Category: Books

was it hell?

Monday, 23 June, 2008 at 12:42 am

I found out about Jodi Picoult’s The Tenth Circle from one of the Borders e-mails. I was intrigued; a novel with comics in it? And the story seemed interesting, from the preview available online.

I bought it, read it, and was not impressed. The ending was disappointing. I was expecting more of a resolution I suppose, I don’t really remember. (Read it when, summer of last year?) Found out recently that it’s one of the author’s less stellar works, and that I should read some other title that I’m not really interested in looking into.

Also found out that quite a few people didn’t like the comics part of the book. I thought that was the best part! That, and the father character was the most interesting. I didn’t care about the mom or the daughter much. Blah.

After I finished reading it I decided to do what I always do with books I didn’t get much out of: stick it on the shelf and try reading it again sometime later. But now, I don’t think I can read it again. x_x So I’m just giving it away and writing this post about it.

(I really like the comics! :P)

all that jazz?

Tuesday, 17 June, 2008 at 12:56 am

I decided to start a new entry [from the “exactly relative sizes” one], since the last one went longer than I expected. (Why do I always do that?!)

Next up … I can’t remember the order. ._. I’ll just go with Burt’s Bees Beeswax lip balm.

I saw this ad in a Vanity Fair issue (I bought it for a class, but I can’t recall which one) decrying lip balms for using petroleum-based ingredients, and to make sure what you put on your lips is all-natural and not refined rotted dinosaur remains. I don’t remember what product the ad was for. But it definitely hit a mark.

I decided, since I needed more lip balm, to try a natural one, i.e. Burt’s Bees Beeswax. I saw it at Target, right next to Chapstick. The Burt’s was about a quarter more than the Chapstick, so I was questioning the au naturale ideas in my head, especially since there were three Chapsticks in one package, and only one of the Burt’s — pay less for triple the product? Very tempting. But I decided to not be cheap and try the Burt’s at least once.

I have to say I’m disappointed. The Burt’s gives my lips this cold tingly feeling , which I do not want. (Apparently other customers like it though…)

Hmm … it appears that it was a good thing I waited to write this up, because the info on the Skin Deep: Cosmetics Safety Database changed since I last looked at it. Chapstick lip balm now looks more harmful than Burt’s Bees Beeswax lip balm. Huh. (And oh hay look, white petrolatum in the Chapstick!!1)

Well, natural lip balms at places like Lush cost too much for me (and I never like having to touch lip balm to apply it — don’t they advise not touching your face because of the bacteria on your hands?), and Chapstick seems out (unless I can find this Chapstick all natural version), so I don’t know what to go for next. But that won’t be for a while. I can count all the lip balms I’ve had in my life on one hand; most of them were freebies.

Next item, 3Musketeers Mint. I saw commercials for this starting Christmas of last year? 3Musketeers is probably my favorite candy bar. It doesn’t mean I absolutely love it, but most of the time I’d accept eating one, which is better than what I can say about other bars. So when I saw the mint, I wanted to try it.

I found it in the checkout line at Albertson’s here, so of course I grabbed it. When I got home, I realized it’s smaller than the normal 3Musketeers bar, and it’s packaged with two bars, half the size of a regular one. Slight disappointment there, but maybe mint costs more or something, I’d forgive them for that.

When I bit into it though, it wasn’t that great. Maybe my expectations were too high. I think I expected something like a York Peppermint Patty. But the 3Musketeers Mint isn’t as sweet. It’s okay. I probably won’t buy it again. But I’d accept it if someone offered it to me. *grin*

The really rad thing about it though, the main reason why I’m talking about it at all, is the packaging. XD First, 3Musketeers Mint wrapping in normal lighting. It’s got that normal metallic look that the 3Musketeers bar has, right? Then, 3Musketeers Mint wrapping while backlit. Whoa! Transparent wrapper! XD It’s not a good quality photo, because in real life the nutrition facts can be read while backlit. mreh.

Now, I read Wil Wheaton’s post about Scarlett Johansson’s album a while ago … whenever it was first posted. I had no idea what type of music she’d done, but I know generally I don’t share Wil’s taste in music. (I’m more pop and mainstream, although I enjoy rock and a bit of indie music.)

