OMG
CANIS HAVE YOU SEEN THE LATEST TSUBASA CHAPTERS
IT'S CLOVER + LOVELESS
FOR THE WIN.
And I feel like if I post a spam entry, the world will end, so here, have some reviews.
Ursula K. LeGuin, Earthsea
I said so much about this book when I hadn't read it that I'm almost afraid to say anything now that I have. But hey! It's just potential embarrassment, and when have I ever let that stop me before?
I was wrong about Le Guin's style. It's not at all preachy or lecturing (not in this book anyway). It is poetic, in a way I couldn't get over. ^^; Usually I sublimate an author's style about a third the way into a book -- if I get that far -- and afterwards I don't notice it. With Le Guin stuff like unusual (formal but not stilted) word order was still noticeable on the last page. It was distracting, but not annoying or difficult, so in the end neither a plus nor a minus.
Now race. What I thought was really neat was that the brown people are allowed to be people -- good people, bad people, ignorant people, wise people, all kinds of people without the burden of a larger value judgment. But white people are always and inescapably white, and everything about them is explained in reference to their whiteness. You can say that's just reversal, and not very progressive, but actually it's very progressive, because it calls attention to something that goes on all the time but that a lot of people don't notice goes on. Anyway I've heard that later books in the series, having established this paradigm, go on to deconstruct it a bit.
Where the book really fails is in the mythology being so abstract/generic. I realize LeGuin is trying to avoid specifics that are tied up with racist or elitist values, and that this is NOT easy. But at the same time, the non-specificity of Earthsea's belief system bothered me. The dark struggles against the light for the minds of men, but what's important is the balance, "Equilibrium". From the land of twilight comes man's shadow-self, the nameless gebbeth. Etc. There's no texture, it's bland.
Also that scene, with Vetch's sister Yarrow, in chapter nine. I have to admit I giggled like a maniac over the meat pies -- but this was as much relief at finally having some comic relief as anything, because that scene was pretty lame. XD; it's funny because it's this typical fantasy snark dialog done in LeGuin's oh-so-serious style.
I would never have had the patience to read this as a child. XD; but maybe there are children who can manage it. I think I could have stood it if someone had read it to me out loud. In any case I am committed to reading the rest of the series. (More in comments.)
A Scanner Darkly
What a banal, torturous, terrifying movie. Keanu Reeves stars as an undercover narcotics agent/drug addict with "barely two brain cells left to rub together; the rest scrambled connections, misfired neurons, and short-circuits." (In other words, perfecting casting XD.) He's so undercover, even his superiors don't know which of five dealers he is -- and, by the end of the movie, neither does he.
As explained by our not-quite-as paranoid and drug-addled neighbor, who brought the movie over, the thematic focus of A Scanner Darkly is society's schizophrenic approach to hard drug use: condemnation of abusers coupled with simultaneous support of suppliers. Only, his explanation was "It's not just the movie, this is actually true, and I can prove it." Aha. Well, it is true that the U.S. government is responsible for the warlords of Afghanistan, who provide most of the world's opium, and this is not an isolated incident. Also, if you replace "hard drugs" with "prescription drugs", you can make a case for the kind of corrupt, for-profit exploitation of consumers by corporations (with state support) featured in A Scanner Darkly. (I can imagine falxumbra reading this entry, shaking her head, going: No, S, the world is not actually like that. All I can say is that sometimes it actually is. Though not the way our neighbor would have it -- that guy is seriously unhinged.)
All of this is fascinating, maybe, and the movie is intricately constructed, with parallels all over the place. Reeves is paranoid, but also an undercover agent ordered to place himself under constant surveillance possibly leading to his own arrest. He's schizophrenic, but also working for a company that treats addicts of "D" on the one hand and grows it on the other. And so on. Problem is, the movie saves the SF stuff for the last twenty minutes. The hour before that is pretty much these four guys having the most horrifyingly boring drugged-out conversations (and terrifyingly cliche hallucinations). Neighbor says and my mother confirms that this is an accurate representation people on speed or dope or meth or LSD, but who really cares when these scenes go on, and on, and on, and on. For an hour. Pure torture.
Specialized pronunciation meme! Occasionally on the internet you run across phrases you may never use offline -- that don't even have meaning offline. How do you pronounce these things?
XD
"ecks-dee"
*g*
"gee" or I just grin
AUGH
aahhhhhhhhhhhhh with a guttural stop at the end
m/m
"male male"
orz
"oars"
yaoi
"yow eee"
meme
"mem" (yes I know it's meem. mem is easier to say)
meta
"I met a baseball player the other day..."
I'm probably forgetting a few. Anyway this brought on by Certain Meta Posts and the realization that I wouldn't have gotten "slash" from Kirk/Spock because I wouldn't have pronounced the slash.
