Friday, August 31, 2007

The Subtle Knife

Last night I finished reading The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman. As with The Golden Compass I credit Amy with recommending it and I don’t want to write a real review yet. This is just my initial thoughts on finishing the book. These books don’t stand alone so they really should be taken as a whole. The usual spoiler warnings apply, especially if you haven’t read The Golden Compass.

I think I may have enjoyed The Subtle Knife more than The Golden Compass, although I didn’t think that I would at the beginning. I missed Lyra and Pan, but I got used to Will and his story fairly quickly. It seemed to be more tightly written to me, with less time spent on getting the story going, which is the luxury of a sequel I suppose. I enjoyed seeing Lyra start to mature though the book, although I don’t remember finding her particularly immature during The Golden Compass, she was irritating me in the first few chapters. It was character appropriate considering all that she’d just been through, but her lack of forethought, especially when compared to Will, was annoying.

It was good to spend more time with Lee Scoresby, but I was devastated when he died. Pullman did a wonderful job of writing his death scene; it was terribly sad and beautiful. I’ll miss him and Hester. I will be very upset if Lord Astriel does something evil with the knife after Grumman told Will to take it to him.

Speaking of Lord Astriel I can’t wait to see more of him. Is he good, evil, or morally ambiguous? My money is on the moral ambiguity. So many apparently good people seem to be rallying at his side, but I can’t forget that he had no qualms at killing Roger to get to the other world. I’m guessing Lyra won’t be able to forget that either.

The Specters are some of the most terrifying monsters I’ve experienced in a book. The scene when Lena Feldt went to spy on Mrs. Coulter and wound up being tortured was horrific. I’m still very interested in Mrs. Coulter and her horrible monkey. I’m pretty sure that she’ll have a hard time bringing herself to destroy Lyra, if she tries at all.

The expansion of the Dust lore was very interesting. I like the direction in which it’s going. I assume Dr. Malone will have more to do in The Amber Spyglass I want to see more about the Dark Matter / Dust theories.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

After Dachau

First of all I have to clarify that Stephen was possibly the one who recommended The City of Ember, or he at least had a hand in the recommendation, neither of us can remember. So in any case, thanks to Anji and Stephen for recommending and lending their jointly owned books.

Moving on, the next book on my list is After Dachau by Daniel Quinn, which was recommended to me by Jenny as we browsed at Barnes and Noble one afternoon mostly because they didn’t have a copy of Ishmael, which I still plan to read one of these days. I’m going to spoil the heck out of it, as usual, so normal spoiler warnings apply. I cannot in good conscience recommend this book to anyone, but if you’re going to read it don’t go past the spoiler warnings below as there are some pretty good surprises involved.

After Dachau takes place around the year 2000 A. D. A wealthy young man named Jason Tull, who is involved in an organization that investigates cases of reincarnation, meets a young woman named Mallory Hastings, who appears to have reverted to a previous life as a woman named Gloria MacArthur following a car accident. Jason gets to know Gloria to try and understand the mystery of her past. Spoilers!

When he learns that Gloria was African American he finally understand what is going on. A. D. in Jason’s time means After Dachau. The Nazis won World War II, after Hitler won the arms race, and exterminated not only all Jewish people, but all non-Aryans. Gloria was one of the last two in New York before she and her partner took their own lives to avoid being found over two thousand years before. Jason begins a quest to learn more about Gloria’s world, looking for the illegal books published before the war.

Jason’s activities are noticed by a family friend who is also a government agent. He kidnaps Jason and takes him to a remote location until he acknowledges three words, “No one cares.” Jason is not deterred and returns to New York to open a gallery to display non-Aryan art with Gloria, who is now his fiancé.

After Dachau is exactly the sort of book that I should love, it’s a reincarnation story about the Holocaust that takes place in a sort of dystopian world. When I was about halfway through I was ecstatic and planning on recommending it to everyone I knew and buying copies for everyone in my family (which is what I did after reading Life of Pi). Once I’d finished I only gave it to Clay, because I had to know if he agreed with me (he did). The book has some wonderful elements, the reincarnation stories at the beginning are fascinating and the scene when Jason asks a group of schoolgirls to explain the Holocaust to Gloria is perfect, but the book begins to go down hill when Jason is kidnapped. First of all, if no one cares then why on earth would there be a need to kidnap Jason to convince him that no one cares. That would indicate that someone must care but if the government, for example, does care, then why are they not shutting down the gallery? However, having it end with Jason planning to publish Anne Frank’s diary truly killed it for me. It took a smart commentary on the nature of history and reduced it to something a child could have written.

