twisted desires/lifted inhibitions; the point is that the trope of a man's lifted inhibitions usually includes an element of sexual threat). Clark wanted to kiss Lana, but I don't think the red meteor rock gave him any better idea of what he wanted to do next than he had before. Clark's more comfortable being asexual, even if he wants to have a girl hanging on his arm like all the successful (Lexlike) guys do.
On a much lower level, I did like Lex's double-take when he checked out Clark's ... new duds. Michael Rosenbaum played it well; I believed that his train of thought had been derailed by this vision of young manhood, and I also thought he gave a nice jealous delivery of his lines when Clark wanted to borrow his car. But most interesting to me was the editing choice to allow MR a few seconds' worth of double-take when he first saw Bad!Clark, which would be more usual for a romantic interest than for a friend. Text, subtext, tomato, tomahto.
PS: To see the power of the Dark Side, check out Small Wars (zip file). And for a promo that explains exactly why SV is slashy, try Forbidden Love (RealMedia). You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll say it was better than Cats.
Okay, now for the weekly book review: Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign. This book, evidently part of a series about the Vorkosigans, a clan from a patriarchal, militaristic planet, centers on the romantic trials and tribulations of Miles Vorkosigan, a dwarf and important political figure, and his clone brother Mark. I felt I got enough background on the series that I could understand what was going on without being bored by the exposition. The lead characters are people, with quirks and annoying habits (though some of the bad guys are caricatures). Several sequences, including most notably a dinner party at which things go spectacularly wrong, made me laugh out loud. At the gym. And I'm an easily embarrassed type, so making me laugh out loud in public is high praise.
So why do I feel uncomfortable about praising this book? It's very well-written. I think the trouble is that everything moved too neatly, as if on greased skids. At the end, Miles achieved romantic and political triumph all at once, and there was great rejoicing. Now, Rivka, you're saying, do you mean that a complicated plot should be poorly resolved? No, but ... it's not just that the ending was tied up with a pretty bow, but that at times I felt like I was watching a really intricate Rube Goldberg contraption without the uncertainty about whether the thing would work. True, I was surprised by some of the details of the dinner party, yet it was clearly The Dinner Party at Which Things Go Wrong. And then there was the obligatory Bug Butter Fight (don't ask).
Basically, I'm complaining that Bujold followed the rules too well. Having introduced a gun (or bug butter) in Act 1, she ensured it was fired in Act 3. And she did that with numerous subplots. All of them were entertaining. Their simultaneous resolutions did not require too much coincidence, because she'd set it up that way at the beginning. Just -- nothing about the resolution surprised me, or made me think that the characters had failed a moral test or changed through experience. They'd moved forward on that great chessboard called life, yet they were still fundamentally the same, albeit Miles had more self-knowledge.
What this means is that my standards for "really satisfying book" involve more moral ambiguity and risk, I think. I *liked* that Anita Blake slowly became a sociopath over the course of Laurell Hamilton's series, though I'm not sure I want to read more of her adventures unless and until Anita does something about that. Susan R. Mathews, James Alan Gardner, David Brin and the like offer space opera plus, and Bujold's book is really really good space opera, full stop. I will certainly read more of her books -- good genre writing is rare enough -- but I doubt I'll be slavering in anticipation for the next one the way I am for the authors named above.
There's No Sex in Your Violence
Now, on to my real obsession: Smallville. Thamiris said a lot that I agree with about Clark acting like Jonathan's image of Lex, which suggests that it's also (at least in part) Clark's image of Lex.
I also agree that Clark's rebellious side was pretty tame except when it came to spending other people's money. For example, borrowing a friend's car with permission was not overly evil -- Rebellious!Lana just up and stole the keys when she was all Nicodemused. Clark's covetousness was the really bad part of him. This is interesting because concentrating his wrongdoing on filthy lucre meant that he wasn't a sexual threat to anyone, despite his ogling. By contrast, Nicodemus!Pete did have a bit of the sexual threat vibe with Chloe (and Hyena!Xander had a lot of sex in his violence, to take a Buffy example of twisted desires/lifted inhibitions; the point is that the trope of a man's lifted inhibitions usually includes an element of sexual threat). Clark wanted to kiss Lana, but I don't think the red meteor rock gave him any better idea of what he wanted to do next than he had before. Clark's more comfortable being asexual, even if he wants to have a girl hanging on his arm like all the successful (Lexlike) guys do.
On a much lower level, I did like Lex's double-take when he checked out Clark's ... new duds. Michael Rosenbaum played it well; I believed that his train of thought had been derailed by this vision of young manhood, and I also thought he gave a nice jealous delivery of his lines when Clark wanted to borrow his car. But most interesting to me was the editing choice to allow MR a few seconds' worth of double-take when he first saw Bad!Clark, which would be more usual for a romantic interest than for a friend. Text, subtext, tomato, tomahto.
PS: To see the power of the Dark Side, check out Small Wars (zip file). And for a promo that explains exactly why SV is slashy, try Forbidden Love (RealMedia). You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll say it was better than Cats.
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