Been a while since I updated.
Been a bit lax in my Book Foos... so, we'll start with them, but they'll probably be a bit short...
Finished: The Dark Tower (Dark Tower Book VII), by Stephen King (reread)
Started: The Bachman Books, by Stephen King (reread) (Technically Four Novels, at the moment I'm on the first, Rage)
So, the Dark Tower. Entertaining story (except for the stupid overreliance on fate as a plot mechanic that I've complained about in previous ones.
Really falls apart on the ending. Spoilers. Fairly major ones. Don't say you weren't warned.
Okay, I'm not opposed, in general, to sad things happening, to characters I love not surviving a book. So the sudden death of Eddie and Jake all really WORK for me. What doesn't work for me as much is the structure of the story... they've been on this long quest forever. Just as they're on the last leg, two die (that's fine), the rest continue on, meet a new guy we've never met before (although, granted, hinted at), and the last of the main cast (save the pet), leaves right on the edge of the quest's completion, leaving the end of the plot in the hands of the new guy. Again, ka, fate, makes the story kaka.
Susannah's "happy ending" also rings false. She goes to another world and winds up with a guy who's a little like Eddie who's got a brother who's a little like Jake and they sort of have some kind of half-dreamy memories of her and it's all supposed to be yay, happy ending, she met her true love again... except, he's not, not to me, he's some pale imitation with a much different life who didn't have to overcome the same obstacles the man she loved did. To me, she got the worst ending. Death would be preferable. Okay, maybe that's a little harsh. But I mean that 'joining her ka-tet in the clearing at the end of the path' would be preferable to 'playing around with alternate world versions of them and assuming that's just as good, because they sort of had dreams about meeting her'. I could even have acknowledged it if she specifically made the acknowledgement and decision that this is NOT Eddie and Jake, she's just settling for similar versions and trying to build some happiness out of that. But no, aside from some initial wondering if Eddie's still got his brother Henry or remembers her at all, she seems to be at peace with it.
And of course, the BIG ending, Roland's ending. He's caught in an endless loop, reaching and saving the
Tower and then going back to the first book to live it all over again. Not a very satisfying ending, granted, but if that's what all it was, okay, I can deal with it. But no, he has to tease the fact that in THIS iteration, it MIGHT be different, because instead of leaving the Horn of Eld on the ground and moving on, he picked it up and took it with him.
What does that mean to me? That for the past 7 books, I've been reading the WRONG iteration of the loop. The story's not over until it FINISHES, one way or the other (trapped forever, or escaping). It's like if you were writing a courtroom drama, get really invested in all the characters, want to see how it works out, are dying to know if they're found guilty or innocent (maybe even if they ARE guilty or innocent), and focus on the trial, and then suddenly because of a technicality, the trial has to start all over again, with a new jury. But instead of continuing the story in the new trial, you just stop there, with a character saying, "Well, maybe in the next trial we'll get a verdict."
Stephen King exists in a metafictional sense within the Dark Tower universe, and what I get from this ending is, "Stephen King the writer (in the story) chickened out, couldn't face what the story was, and chickened out, wrote a crappy NON-Ending, and so the Tower is still in existential peril." Or, out of metafiction, that he wrote himself into a corner and took a lazy way out. Either way, it was not satisfying.
The only thing that might salvage it is if King (or someone else), later went and specifically REWROTE the story (or major parts of it), with Roland having the Horn he picked up in this latest iteration, and released that as a new book, showing how the presence of the horn does finally free him, maybe by letting him take his ka-tet with him to the Tower and all survive..
Anyway.
Finished: Tesseracts 7, (short story collection)
Another Tesseracts. This one was a little interesting, because someone had written notes on most stories
in pencil. From what I could piece together, someone, probably for a school project or something, was trying to nail down specifically Canada as portrayed in SF, so each story had a note about its setting (most of them "Setting impossible to ascertain", and a couple other notes. And, at the very beginning, "Incompetently edited, some good stories".
