BUtterfield 8 by John O’Hara

Posted by melydia on December 3, 2013 1 comment

BUtterfield 8 by John O’Hara: Wow, is this book ever tedious. The back cover blurb claims that the first scene unleashes a chain of events that can only result in tragedy, so I kept reading to the end in the hope that this meant something would actually happen, but it never really did. I mean, sure, I suppose the death of a character could be considered tragic, but only if the reader had any emotional investment in the life of that character. Which I did not.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Native Tongue by Carl Hiaasen

Posted by melydia on November 29, 2013 No comment

Native Tongue by Carl Hiaasen (unabridged audiobook read by George Wilson; 15.75 hrs on 13 discs): When a couple of endangered voles are stolen, a disgruntled PR guy at a cut-rate Disneyland-wannabe discovers a sinister secret. Meanwhile, you have an ex-politician hobo, a gun-toting octogenarian ecoterrorist, a couple of bumbling thieves, a phone sex worker turned serious poet, and the mafia, all getting in each other’s ways. This book tries to be light-hearted and silly, and indeed most of the characters are pretty ridiculous, but it rubbed me the wrong way all the same. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of humor, but it didn’t hide the sometimes obnoxious preaching. This is only my second Hiaasen book, but the story is very similar: well-meaning environmentalists versus corrupt developers. The thing is, most developers are completely legit. It’s like, we’re against all this development and destruction of native lands, and oh hey, they just happen to be doing something illegal. How convenient. How contrived.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Book of Times by Lesley Alderman

Posted by melydia on November 22, 2013 No comment

The Book of Times by Lesley Alderman: As one might expect, this is a collection of assorted factoids about time – more specifically, how people spend their time. It’s not nearly as interesting as I’d hoped. For one thing, almost all the data is from surveys, and many of those are from internet surveys, and we all know how accurate those are. The results are often contradictory as well: for example, on one page we learn that smoking takes nine years off your life, but just two pages later we learn it’s only four. This general lack of continuity isn’t helped any by the large number of typos, some quite prominent. How long do rock banks last? I didn’t understand until I read the list and realized it was supposed to be rock bands. In short, unless you are desperate for a book of trivia about how people may or may not actually spend their time, I’d suggest giving this one a miss.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Hand of Osiris by Jim Mastro

Posted by melydia on November 19, 2013 No comment

The Hand of Osiris by Jim Mastro: This is the second book in the Children of Hathor series, but it’s been long enough since I read the first one that I can safely say that it’s not absolutely essential to read that one to enjoy this one. All you really need to know is that American middle-schooler Jason and his friends Amelia and Kevin were abducted by aliens, and Jason became the holder of a powerful talisman. In this book they are once again spirited away into the realm of galactic politics and long-lost talismans, but as the situation worsens and the galaxy plunges toward war, Jason starts to doubt his so-called allies. Is he being told the truth? Whose side is right? It’s a grand sci-fi adventure, full of memorable aliens and fast-paced action. I look forward to seeing how Jason’s story pans out.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Blogging Platforms

Posted by melydia on November 18, 2013 3 comments

My sister and I were discussing blogging platforms the other day. She’d recently moved to Blogger from LiveJournal, so we were contrasting various blogging experiences.

I’ve used Blogger since 2003 (though originally with a different blog, now defunct), WordPress.org since 2009, and LiveJournal since 2001. I’ve visited a number of blogs using these and many other blogging platforms, free and otherwise. These are my thoughts.

These days, having a LiveJournal is sort of sniggered at, kind of like having a Hotmail.com email address or a MySpace account. I’ve come across people who were surprised to learn it even still exists, and roll their eyes as if it’s just one of those embarrassing things we do as stupid teenagers then grow out of.

But why is that? Is there something inherently childish about the LiveJournal format?

MySpace, with its awkward interface and preponderance of glittery GIFs, is not quite analogous, though it did attempt to be at least partly a blogging platform. People moved to FaceBook largely because it was cleaner and faster and easier to use.

WordPress is great if you want complete control over your blog’s layout. There are bunches of customizable templates for various uses. My husband, for example, uses Easel (which grew out of ComicPress) for his webcomic. If your blog is specialized, WordPress is very handy.

Blogger is free. It’s easy to set up and get started. Personalization options are so-so, and it often tries to be entirely too helpful in its enthusiasm for all things Google (stop trying to make Google+ happen!), but it’s not bad. One perk is that if you can run multiple blogs from the same account without difficulty.

A lot of people have turned to Tumblr for their blogging needs. I have an account but I don’t use it. I never quite got the hang of Tumblr. As far as I can tell, it consists mainly of people reblogging pictures, with relatively little original content. There are no comments: you can heart/favorite something, or you can reblog it and add your own thoughts, or you can send a question directly to the author but no one else will see it unless they decide to answer it publicly. I think of Tumblr largely as a meme accelerator.

Twitter and Facebook are not blogging platforms. You can write “notes” in FB but that’s nothing but a lengthy status update most people don’t bother reading. I like Twitter and FB for random links, pictures, or pithy comments – stuff too short to warrant a full blog post, in other words.

