I'm never sure if the evil Muslim sorceress is appropriate for the conversation or not...
1. I tried reading more of Dan Brown's The Last Symbol. I made it to about chapter 19 (they're short chapters), and it would have been a mch better book with about 1/3 of the wordcount at that point. Anyway, apparently, almost every college student in America gets an Eurorail ticket and tours Europe between high school and college. This, apparently, is a true American standard. The hundreds of college graduates and students that I know and I would like to know where our tickets were. With our silver spoons, maybe? ("Silver spoons" referring not from coming from a family able to send their kid to Europe, but to the classism involved in the assumption.) And really, aside from being tedious and having a boring plot (which gets interrupted every other paragraph by trivia, most of which serves absolutely no purpose) it's...extremely elitist. Almost every character is an amazingly brilliant, wealthy white person who is revolutionary in hir field, which we are constantly reminded of, and their lives and brilliance get explained to us in minute detail. Complete with what appears to be the main female character being mansplained into brilliance. Also, I find the characters terribly dull? Like, even the geeky ladies aren't fun. Also, the only nonwhite people are (1) the hispanic guard who did not properly perform a security check and let the villain in, and (2) the Japanese leader of the supersecret branch of the CIA. Who is actually the only character with the potential to be interesting so far, but she's also the only character to get a really detailed physical description, and she's described in extremely unflattering terms, depicted as incredibly ugly and scary looking.
2. But for better or for worse, they took the books off the computers again, so no more The Lost Symbol for me. Actually, that's probably unquestionably good. It also means no more Sparklepire posts, though. Not reading more of that is also probably for the best, but, while time consuming, those posts were pretty fun to write. More time to catch up with all the books (good and bad) that i've read the last month or so, though.
3. The whole thing with Elizabeth Moon's really bad Islamophobic/appropriative/narrowminded post went down when I had laryngitis and did not want to, uhm, discuss unpleasant things. (Random fact: Eureka and Scarecrow and Mrs. King go from fun to utterly fabulous when you live in a mild blur caused by drugs meant to keep you from feeling the pain of trying to hack up a lung for a week, let me tell you.) A lot of the hoopla involved the fact that Moon is a guest of honor for 2011's WisCon, and whether or not that status is being revoked. It isn't, and while I'm not familiar with the process involved, I suspect that, in most cases, there are far more strings and rules involved in uninviting a GoH than in inviting them in the first place. Like many others, I think that, while the post itself is pretty awful, the biggest problem is that Moon deleted all the comments to the post but left the post itself exactly as it originally was and has said nothing else on the matter publicly. Third parties have said she regrets the post, but nothing from Moon herself. I mean, what, is she saving it up for a giant, manipulative group hug at WisCon?
I also think that the other GoH, Nisi Shawl, is largely being overlooked? Here's what she has to say on the matter.
Anyway, assuming I can afford it and have a roommate/place to stay next year, I still plan on going. I mean, this year, I wanted to see Nnedi Okorafor (ETA to fix the name change, which I will eventually remember!), and only did at the GoH speeches and the signing?
4. Continuing with authorfail, Christopher Pike's recent fail is possibly the most entertaining. Basically, he wrote a book set in Turkey. A Turkish woman read the beginning and posted an Amazon reviews explaining a number of misrepresentations in the book. A man claiming to be Pike's editor left a (now deleted) response explaining why she was wrongwrongwrong. They interacted a bit more and "Michael Bright" basically said that she couldn't possibly know what she was talking about and that one trip to Turkey made Pike an expert. And then it was discovered that Pike had previously publicly admitted that "Michael Bright" is one of several sockpuppets he uses. And then it was discovered that Pike had left a number of Amazon reviews praising his books as amazing and brilliant and the best things ever. There's an excellent writeup on the whole thing here.
Naturally, this went down just as I was about to embark on a reread of Pike's books! And it was to be a reread for pleasure, no doubt marred by what my adult mind will register as Fail. Now it'll be a reread watching for the Fail! Uhm...when i get around to it.
5. You know, I get that a lot of book releases are scheduled for late in the year so they can be bought as gifts and whatnot, but it can be a bit overwhelming? This is the stack of books released in the last couple months (some paperback releases of hardcovers) that I have but haven't read yet:
Tasha Alexander: Tears of Pearl
Julie Berry: The Amaranth Enchantment
Rhys Bowen: Royal Flush
Marie Brennan: A Star Shall Fall
Elizabeth Chadwick: For the King's Favor
Loretta Chase: Last Night's Scandal
Simon R. Green: Ghost of A Chance
Karen Kincy: Other
Carolyn McCullough: Once A Witch
Deanna Raybourn: Dark Road to Darjeeling
Gillian Shields: Immortal
I suspect there are a few out that I've missed, I'm good at that. And Anna Godberson and Sarah Beth Durst both have new books out next week!
Maybe I'll get some of these read while travelling to various family things this weekend.
5. The first few eps of season 3 of Chuck are...not as bad as I'd been lead to expect (possibly because of that) but definitely not as fun as previous seasons. And I still refuse to believe that Chuck (or anyone) could physically adjust as quickly as Chuck did. The end of ep 3, though, implies that the show and I may soon have a serious falling out.
ETA: 6: I have learned that the guy behind Lost Girl is also behind my most recent One True Love, Queen of Swords (I, uhm, am a bit fickle about fictional One True Loves...what do we think will supplant girl!Zorro?) as well as La Femma Nikita, Andromeda, and Relic Hunter, all of which I have intended to watch for some time, but haven't.