Category: Books

blonde-haired dude in a cape

Monday, 18 June, 2007 at 11:42 pm

I’m reading Crown Duel (with Court Duel included) by Sherwood Smith. This is my second read, so I know the major events and everything. I still really enjoy the book. ^^ The first time I read it was … at least four years ago, guaranteed. I love strong heroines in fantasy settings. Ella Enchanted, the Abhorsen trilogy, The Ordinary Princess …

One thing that is confusing me though, is that I keep picturing Shevraeth as another male character with long pale hair, who wears a cape… If you thought Lucius Malfoy, you either spend too much time in the Harry Potter realm or you’ve read Court Duel and think the same way I do.

I don’t remember the way I pictured Lucius in the books (movie media overload, boo), but if you take his movie portrayal, make him thinner, a bit younger, and not as … sneery, then you’ve got my image of Shevraeth.

The part where I’m getting confused is, I don’t like Lucius (I’m a good girl; I hates on the bad guys), but I definitely like Shevraeth. So I have this image in my head with an association that I don’t think of favorably … yet I like the character!

It’s sort of like in The Shop Around the Corner, which I saw Saturday (woo free OnDemand TCM movies). The lady admits to being confused in the beginning because she had mixed identities or something in her head. asdjkl; need to rewatch the movie to know what she said… [edit: “psychologically mixed up” is what she said]

Anyway. I’m almost done with the book. Chapter nineteen of part two. It’s such a fun story! But I don’t want it to end. :( Do I read and continue the fun, or not read and still have a bit of story left to live in? *laugh* Right, like I could do anything else.

After I’m done with this book I can go back to Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. I’m about two-thirds done in that one. It’s a great book, it’s just not as fun as Crown Duel. I wonder, are there adult fantasy books with strong heroines that are as fun?

friend or foe?

Thursday, 1 February, 2007 at 6:16 pm

I guess the release date for the last Harry Potter book was announced recently. (Yeah, I saw J.K. Rowling on the news but I wasn’t really paying attention, hey it was the 7 a.m. hour, so I didn’t really comprehend what they were talking about.)

I got an e-mail about it from Borders today, and in it they had this promo sticker thing. [Borders ad for a free sticker with book reservation. Two different stickers, both with the Harry Potter and Borders logos on the bottom, one in purple reading “trust Snape” and the other in orange reading “Snape is a very bad man.”] I thought, that’s pretty good marketing.

Let me explain something. It seems like when I take a class, I suddenly find instances to apply it in real life. During my stat class, or maybe soon after, I took great interest in the polls for presidential outcome. “This poll has a 3% margin of error.” me: “Well that sucks.” Or my Bindery and Finishing class. I started staring at junk mail ads if they were fancier than just slips of paper; I looked more closely at all the books I read, wondering how many signatures were used, what kind of impositioning was used. How about my Consumer Packaging class? (Which involved a bit of marketing.) I found the Microsoft iPod redesign hilarious.

Now? I’m in a Marketing and Sales (for Print) class. Last week I just saw an hour-long show on the Discovery channel about the iPod, which talked some about, yup, the marketing strategy. Sometime in the past week I’ve seen commercials for Blockbuster’s new offering: get movies in the mail just like Netflix, but also have the ability to return the DVD to a store and get a new movie instantly. New market!

Back to the Snape sticker. Who could have thought up that idea? Seriously, books are preordered all the time, and not much advertising goes into it. How many people are going to reserve at Borders over Barnes & Noble or any other bookstore just for the sticker? Brilliant. (I would, except for the fear of looking stupid if I’m wrong. *snrk*)

book to movie

Thursday, 14 December, 2006 at 11:33 am

I’ve decided that I will try to stop comparing movies to the original books. Mostly influenced by Neil Gaiman’s comments on his blog. Latest, “A film isn’t a book.”

But it is true. Like Count of Monte Cristo (I read it for an hour this morning and I kept thinking of the last movie), I consider them two different stories. Same plot, similar characters, but two different takes. You just can’t fit all of Alexeandre Dumas’ (paid-by-word O.x) story into a feasible movie. Maybe it’s better as a mini-series…

Also the Harry Potter stories. I was sort of meh about the first book. But I liked the first movie. (I think I read all four books before seeing the movie. I’m not sure.) I found it great fun. I don’t remember how I felt about the other books the first time, but I’ve always enjoyed the movies the first time around. Although the Potter movies are pretty close to the books. So not much of a point there.

Maybe a better example would be V for Vendetta? *hides* Ignoring the Wachowski Brothers-esque elements, I thought it was a good story. It’s not the comic. It’s a different story. I guess liberties were taken to mold the story more to current events. But who’s to say we shouldn’t have that? The original graphic novel is still there, 100% and whole for anyone who wants to get the original story. In the meantime, there’s another idea out there that was based on that story. And after a while, another movie could be made, perhaps one that’s closer to the original story.