I'm not sure I'd go with "incompetently edited", but there certainly were a lot of typos and grammar/punctuation errors(which the mysterious pencil writer often corrected... although in at least one case I felt they were being too harsh with poetical language). Some stories were okay, most were a bit blah. Can't really remember any standouts, aside from the ones by authors I already know (there was also another by my old "Apocalyptic SF" professor).
Started and Finished: Jumper: Griffin's Story, by Stephen Gould
Jumper, the book, is one of my all-time favorite escapist books, about a teen who discovers he can teleport.
It was made into a movie. A movie I did not like at all. This book is based on one of the characters from the movie, Griffin, and is set in the movieverse. However, it is written by the guy who wrote the novel. So, I figured I'd give it a chance, and figure, if nothing else, I might get a decent enjoyable story about another teleporter.
And that's more or less what this is. A story of a kid who teleports and is hunted by a mysterious group trying to kill him because of it. In many ways it reads almost like a "what if", if Davy (The protagonist in Jumper) was hunted more viciously, and in fact, sometimes I felt like I was reading Davy, except with an English accent. There are a lot of similar character-type beats.
It does end abruptly, because it has to lead into the movie, so pretty much it just gets the character to the point in the story where the movie begins, and feels more like it just stops than that it concluded. But I had a moderate amount of fun reading it. Not as much as Jumper (or even the sequel, Reflex), but not enough to regret buying it (even if I did wait until it was down to $2 in the "last copies" bin). Probably not worth reading unless you really liked the movie, or really liked the book, though.
Started and Finished: Tesseracts 8, (short story collection)
Started: Wireless, by Charles Stross (short story collection)
Tesseracts 8... I'd almost call this one incompetently edited. Not because of typos, but because it felt very unbalanced. For example, at one point in the book, there were like 5 or 6 stories in a row with "Sea" or "Lake" or similar large bodies of water in the title, and there were more throughout the book (not to mention how many deal with large bodies of water without having it in the title). It didn't seem to be explicitly mentioned as a theme anywhere in the forewords or afterwords.
However, I can't call it incompetently edited, because there WERE some pretty good stories in this one (although, oddly enough, virtually NONE of the ones that had the ocean titles or themes were among the ones I liked). Standouts were "Home Again, Home Again," by Cory Doctorow (which I liked a lot except for the end), "The Dragon of Pripyat" by Karl Schroeder, and "The Dark Hour" by A.M. Dellamonica.
And now we're up to date, I believe. Moving on... let's talk about Television.
Of shows currently on (not counting cartoons, or fairly stand-alone or procedural shows like House or Criminal Minds and such that I watch for something to watch and usually enjoy, but aren't the type I especially get invested in), I'm still watching: No Ordinary Family, V, Fringe, Supernatural.
Of that list, shows I still care about: ... Fringe, I guess.
The others just fall fall short of the marks, or are actively annoying me. V is the worst of the bunch. Seriously, EVERYBODY's an idiot on that show. (Spoilers) Anna, for not having any surveillance on her own ship, and for using a huge, secret, painful machine... to EXTRACT DNA. NOTE TO WRITERS: DNA IS NOT A MAGIC SUBSTANCE THAT ONLY RESIDES DEEP IN YOUR BODY. YOU WANT SOMEBODY'S DNA, GIVE THEM A HAIRCUT). Erika, for never once considering that, hey, her son completely loves this alien chick who is ON YOUR SIDE in the revolution... how about just having HER explain to him that the V aren't all sweetness and light?
The FBI, for thinking, "Hmmm, we suspected this woman of being a terrorist. However, when we raided the terrorist base, we found her inside, and she said she was a hostage, and even though we had this magical V technology that let us see where everybody was and where they were moving and there was no sign of her ever being restrained or not being allowed to move freely and talk to everybody, because her ex-husband died in the firefight that broke out in the end... she couldn't POSSIBLY be one of them.
