What Good Songs Do You Know?
Jetskiing is fun, if mildly terrifying. Falling off is a little bit less fun and a little bit more terrifying, at least if you're me and land badly so that the wind gets knocked out of you. Thank goodness for lifejackets. It was good to see Paco and LB and Tiny Charles Ackerman, who cries when he's naked and very few other times. I'm not big on babies or kids in general, but it will be fun to play crazy aunt when he gets old enough to know who I am. By then, maybe he and I will be able to share a lifejacket and I will be able to feel less guilty about us having to buy me a special one.
I finished reading Snuff, Chuck Palahniuk's newest book, two nights ago. I liked it well enough, although it isn't his best. I'd actually call it one of the least shocking of his books, even with the 600-man gang-bang theme. But then, maybe it takes more to shock me than it did way back when I first picked up Choke. Or maybe it's just because he didn't pull a "Guts" this time.
I can't promise no spoilers, but I'll try not to regurgitate too much of the novel's action.
I picked up Dexter in the Dark while I was in Stanwood, because I enjoyed the first two novels by Jeff Lindsay and sure as a pig's ear loved the first two seasons of the Showtime TV adaptation. This third installment in the series, however, was more than a little disappointing. To put it bluntly, it sucked donkey balls. If you enjoy the show or liked Darkly Dreaming Dexter and/or Dearly Devoted Dexter, avoid this one like the hantavirus.
For one thing, Lindsay introduces into the series a serious supernatural element, which I found to be quite a jarring contrast to the complete lack of such a note in the previous novels. I certainly don't mind ghosts and spookies and malicious gods in my reading material, but it came out of nowhere and was rather poorly employed. It turns out that Dex's infamous "Dark Passenger" is a separate being hosting itself in his brain, an anomalistic child of the thousands-year-old god Moloch, who dates back to Solomon's time and requires regular human sacrifice. I only have two words for this: the hell? As Jessica put it, since when is severe childhood trauma not sufficient explanation for Dex's serial-killer ways? He saw his mother hacked to death as a toddler, of course he's going to be a little messed up. This is a case of ruining the mystery, over-explaining things. Dexter's more fun as a character when he kills people of his own volition, not because he's housing the spiritual spawn of an evil ancient god. People can do bad things because people are bad sometimes. That's what bothers me.
Another major problem is, quite simply, the writing. The secondary characters are turned into caricatures of themselves (I swear the only thing Deborah says throughout the entire novel is, "Dammit, Dexter!" over and over), the plot is cartoonish and poorly-paced, and the climax is so muddled I was continually pulled out of the action by wondering what the hell was going on. The end was a disappointment as well; I had felt that, disappointing though it was, the novel was setting itself up well enough to lead into the next novel, where Dexter would do more searching for his Dark Passenger, which disappeared early on and left him vulnerable and human (or, in the case of Lindsay's writing, whiny, but more on that in a minute). But, lo and behold, the Passenger returns out of nowhere in a rush, as if Lindsay wanted the novel's events to be entirely self-contained. After all that, it was that easy? I just couldn't buy it.
The worst thing, though, is Dexter's characterization. If the secondary characters are rather flat, Dexter is practically one-dimensional. The minute he loses track of good ol' DP, he turns into a sniveling, melodramatic emo kid, and that's something that should never happen to Dexter. His character is what makes the books and the show so enjoyable--the fact that he's in control and so dryly amused while the others are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Stripped of his self-confidence, he just becomes sad and pathetic in a way that's hard to read. I was both cringing and bored through most of the novel, and all in all felt extremely let down; I only finished it out of a sense of duty to my love for the rest of the media concerning Dex, and it was something of a chore. As of closing the book, I mentally declared that I would excise Dexter in the Dark from my personal Dexter fandom, which might make reading any of the subsequent novels difficult. More than ever, I'm looking forward to season three of the show this fall, and I can't say how grateful I am that the show has deviated greatly from the books. I may have hated Lila throughout the entirety of the second season, but I hated this far, far more.
Hoo. Glad to get that off of my chest.
In other news, something lighter. I'd like to put out a general call and ask if anybody would, by chance, be interested in trading mix-CDs. I love getting new music from anybody, and I have to admit a certain fondness for putting together mixes for my friends until they complain and hide the unopened cases in their closets. So! If anybody would like to do this thing, please to post me a list of your ten-or-so favorite musical artists, and general genres of which you're fond? I want to both get a feel for your interests and know what to avoid, since the point is to be mutually exposed to new awesome music. (Of course, I certainly won't complain if I get a track or two that I already know, 'cuz it's always interesting to learn what other people like of your favorite albums as well.) If you want to just trade general mixes or go for special themes, it's all fine by me. Just sounds like something fun to do, you dig? I know most if not all of you in real life, so hopefully nobody has a problem trading addresses over e-mail for the subsequent mailing of the mixes. (I know for most people I could probably just deliver mine in person, but isn't getting mail half the fun of it?)
