utter randomonium

Heresy by S.J. Parris: Giordano Bruno is an excommunicated monk on the run from the Inquisition for reading subversive literature. A few years later he ends up in Queen Elizabeth’s employ to root out Catholics at Oxford. When university fellows start turning up dead, Bruno finds himself in the middle of a long-standing feud over religion, love, and money. No one is what they seem, and though the culprit’s identity is hinted at throughout the story, I was never quite sure until the very end.

Even more interesting is the fact that Bruno was a real person. The author, having read his various journals and other works, discovered he’d left Oxford with a bad taste in his mouth, and wondered why. This novel is a fanciful answer to that question, clever and quite readable without losing the gritty reality of the time period.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

I totally slacked on this and forgot to post this in time for people to actually sign up, and for that I apologize, but I suppose I might as well let y’all know what I’m up to this month: Thing-a-Day. Based on an idea by the incomparable Ze Frank (whose videoblog The Show was simply excellent and I miss it), the challenge is to create something new every day for the entire month of February and post it publicly on the community blog. It doesn’t have to be a big thing – I plan on doing a small drawing each day in a new sketch book I got for free – but it does have to be something and it has to be completed. (At least, I assume it does. You can’t really claim to have created something until it’s finished, right?)

Anyway, I’m participating. This year’s blog format is on posterous, so everything’s going there. I’m uploading them to my gallery as well, because I am just that kind of exhibitionist. The scans aren’t very good but that’s not really the point. The only really irritating part of all this is that I appear to be in a much later (earlier?) timezone than posterous, meaning that my 3am post on February 1st was timestamped the 31st. What do folks in Europe do? Oh well.

If I remember, I might post a month-end wrap-up about the experience, but if this post’s slackitude is any indication, you can expect that it to actually happen sometime around mid-April.

Believe it or not, a few people have approached me about reviewing a book. Which is pretty awesome, if you ask me, but it occurs to me that maybe I should have guidelines for these folks. Y’know, just in case.

For authors/publishers wanting a review:

• First and foremost: I make no promises to like your book. I try to find something positive to say about every book I read, but I’m also honest.
• When I receive a book to review, it immediately goes to the top of my TBR pile. This generally means it will be read within a month.
• If you give me contact info, I will let you know when the review is posted.
• All reviews will also be posted on LibraryThing, GoodReads, and BookCrossing. If you wish, I will happily repost the review anywhere you like, as long as there’s no fee for doing so.
• No e-books. Sorry, that’s just how it goes. If you desperately want me to read your e-book, I’m afraid you’ll just have to print it off and mail it to me.
• No religious books.  I do not believe I can give an unbiased review of them.
• Audiobooks on CD are welcome.  I might be able to do MP3 if you ask nicely, but that’s kind of a pain in the tuckus. :)
• Any publisher is fine, including vanity presses.  If you’re willing to send me your book, I don’t care who printed it.
• This should go without saying, but I will not purchase your book in order to review it. So don’t ask. (And yes, people have.)

Other stuff, while I’m on the topic:

• I have no word min/max per review. How much I write is entirely dependent on how much I have to say.
• I’ll read pretty much anything, but I don’t generally enjoy genre romance, westerns, maritime fiction, or military tales. My favorite genres are science, mathematics, science fiction, fantasy, and humor.
• All books I receive will be registered on BookCrossing and passed along after I finish it. (Printed out e-books will be recycled.)

Anything else? Just ask.

Avatar: A fun film, sort of Pocahontas meets Ferngully meets The Matrix, with a dash of BattleTech thrown in for spice. The story is simplistic and familiar: Jake Sully is a Marine who is paralyzed from the waist down who gets the opportunity to join the Avatar program when his identical twin brother is killed. This program allows a human to mentally occupy a genetically-matched alien body so they can mingle with the native race of the planet Pandora. Pandora contains large deposits of a valuable ore called unobtainium (a name so lame it distracted me), and getting to this means displacing a bunch of natives.  So you have the pacifist scientists and the trigger-happy military dudes and the cold-hearted bureaucrats and the innocent natives who have a special connection with all living things. Jake, in his avatar form, befriends the alien chief’s daughter and suddenly finds his loyalties torn.  I think you see where this is going.