Thank goodness Stargate Universe kicks off the rest of its second (and sadly final) season this week). Might also give Game of Thrones a chance when it starts in April. Never read the books.
I kind of glossed over cartoons, but let's go back to them and deal with them directly. Young Justice is continuing and... I'm not loving it. I hoped I would. But I'm just not. I think my biggest issue is that Miss Martian seems to be there solely to moon over Superboy, be mooned over by the Flash, and occasionally either screw up or be useful, depending on the episode (and seriously, one time she 'screwed up' and everybody patronized her about "oh, she's still new", when they all screwed up JUST AS MUCH by following her rather logical deduction, and there was no comeuppance. I sometimes think they're going to go all the way and just have someone say, "well, she is just a girl."). Artemis likewise, the moment she joined, entered the "let's start being romantic leads!" game. I'm not opposed to a little romance in cartoons, but it seriously feels like that's ALL they're there for.
Earth's Mightiest Heroes was more enjoyable but it seems to be off for a bit.
I also watched All Star Superman. And it seems to match with my opinion of Morrison in general: He can do cool epic story ideas. And he can do tiny moments and details that really sell you on the characters living in a realistic world. But he can't do either of them consistently, and almost never both at once. In this case, it's not all his fault since it's an adaptation, and they had to leave several things out, but basically, I though the general idea and progress of the story, if you broke it down to a three-or-four line summary, was good, but too many of the details I didn't really care for. In particular, the parts dealing with the two Kryptonian astronauts felt like they didn't need to be there at all, adding nothing to the story (which could have been a lot better by showing Superman completing things important to him), and Clark Kent letting Parasite kill guards rather than exposing his secret identity... seriously? You're dying, dude, if there's any time that's not important, it's this time. As a movie (which should have to set up things in advance and have them pay off), things like antagonists coming out of nowhere don't really work as well as they might in comics... Lex's secret ally, for example. I also didn't care for all the silver-age-loving moments of "I'm Superman, aren't I awesome, I create tiny suns out of my bare hands! And carve half a million-ton tools out of neutron star stuff and leave them on Earth). Anyway, I guess it was an enjoyable movie, but it's always depressing when I can SO easily see how it could be lots MORE enjoyable (to me, at least).
In the "commercials that are ticking me off" dept, there's a scratch-and-win lottery commercial. Basically, this woman is bungee jumping and shouts "I'd rather be playing Instant Keno!". Then, it cuts to her friend, who is getting suited up for her jump, and is scratching a card, and says, "That's great, but I'd rather be playing Instant Keno too."
NO. THAT DOES NOT WORK. You can say, "That's great. AND I'd rather be playing instant Keno too." Or you can look at the prospect of bungee jumping and say "Yeah, I'd rather be playing instant keno too." But the way you say it is just aggravating to some irrational part of me. It's like somebody saying, "Hey, I'm in the mood for tacos for dinner." and you replying, "That's great, but I'm in the mood for tacos for dinner!" The "That's great, but..." is a NEGATION of what they said. You don't say "That's great, but..." and then go on to AGREE.
Less annoying, but more amusing, is a Honey Nut Cheerio's Commercials with a song in the background with the following line in its chorus: "A Taste of Honey's Worse Than None At All".
...
You really want that to be on your commercial for Honey Nut Cheerios? If you wanted to use it at all, shouldn't it be in your commercial for REGULAR Cheerios?
Anyway, is there anything else going on in my life?
Not really. In a few weeks, my birthday, but that's nothing to celebrate. There is a chance I might pay off all my remaining student loans in one lump sum, rather than waiting a few more years and paying interest. It's actually doable, and while it's not a major improvement in my life, would at least feel good (and, after that initial hit to my finances, which I can weather easily at this point), would mean basically a hundred extra a month income (or, rather, that much less deducted automatically). The major concern is that they don't let you do it online, so I'll have to call somebody or possibly visit somewhere in person, and, well, I'm not good on the phone or in person, I have to work up some nerve for it.
