Serenity

        Serenity always got me because it's very old fashioned. It's a western in space, even more so like Star Trek or Star Wars. Sometimes they're even literally rounding up cattle. The plotline is flawless, they are constantly plagued by the Alliance government as well as the ultimate evil: the reavers who will basically rape you and sew your flesh into their skin. So literally they are fighting for life and death. These conflicts, not to mention the mini conflicts along the way like dealing with River and their jobs going awry, are what the crew of Serenity face.

        As a watcher of the tv show as well as the movie, I'd have to say it's very fast paced, it's got lots of action and hyper intense situations. At the same time, the humor of the show tones it down and makes it bearable.

        I think the best part of Serenity is the characters. Everyone is so unique and has their own job. Mal is the headstrong leader, Zoe is his righthand woman, Wash is the pilot of the ship, Simon is the doctor, River is the psychic, Inara is the Companion, Jayne is weaponry, Kaylee is the mechanic, and Shepherd is the preacher. But at the same time they are so much more than that. Mal is blunt logic, Zoe always asserts her own opinion, Wash is usually the voice of the ship, Simon's life is dedicated to River, River has mental problems as well as awesome fighting powers, Inara stands up to Mal's ridiculousness, Jayne is smarter than her appears, Kaylee is a wiz with the ship and is almost always happy, and Shepherd has more to him than he lets on. And the thing is, the story doesn't get muddled down by all these characters. In a way they wouldn't work without one another. They're like one big family.

        This movie mostly focuses on River's story which is an interesting change of pace since the show seemed to use her story as a subplot in Firefly. It's finally time for the big cheese, the problem that was never solved. River symbolizes lost innocence, she's a smart girl who has been abused by the government, giving her godlike powers as well as an inability to cope with these powers. River herself is constantly a help and a hurt to the operation. She's always in flux. Sometimes she just rambles gibberish, but other times she genuinely says exactly what's on everyone's mind. This show can get really deep.      

Avatar, aka Flight of the Blue People

         First of all, the story isn't greatest thing in this movie. It's basically Pocahontas, but with blue aliens. Not to say that I didn't like it or anything, it's just a really simple story where girl falls for explorer, they have to make peace between both of their people. The effects were where it was super boss, I'd never seem motion capture like that before. It just looked so damn real!

I think Neytiri was basically our usual cyberpunk heroine. She's the princess, she's badass, and can fight well as any man. Sully is a good character to follow because he is new to everything going on. He's as new to everything as we are. So because he's outside of the system he's able to make his own decisions and he can make his own path throughout the course of the story. I think his constant recordings of what was going on gave it a sort of documentary sort of feel which I think was a good way of tying what they were doing in the movie to what modern scientists do today. I think Sully's legs were the perfect bargaining chip when it came to which side he was going to be on. Who wouldn't want legs so they can walk again? It's one thing when you're doing something for money or power, but this is something more than that. It's how he physically operates and moves. Sully has to make a choice, stay with the girl/people he loves or sell them out and get his legs.

          I really loved the world that James Cameron where everything was linked together, except I think the part with the hair braids was really overdone. I've seen some many odd spin off os Avatar people syncing with all kinds of weird things. 

       But the world itself was really believable. I mean the culture behind the story was really what moved the story along, without the system of unity throughout the planet via their life force, all would be lost. This always reminded me of the little crystals the people had in Atlantis as well. Without this life force, the people and the world dies. There was a lot of teamwork as well. Sully worked with the scientists to retaliate against the Colonel's force. The people of Pandora team up with their tribes as well as the creatures of Pandora itself.    

Blade Runner Movie Review

 I think the best thing going for this movie is the feeling you get from it. It looks the part, which is probably why this is my favorite movie ever. It's got the dystopia going on, as well as a very dark noir kind of tone to it. We've got flying cars and advertisements everywhere. In this future, we've done it. We can make robots as intelligent as humans, but her inlays the problem. Robots on the lose.

      Deckard is an interesting guy to be following. We're never told if he's a human. I know it was left open for us to decide but I mean it does seem plausible. He has photos just like the replicants. Deckard doesn't have a family or anything alluded to. There's also the hinted illusion with the unicorn which suggests Deckard might be like Rachel, a special replicant. Unicorns are the purest things, they are all good and no evil. Deckard seems to be a lone wolf actually. It never occurred to me when I was younger that he was a replicant too. But now, I think it's possible. Deckard is a reflection of his surroundings. He's very dark, closed off. He drinks heavily and he seems very negative and basically just gets pushed into the job to begin with. He's the reluctant hero. But you love him all the same because he's carrying out his job, he's like a cowboy sheriff or a bounty hunter, he's rounding up the hoodlums. I always thought it was kind of weird the way the ending was so blatantly different from the tone of the movie. Rachel and Deckard are driving away to some grassy place that almost looked unreal without the dark aspect from the rest of the movie.