IT'S CLOVER + LOVELESS
FOR THE WIN.
And I feel like if I post a spam entry, the world will end, so here, have some reviews.
Ursula K. LeGuin, Earthsea
I said so much about this book when I hadn't read it that I'm almost afraid to say anything now that I have. But hey! It's just potential embarrassment, and when have I ever let that stop me before?
I was wrong about Le Guin's style. It's not at all preachy or lecturing (not in this book anyway). It is poetic, in a way I couldn't get over. ^^; Usually I sublimate an author's style about a third the way into a book -- if I get that far -- and afterwards I don't notice it. With Le Guin stuff like unusual (formal but not stilted) word order was still noticeable on the last page. It was distracting, but not annoying or difficult, so in the end neither a plus nor a minus.
Now race. What I thought was really neat was that the brown people are allowed to be people -- good people, bad people, ignorant people, wise people, all kinds of people without the burden of a larger value judgment. But white people are always and inescapably white, and everything about them is explained in reference to their whiteness. You can say that's just reversal, and not very progressive, but actually it's very progressive, because it calls attention to something that goes on all the time but that a lot of people don't notice goes on. Anyway I've heard that later books in the series, having established this paradigm, go on to deconstruct it a bit.
Where the book really fails is in the mythology being so abstract/generic. I realize LeGuin is trying to avoid specifics that are tied up with racist or elitist values, and that this is NOT easy. But at the same time, the non-specificity of Earthsea's belief system bothered me. The dark struggles against the light for the minds of men, but what's important is the balance, "Equilibrium". From the land of twilight comes man's shadow-self, the nameless gebbeth. Etc. There's no texture, it's bland.
Also that scene, with Vetch's sister Yarrow, in chapter nine. I have to admit I giggled like a maniac over the meat pies -- but this was as much relief at finally having some comic relief as anything, because that scene was pretty lame. XD; it's funny because it's this typical fantasy snark dialog done in LeGuin's oh-so-serious style.
I would never have had the patience to read this as a child. XD; but maybe there are children who can manage it. I think I could have stood it if someone had read it to me out loud. In any case I am committed to reading the rest of the series. (More in comments.)
A Scanner Darkly
What a banal, torturous, terrifying movie. Keanu Reeves stars as an undercover narcotics agent/drug addict with "barely two brain cells left to rub together; the rest scrambled connections, misfired neurons, and short-circuits." (In other words, perfecting casting XD.) He's so undercover, even his superiors don't know which of five dealers he is -- and, by the end of the movie, neither does he.
As explained by our not-quite-as paranoid and drug-addled neighbor, who brought the movie over, the thematic focus of A Scanner Darkly is society's schizophrenic approach to hard drug use: condemnation of abusers coupled with simultaneous support of suppliers. Only, his explanation was "It's not just the movie, this is actually true, and I can prove it." Aha. Well, it is true that the U.S. government is responsible for the warlords of Afghanistan, who provide most of the world's opium, and this is not an isolated incident. Also, if you replace "hard drugs" with "prescription drugs", you can make a case for the kind of corrupt, for-profit exploitation of consumers by corporations (with state support) featured in A Scanner Darkly. (I can imagine falxumbra reading this entry, shaking her head, going: No, S, the world is not actually like that. All I can say is that sometimes it actually is. Though not the way our neighbor would have it -- that guy is seriously unhinged.)
All of this is fascinating, maybe, and the movie is intricately constructed, with parallels all over the place. Reeves is paranoid, but also an undercover agent ordered to place himself under constant surveillance possibly leading to his own arrest. He's schizophrenic, but also working for a company that treats addicts of "D" on the one hand and grows it on the other. And so on. Problem is, the movie saves the SF stuff for the last twenty minutes. The hour before that is pretty much these four guys having the most horrifyingly boring drugged-out conversations (and terrifyingly cliche hallucinations). Neighbor says and my mother confirms that this is an accurate representation people on speed or dope or meth or LSD, but who really cares when these scenes go on, and on, and on, and on. For an hour. Pure torture.
Specialized pronunciation meme! Occasionally on the internet you run across phrases you may never use offline -- that don't even have meaning offline. How do you pronounce these things?
XD
"ecks-dee"
*g*
"gee" or I just grin
AUGH
aahhhhhhhhhhhhh with a guttural stop at the end
m/m
"male male"
orz
"oars"
yaoi
"yow eee"
meme
"mem" (yes I know it's meem. mem is easier to say)
meta
"I met a baseball player the other day..."
I'm probably forgetting a few. Anyway this brought on by Certain Meta Posts and the realization that I wouldn't have gotten "slash" from Kirk/Spock because I wouldn't have pronounced the slash.