Well, I saw Django Unchained yesterday and, I suspect, I won’t need to see any movies for a while. Well, I *AM* intruiged by the upcoming Tom Cruise “Oblivion” film. (When in the heck did Tom Cruise become the Big Science Fiction Action Star?)
Oh, and I saw the trailer for A Good Day to Die Hard. I reckon it’ll take wild horses to keep me away from that.
Fixing to go out to breakfast with Maribou and to run a handful of weekend errands and, while we wait for our eggs, I’ll be reading American Gods some more. (I must have some weird situational amnesia because I keep forgetting how good Gaiman is at creating night terrors. I think I have him categorized in my head as a PoMo Theologian so when he writes horror, I keep getting taken aback.)
So… what are you reading and/or watching?
Hey great minds think alike I am reading American Gods right now while I keep waiting, and waiting on the library to get Sandman back in
I finished Gaiman’s Anansi Boys a couple of days ago, and I enjoyed it, so perhaps I should try American Gods. We’ll see. I’m reading Bared to You right now because it was a birthday gift.
I think Cruise is throwing everything he has at the wall and trying to make something stick. It has presumably occurred to him that more people think he’s creepy than think he’s hot now.
I’m halfway through my re-read of Eye of the World. Since its been about 5 years since I last read it, it’s interesting to compare the characters to the people they become in later books.
I re-read all of them early last year so, that the books would be fresh in my memory for the last one. I have started it this weekend.
It is interesting to see how the people have changed over the books. I have a few friends that gave up on the series because of how slow the character developement is, but it is amazing the differences between them from book one to now. Also, when a major change happens to them, it feels much more important and exciting than in many other books I read.
Yes the development is quite obvious when going from reading book 13 1 year ago to reading book 1 today. In retrospect, I should have started my re-read sooner. As it stands It’ll probably be July before I get to book 14. I guess I’ll have to put a few days into reading 3-4 books the next time I take a week off.
Reading Alfred Bester’s other mainstream novel Tender Loving Rage. It’s very similar to Who He:
* Both set in Manhattan (though in the 60s, not the 50s)
* Lots of smart-aleck dialogue
* One of the main male characters is a successful hotshot who’s running away from his humble background
* The main female character is improbably gorgeous
* Bar bs gur znva punenpgref’ fhopbafpvbhf vf fnobgntvat uvzfrys, yvxr va Gur Qrzbyvfurq Zna.
If Bester had a chief weakness, it’s that he believed in Freudianism the way C S Lewis believed in Christianity.
http://www.bazillionpoints.com/black-women-in-heavy-metal/
it’s pretty good so far – i think the editing is a bit choppy – but the kindle edition was messed up on my phone. i’ve always enjoyed the essays she’s posted to invisible oranges.
Just finished The Letter Q (which was excellent), almost done with Mo Yan’s epic Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out (yes, yes they are), and eyeing both Smoking Seventeen and Hex Appeal as sources of, well, mindless diversion.
Still working on Bones, watching-wise – think I’m up to season 6 now? Oh, and I loved Les Mis, and I was delighted by the popcorn-quotient of John Carter.
I saw Django Unchained a few days ago. The film was okay, really picked up speed when DiCaprio had his big scene at the dinner table. THAT was good filmmaking. The rest was a pastiche of Peckinpah liberally peppered with racial epithets.
To Tarantino’s credit, no extended scenes focusing on Uma Thurman’s feets.
The scene where the movie changed for me was the private conversation between Sam and Leo in the library. “Uh-oh”, I thought.
I forgot, did you get to the ifirit taxi driver chapter in American Gods?
Was there a purpose to this scene beyond the obvious?
We just had a potato and borscht (with sour cream!) with the three sisters.
And I realized that it has been too long since I’ve had a decent bowl of borscht. (They had good borscht in Michigan, of all places, but I haven’t found any decent borscht here yet.)
I have started the last book in the Wheel of Time series, A Menory of Light. I never thought I was going to get and ending. So, excited.
*snickers* yeah, I know da guy who talked Jordan’s wife into releasing these now, not later.
I did not realise she needed convincing. What were her reasons for not?
Wait a few years, make more money.
The advice was “strike while the iron’s hot”
(fitting, when you recall how detailed Jordan’s research into bladesmithery was)
With all of the talk about Django Unchained, I decided I should finally watch Inglourious Basterds. I was expecting a lot more violence. I only had the vaguest notion of the plot, which almost always makes for a better movie. Was I the only one who did not care for Brad Pitt’s attempt at a southern accent? He grated on me for the entire movie, and I do not think it was intentionally bad.
For reading, I finished Ender’s Shadow for a book discussion group I started with some coworkers, and I started on Crucible of Gold.
I have not decided if I will try to make my way through The Wheel of Time. I read the first three several years ago, but never got back to the series. I know it will be a huge commitment to get through all 14 (?) books. So much reading, so little time.
Honestly? I wouldn’t bother. Jordan writes like a physicist. Better to play an RPG of his world than to actually read that many books.
I’m not I’d bother if I were you, the series hits the doldrums for several books in the middle. It picks up a lot when Brandon Sanderson takes over, but that’s at book 12.
My advice (if you haven’t done it already) is to read Sanderson’s original work. The Mistborn books, and the first book of The Stormlight Archive in particular.