Finished: The Dark Tower (Dark Tower Book VII), by Stephen King (reread)
Started: The Bachman Books, by Stephen King (reread) (Technically Four Novels, at the moment I'm on the first, Rage)
So, the Dark Tower. Entertaining story (except for the stupid overreliance on fate as a plot mechanic that I've complained about in previous ones.
Really falls apart on the ending. Spoilers. Fairly major ones. Don't say you weren't warned.
Okay, I'm not opposed, in general, to sad things happening, to characters I love not surviving a book. So the sudden death of Eddie and Jake all really WORK for me. What doesn't work for me as much is the structure of the story... they've been on this long quest forever. Just as they're on the last leg, two die (that's fine), the rest continue on, meet a new guy we've never met before (although, granted, hinted at), and the last of the main cast (save the pet), leaves right on the edge of the quest's completion, leaving the end of the plot in the hands of the new guy. Again, ka, fate, makes the story kaka.
Susannah's "happy ending" also rings false. She goes to another world and winds up with a guy who's a little like Eddie who's got a brother who's a little like Jake and they sort of have some kind of half-dreamy memories of her and it's all supposed to be yay, happy ending, she met her true love again... except, he's not, not to me, he's some pale imitation with a much different life who didn't have to overcome the same obstacles the man she loved did. To me, she got the worst ending. Death would be preferable. Okay, maybe that's a little harsh. But I mean that 'joining her ka-tet in the clearing at the end of the path' would be preferable to 'playing around with alternate world versions of them and assuming that's just as good, because they sort of had dreams about meeting her'. I could even have acknowledged it if she specifically made the acknowledgement and decision that this is NOT Eddie and Jake, she's just settling for similar versions and trying to build some happiness out of that. But no, aside from some initial wondering if Eddie's still got his brother Henry or remembers her at all, she seems to be at peace with it.
And of course, the BIG ending, Roland's ending. He's caught in an endless loop, reaching and saving the
Tower and then going back to the first book to live it all over again. Not a very satisfying ending, granted, but if that's what all it was, okay, I can deal with it. But no, he has to tease the fact that in THIS iteration, it MIGHT be different, because instead of leaving the Horn of Eld on the ground and moving on, he picked it up and took it with him.
What does that mean to me? That for the past 7 books, I've been reading the WRONG iteration of the loop. The story's not over until it FINISHES, one way or the other (trapped forever, or escaping). It's like if you were writing a courtroom drama, get really invested in all the characters, want to see how it works out, are dying to know if they're found guilty or innocent (maybe even if they ARE guilty or innocent), and focus on the trial, and then suddenly because of a technicality, the trial has to start all over again, with a new jury. But instead of continuing the story in the new trial, you just stop there, with a character saying, "Well, maybe in the next trial we'll get a verdict."
Stephen King exists in a metafictional sense within the Dark Tower universe, and what I get from this ending is, "Stephen King the writer (in the story) chickened out, couldn't face what the story was, and chickened out, wrote a crappy NON-Ending, and so the Tower is still in existential peril." Or, out of metafiction, that he wrote himself into a corner and took a lazy way out. Either way, it was not satisfying.
The only thing that might salvage it is if King (or someone else), later went and specifically REWROTE the story (or major parts of it), with Roland having the Horn he picked up in this latest iteration, and released that as a new book, showing how the presence of the horn does finally free him, maybe by letting him take his ka-tet with him to the Tower and all survive..
Anyway.
Finished: Tesseracts 7, (short story collection)
Another Tesseracts. This one was a little interesting, because someone had written notes on most stories
in pencil. From what I could piece together, someone, probably for a school project or something, was trying to nail down specifically Canada as portrayed in SF, so each story had a note about its setting (most of them "Setting impossible to ascertain", and a couple other notes. And, at the very beginning, "Incompetently edited, some good stories".