      Tyrell has become a god. He's created these people and towers over them in his huge pyramid-like tower. Tyrell can make these people who think of themselves of humans. He thinks of them like his chess game, like pawns. Roy wants the unattainable, immortality. When this is denied, Roy strives against his maker and kills him, stabbing his all seeing eyes. The main question raised in this movie is “Do replicants have souls?” That rooftop scene where Roy saves Deckard gets me every time. The white dove shows him dying in peace, flying to some sort of heaven. An

The Man Who Fell to Earth. With the Fabulous David Bowie

         This movie is one of those cautionary tales. Newton starts out as a pure character. And he has a plan. He is going to use the technology he's learned on his planet to finish build what he needs here on Earth. He's a good guy trying to get water back to his home planet so people don't die. Along the way, time as well as his friends drain and poison him. His sexual driven relationship with Mary Lou, Bryce, as well as the lies around him corrupts him. There's a lot of pointed problems revolving around the times as well: excess, fear of television, alcoholism, and the government. He ends up a disillusioned wreck, still depressed and drunk.

       Mary Lou's character really drove me insane. I really hated her because she just seemed so vapid. She's whiny and needy, the whole time she's all over Newton and he never seems to notice her for what she truly is. I think we were supposed to feel sorry for her but I'm much more liable to punch her in the face. All she does is feed off of Newton like the white trash she is. And not to mention she's willing to except anything even if it does involve her peeing on the floor. I kept waiting for her to leave but she kept coming back like clockwork. She, like Newton, did not end up that well in the end. It was literally the downfall of everything.

        I do think this movie is kind of over the top. For one, it's really drawn out. I remember, when I watched it, the movie seemed really long, almost never ending. I mean, it was a good reason to watch David Bowie for two hours. But it seemed like the director didn't want to edit anything out, so we were stuck watching Newton be stuck in that house for ages. We're constantly shown lots of wild sex scenes. There was lots of testing by the government that leaves his eyes stuck as human eyes. After seeing this movie it's like you've seen everything: wild sex, woman peeing on the floor, and people torturing David Bowie. It's like a merciless tragedy, watching this honest guy bite the big one. I think it's very much a good description of the 70's rockstar image, and who better play the part than David Bowie himself.  

The Haunted Vagina

        This book was a really interesting change of pace. The story itself was kind of the most ridiculous combination of things ever imaginable. You'd have to be drunk and high and hallucinating to think of the plot: a man taking a literal journey into a woman's vagina. And I just had to read it because I'd never read anything like that before, it sounded like fun. I tend to write highly imaginative stories, not usually about such a subject matter, so this was right up my alley.

       I didn't really take this book that seriously. It seems more to be something written for fun than as something to be taken literally. The book itself was driven mostly by lust and sex, so I think it was more of a physical drive that led the plot rather than any kind of psychological or deep messages about humankind. Well, I mean some people are just driven by sex. It was more of the obsessive love. I sort of felt like Steve would fall in love with anything cute or anything that was of the opposite sex if he was left around them too long. The character development on Stacey and Steve was well done. You only have about 100 pages in this book, but I felt like I really knew them. Mellick used really precise details to describe them like the way Stacey ate her food and “calls water pouring from faucets waterfalls”. You could tell their relationship was a bit lopsided, Steve would do anything for her. I mean this guy went into this woman's vagina even after a skeleton came out of it, that is dedication, man. Dedication. I felt like Stacey was just using him for sex and to be her man pillow.

        I think it could be a little better if Mellick gave it a few more pages, it sort of ended really quickly. After Stacey got pregnant there were about five pages that basically summed up that Steve fell in love with Fig and got her pregnant and they lived happily ever after. I thought it was a little quick considering the bulk of the story was situated in the real world surrounding Stacey and Steve's relationship. And when that skeleton came out of Steve's back, I was freaking out. If my skeleton came out of my body, I would've flipped out. I felt like he didn't really have a reaction other then, well there goes my skeleton. He seemed to be quite zen with having to stay there forever and never once had a huge emotional reaction other than figuring he was stuck there.

        It wouldn't have hurt to put some more detail into the backstory of Stacey's vagina world. I know Steve hinted that it was possibly part of some genetic disease or some sort of defect that was handed down, but I kind of wished we found out some sort of nailed down truth about it since that was kind of what the whole story was pivoting on. We were left guessing what the real reason was.

Oryx and Crake, No Zombies.

