The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco

Posted by melydia on October 4, 2013 No comment

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco, translated by Geoffrey Brock (unabridged audiobook read by George Guidall; 15 hrs on 13 discs): 60-year-old Yambo, an antiquarian book dealer, wakes up in a hospital with amnesia. He remembers everything he’s ever read, everyday things like how to shave, and a certain amount of history, but all his personal life experiences are gone. He doesn’t know who anyone is, or how anything tastes or feels, or any other memory with an emotional component. The first portion is largely a string of literary references that build on each other through word association. Eventually he returns to his childhood home to read old schoolbooks and comics in order to rediscover his own identity. His memory returns very gradually, so you have to be in it for the journey, not anticipating some Big Change at any point. To be honest, I was bored for a lot of this book. I didn’t understand a lot of the references, especially later when most of them were to WWII-era Italian propaganda. The amnesia concept was fresh – rediscovering tastes and smells, for example – and the actual memories turned out to be quite interesting, but for the most part I felt like I was slogging through a bunch of navel-gazing for which I had no context. I also never figured out what caused him to get the amnesia to begin with, but that may have been revealed at a time when I’d glazed over. I am quite certain many people would quite enjoy this book, but I appear to not be one of them.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

Posted by melydia on October 1, 2013 No comment

Fool Moon by Jim Butcher: This is the second book in The Dresden Files, but I read the first one so long ago that I can safely say that you can enjoy this one just fine on its own. Here, our favorite wizard-for-hire is dealing with being on just about everybody’s bad side: the mafia, the FBI, the local cops, and multiple varieties of werewolf. The plot is exciting and funny, often at the same time, without losing the realistic touch that yes, people do really get hurt when magic and magical creatures get out of hand. I especially liked the different types of werewolf all existing in the same world: that’s something I haven’t encountered before. Dresden’s commentary is always enjoyable, but all the characters are three-dimensional. All in all a very fun read.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Classics Retold Wrap-up

Posted by melydia on September 30, 2013 2 comments

This has been fun. I haven’t been able to watch quite as much as I’d hoped, largely due to some unforeseen situations in the months leading up to September, but I made a decent go of it. Here are the posts:

If I were to do it again, I’d also include these:

That last one would have been especially nice to get my hands on, since it’s an actual adaptation of the book. That was the main problem I ran into: most of the retellings I could find were not the original story, but only the character of an invisible man placed in various scenarios. It’s a shame, because there’s so much that could be done with the original tale of Dr. Griffin.

One last homage to my subject, The Invisible Man: a monument in Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia. The inscription reads: “The first monument to the Invisible man, the hero of Herbert Wells’ novel.” Hero? I’m not so sure that’s quite the word you’re looking for, but it might be a mistranslation. He’s certainly the central figure, but very definitely not a hero.

The Ghost from the Grand Banks by Arthur C. Clarke

Posted by melydia on September 27, 2013 No comment

The Ghost from the Grand Banks by Arthur C. Clarke: It’s always interesting to read books that take place in a future that is now the past. Granted, this one has a much shorter timeframe – it was written in 1990 and takes place in 2010 – so things aren’t all that far off, but the differences are more noticeable for it. I wonder how the story would have changed had Clarke envisioned smart phones. I was especially amused to read about the couple who made their fortune “sanitizing” old movies by removing all evidence of cigarettes. Anyway, this is about two semi-rival attempts to raise the Titanic using two very different methods. Luckily, they’re each content retrieving a different half of the ship so there isn’t much rivalry aside from who gets it to the surface first. And honestly, it’s really not all that good. The technology is passably interesting but the characters are too thin, the disasters are too convenient, and the Mandelbrot Set theory is jammed in sideways with no apparent connection to anything else in the story. This might appeal to a Clarke or Titanic enthusiast, but if you’re new to either, you’d be better off picking up something else.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Invisible Woman (1940)

Posted by melydia on September 26, 2013 1 comment

The Invisible Woman: The eccentric scientist this time around is Dr. Gibbs. (Amazingly, no one in the entire cast is named Griffin.) Broke playboy Richard Russell is his patron, and he plans to raise money selling Dr. Gibbs’s latest invention: an invisibility machine. Gibbs puts an ad in the newspaper for a human guinea pig, and is surprised to find it answered by a woman.

Kitty Carroll works as a department store model for a jerk of an employer. She takes the job as a guinea pig for the invisibility experiment so she can take revenge on him. Oddly, for all her talking, her boss doesn’t recognize her voice.

Meanwhile, a trio of gangsters are after the machine for themselves so their boss can escape Mexico, but when they fail to steal all the parts, their trials have some unexpected consequences.

The special effects are fairly minimal – some empty clothes here, some floating objects there. Something unique to this movie is that alcohol prolongs invisibility, and even can cause it to recur.

This movie is freaking hysterical. I’d gotten so accustomed to the dour horror-ish dramas that the silliness was quite unexpected. It’s fun to see some big names here too: John Barrymore, Margaret Hamilton, Charlie Ruggles, even Shemp Howard.

Now, I’m not being sarcastic when I say this movie is funny. Some of the dialogue is just classic. The butler is by far my favorite character, but they’re all pretty wonderful. And at only 72 minutes, it sure doesn’t drag. This is one worth picking up if you happen upon it.

The Invisible Man Returns (1940)

Posted by melydia on September 25, 2013 2 comments


The Invisible Man Returns: This claims to be a sequel to the novel, but it’s more like a sequel to the movie. Vincent Price plays Geoffrey Radcliffe, a man wrongly imprisoned for the murder of his brother. Through the help of his friend, Dr. Frank Griffin (brother of the original Invisible Man, whose tragic tale unfolded nine years before), he escapes and begins his search for the men who framed him.