But you know, it was kind of nice to have such a standard storyline in the face of such intricate special effects. As so many have said, the CG is phenomenal. The aliens move realistically and have stunningly convincing facial expressions. The Pandoran landscape is nearly seamless, and it’s very easy to forget you’re watching a cartoon. Maybe I’m weird, but the effect I noticed most was Jake’s legs when he’s human. Since he’s supposed to be paralyzed, the muscles are completely atrophied. I’m sure this was done in post-production (as opposed to the actor letting his legs whither away in real life), but it was so believable that I still had to wonder.

I saw this film in 3D. It was good 3D – that is, it actually looked 3D rather than like a bunch of 2D planes moving in front of each other – but I’m not sure I needed it. They didn’t pull any of your standard tricks that make the audience flinch like something’s going to hit them in the face, and I think the film would have been just as entertaining without the audience looking like a sea of Max Headrooms (though that was amusing in itself). So in short: fun to watch, not too intellectually taxing, worth seeing in the theaters. I doubt I’d watch it again but my husband looks forward to the behind-the-scenes content on the DVD. Something tells me it won’t be too interesting, considering most of it will involve people sitting at computers, but I could be wrong.

The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman: While trying to protect his mother from some mysterious men, Will steps into another world. There he meets Lyra and is swept up into the tale of Dust and witches and daemons. This is the second installment in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and like many seconds-of-three, it’s pretty dark. The violence is both more prevalent and more graphic than in The Golden Compass, and at times I almost cried. But it’s well-written and exciting, and I just love Will. Like the previous book, it ends with a cliffhanger. Looking forward to the conclusion.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

In Her Shoes: I read the book some time ago and mostly enjoyed it, though I didn’t feel it was quite as tight as some of Weiner’s other novels. The movie removed the parts that bugged me about the book, such as the all-too-convenient flashbacks and the weird part about camping out at the Princeton library, while keeping most of the good stuff: the believable characters, the funny one-liners and exchanges, and the happy ending. Not a movie I’d necessarily want to watch again, but it was a nice way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini: An incredibly depressing story about two Afghan women living through the numerous regime changes in that country. I will say that this is beautifully written, with compelling characters and rich detail. And I certainly learned a lot about Afghan history and culture. It’s just that the story was a big downer, filled with cruelty and regret. Women are horribly mistreated; people are thoughtlessly mean to each other and then never get a chance to apologize for it; and the “happy” ending feels really contrived. So if you’re looking for a brutally honest look at the lives of women in Afghanistan, this is probably a pretty good start, but don’t go looking for a feel-good story to pass a rainy afternoon. Some of the images will stick with me for a long time.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

This week’s WoW we’re talking about taking risks. More specifically:

What’s the riskiest thing you’ve ever done? What risky thing would you like to do? What’s a risk you’re just too afraid to take (although you really want to?)

I’m not much of a risk-taker. I suppose the riskiest thing I did was offer to support my husband financially while he followed his more artistic dreams. We were living together but not married, and he was absolutely miserable at his umpteenth tech support job. And he was making me miserable. Eventually I told him that I made enough money to support us both, and I offered to pay for him to go back to school so he could devote himself to his recording studio full time. “If this is what I have to look forward to,” I said, indicating his general unpleasantness, “then I don’t want to marry you.”

Granted, it wasn’t a very difficult choice for him: job you hate versus woman you love. It was tough for him to get used to not “pulling his weight” financially, but eventually he got into a groove and now works regular hours on both his recording studio and his web comic. He’s happy and I’m happy. And as an added bonus, he does all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, yard work, and grocery shopping. That alone is worth it to me.

A risk I’d love to take but probably could never do would be to make a drastic career change myself. Don’t get me wrong – I like image science just fine – it’s just that I’ve always wondered how I would do in a more arts-related field, like working in graphic design or writing magazine articles. I wonder what I’d do if I were to pursue an MFA, for example. But I don’t see myself doing that. Financially it doesn’t make any sense (two artists under one roof can’t make the mortgage payments), and honestly, most things I want to do I can do while working full time – they just take longer. So I continue to do what I always do: work on stuff in my free time, and hope that one day they start paying for themselves.