It’s a very short book so it doesn’t take long to get through and it might be worth reading for the excellent first half. I don’t really think anyone should be discouraged from reading a book they are interested in by someone else’s opinion. But I certainly won’t be clamoring for everyone I know to read it like I am with most everything else I read.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

The Golden Compass

I finished reading The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman this morning. First, credit goes to Amy for telling me about the books two years ago. It’s been a while, but I would certainly say that it was her recommendation that piqued my curiosity. I don’t want to write too much about it right now since it is the first book in a trilogy and I would rather treat them as a whole like I did with The City of Ember and The People of Sparks yesterday. Still I wanted to jot down at least a few things to organize my thoughts on the subject more than anything. *There will be spoilers so don’t keep reading if you don’t want to know.*

The Golden Compass is interesting because I really am not sure how to describe it. It takes place in an alternate world where all people are accompanied by a dæmon, which is an animal representation of the person’s soul. Adult’s dæmons are a particular animal, but children’s can change shapes until they are frozen around puberty. I’m impressed with Pullman’s ability to characterize the relationship between people and dæmons without leaning too much on exposition. Even the discussion Lyra has with a sailor about why dæmons must eventually take a particular shape doesn’t feel inorganic. The set up worked well enough to allow me to feel properly horrified when Lyra’s dæmon, Pantalaimon is nearly cut off.

I’m fascinated by the Dust and the philosophical and religious ideas hinted at by Lord Asriel’s explanation. Speaking of Lord Asriel, he and Mrs. Coulter are amazing characters and I can’t wait to see more of them in the next two books. I spent the whole book imagining Asriel as a benevolent father, even though I should have known better, and was pretty shocked by most of the last ten to twenty pages.

This is another book that should make a pretty good movie and has a phenomenal cast. I’m really looking forward to seeing what Daniel Craig does with Lord Asriel.

Now I'm going to go get started on The Subtle Knife!

Friday, August 24, 2007

The City of Ember and The People of Sparks

I’m writing about The City of Ember and The People of Sparks by Jeanne DuPrau together since they’re the two parts of one story. I want to thank Anji for recommending them and letting me borrow her copies. I love when people are enthusiastic enough about books to recommend them and I’m always looking for something new and interesting to read, especially when it comes complete with someone who’s already read it for discussion. I’m pretty compulsive about recommending books to people and always delighted when someone asks to borrow or picks up a book I suggested. I think it’s a pretty big complement when someone makes the effort to read a book based what you thought of it. That’s my long winded way of saying that I’m going to try to mention when someone recommended a book to me and that I always want to hear about it when someone else has read the same books I have. I guess I should add that Fingerprints of the Gods was both recommended and lent to me by Jenny, so thanks to her too.

The City of Ember is a dystopian young adult novel. I’m a huge fan of the dystopian genre and City of Ember is just the sort of thing I love. The story is about two children, Lina and Doon, who live in a city that is lit entirely by electric lights. Thing are getting scary in Ember because there have been blackouts due to problems with the generator and the stock of light bulbs is dwindling along with the other supplies. Lina finds a mysterious torn letter and asks Doon to help her figure out what it means. They interpret the letter and make some very startling discoveries. *I’m going to go ahead and spoil the ending here and talk about the plot of the sequel so don’t continue if you don’t want to know.*

They find out that Ember was built to be a temporary hiding place for a group of people chosen to ensure that the human race continues in the event of a “Disaster.” After 200 years the mayor was supposed to lead the people back above ground, but a corrupt mayor stole the box containing the critical information. They escape through the river and drop a message to let the remaining people know how to follow through a hole above the city.