        First of all, I seriously thought this book was about a zombie apocalypse when I first started reading it. I kept waiting for those zombies and I was kind of glad the book didn't involve zombies at all, it was a good change of pace from a lot of movies I've seen lately. I wish they delved into Crake's reason for deciding to wipe of almost all of mankind. I feel like it was really slow moving up till then and suddenly there was this red death, Jimmy was locked in with the Crakes, Crake went shot Oryx, Oryx was dead, and then Jimmy shot Crake. It was a lot to take in after a really building plot. Without delving into Jimmy's past we wouldn't really have much of a story, we would've just had man going on a journey to get food so I liked the way it was laid out with the past interwoven throughout it.

        The relationship between Crake and Jimmy was really deep if you looked at it. It was sort of the joining of two paths: the right and left side of the brain. You have Crake, an analytical calculating genius who is rational and logical. Jimmy on the other hand, is everything he lacks, he's driven by his emotions, lust, as well as what he believes is right. I was surprised they hit it off so well. They almost matched each other. And since they sort of depended on their dual friendship, it was basically the building blocks of everything that followed.

        Jimmy's character really reminded me of The Catcher in the Rye. Like Holden, Jimmy's constantly at war with himself. He's over the top, he wants to go back to the way things were. He is a prisoner of his past and he's disillusioned. Jimmy is constantly thinking back on what he's done, trying to figure out what went wrong and if he could've fixed it. He's longing for the parental love he never had. I mean his mother was a depressed mess and his father was never really the emotional one. Crake's family life too, is void of love. Throughout this book, Jimmy's trying to find love and he goes through women like toothpicks because he's broken. He doesn't know how to really love some one. Jimmy's basically left wandering around with nothing left in his life. His girl is dead and he's killed his best friend. The human race is almost wiped out and he's stuck dealing with getting food and wild pigoons. His pointless existence is a reflection of man's pointless existence. He's stuck taking care of the Crake people who have basically kind of followed his lead like a God or Moses. And it's up to him to basically make up all this history and information for them.

        The ending really caught my attention as well. He's taken care of the Crakes because of what Oryx and Crake asked of him, even if he was unsure of their motives at the time. So what now? I kind of get the feeling it doesn't make sense for him to go back to the other humans, he's become a sort of loner but he was looking for others in the beginning. But if he does go back, what happens to the Crakes? Can they fend for themselves? And besides, it seems like the people that he runs into at the camp are like a reflection of himself. There's two men and one woman, like there was Jimmy and Crake—and later Oryx. It's kind of like Jimmy's become the man of two worlds and he has to decide where to go from there. Is he going to go back even though his best friend betrayed him and he betrayed his best friend? Is all man flawed?

Lilith and Her Tentacle Beard Friends

         For me, this Lilith's Brood was very alien. The opening confused the hell out of me at first. I wasn't sure of anything and for a minute I felt like I was stuck in a dryer on spin cycle. I mean yes, it took place in a future where aliens exist and want us to have their children, but it just seemed very sort of detached from what I'd view aliens as normally, or what I'm used to. It was very clean, too. There wasn't really a lot of details spared about the surroundings except an occasional tree, but the place seemed really sort of creepy hospital white to me. I'm not gonna lie, beard tentacles would probably cause me to go screaming into the night.  Unless they were like Davy Jones' beard from Pirates of the Caribbean. Those are allowed.

          It was hard for me to like the Oankali as far as their customs go. You've got a wife with sexual and a regular wife. And it seemed to me that everyone hated the sexual wife. I wasn't able to understand the Oankali they were as far removed from humans as sea monkeys or something. It was just hard to picture. I guess it was just a matter of putting myself in Lilith's shoes. It's hard to imagine suddenly waking up in a future where everything is gone that you know.

        Usually, in science fiction the aliens are either bad or good guys. If they're bad guys well we better do something because they're organized and we need to figure out how to fight back. But in this case, the aliens were sort of higher beings per-say. I mean, they can heal each other and they seem to be peaceful. And the chemical powers weren't too shabby. Nikanj's weird transformation really made me laugh, though. I kept thinking of the Star Trek episode where Spock has basically his Vulcan period and suddenly almost marries this lady. That was just really ridiculous. I see no point in that at all. It was supposed to make Lilith important and then it didn't.

        I only got half way or so in this book because I really wasn't into it. It seemed to me Lilith gave in a bit too easy to succumbing to doing the Oankali's bidding. I know she was considering an uprising possibility in the future but it just seemed too easy. Let's do exactly what the aliens what to do that want to kidnap our children and do experiments on them. That's a great idea.