CauseWired by Tom Watson: This is not a book I would have read had I not received it for my participation in Blog Action Day 2008. (Yes, I’ve had the book for a year and just now got around to reading it. That’s actually pretty good considering there was no deadline.) I’m not usually interested in current events books (that’s what the internet is for) or books about how OMG teh intarwebs are changing everything (ditto). But I also never pass up a free book, which has probably done more to broaden my horizons than any concerted effort on my part.

But that’s neither here nor there. The fact of the matter is that I would not have picked up this book on my own, but I’m glad I read it. It is more or less a discussion of the impact of social media (Web 2.0, Facebook, that kind of stuff) on philanthropy. From Hurricane Katrina to the 2008 US presidential campaign to a myriad of other internet start-up charities, there’s a whole lot of information in this relatively slim volume. I was particularly drawn in by the descriptions of Kiva and DonorsChoose, both of which are about reducing the middlemen between the donor and the receiver. I even made a loan on Kiva to Saret Sao in Cambodia. The idea of helping a specific person really appeals to me, and the knowledge of what exactly my money is doing makes me want to donate more. At worst, I don’t get my $25 back. I can deal with that. At best, I help a businesswoman grow her business. Which is awesome.

Some of the book bored me, such as the discussion of the 2008 presidential campaign. I suspect that might be because it’s too recent; I’m still tired of the nonstop politicking leading up to the election. The liberal bias was a touch irksome too, which is telling considering I voted for most of the candidates Watson was praising. (For example, where did he get the idea that Ron Paul was an anarchist? People who are truly anti-government don’t run for office under the banner of a major political party. They’d put all their cronies out of a job.) I suspect, being a blogger and a Twitterer and a Facebooker and (sort of) a “millennial” already, I am not the target audience anyway. But once elections were off the table, the rest of the book was surprisingly engaging, and made me want to do more research on my own. The list of links and references in the back alone are worth photocopying.

So in short: I’d recommend this book if you’re a jaded would-be philanthropist looking for new opportunities. Yes, the billionaire donors are still the world-changers, but slowly us ordinary guys are banding together and making a difference.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

So after yesterday’s discussion of romance novels it occurs to me that maybe I really am a generic trend-follower and the real draw for me, regardless of genre, is vampires. Case in point:

• Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles: These ate my brain* for a while during college. Interview with the Vampire (and the associated movie) remains my favorite, perhaps because of an affinity for Louis that Rice herself obviously did not share. (In an intro to the IwtV DVD, Rice referred to Lestat as her “dark lover.” Um.) The books declined in quality as time went on, and eventually I gave up without reading Memnoch the Devil and only bothered with a few of the spin-offs (The Vampire Armand, Violin, and Pandora, if I recall correctly).
• Bram Stoker’s Dracula: I actually rather enjoyed the book (to which the movie was reasonably true), but it didn’t have a whole lot of Dracula in it. (More detail at my post on the Dueling Monsters Read-a-long.)
• Buffy The Vampire Slayer: The film was fairly forgettable, but I really liked the series, to the point where I was perfectly happy watching back-to-back-to-back episodes during much of graduate school.
• Van Helsing: Silliness to the extreme and felt more like fanfic than homage, but I loved it for what it was.
• Twilight: Oh god, don’t get me started. Short version: this horribly-written series totally ate my brain* for several months in 2009.
• Count Duckula: Probably my favorite recurring guest star on Dangermouse, but I’m not sure that has anything to do with him being a vampire.

So I guess this means I would probably enjoy The Lost Boys, Underworld, Anita Blake Vampire Hunter, True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, Hellsing, Cirque du Freak, and Vampire Hunter D. The question is: where to start?

*ate my brain: overwhelmed my psyche, to the point where I was thinking about it practically nonstop and could not get enough of it. See also: short-term obsession. (To be fair, this also happened when I read The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. So there’s that.)