Radcliffe takes the invisibility drug with the full knowledge that one of the side effects is madness. He worries that he’ll hurt those he loves, and of course once it he does start going mad, he doesn’t recognize it. His need for revenge upon the real killers gets the best of him.

Man, I love Vincent Price so much. And wow is he ever young – not yet 30! You don’t see his face until the final scene, as in the book, so this whole time I’d had middle-aged Vincent pictured in my mind, since that’s the era of his life I’m far more familiar with.

The re-visibility effect is an interesting mix of live action and what looks like an illustration from an anatomy text book. The other special effects are the same sort as we’ve seen before: the clothes superimposed upon the scene, with occasional glimpses of the actor shining through dimly. The wire work is much less obvious, though, which is nice.

I actually really enjoyed this one, but I think Price had a lot to do with that. He managed to play his madness convincingly, alternating between humorous and menacing, all while remaining quite sympathetic. The ending was honestly good, far less cheesy than it could have been, and didn’t drag out. This is one movie I’d watch again.

American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett

Posted by melydia on September 24, 2013 No comment

American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett: The title of this book is somewhat misleading: American Elsewhere sounds like it should be about numerous locations across the country, not a tiny town in New Mexico, but that’s neither here nor there. Shortly after the death of her deadbeat father, Mona Bright learns she has inherited a house from her long-deceased mother in tiny Wink, New Mexico. The locals are mostly friendly but somewhat aloof, unused to strangers and seemingly afraid of basically everything. Mona later learns that there’s more to this town than she thought, from defunct super-secret government facilities to creatures that may or may not be old gods to her own mother’s mysterious past. The influence of Stephen King on this writer is obvious and extensive. Which is fine, if you like King, and I’m okay with King. This book, clocking in at just under 700 pages, is perhaps too long, but it doesn’t drag much. If you like atmospheric horror with some monsters thrown in, you may enjoy this one. As it is, I do not feel inspired to pick up any other works by this author.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1944)

Posted by melydia on September 21, 2013 No comment

The Invisible Man’s Revenge: Robert Griffin has escaped from the insane asylum! He believes his old friends, Sir Jasper and Lady Irene, have cheated him out of great wealth. He’s also determined to marry their daughter, Julie. After they throw him out of their house, Griffin wanders the countryside until he finds himself at the door of eccentric Doctor Drury.

Drury is the inventor of the invisibility serum, and Griffin is his first human subject, eager to be invisible so he can have his revenge on his former friends. Use of the Griffin name (and the fact that the same actor played Frank Griffin in The Invisible Agent) is a little confusing, but whatever.

Here, the invisibility is cured (temporarily, as it turns out) by a complete blood transfusion from another person. Thus the murders begin. I kind of like this twist, and I wish the movie was longer so they could take better advantage of it.

The plot here doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Griffin’s lost some five years of memory, but it’s never explained what happened or whether his friends really did betray him. It’s hard to buy the moral at the end if Griffin really was the victim.

Ultimately, this is a pretty forgettable film. I do like the idea of the temporary visibility caused by blood transfusion; that could make a great story on its own. I’ve also noticed in these older films that the invisible man really likes to make himself known, by talking or moving objects or what have you. He’d be so much more menacing if he could keep his trap shut.

And Another Thing… by Eoin Colfer

Posted by melydia on September 20, 2013 2 comments

And Another Thing… by Eoin Colfer (unabridged audiobook read by Simon Jones; 10.5 hrs on 9 discs): As a longtime fan of the series, I approached this book with some trepidation. After all, I had pretty lukewarm feelings about Colfer’s Artemis Fowl books. I am pleased to report that I was not disappointed. This book is hilarious. And, in a lot of ways, it makes up for the rather disappointing end to Mostly Harmless. All your favorite characters are here: Trillian, Zaphod, Arthur, and assorted other characters. No Marvin, but I’m pretty sure something final happened to him in a previous book. The Guide notes are marvelous and I did quite a lot of laughing throughout the story. The ending wraps up more or less satisfactorily while still left wide open for any future installments. To be honest, I did not expect to recommend this book to fans of the series, but I definitely do. It’s a pile of fun.

A note on the audio: Simon Jones played Arthur Dent in the original incarnations of the Hitchhiker’s Guide, and indeed I read somewhere that he was Adams’s inspiration for the character, so it was pretty durn nifty to have him read this book. He also has joined Prebble and Vance on my list of beloved audiobook narrators named Simon.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Invisible Agent (1942)

Posted by melydia on September 19, 2013 1 comment

The Invisible Agent: The screenplay is “suggested by” Wells’s novel, which to me sounds like it’s even further from the original material than “inspired by”. And, indeed, here the invisible man fights Nazis. Yes, really.

Our hero is Frank Griffin, grandson of the original invisible man. He rejects requests for the formula from both the Axis and the Allies, until Pearl Harbor is bombed and he decides to give it to the US military and become a spy himself.

Peter Lorre! Yay! Playing a Japanese man. What?

I’m not sure how the invisibility effect was done in this one, but you can often see the actor faintly superimposed against the background.

Anyway, the plot is pretty simple: invisible man spies on Germans, learns of a plot to attack America, thwarts the plot, saves the day, gets the girl, etc. There’s no mention of things like invisible eyelids, but the invisibility drug does cause narcolepsy for some reason. It also wears off after a certain period of time, which is convenient since it’s exactly the amount of time required to complete the mission and wake up in the hospital with the Love Interest at your side.

All in all, it’s a pretty meh movie, but it’s nice to see the invisible man as a hero for a change.

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