        Another thing which kind of got to me was the pacing. I mean, it starts off slow she's stuck in a box and I really wanted her to get the hell out and when she did I was kind of disappointed.  It was more about here fitting in and getting used to it than freaking out because of the new alien ship.  I think I was expecting crazy Blade Runner cities and flying cars and the Star Wars bar scene and I got a bunch of trees and a moving platform. Kind of a bummer. If aliens like this come to earth I'm not going to be impressed. Especially if they stick me in one of those creepy aloe plants.   

Mona Lisa Overdrive

         This book kind of really got me hooked on sci fi. I was really interested in the idea of sort of the integration of man and computers and I am an avid Matrix/Blade Runner fan. I love the dark noir sort of setting of the future, it just seems so mysterious and appealing to me. It was a little hard reading this book and not the two other books before, but for the most part it was pretty easy once I got ahold of the backstory. I think the pacing was a little off though, we kept cutting back to Kumiko who did nothing of interest for the longest time. Half the time I just wanted to skip her chapters and go onto Angie's or Mona's. I think the other characters overshadowed her a little too much. I mean a prostitute on doing crystal methe of the future, a Korsakov-induced Slick Henry, and a Loa-ridden pop star against a boring girl with Yazuka father. I really liked what Gibson did as far as voices, almost immediately I could tell which character I was following throughout these switches because they were so distinct.

         The loa themselves greatly added to the story. This is a very futuristic story, we have all kinds of cybertronics going on: headsets, drugs, and all kinds of double dealing. And all of a sudden we add in something very primitive in comparison, the loa. It kind of ties all this new futurism to something very old school. And loa themselves are almost bordering the dark arts. This is voodoo culture we are talking about. I think the loa were a perfect way of sort of voicing the integration of man with the matrix. They are neither man nor machine, I mean they are the closest anyone gets to religion. The people mentioned talking about “Rapture” don't even get close to this.

This book was very heavy in terms of plot building. It seemed to take a long time for the events to unfold, but I did like how they all tied together. What did confuse me time to time was when characters met one another from other chapters and from the scarce description of what they looked like I really wasn't sure who was who. Also, it seemed like all the characters were escaping from something. Mona was doing all kinds of crystals, Angie wanted to find Bobby and leave her glamorous life, Sally wanted to stop being pressured, and Kumiko wanted to find out what the hell was going on. I'd have to say Mona's character stood out the most to me. Compared to the rest of the characters who seemed to move sort of in a linear movement, she was all over the place doing drugs and getting surgery. I agree with what Angie commented about her, Mona was very akin to a child, even more so than Kumiko. She has blinders on and only sees Angie's glamorous life and nothing else, she has total nostalgia about her best friend who is probably dead, and she's just sort of being pushed through life. And plus, the chapter on her doing drugs during the highly intensive battle was a very nice change of pace.

Attack of the Ninja Language

       For me, Babel-17 was a bit too wordy. By that I mean I am a visual learner it was very hard for me to picture some if any of this book's happenings. I'm not much of a linguist so most of the information about language didn't really do much for me. It was kind of like being talked at for 200 pages in another language I didn't quite understand. There was like no visual description whatsoever of what anything looked like and instead the reader was left focusing solely on the speaker's language. I can understand how this was the heart of the story, but sometimes I felt it left me totally in the dark. For example, I had to reread the entire scene where Brass was introduced because I couldn't picture him with the description I was given. I think Delany took too much for granted with his sparse background story while he jumped into a complicated world that was hard to follow. We were introduced to dozens of new characters within just a few pages and it was a bit overwhelming.

        The way the story was written in segments, proved to be very jaunting for me. A chapter would end in one place with something like a space jump and then Rydra would be entangled in a web and it just didn't seem to match up. I couldn't tell how much time had passed at first and I seriously had no idea what was going on. I like being able to read books in one pass but this book required me constantly going back trying to figure out what the hell was going on.  But regardless, I did like the story though, it was just it was sort of the wrong flavor for me, like I got pistachio instead of chocolate.

          Rydra herself ticked me off a bit. It was like she had it too easy. Almost everyone was bound to automatically fall for her. She was a badass, knew all these languages, and could also fight. I felt like she had so much potential as a character but all she really did was get transported to meet more people and have intense discussions about language.  I felt like there wasn't enough of a payoff regarding the Babel-17 language, too.  There was all this building up to this amazing idea and then it was just sort of a letdown when we never got to learn anything about these Invaders or their culture after this really long attempt to stop them. I mean we followed Rydra on this quest to stop them, and we sort of got side tracked and then met this man without a past and then mentally bonded. And then it was over. I felt like the explanation revolving how to neutralize Babel's negative effects was also a bit childish. The answer is just introducing a contradictory idea? Really? That just seems just a bit too easy.