The People of Sparks picks up right where The City of Ember leaves off, with Lina and Doon waiting to see if the note that they dropped was found and if anyone was able to escape. They are soon joined by those who were brave enough to leave and survived the journey through the river. The citizens of Ember walk until they find a small village called Sparks which has only recently begun to prosper following the Disaster that occurred 200 years ago. The inhabitants are reluctant to allow the refugees to stay as they already have a difficult time providing for themselves, but they do not feel that they can send them away to starve. Over time resentment grows between the two groups and Doon must attempt to avert all out war between the two groups.

I enjoyed The City of Ember tremendously, but was less enthusiastic about The People of Sparks. The City of Ember is very dark and the central mystery of who these people are and where they are is interesting and leads to a satisfying conclusion. At the beginning I thought I was in for an Anthem style, people being forced to do assigned jobs with no regard for their wishes, for the good of all, screw the individual type of book. However it quickly proved to be a much more complex comment on the folly of man and abuse of power. There are some coincidences that strained my suspension of disbelief a little, but all in all it’s very well written. The People of Sparks is not as dark and much more heavy handed. I often felt that I was being beaten over the head with an anti war sledgehammer. It was very reminiscent of Wesley’s “If drugs are bad then why do people take them?” scene from Star Trek TNG. War and prejudice are bad, I get it! I was also disappointed that there was no resolution for the question of Lina’s dreams of a grand city, which had been teased from the first book. Perhaps it represents the city they might build some day or the grandeur that was lost due to war, I really don’t know.

I’m interested to see how The City of Ember works as a movie. They’ve got a pretty impressive cast signed up. Who knows, I might even go see it.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Exploring a Fuzzy Keyboard


This is my desk buddy, de Soto. It's a bit fuzzy because I took this with the camera in my new phone. I obviously need more practice since the monitor and coffee cup are in focus, but not my poor manatee. However, I wanted to try out the micro memory card and adapter.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Fingerprints of the Gods

I had so much fun writing my thoughts about Lord of the Flies that I thought I'd go back and write about the other books I've read this year.

Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock documents the author’s attempts to find evidence that an advanced society existed long before conventional scientists believe. Whether one believes him or not, it is a fascinating look at many unexplained wonders of the ancient world. I had previously heard some things such as the evidence that the Sphinx is much older than it is generally dated (weathering of the stone that could only have come from copious amounts of water), but did not know about others, like the mapping of Antarctica. It was not an easy read, but I found it enjoyable. I was especially fascinated by the section on Egypt, which has been a particular interest of mine ever since I read an article about Egyptologists in 321 Contact when I was about nine.

I don’t know if I agree with his conclusions, but he makes many good points, especially about the structure and possible uses of the pyramids. I was pretty disturbed by what he has to say about global warming and the “end of the world.” The part about mammoths being flash frozen is a bit scary, especially when he’s talking about how the world is supposed to end in fire next time.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Monday, August 20, 2007

Strawberry Fields Forever

It's so generic and touristy, but I still really love it.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

I'm a sucker for sunset pictures

Lord of the Flies

I finished reading Lord of the Flies by William Golding this afternoon. I already knew a fair amount about the story mostly thanks to Stephen King, but also just because of various references and parodies, like the one on The Simpsons that inspired me to go ahead and read it. So I came into it knowing that Piggy was done for and that the boys would get rescued in the end. Anyway, I enjoyed the story although I found that occasionally I had trouble following the descriptions. I have to wonder if maybe this was on purpose, because of the surreal nature of the story. I was frustrated with the actions of Jack and his followers, which reminded me so vividly of the realities of being a kid. Every time Piggy accused the other boys of “acting like kids” I remembered being in elementary school and being so frustrated with the immaturity of so many of the other people kids. I would probably have been similarly ostracized when I was 12.

There is a short afterward by E. L. Epstein in the edition I have (1959 paperback published by Capricorn Books) that includes a quote from Golding’s description of the themes of the book that I found interesting. “The theme is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature. The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable. The whole book is symbolic in nature except the rescue in the end where adult life appears, dignified and capable, but in reality enmeshed in the same evil as the symbolic life of the children on the island. The officer, having interrupted a man-hunt, prepares to take the children off the island in a cruiser which will presently be hunting its enemy in the same implacable way. And who will rescue the adult and his cruiser?” If that’s not food for thought I don’t know what is.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

The Riverside Church Angel

This is one of my favorite pictures. If someone asked me to show them my top three photographs this would certainly be one of them.