I'm not sure I'd go with "incompetently edited", but there certainly were a lot of typos and grammar/punctuation errors(which the mysterious pencil writer often corrected... although in at least one case I felt they were being too harsh with poetical language). Some stories were okay, most were a bit blah. Can't really remember any standouts, aside from the ones by authors I already know (there was also another by my old "Apocalyptic SF" professor).
Started and Finished: Jumper: Griffin's Story, by Stephen Gould
Jumper, the book, is one of my all-time favorite escapist books, about a teen who discovers he can teleport.
It was made into a movie. A movie I did not like at all. This book is based on one of the characters from the movie, Griffin, and is set in the movieverse. However, it is written by the guy who wrote the novel. So, I figured I'd give it a chance, and figure, if nothing else, I might get a decent enjoyable story about another teleporter.
And that's more or less what this is. A story of a kid who teleports and is hunted by a mysterious group trying to kill him because of it. In many ways it reads almost like a "what if", if Davy (The protagonist in Jumper) was hunted more viciously, and in fact, sometimes I felt like I was reading Davy, except with an English accent. There are a lot of similar character-type beats.
It does end abruptly, because it has to lead into the movie, so pretty much it just gets the character to the point in the story where the movie begins, and feels more like it just stops than that it concluded. But I had a moderate amount of fun reading it. Not as much as Jumper (or even the sequel, Reflex), but not enough to regret buying it (even if I did wait until it was down to $2 in the "last copies" bin). Probably not worth reading unless you really liked the movie, or really liked the book, though.
Started and Finished: Tesseracts 8, (short story collection)
Started: Wireless, by Charles Stross (short story collection)
Tesseracts 8... I'd almost call this one incompetently edited. Not because of typos, but because it felt very unbalanced. For example, at one point in the book, there were like 5 or 6 stories in a row with "Sea" or "Lake" or similar large bodies of water in the title, and there were more throughout the book (not to mention how many deal with large bodies of water without having it in the title). It didn't seem to be explicitly mentioned as a theme anywhere in the forewords or afterwords.
However, I can't call it incompetently edited, because there WERE some pretty good stories in this one (although, oddly enough, virtually NONE of the ones that had the ocean titles or themes were among the ones I liked). Standouts were "Home Again, Home Again," by Cory Doctorow (which I liked a lot except for the end), "The Dragon of Pripyat" by Karl Schroeder, and "The Dark Hour" by A.M. Dellamonica.
And now we're up to date, I believe. Moving on... let's talk about Television.
Of shows currently on (not counting cartoons, or fairly stand-alone or procedural shows like House or Criminal Minds and such that I watch for something to watch and usually enjoy, but aren't the type I especially get invested in), I'm still watching: No Ordinary Family, V, Fringe, Supernatural.
Of that list, shows I still care about: ... Fringe, I guess.
The others just fall fall short of the marks, or are actively annoying me. V is the worst of the bunch. Seriously, EVERYBODY's an idiot on that show. (Spoilers) Anna, for not having any surveillance on her own ship, and for using a huge, secret, painful machine... to EXTRACT DNA. NOTE TO WRITERS: DNA IS NOT A MAGIC SUBSTANCE THAT ONLY RESIDES DEEP IN YOUR BODY. YOU WANT SOMEBODY'S DNA, GIVE THEM A HAIRCUT). Erika, for never once considering that, hey, her son completely loves this alien chick who is ON YOUR SIDE in the revolution... how about just having HER explain to him that the V aren't all sweetness and light?
The FBI, for thinking, "Hmmm, we suspected this woman of being a terrorist. However, when we raided the terrorist base, we found her inside, and she said she was a hostage, and even though we had this magical V technology that let us see where everybody was and where they were moving and there was no sign of her ever being restrained or not being allowed to move freely and talk to everybody, because her ex-husband died in the firefight that broke out in the end... she couldn't POSSIBLY be one of them.