EYE OF THE TIGERRRRRR

            The Star's My Destination reminded me a lot of The Count of Monte Cristo.  Although I’ve never read the book, I’ve seen the modern movie countless times and it really struck a similarity there.  Compared to Bester’s story, Dumas’ story appears quite tame.  Instead of wanting revenge on his best friend, it turns out Gully wants revenge on an entire ship, which he soon finds is the only woman he truly loved.  His refusal to destroy the only thing he loves causes him to fall from his malignant nature. 

            Foyle himself is quite an interesting character.  He’s put in a situation we can understand, he’s left to die.  But this causes the average Joe to become ruthless. We’re not following around the usual antihero who shies at the sight of blood and guts, we’re following a murder, a ruthless man whose movements we begin to support in his lust for revenge.  We’re left supporting him because of his dynamic mindset, he’s a brash person and therefore all he relies on is brash logic.

            “The, Tyger” brought a lot of similarities to Foyle’s character.  The “tyger” is forged like Foyle’s hatred.  He wasn’t a bad man in the beginning.  But he gains this lust for revenge which is branded into him just like his tiger tattoos from Joseph’s clan.  “The Tyger” is all about unanswered question while the mad chase to get to Vorga requires constant questions: where can Gully find the people responsible, what is PyrE, and what are people’s true motives with such a substance.  Also, a lot of this poem in particular has to do with religion.  Did the God who made something as evil as the tyger make something as good as the lamb?  All of this talk of God, while this book claims religion is illegal.  I think Bester hints at an upcoming religious movement.  When Gully picks up the PyrE, it’s a the base of a cross.  I mean, his whole encampment was at St. Patrick’s Cathedral to start off.  He then distributes the power of PyrE, makes a final speech after being beseeched by the people like Jesus and then he poofs into outer space. This leads Foyle to another level.  He is no longer on the line with normal human beings.  He goes through a kaleidoscope of time and space seeing things in a different light.  He becomes a godlike figure in the end, having supernatural dreams about mankind.  We are left with an interesting thought left in our brains.  Is the world going to destroy itself?  Will Gully come back an enlightened God?  Will the worlds be saved?

THE COLORS, MAN!

       I've really never run into something like Warbreaker before. While I usually go for the fantasy sci fi, this one was more medieval than what I usually go for. Since it was so long, I kept thinking I'd only get half way but then I just had to know what was going to happen and I finished it. The concept of color was absolutely brilliant.

        I thought it was interesting how it was all tied to religion. I think color was also related to the whole Adam and Eve story. Once you bit into the apple, or had multiple Breaths in this case and were able to do Awakening, there was no going back. Vivenna couldn't return to her original life without color. Usually I don't like an abundance of religion driving a story because I seem to think that it bogs down the story too much. But in this case I think it worked. It really brought a change in Vivenna in particular. I liked watching the sisters change. It seemed that throughout the book, they switched roles. I don't think that it could be done any other way. If Vivenna had been in Siri's place, the book would've ended up completely differently. Siri adopted Vivenna's style of being logical and tactful while Vivenna learned to let go and step outside of her box.

        I loved the bait and switch regarding Tonk Fah and Denth. I was totally under the impression they were good people. I loved their little sarcastic witty banter throughout the chapters. At first I thought Tonk Fah's disappearing animals were because his animal was like a daemon or something from Golden Compass and then it was like no he just murders them and I was like WHAT. I think a little more time needed to be spent when Vivenna realized that she was tricked. I seriously had to read the scene when she found out Palin was dead like three times just to make sure I was understanding what was happening. This happened again at the end when Vasher's true nature was revealed, I was sort of left spinning. There seemed like there wasn't enough time to recover from that much information. And then it just ended and I was really surprised I mean the story led up to this war the entire time and then it was over so quickly I felt like the ends were tied up but it was like everything was crammed together like a train wreck.

        At the same time, there were parts that were way too drawn out. We were constantly brought back to things Lightsong's moaning. I kept waiting for the war to happen, I think it just took way to much to build up to. 500 pages in I was thinking to myself, they're still not fighting yet? There was just so long that it could be delayed before it got ridiculous. And I think it got a little ridiculous. There was a lot of backstory and it did get a bit complicated especially that seriously huge monolith of a paragraph the storyteller explained about the history of Hallandren. It was more like copy-paste entire construction of the universe and it kind of left the reader reeling. Too much information.       

ALL THE COLORS

Humans, Spiders, and Tigers, Oh My!