Okay, enough rambling by me. Time to go read When You Are Engulfed in Flames, like a good David Sedaris fan.
(Pictures promised are coming within the next few days, for serious. I just have to get my crap together.)
I finished reading Snuff, Chuck Palahniuk's newest book, two nights ago. I liked it well enough, although it isn't his best. I'd actually call it one of the least shocking of his books, even with the 600-man gang-bang theme. But then, maybe it takes more to shock me than it did way back when I first picked up Choke. Or maybe it's just because he didn't pull a "Guts" this time.
I can't promise no spoilers, but I'll try not to regurgitate too much of the novel's action.
I picked up Dexter in the Dark while I was in Stanwood, because I enjoyed the first two novels by Jeff Lindsay and sure as a pig's ear loved the first two seasons of the Showtime TV adaptation. This third installment in the series, however, was more than a little disappointing. To put it bluntly, it sucked donkey balls. If you enjoy the show or liked Darkly Dreaming Dexter and/or Dearly Devoted Dexter, avoid this one like the hantavirus.
For one thing, Lindsay introduces into the series a serious supernatural element, which I found to be quite a jarring contrast to the complete lack of such a note in the previous novels. I certainly don't mind ghosts and spookies and malicious gods in my reading material, but it came out of nowhere and was rather poorly employed. It turns out that Dex's infamous "Dark Passenger" is a separate being hosting itself in his brain, an anomalistic child of the thousands-year-old god Moloch, who dates back to Solomon's time and requires regular human sacrifice. I only have two words for this: the hell? As Jessica put it, since when is severe childhood trauma not sufficient explanation for Dex's serial-killer ways? He saw his mother hacked to death as a toddler, of course he's going to be a little messed up. This is a case of ruining the mystery, over-explaining things. Dexter's more fun as a character when he kills people of his own volition, not because he's housing the spiritual spawn of an evil ancient god. People can do bad things because people are bad sometimes. That's what bothers me.
Another major problem is, quite simply, the writing. The secondary characters are turned into caricatures of themselves (I swear the only thing Deborah says throughout the entire novel is, "Dammit, Dexter!" over and over), the plot is cartoonish and poorly-paced, and the climax is so muddled I was continually pulled out of the action by wondering what the hell was going on. The end was a disappointment as well; I had felt that, disappointing though it was, the novel was setting itself up well enough to lead into the next novel, where Dexter would do more searching for his Dark Passenger, which disappeared early on and left him vulnerable and human (or, in the case of Lindsay's writing, whiny, but more on that in a minute). But, lo and behold, the Passenger returns out of nowhere in a rush, as if Lindsay wanted the novel's events to be entirely self-contained. After all that, it was that easy? I just couldn't buy it.
The worst thing, though, is Dexter's characterization. If the secondary characters are rather flat, Dexter is practically one-dimensional. The minute he loses track of good ol' DP, he turns into a sniveling, melodramatic emo kid, and that's something that should never happen to Dexter. His character is what makes the books and the show so enjoyable--the fact that he's in control and so dryly amused while the others are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Stripped of his self-confidence, he just becomes sad and pathetic in a way that's hard to read. I was both cringing and bored through most of the novel, and all in all felt extremely let down; I only finished it out of a sense of duty to my love for the rest of the media concerning Dex, and it was something of a chore. As of closing the book, I mentally declared that I would excise Dexter in the Dark from my personal Dexter fandom, which might make reading any of the subsequent novels difficult. More than ever, I'm looking forward to season three of the show this fall, and I can't say how grateful I am that the show has deviated greatly from the books. I may have hated Lila throughout the entirety of the second season, but I hated this far, far more.
Hoo. Glad to get that off of my chest.
In other news, something lighter. I'd like to put out a general call and ask if anybody would, by chance, be interested in trading mix-CDs. I love getting new music from anybody, and I have to admit a certain fondness for putting together mixes for my friends until they complain and hide the unopened cases in their closets. So! If anybody would like to do this thing, please to post me a list of your ten-or-so favorite musical artists, and general genres of which you're fond? I want to both get a feel for your interests and know what to avoid, since the point is to be mutually exposed to new awesome music. (Of course, I certainly won't complain if I get a track or two that I already know, 'cuz it's always interesting to learn what other people like of your favorite albums as well.) If you want to just trade general mixes or go for special themes, it's all fine by me. Just sounds like something fun to do, you dig? I know most if not all of you in real life, so hopefully nobody has a problem trading addresses over e-mail for the subsequent mailing of the mixes. (I know for most people I could probably just deliver mine in person, but isn't getting mail half the fun of it?)
Okay, enough rambling by me. Time to go read When You Are Engulfed in Flames, like a good David Sedaris fan.
(Pictures promised are coming within the next few days, for serious. I just have to get my crap together.)