Her album really surprised me though. I thought she’d be doing the normal pop album. I never expected the music that I heard. (I’m no music guru, so I have no idea what style or genre it is or anything.) There are a few songs on there I don’t enjoy, but for the most part, I would buy the album if it cost me $10 or so. (Hm, maybe I should buy the mp3s on Amazon.)

It’s got a nice atmosphere to the music. Not something I’d want to listen to every day like The Cardigans, but in the right mood it would be the best music. Like Lily Chou-Chou! *grins*

So I finished reading Garth Nix’s Across the Wall … a long while ago. I loved it! I read someone’s comment that it’s not as good as the Old Kingdom Trilogy. Well of course. The Old Kingdom spans over three books, you really get to get into the world and into the characters and into the stories.

Across the Wall is a collection of short stories. Short stories are, well short. There’s no time for development and evolution. It’s just a quick event that introduces a new idea and makes you (well, me at least) think about the world differently. I thought Garth Nix was incredibly imaginative with these stories. (I love short stories, by the way. Got introduced to them properly by Neil Gaiman. Read some of Roald Dahl’s adult short stories. I need to own them!)

Garth Nix was so good that I want to read The Once and Future King. I never thought I’d pick that up. Daddy owns a copy (an ooold copy). I never was interested in King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. But Garth Nix has piqued my interest … as any good author should do.

Those are my reviews. The first two were written June 6th; I’m finishing this June 17th.

The remark I made earlier about gas … well the Monday before I saw gas was $4.33. I thought of filling up, but meh I was lazy and as I always do when I’m lazy, I thought I’d wait to see if the price would go down. The next day, Tuesday, I drove by the station again and the price was $4.44. I was so gobsmacked that I didn’t even consider buying gas.

I guess I should have though. I ended up buying four gallons on the 13th to make it home to L.A. where gas is guaranteed to be at least five cents cheaper (oh big whoop, five cents…) and had to pay $4.69 per gallon. Augh.

That ends my collection of little reviews and thoughts.

get me a Kindle!

Friday, 30 May, 2008 at 12:36 am

I am avoiding reading the paper my teacher wrote and assigned us to read in lieu of class and lab this week—it’s on estimating and “job costing,” whatever that is. 39 lovely pages on guessing how much it’ll cost to print something!

Instead my mind keeps wandering to Amazon’s Kindle. (I’m reading 39 pages in PDF format on an LCD laptop screen, is that such a surprise?)

*insert vinyl record scratching sound here*

Okay so this draft has been sitting here since April 27. Figured I should either do something with it or trash it, since it’s not going to improve with age or anything. April 27th … that was one hot weekend, very uncomfortable (85° in the shade, anyone?), otherwise I probably would have finished this. Or not started it at all. Oh well.

When I first heard of this Kindle thing (from Neil Gaiman’s blog) I was not interested at all. I’m not into reading books on screen. (Lately I’m having trouble reading lots of things on screen, and it’s not just poorly styled text on sites … I’m getting old. Or I need new glasses. Going way off topic here.)

My teacher mentioned in class (talking while we were working — common thing — I love random knowledge my teachers add) that the Kindle wasn’t a backlit screen, that it acted more like paper does, reflecting light. That piqued my interest, so I looked more into this Kindle thing. Watched Neil’s interview thing on Amazon. Recall isn’t that great, and I’m too lazy to rewatch it, so the only comment I have now is that I really love reading books, those bound things of paper and ink.

I love holding the books (or laying them out in my lap/on the table/on the bed if they’re big enough), I love turning the pages, I love using my pinky to hold the next page so I can quickly turn the page and not break into the action too much.

I pay entirely too much attention to where I am on a screen, how far from the top or bottom the line I’m reading is, how much farther until I scroll down. That’s a part of my personality though, I think. A bit too Monk-ish. (From the tv show…) I know fairly accurately how far the screen will scroll down if I hit the page down button, if I use the down arrow button, or if I click the scrollbar down a page. I know where the line I’m currently reading will end up (hidden or right at the top of the screen). I’m aware of where the paragraph breaks are, how to manipulate the two buttons and the scrollbar to make the paragraph break end up at the very bottom of the page.