One thing LiveJournal handles better than any other platform I’ve used is comment notification. You automatically get notified if someone replies directly to a comment you posted. Most other blogs only allow you to subscribe to all comments to a particular post, many of which offer minimal threading. This is problematic for a popular blog. For example, if I comment on Cake Wrecks or The Bloggess, I get the option of either checking the post repeatedly to see if anyone’s replied, or else subscribing to all the comments and watching my email fill up for the next few days. Discussions are very difficult in this format.

LJ’s nearly limitless reply levels also improves the discussion aspect, because you can clearly see who is replying to whom. I’ve never seen this depth of threading anywhere else. Blogger, for example, allows for only a single level of replies – anything beyond that is formatted like a reply to the first comment in the thread.

LJ isn’t perfect, of course. Though you can login/comment from a number of sources (my brother, for example, has commented on my LJ using his FaceBook account), full functionality really requires a LiveJournal account. It’s free to use but I have a paid account because I like the perks it offers. I like how easy it is to read and add to my “friends page” – those other LiveJournals I read regularly. I can add RSS feeds too (one of the paid account perks) but I prefer to use Feedly (since Google Reader died, anyhow) as my blog aggregator since I can use categories and read individual blogs and sort by oldest first and stuff like that. Of course, I could always just add all the LJ blogs I read to Feedly and read them that way. (Adding Tumblr blogs to Feedly doesn’t work very well for some reason.) However, since I’ve been using LJ for over 12 years now, I’m perfectly comfortable with the format of the friends page there.

LJ also doesn’t allow you to have multiple blogs from the same account. I have multiple LJ blogs (my 101 Things in 1001 Days progress blog, for example, is on LJ) but I have to log out of my regular account and into another in order to post or comment. LJ does, however, give you control over who may and may not read certain entries, or even your blog as a whole. Granted, those allowed to read must have LJ accounts themselves, but still, that sort of selective locking is something I haven’t found elsewhere.

I stay on LiveJournal partly out of habit but mostly because I haven’t come across a compelling reason to leave. It’s not like personal blogs don’t exist anywhere else, but for some reason LJ has become synonymous with whiny teenagers venting their spleens. Which is kind of hilarious, actually; I don’t read anyone under the age of 30. One of LJ’s most famous residents, Cleolinda Jones, continues to draw a huge readerships without even bothering with a personalized domain name.

So what do you think? Do you have a preferred blogging platform? Do you look down on certain URLs for particular reasons? Are personal blogs passe?

Packing for Mars by Mary Roach

Posted by melydia on November 15, 2013 No comment

Packing for Mars by Mary Roach (unabridged audiobook read by Sandra Burr; 10.5 hrs on 9 discs): I have never wanted to be an astronaut. The notion of having nothing between you and the vacuum of space but a thin wall is absolutely terrifying. I don’t want to worry about using the toilet while weightless or eat food from a tube or go weeks without bathing. I am also prone to motion sickness. That said, it’s still interesting to read about the challenges involved in propelling man out past the atmosphere. I liked a lot of the history, but unfortunately the majority of the facets of space life covered here have to do with vomit and feces. I understand how important those two things are in these sorts of conditions, but it got really old. Not something I’d recommend to the casual reader, but if you’re hoping to become an astronaut, it could serve as a much-needed warning for what you’re getting yourself into.

A note on the audio: I dislike Burr’s fiction narration intensely, but she reads nonfiction like this very well.

My Own Toy Story

Posted by melydia on November 13, 2013 12 comments

Now that the weather is turning chilly, I am reminded of the days when Mom would get out the flannel sheets for the winter. It was cozy then, but I imagine I would roast in them now. I think my internal thermostat is busted.

Our sheets are kind of boring these days (solid colors or maybe striped if we’re feeling crazy), but I had patterned sheets as a kid. I can remember Peanuts in particular, which aside from Snoopy on his red doghouse was largely baseball-themed. One of the pictures had Charlie Brown on the pitcher’s mound yelling, “AUGH!” I can honestly say that I learned the word “augh” from bedsheets.

I also had Rainbow Brite sheets. And a puzzle, a coloring book, and a doll. My childhood was full of vaguely fantasy-themed toys, many of which were tied to cartoons I’d never seen (or, in some cases, was even aware of). I couldn’t tell you the plot of Rainbow Brite – I think the bad guys were trying to remove color from the world for some reason? – but I liked her horse and her little sprite friend and her awesome boots.

My mom was (and is) the queen of the garage sale, so I honestly don’t know how many of my toys were bought new. I like to think most of them were secondhand, if only because I had a rather alarming quantity. I had no idea until sometime in college when my interest in Jem led me to assorted other doll lines from the 1980s and I discovered that, for instance, I had owned just about every single She-Ra doll ever made, and a fair number of Strawberry Shortcake dolls as well. I think Mom still has a bucketful of my old Charmkins, and there are definitely some My Little Ponies in a box somewhere.

