PKD

After i got home after watching the Superbowl i finished the last couple chapters of Martian Time-Slip by Philip K Dick. It's a 60's sci-fi novel set on Mars, which has been pretty lackadaisically colonized. The novel starts off so mundane; we follow a few characters about their daily lives. Jack Bohlen is a repairman making his rounds. I thought for a while that the time slip was literally going to be his time card for work! His father Leo is traveling to Mars to buy land that Jack thinks will be worthless. Jack is also struggling with a returning schizophrenic episode. During all this he meets Arnie Kott, the leader of a Union community. Arnie wants to learn the future and has decided that an autistic boy, Manfred Steiner, can see the future. He hires Jack to make contact with the boy to get information or make changes to the past.

The setting is so weird. It really seems to be a Western or could have taken place in rural Australia as it was colonized. The science of Mars is all wrong of course; one character makes a living smuggling foods to Mars by rocket! The expenses would be so enormous that there's no way that would work, even with much faster travel I think Dick just sets it on Mars to help it qualify as sci-fi for his readership. It wasn't bad at all but not what i was expecting. a 5 from me.

awww yeah!

Great game all around! Loved seeing the camera cut to Manning on the sideline in the second and third quarters looking all pouty. i was a little concerned in the first quarter but after that i got confident. unfortunately i still bit all my fingernails off. ouch! I love that for once i don't have to say "well, maybe next year..." it was great that i suddenly got half a dozen text messages from my family down there. Hope one of them gets me an authentic New Orleans Saints NFL Champion tee shirt for me! black please! I can't imagine how much fun Mardi Gras is going to be this year. Geaux Saints!

Last of the Books I Finished on My Snow Day

So the final book i finished Saturday was The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch by Neil Gaiman and Michael Zulli. This one was a Christmas gift from B. It's a beautiful hardcover graphic novel.

I had actually read this as a short story before in one of Gaiman's collections but didn't realize it until about halfway through. The story starts as the end, as three friends are discussing what they should do about a fourth person's disappearance. We then travel back and hear how the fourth person, named Miss Finch by our narrator, departed. The three people get roped into entertaining Miss Finch, a bio-geologist, for an evening. Before going to get sushi, they head to an underground circus in London. It's more of a geek show, with various magic tricks and macabre acts. When the abrasive Miss Finch gets picked to have her heart's desire come true, things get even more strange.

The art was really lovely. Apparently Michael Zulli has drawn for Sandman and his work did look familiar. This one is a 6. I think a Sandman reread is in store for me in the next few weeks; i read a theory on EW about LOST (starting up tonight!) that linked back to the Sandman series.

Hobbit Reread

Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.

I don't know how many times i've read The Hobbit. maybe a dozen times? a few years ago i read a big illustrated version when i went home to my parents for a week, just because it was there. i know i have listened to the audiobook at least twice too. B and i were discussing childhood books and we both followed the same pattern: read The Hobbit and loved it, tried LOTR and couldn't understand it, then came back to LOTR a couple years later and loved it. The Hobbit is so accessible, especially to youngsters. Bilbo is small, not physically strong, who wants comfort and peace. Kids can relate to being underestimated and scared in a big bad world and seeing another small, scared person overcome makes you think maybe you can too. I love the ending. Most stories would end with the Battle of Five Armies ending, Bilbo being a hero and getting lots of treasure. Not this one though. Bilbo goes home. He returns to his journey's beginning, older and wiser, with treasures bigger than the gold in his sacks. Of course this is a 7.

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations.

The Club Dumas

I know i've read something by Arturo Perez-Reverte before. I believe i read the first Captain Alatriste novel in 2006, in the fall. The reason i am pretty sure is that was when R first got the news that he'd be having surgery and i remember sitting in a waiting room, staring at the same page and not being able to remember much.

One of the books i finished on my snow day was The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte. This is a very twisty sort of novel, complex. Lucas Corso is a rare book go-to guy. He finds books for collectors, negotiates deals, has books authenticated and, if an owner is unwilling to sell to a motivated buyer, he is able to arrange that the book becomes available, without doing the dirty work himself. He gets two assignments: a friend wants him to authenticate a handwritten chapter of The Three Musketeers and a rich client wants him to find which of three copies of a book, The Book of Nine Doors, is the real one. Several characters seem to Corso to have come straight out of The Three Musketeers. As people die, the intrigue ramps up; there are clues and red herrings, complications and coincidences, demonology, angels, and lots and lots of book knowledge.

Corso is a smart guy but world-weary and lonely. He has a random sexual encounter which makes him look terrible to a female reader. After he meets Irene Adler, his self-appointed bodyguard, we get a lot of Corso's softer side as he thinks about his feelings for her and reminisces over his lost love, Nikon. I ended up rooting for him and feeling very protective by the end.