I’m aware of where my arrow cursor is in relation to the paragraphs and the breaks. I will scroll up or down so that the arrow is at the same level as a paragraph. (Draw horizontal lines out from the top and bottom of paragraphs, and my arrow will fit within them.)

So I think Neil is wrong there. I will always be aware that I’m reading a book on a screen. (Yes, all that weirdness had a point. I didn’t just go off into gonzo space.) I don’t know if I could be comfortable holding the Kindle for long periods of time.

Despite all that, I’d like a Kindle to play with. Just because it’s new technology and I want to try it out. :3 I’m such a brat.

But then later I heard of another e-reader thing, made by iRex Technologies. This one has 16 levels of grey (versus Kindle’s 4), Wacom technology, and can read PDFs (although Neil surmises that the Kindle was having problems dealing with PDF during testing and they took the capability out until it could be fixed…). Ooh, I want, I want!

But Amazon’s wireless ebook store is tempting … I’m not quite sure how other e-readers get the books. Go dumbing down of technology!

worth her weight in gold, but not in typography

Sunday, 11 May, 2008 at 2:24 pm

I finished reading Thousand Pieces of Gold the other day. The story was all right. A bit short in parts. I had to get used to how the book would jump spans of time. No, I’m still not sure I got used to it in the end. But it wasn’t too bad.

Polly Bemis’ story is so incredibly heartbreaking. It’s amazing, all that she went through, and she just kept going. (Well I guess you don’t have any other choice, if you don’t die…)

I don’t know though. The story seems lacking, somehow. I know, being a “biographical novel,” that it tells Polly’s life story, but in a way that makes it more story-ish. But it doesn’t really feel like either a biography or a novel. The beginning started well, the whole thing seemed fairly contiguous, but after being sold to the lady the story got more disjointed and jumped more and more from event to event.

I’ll just have to keep the book and try reading it again at a later time. Like I do with all books that don’t wow me. (The only book I got rid of after reading only once, or not even once, I couldn’t even finish it, was Mary, Called Magdalene. I expected it to be at least as good as Song of the Magdalene, by Donna Jo Napoli, if not better, considering the author, Margaret George, said she did research for her historical novel. But once I read that Mary supposedly heard an iconic idol talk to her, the book just went waaay downhill from there. I stopped reading at Jesus’ crucifixion.)

One part I found interesting, was Polly having to confine her body into special bindings. First her golden lotus, binding her feet so they were smaller. It made me think about other cultures where women had to change their body shape to conform to standards of beauty.

I don’t know much about other cultures and their histories (I am so ignorant. *hangs head*), so the only thing I could think of was corsets in western society. With the golden lotus, girls and women were limited in mobility, relying on servants to move them from place to place. With the corset, the women were free to move of their own accord, although I’m sure they couldn’t run away if their life depended on it. But it did restrict their lung capacity, and fainting couches were commonly used for when they couldn’t get enough oxygen.

And now? In western society women will starve themselves to look like models. I think that’s the most detrimental to health, no? We haven’t gotten much better. And in China leg lengthening surgeries are performed, where legs are broken and slowly stretched to grow more bone mass. Then there are those eyelid glue products in Japan (and other far east countries? I don’t really know) where you have to jab a stick into your eyelid just to get that eyelid line. I don’t know if there are any bad long-term effects with that though.

But back to Polly. Later, while she was still in China, it was mentioned that her mom gave her a bodice that would flatten her chest. I’d never heard of that before, and wondered why that would be a standard of beauty.—Although in Japan, with the kimono and the obi and everything, they had women looking like logs as well. I just don’t get it. But then I do live in a time when “bigger is better”…

Then even later in Thousand Pieces of Gold, Polly had to wear a corset! The unfairness of life! Going from one confinement (which she never quite got over—her feet had been bound for too long before they were unbound, and never fully regained their mobility) to another. I wonder if she willingly wore the corset after she got out of slavery, or choose not to, or felt she had to in order to fit in with other midwesterners.

The photos included in the book were a nice touch. They made the story, and Polly, more real. (I think the last photo of her is so cute!) Because haha, it being a biography doesn’t make it real enough.