Originally, I was a little unsure of reading Anasai Boys. I just read The Graveyard Book for another class. I thought it was extremely slow moving in the beginning, I practically wanted bad things to happen to the main character so something worthwhile would happen. When my teacher for that class, Ryan Van Cleave, said that Gainman tended to write a lot of different genres, I decided to give this book a chance. This book in terms of pacing was much faster than the other. While I had to wait for practically one hundred pages for the main character, Bod, of The Graveyard Book to grow up, Anasai Boys immediately cut to the chase: your father is dead. Throughout the book, it was all about lots of action and it was well cut. At first I thought Charlie flying inbetween Florida and London on planes and such would be another 100 pages of boring filler but in almost a page or two it was over and it didn't even seemed rushed, it just seemed normal. And I love following Fat Charlie because he was one of those lovable losers. Everything he did was just so comedic.

I wasn't sure at first where he got the idea of the animal folklore concept. I'm interested in the voodoo gods and that sort of thing so when I thought it had something to do with Caribbean and African lore. I really loved the way the stories were intricately connected. I've never seen a story that was reflected so much. I mean there were the stories of the past the narrator would tell us, the story on the human level, and story on the god level so to speak—where Spider fought the Tiger. It was like the oral tradition of telling stories in African countries was reflected exclusively throughout this entire book.

It was really funny, I actually figured Spider and Fat Charlie were the same person throughout the book. This was probably enhanced by the women both being named after flowers. To me it seemed like Daisy was the fun one and Rosie was sort of the stable one. I think Spider and Charlie's interactions sort of brought together a sort of trade. Spider seemed to calm down a bit in terms of all the magic and Charlie gained confidence and some power himself. It gave a really interesting family relationship as well. Charlie started off kind of ostracized from his father and at the end it was kind of like passing the gauntlet, Charlie was acting just like his father and walking around in his hat. And the life cycle went on when Charlie was talking to mermaids with his son just like Charlie and his father in the beginning.

Golden Compass

         I always meant to read this book but I never got around to it for some reason or another. I really enjoyed Lyra's character. She's not the usual hero who starts out meek and helpless, she's ready for adventure at any time with almost a sardonic tone like when she thinks to herself well I guess I should go rescue Rodger. Most of the main characters: Lyra, Lord Faa, Iorek, Mrs. Coulter, and Lord Asriel were all really strong. I mean, Mrs. Coulter had her Intercision, Lord Asriel had his expedition, Iorek had his brute strength, Lord Faa had that amazing battle speech, and Lyra is constantly thrown in dangers way. It was interesting the way Lyra's destiny was talked of. It was whispered throughout the book that she must do something “without knowing what she's doing” which seemed rather vague to me at first, but then I just realized she was just being herself.

 

        The concept of daemons and how they symbolize a person's character as well as their strengths or weaknesses really caught my fancy. It was interesting to see people's inner emotions expressed on the outside. I also liked the social boundaries it created with the people with the dog daemons as the servants were more submissive while a stronger daemon meant a stronger hold of power. This power was used accordingly. Mrs. Coulter used her power to try to stop Dust. Lord Asriel used power to break down the barrier between the worlds by killing Rodger.

        I was kind of pissed the way the book ended. I mean, I understand it's a trilogy but it just seemed like it happened out of the blue. It didn't seem to fit at all, the story was leading up to her getting to her father and then he wasn't happy but then I thought they would eventually bond over the story of her journey. Apparently not? Don't get me wrong, I really liked this book but I really couldn't fathom her parents at all. When I got to the end with Mrs. Coulter and her father I was just like WHATS GOING ON. I thought I had a good grip of the book and all of a sudden portals were opening and her father turned out to be just as crazy as her mother. Her parents were making out even though they hated each other and Lyra was holding her dead friend and I was just thinking THESE PEOPLE ARE CRAZY. At this point I was half expecting a unicorn or something to come out of the portal and kill everyone but that didn't happen. It's always possible. There's two books to go.

ADVENTURE IS OUT THEREEEEEE!!!!

         I read the Hobbit once in like 5^th grade and I remember thinking it was so epic and I was the coolest kid ever to be reading it and it was such a high level reading book that I had to carry a dictionary around to understand what the hell was going on. Since then I've been an avid reader of the late Brian Jacques' Redwall series, so this adventure was right up my ally in terms of what I like to read. I wanted to read the Hobbit again since all I remembered was there was a part involving trolls by a fire.

Firstly I really liked the idea of Bilbo as so of the antihero. Bilbo starts off as just another laid-back hobbit who wants to stick to the norm as much as possible. I enjoyed watching him grow, it was really easy to put yourself in his shoes. You are off on a quest with a bunch of fearsome dwarves and the farthest you've probably traveled is the town market. In the beginning he's this timid little thing who swoons at the thought of dragons and adventure. He's scared out of his mind and in the beginning all he tends to do is cause more trouble with the trolls and he gets himself lost in the darkness of the underground goblin caves.