This “research” led to reminders of dolls I’d forgotten even existed, much less that I owned, like Rose Petal Place (I had two or three of them), Lady Lovely Locks (apparently the one I had was Maiden CurlyCrown, but I very creatively referred to her as “Lady Lovely Locks Doll”), and Herself the Elf (I definitely had three, and may have owned all five). I had the green Fluppy Dog plushie, but we also watched the movie several times and would sometimes pretend to be Fluppy Dogs while riding our bikes. Having not seen the movie in a couple of decades, I could no longer tell you what bike-riding had to do with Fluppy Dogs (which Wikipedia tells me is about time-traveling dog-like aliens). (…yeah.)

With the exception of a single Cabbage Patch Kid (named Kara – why do I remember that?), I wasn’t too interested in baby dolls. My toys had adventures. When they weren’t fairy princesses or similar, they were anthropomorphic animals, like Sylvanian Families or random plushies. Honestly, if the animals didn’t talk, I wasn’t all that interested.

Not all my toys were girly, of course – I played with Star Wars figures and LEGO and Matchbox cars – but man, what I would have given to be a magical little pixie, flitting about the forest and befriending woodland creatures.

What kinds of toys did you play with growing up?

The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde

Posted by melydia on November 8, 2013 No comment

The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde (unabridged audiobook read by Elizabeth Sastre; 12 hrs on 10 discs): Every time I read another Thursday Next book I figure that’s the last one I’m going to bother with. Not because they’re bad – they’re actually rather charming – but because there are so many literary references that I feel I’m not really appreciating them as much as I could be. And I don’t want to bother with the prerequisite reading to catch up. Anyway, this is the third book in the series, and Thursday has settled in an unpublished novel for the duration of her pregnancy. At the same time, she is training to become a Jurisfiction agent, dealing with the memories of her eradicated husband being erased, and raising two young generics trying to figure out what kind of characters they will become. She is visited by her grandmother (and it just occurred to me that it was never fully explained just how old Granny managed to travel into the book world), deals with footnote spam, and attempts to solve the murder of several of her fellow agents. The whole thing is actually quite a lot of fun, and there were points when I laughed out loud at the absurdity of it all. I don’t know that I’ll necessarily continue the series, but I won’t rule it out either.

I would like to note that the unpublished novel in which Thursday stays is no longer unpublished – the story eventually became The Big Over Easy. I actually think my having read that book first made this one more enjoyable, since I knew the nursery rhyme characters would sooner or later be infiltrating the generic detective story. It was also fun to see the plainer origins of the often zany characters from that series.

A note on the audio: This may be better in paper form, since so many of the jokes are in the forms of footnotes and misspellings, but Sastre was up to the challenge and I never felt confused.

Night Film by Marisha Pessl

Posted by melydia on November 5, 2013 No comment

Night Film by Marisha Pessl: When the daughter of famously reclusive director Stanislas Cordova turns up dead of an apparent suicide, journalist Scott McGrath finds himself determined to learn the truth. On the way he picks up two unlikely companions, meets a host of strange folks, encounters black magic and hallucinations, and uncovers a large number of strange coincidences. The mystery and suspense are thick the whole way through. Is Ashley Cordova leading him somewhere from beyond the grave? Is Stanislas Cordova a bigger monster than anything that appeared in his horror films? What happened to the actors he worked with? Why is there such a wall of secrecy around the man? Pessl’s gift is writing with such realism that you want to check IMdb.com for Cordova’s name just to reassure yourself that he doesn’t really exist, that this really is fiction. The plot is masterly woven, and though certain parts of the resolution are left to the reader to decide, this feels deliberate rather than lazy. I’ve complained in the past about “open-ended” books that feel like the last chapter was somehow left off, but the ending here is both open and satisfying. I personally prefer the more fantastic explanation offered, but either way this is the sort of story you want all your friends to read so you can share your theories. Truly un-put-downable. I hope Pessl is already working on her next novel.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

Posted by melydia on November 5, 2013 1 comment

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell: Emilio Sandoz, Jesuit priest and only survivor of the first expedition to an inhabited alien planet, is returned to Earth and immediately removed from the public eye while he recovers from grave injuries. His fellow priests desperately want to know what happened on the planet, but he is unwilling to talk, clearly traumatized in ways they don’t understand. The story of the expedition is told in flashbacks, from how the characters first met through the discovery of the alien radio signal to their adventures on the planet Rakhat. Since you know from the start that every other member of the crew eventually dies, much of the book is read with a sense of deep foreboding that only worsens the better you get to know and like them, and the longer they spend on Rakhat.

This book is amazing. It’s about aliens, sure, but it’s also about love and grief and faith and friendship and sex and language. I loved the characters and their relationships with each other, especially Anne as the sort-of matriarch. The alien culture is fascinating and quite new to me, and Emilio’s experiences are often harrowingly real. Like any good drama, it’s sometimes hard to take, and sometimes quite funny, but always engrossing. I needed to know how it all turned out, even though I knew from the beginning that it would be tragic. But it’s also uplifting in some ways, almost cathartic. Either way, I highly recommend this book. I think I may need to seek out the sequel.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

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