You know, i learned something today. Because of comments Corso makes, I looked up what a "second-level reader" was and learned about the Reader-Response school of literary criticism. Cribbed from Wikipedia "Reader-response theory recognizes the reader as an active agent who imparts "real existence" to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation. Reader-response criticism argues that literature should be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates his or her own, possibly unique, text-related performance". so the same book may mean different things to different people at different times? All quite interesting. I know i've got a literary theory book around here somewhere...

I really liked this book. a 6. Other Opinions: BiblioHistoria, BookShelves of Doom, The Reading Life, We Be Reading.

Weekly Geeks 2010-4

I had intended to write a post today about our lovely weather. The fact that it ties in with Weekly Geeks is just lagniappe! Now, to those midwesterners or Yankees that are used to this, feel free to point and laugh, but understand that this is the most snow Nashville has gotten in exactly 7 years. Jan 16, 2003 we got snow like this (i only know the date because the following day is D's birthday) but not more than an inch or two at a time since then.

so, we were supposed to get ice yesterday morning, then switching to 3-6 inches of snow. when i woke up at about 7:30 nothing had started and i figured the snow was a bust again. then, lying on my couch watching Sportscenter, i noticed it had started snowing. by about 1 pm things looked like this
Then at about 5 we'd gotten hereIt just kept going and going, then around 1 i heard a weird noise. it was a plow! I've never seen one in action.
At about that time the weather switched over to the ice we were supposed to be getting first. Here's how much of that we ended up with, on top of the snow.
my poor car, very aerodynamic, but lower visibility now!
snow is lovely thoughmy birdfeeder has been quite popular this morning as well, some visitors have been queuing up on the porch.
the other bit we were to talk about was books we like in the winter as well as show our reading area. Here's where i've been the last day and a half
i have liquids, blankie, tissues, variety of reading material and the computer is for music. When i take a break i've got the tv for sports/movies. I've watched The Dark Knight, Watchmen, Wolverine and am working on The Two Towers now. I've also managed to play some Wii Fit (thanks for letting me borrow it B) and took a nice walk.

as for reading particular things during winter, i think i've said before that i don't notice much change in my reading habits over the course of the year.

an aside, a piece that gives B more proof that soccer is better than football.

Can You Forgive Her?

I thought Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope was going to be my 101st book from the 1001 list, thereby pushing me to 10% read. Unfortunately, i'm still at 9.99999999% read. So close! This review may be a little spoilery so you're warned!

Alice Vavasor is a young woman who is engaged to a man really too good to be true, John Grey. Several years before Alice had "an understanding" with her cousin George (really her cousin, their fathers were brothers) but she broke off with him because he was still too wild. Alice takes a vacation with George and his sister Kate, during which she decides John is too good for her and she cannot make him happy, so she breaks up with him. Alice definitely suffers from some self-esteem problems.

At one point Alice gives her cousin George money to run for Parliament, about 1000 pounds. Various characters go on about how much money that amount is and i decided to look it up the conversion to today's dollars. I felt it was going to be about 10, maybe 15 thousand US dollars today. I was quite surprised when i discovered Alice gave George about $250,000! No wonder her father was so upset.

There are two other women who's lives we follow, Alice's Aunt Greenow, who married a very rich older man who rapidly made her a very rich widow, and Alice's other cousin Lady Glencora, a very young, rich heiress who's relatives influenced her to not marry her love, a rake Burgo Fitzgerald, and instead to marry Plantagenet Palliser, a stolid politician. I actually liked both of their stories better than Alice's. The choices available to women were so restricted, so prescribed, is it any wonder that Kate stays unmarried and independent?

A 5 from me. It was long but overall i did enjoy it. Next week I'll be starting Phineas Finn by Trollope for the same classics group and that one will for sure count on the 1001 list!

changing topics now, sorry! here's an article i completely agree with. Looting is when a conquering army takes stuff they don't need from the conquered people. An example: as much as i love the Band Of Brother series, they do a lot of looting in those last couple episodes. in an emergency situation, taking food, water, or other basic supplies is scavenging, or being resourceful, or commandeering. it isn't stealing and it isn't wrong. If there's some sort of mass disaster i'm not going to give a damn about my mp3 player or my cute shoes. if i'm dead or gone i'd be perfectly fine with someone raiding my apartment for canned goods and blankets, spare cash and candles. if it's cold let them burn all my books. Human lives are more important than things. why are governments able to get guys with guns into an area to protect things when they can't get water, food, and rescuers into the same areas?