        I mean, by the end Bilbo was a courageous thing to behold: saving everyone from the spider's clutches, storming into the dragon's keep by himself multiple times, and going against what his friend wanted to ensure peace between the people. Of course, all if not most of this was aided by the ring he picked up from Gollum. I think the ring did help him do a lot of things that normally couldn't do but his heroic qualities that he got he made himself. He forged his own path. The ring did sort of give him the “level up” which allowed him to become the leader and have the guts to come up with most of his ideas.

         My friend asked me who my favorite character was in this story and it took me a minute but I'd have to say Gandalf. I like his sort of “godlike” role as far as he's sort of the Jesus of Middle Earth. He's more than just another fantasy wizard. I liked the way he knew how everything was going to unfold the entire time he kept everyone in the dark. Gandalf seems to be sort of the grand ringmaster of the situation: he gets Bilbo to go on the journey and he doesn't go on the journey for material wealth like the others. It seemed that the times he left to tend to other matters, he needed to be gone for other reasons that his business with the Necromancer (Sauron). I think in a way it was Bilbo's way to shine and he had to take his rightful place in the group. If Gandalf was there, we'd probably have less of a story as well, Bilbo's transformation would have been unnecessary if Gandalf was always there to save the day with magic.

                              

Sheep and Sexy Ears

        I was originally going to bail on the book this week and read the short stories instead but I read a few pages of the legends and was kind of thinking “eh” and then I read the back of “A Wild Sheep Chase” and immediately fell in love. Maybe it was the ears.

        What I really liked about this book was the small things. For example, I liked the fact that no one had a name. I didn't realize it at first and then I realized that the narrator, his pretty-eared girlfriend, and the other characters were either given nicknames such as the “The Rat” or “The Boss”. I've had a lot of nameless characters in my own writing and I find it to be rather nice because then it's not just “George” its “Man” and it's sort of cutting the character down to the root without any extra bells or whistles. And as Murakami noted "Herring swim around on their own will but nobody gives them names". People are people and nothing more or less.  Also, the characters themselves were so distinctive that I think it was impossible to confuse them. Who could confuse an extremely sexy-eared call girl with your ex wife who divorced you because you life was going nowhere?

        I liked the role that women played in this book. It seemed they possessed some sort of spiritual knowledge that the narrator lacked. For example, his dead ex girlfriend in the beginning was only off by a year when she predicted the age she would die. His pretty eared girlfriend even predicts the phone call about “lots of sheep and one sheep in particular” (49). She also seemed to have the sixth sense about which hotel they should stay in that would eventually lead them down the road to the sheep they were looking for. Without the aid of his girlfriend, the narrator wouldn't even gotten near the location of the sheep. This brings the matter of the quest itself, following a man who's basically coming and going nowhere in his life. This Nowhere Man is stuck on a random journey to find this sheep and it turns into a random fallout of events which I can only seem to grasp another search for the holy grail, but this time its a magical sheep.

         I think the sheep itself was kind of like the Moby Dick of this book. Everyone was looking for it, everyone wanted to harness its power or rather, be harnessed by its power. In the end it was all related in an odd sort of way, kind of like when you have a dream and everything falls together and then you wake up and you have that lingering feeling but the reason is gone. There was the constant thinking back to the whale penis, which again points back to Moby Dick, as well as the Dolphin Hotel which was going to originally be named Whale Hotel. In a sense, the narrator is the Ishmael of this book he's the last one left, with his friend the Rat dead, girlfriend gone, job gone, and nowhere to go. I think this really reflected on the book as a whole, about loss of self and loss of ideals.

Louis' Long and Laborious Lengthy Tale of Woes and Angst Muffinry

       I really loved the way “Interview with a Vampire” was written, though it was a little hard to get into at first. The beginning was really slow and a lot of Louis's descriptions were extremely long winded. I found myself seriously bored with the long winded description of New Orleans, traveling of Louis and Claudia in Europe, and Louis' repetitive angsty moaning about how no one understood him. I thought it was really interesting that once they got to Paris, Louis's musings switched entirely to the description of Armand. I think this really showed just how much Armand meant to Louis in terms of how their minds were alike. I really liked the relationships between the characters like Armand and Louis' bond. But on another note, there was so much man slash in this book. And it totally was ridiculous at some point I would have to put it down and start laughing historically with my roommate who has also read the series. Sometimes it did seem to be just Armand and Louis staring at each other forever and I was just leafing through it a bit thinking “When is something going to actually happen?!"