Thank goodness Stargate Universe kicks off the rest of its second (and sadly final) season this week). Might also give Game of Thrones a chance when it starts in April. Never read the books.
I kind of glossed over cartoons, but let's go back to them and deal with them directly. Young Justice is continuing and... I'm not loving it. I hoped I would. But I'm just not. I think my biggest issue is that Miss Martian seems to be there solely to moon over Superboy, be mooned over by the Flash, and occasionally either screw up or be useful, depending on the episode (and seriously, one time she 'screwed up' and everybody patronized her about "oh, she's still new", when they all screwed up JUST AS MUCH by following her rather logical deduction, and there was no comeuppance. I sometimes think they're going to go all the way and just have someone say, "well, she is just a girl."). Artemis likewise, the moment she joined, entered the "let's start being romantic leads!" game. I'm not opposed to a little romance in cartoons, but it seriously feels like that's ALL they're there for.
Earth's Mightiest Heroes was more enjoyable but it seems to be off for a bit.
I also watched All Star Superman. And it seems to match with my opinion of Morrison in general: He can do cool epic story ideas. And he can do tiny moments and details that really sell you on the characters living in a realistic world. But he can't do either of them consistently, and almost never both at once. In this case, it's not all his fault since it's an adaptation, and they had to leave several things out, but basically, I though the general idea and progress of the story, if you broke it down to a three-or-four line summary, was good, but too many of the details I didn't really care for. In particular, the parts dealing with the two Kryptonian astronauts felt like they didn't need to be there at all, adding nothing to the story (which could have been a lot better by showing Superman completing things important to him), and Clark Kent letting Parasite kill guards rather than exposing his secret identity... seriously? You're dying, dude, if there's any time that's not important, it's this time. As a movie (which should have to set up things in advance and have them pay off), things like antagonists coming out of nowhere don't really work as well as they might in comics... Lex's secret ally, for example. I also didn't care for all the silver-age-loving moments of "I'm Superman, aren't I awesome, I create tiny suns out of my bare hands! And carve half a million-ton tools out of neutron star stuff and leave them on Earth). Anyway, I guess it was an enjoyable movie, but it's always depressing when I can SO easily see how it could be lots MORE enjoyable (to me, at least).
In the "commercials that are ticking me off" dept, there's a scratch-and-win lottery commercial. Basically, this woman is bungee jumping and shouts "I'd rather be playing Instant Keno!". Then, it cuts to her friend, who is getting suited up for her jump, and is scratching a card, and says, "That's great, but I'd rather be playing Instant Keno too."
NO. THAT DOES NOT WORK. You can say, "That's great. AND I'd rather be playing instant Keno too." Or you can look at the prospect of bungee jumping and say "Yeah, I'd rather be playing instant keno too." But the way you say it is just aggravating to some irrational part of me. It's like somebody saying, "Hey, I'm in the mood for tacos for dinner." and you replying, "That's great, but I'm in the mood for tacos for dinner!" The "That's great, but..." is a NEGATION of what they said. You don't say "That's great, but..." and then go on to AGREE.
Less annoying, but more amusing, is a Honey Nut Cheerio's Commercials with a song in the background with the following line in its chorus: "A Taste of Honey's Worse Than None At All".
...
You really want that to be on your commercial for Honey Nut Cheerios? If you wanted to use it at all, shouldn't it be in your commercial for REGULAR Cheerios?
Anyway, is there anything else going on in my life?
Not really. In a few weeks, my birthday, but that's nothing to celebrate. There is a chance I might pay off all my remaining student loans in one lump sum, rather than waiting a few more years and paying interest. It's actually doable, and while it's not a major improvement in my life, would at least feel good (and, after that initial hit to my finances, which I can weather easily at this point), would mean basically a hundred extra a month income (or, rather, that much less deducted automatically). The major concern is that they don't let you do it online, so I'll have to call somebody or possibly visit somewhere in person, and, well, I'm not good on the phone or in person, I have to work up some nerve for it.