Despite all of what I’ve said so far, the only real complaint I have is with the printing. The typeface isn’t a monospace one, but it’s set so large and dark that it feels like one. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Courier or other monospaced fonts like other designers do. I guess code runs deep in my veins. *laugh* But I definitely don’t want to read a book set in any such typeface.

What’s even worse is that I could forgive the typesetting (perhaps it’s meant for an older audience, who have poor eyesight), because there’s a much worse typography sin committed in the book—there are double spaces after every period! Gasp and shock and horror! Since the type is set so large, there is less leading required to make it legible and so it looks to me like it’s 110% of the type size. Nothing wrong with that. But because the type size is so large, the word spacing is also large, and therefore the double spacing is extra doubly large! And I see all these empty areas in the text, and augh I can’t stand it! As my typography teacher said, “You could fly a plane through there!” In this book, there’s more space for planes than at LAX!

I shouldn’t complain though, I got the book at my library for $1. If I do decide to keep the book, I’ll just give this book back to the library (they can make another dollar, woot!) and go find a nicer printing at Borders.

Inda and Ender

Tuesday, 6 May, 2008 at 1:35 am

I finished Inda a while ago. I was going to write an entry about it, but as always I kept building up the writing part of it, trying to make it all nice and a coherently written piece, so it never got out of my head. Now I am forcing it out so everything will be rambly. (Spoilers ahead probably.)

The first thing that struck me while reading was how similar the academy was to Battle School (in the Ender books). I don’t mean anything negative by the comparison. Of course two schools centered around command and winning wars will be similar. But I thought it was interesting, how the premise worked in both settings. One was outer space and all future-y, the other was on another planet entirely (more like another universe, not really an alien planet) and in medieval-like times. (Flying spacecraft versus swords and bows, woo!) Both would set up battles between students.

Gand actually reminded me of what’s-his-name in Ender (sorry can’t remember, haven’t read the books in a while, and they’re not handy at school either), although I didn’t realize it until he was talking to Brath (is that his name? argh I took Inda home over the weekend) about controlling the students. Brath reminded me of that other school head guy in Ender too.

I think Battle School factored more into Ender’s plot though. Or … at least it did in Ender’s Shadow. Sorry, haven’t read Ender’s Game in a while, and it tends to blend with Shadow for me anyway. In Inda it was more just a setting.

But that’s okay, I liked learning more about Sartorias-Deles (the world Inda takes place on) and the customs of that time and everything. (Crown Duel takes place on the same world, but many many years later.)

What else? Oh, when some of the characters died, I couldn’t believe it. Even nearing the end, I thought, Oh this character can’t die because such and such, then in the next scene or two, that person dies! Heartwrenching.

Oh yeah, you know how in Crown Duel I probably have weird associations with characters? Well it happened in Inda too. Firstly I was sort of comparing Inda and Ender while reading through the academy part, but Inda stood on his own personality in my mind. (They both got banished oh em gee el oh el!)

Then near the end I was shocked by this association I had: the Sierlaef looks like and is like Prince Zuko from Avatar: the Last Airbender, in my mind. O.o Except with blonde hair. It probably started with the “horsetail” hairdo. Then all of his throwing his royal weight around, his anger, or something in his personality cemented the connection in my mind.

I didn’t pick up on it until the Sierlaef was riding around patrolling the south though. It really shocked me. The Sierlaef doesn’t have a scar on his face in my mind … and he also has blonde hair (I have to force the blonde hair though—I always picture brown hair first, for anybody), but he still looks like Prince Zuko! Weird.

Now I need to buy The Fox. But it’s only in hardcover? And I am a poor, poor student with little expendable cash. :( (All my allowance goes toward cable and internet.)

Also, I would like to say, woot! My silly little post in the athanarel community on LJ may or may not have prompted Sherwood Smith to post the latest behind-the-scenes story, but either way it’s written and posted! XD Joy of joys! Now I have to print out all the stories and bind them in a nice book. Hmm, I have to shop for a nice paper. (I’m thinking of doing a Japanese link stitch binding, if I can get money for that book off Amazon.)