          Louis and Claudia's bond in particular caught me in particular and how they stayed together even though they were almost complete opposites. This is exemplified by little remarks on things that they don't see eye to eye where Claudia believes “Fire purifies” while Louis believes “...fire just destroys”. Claudia really manipulates Louis throughout the book with her . I think Louis becomes knowledgeable of this but he stays with her regardless even when he fears for himself. He stays with her even when the actor vampires threaten to attack and when he fears Claudia herself. This is reflected in Louis' musings where he thinks “would I awake, like Gulliver awake, to find myself bound hand and foot, an unwelcoming giant..?”

            After Louis turned Madeleine everything seemed to rush downhill from there. I couldn't put the book down after that. Louis' claim that “What has died in this room tonight is the last vestige in me of what was human...” seemed to spark the beginning of the end of his joys of life. I thought it was strange how the two people who meant the most to him at that time, Armand and Claudia, both led to his downfall.

           I thought the ending was a bit bitter. It just seemed strange to end it with Louis totally estranged from, life in general, that he had lost all connection with the world. It was like he was now a total robot who had detached himself to the point where he decided he didn't want to care for any one or anything anymore. I thought it was kind of ironic the only thing he decided to hold onto was his belief that life was precious even though he decided to still live on killing after all this time and all this regret as some sort of final retribution.

FEAR OF THE ZOMBIE APOCOLYPSE

This book really surprised me in terms of zombies and what they can do. It never occurred to me to think of a zombie with a mind still intact, let alone a zombie who can control other zombies with his mind. Most zombie stories that I have seen in both film and books tend to be more about action and less about characters. I think Monster Island had both dynamic characters as well as an action-packed plot which made it into a really good story that was believable. Also, Wellington's story wasn't overdone. There was grotesque description when needed but it wasn't overdone. This detail of all the zombie gore was lightened by dark humor throughout the book through characters like Gary's remarks and Kreutzer's “I don’t know if either of you has accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior...but now might be the time.”

At first I thought it was hard to keep up with switching between the first person narration of Dekalb and the third person narration of Gary. Deklab was easily relatable as well as underwent a lot of changes from a man who wouldn't shoot his gun a man who was slicing off zombie's heads. I think Gary was my favorite character and he was an interesting foil as well. When I finally got to the end of the book I was blown away when Deklab said “You’re probably wondering how I can know what he’s [Gary's] thinking. How I could write all those passages from his point of view, describing things I never saw or experienced.” That completely just made my day and it explained the strange switching back and forth of the storytelling narrator as well.

I thought that the zombies' lack of brains was a metaphor for humankind's fear loosing their humanity. I think zombies have become really popular because people sometimes feel like zombies when they feel like they are mindless slaves that can't control their instincts. The usual reason for a zombie apocalypse is usually an epidemic or some kind of genetic experiment gone wrong. This reflects our fear of science and bioengineering.  

Conventions of Genre of Horror

-Lots of lightning
-Creation of a monster
-Lab equipment
-Dark and ominous appearance of the sky/surroundings
-Events unfold that are impossible by normal human means
-Death and destruction
-People loosing their sanity
-Epic showdown against fantastical creature
-Blood
-In movies: sickeningly scary music
-Not sure what is real and what is a dream/made up
-Nighttime, Stormy
-Barren deserted wasteland with a castle

Knowledge and Monsters

My immediate reaction of picking up Frankenstein was that this book was nothing like what I had expected. I had watched Young Frankenstein and the Frankenstein movie and the book was totally different! I really enjoyed it once I got passed the preface. I really liked the classification of the monster. Because he had no name or physical description other than being hideously grotesque, it was up to the reader to basically picture the most horrible thing he or she could imagine.

Victor himself could be classified as a monster. While on the outside he is normal, on the inside he is consumed with intense hatred for what he has done. He rejects his own creation and his secrets that he keeps from his family and friends alienate him from the people most close to him. The monster's words “You accuse me of murder; and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature...” seem to condemn Victor even more as an unloving maker. After the monster swears to kill the people that Victor loves, this isolates Victor even more and in turn this bars him from the once sublime and healing effect of nature.

The power of nature on mood is evident in both man and monster throughout the novel. This influence soon dissipates when Victor realizes the monster will haunt him wherever he goes. This leads the monster to isolate Victor and doom him to a life like that of the monster, one doomed by loneliness and eternal wandering. Their connection with nature is again reflected in this, the frozen Artic where Victor follows the monster, spurred by his hatred for what he has done. This desolate place has lost all of its beauty like monster and maker.

All of this boils down to Victor's conquest of absolute knowledge. Victor tries to find the secret of life. Walton similarly follows his obsession with knowledge to the North Pole. While Victor's creation destroys everyone he cares for, Walton is trapped between the ice floes. Victor's obsession drives him to his death but Walton falls back from his mission after learning from Victor's story and finding how destructive the quest for knowledge can be.