That’s another thing, the way people rail against movie adaptations, you’d think the movie was the end-all be-all of the story. But with Count of Monte Cristo you have so many movie versions. Take your pick, which one do you think is the best? Mickey likes the French version. So does Mum. But she still likes the Guy Pierce version. I’ve never seen the French one, so I can’t really say.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, what about movie adaptations that I didn’t like? The ones that come to mind are A Wrinkle in Time and The Face on the Milk Carton. *twitch* Poor made-for-tv excuses of book adaptations. If I forget the story they were originally based on … they’re still pretty bad. But I suppose they work, for the medium that they’re in (film).

Okay, all this post serves to prove is how bad of a writer I am. Blah.

The Shining Count of Monte Cristo

Thursday, 16 November, 2006 at 11:53 pm

Hmmm … today was rather humdrum. Lecture, art lab, printing lab. Not much special there.

Little tidbits: I stood in line mindlessly waiting for a chicken sandwich during lunch. I went to the library three separate times today. Half the lights in the second floor are turned off, probably for money energy conservation, but there are also quite a few lights that have just plain died.

The Shining is getting interesting. I didn’t know there was a backstory to Tony! Then again, I’ve only ever seen the parts of the movie where the scary stuff is seen. Wooow, great plot device there.

The Count of Monte Cristo is a lot more convoluted than I remember. I still like the movie with Guy Pierce. I just consider them two different stories in two different mediums (of course, one gets a bit Hollywood-ized at the end, but what do you expect?). They’re both just so much fun! hee.

woozy, so woozy

Friday, 10 November, 2006 at 2:07 am

Well the little dog in the apartment upstairs is yapping his little head off and has been for quite a while now, so I might as well write here.

Umm, Tuesday wasn’t that interesting. Actually this whole week wasn’t really that interesting. Tuesday I took a quiz and spent an hour and fifteen minutes looking busy in art while I listened to classmates talk, since the project can be done on Illustrator and not everyone can bring their computers to class.

Wednesday I went to class then spent the rest of the day working on said art project. Or, well, I guess I kinda interspersed it with reading LJs and blogs and such, and also working on the new layout for the blog. *wry grin*

That dog sounds like it’s in a hamstertrail thing all over the apartment or something. I can hear its footsteps padding all over the floor/ceiling. x.x Annoying. I wish I could bang on the ceiling. But there’s some faux finish on it, and it’s already scraped off in the living room so I don’t want to chance damaging it here. Plus the ceiling’s too high, and I’m too short, even with a stepladder. XD

Umm lessee today is still Thursday. Well no technically it’s Friday. I have to remember that. I keep thinking it’s Friday (night) and that tomorrow (day) is Saturday.

I finished Carrie. I don’t remember what I thought. Er, I mean about what I read today. Earlier thoughts I’ve had (don’t remember typing them up here, correct me if I’m repeating myself): It’s an interesting format. The normal third person narrative interspersed with “articles” and characters’ accounts. It’s not so one-sided, I guess. Or maybe, with third person, unbiased-toward-any-character-at-all. (Unless of course there’s really cool characters that you just gotta love. *thinking of Ender and Bean*) I don’t know, it’s past 1am and I’m just kinda woo. People shouldn’t let me stay up this late. Yeah, where are you, people?! I’m saying weird totally unbased (is that a word?) stuff here.

It’s also interesting how the movie makes it all more horror movie-ish. Shock. Snap. That person’s dead. The book is more horrifying. That’s probably because you’ve got the narration there. Carrie thinks this, other people think that.

I started reading The Shining when I finished that. (Because it’s in the same book; it has four of Stephen King’s novels unabridged.) I read on Wikipedia that King didn’t like the movie. I haven’t seen the whole movie. But I pieced together the whole thing from parts I saw. And the Simpsons. *snerk* The Wikipedia entry didn’t hurt either.

I checked the school library catalog earlier this week and it said Cat’s Cradle is not checked out, but it wasn’t there this morning. grrr. There’s this option I have of asking the main desk to look through the whole library for it (like on desks and in cubicles) but that just seems like such a pain in the neck. I guess I’ll either wait for the library at home to get that book, or I’ll buy it and then donate it to the library. Or maybe just never finish it because ya know I do want to read the important books, but this book just isn’t The Count of Monte Cristo (i.e., really juicy and fun), and I’m just that lazy.

I wonder if the dog is yapping himself hoarse.

I finished Shadow of the Giant Tuesday night. Or was it Monday? Not quite sure. I can’t believe Card ended the book with Bean that way! XO I mean, sure maybe it’s interesting or whatever, but I don’t know, I just think it’s unresolved and lame. Oh well.

Now to go through the whole series (Ender and Shadow both) and write up little bios on all the characters, because fudge if I can remember all the little things, then it comes up from behind to re-enter the story and whaaa? I get confused. So I want to unconfuse myself. I’m debating whether to make a website out of it. It would be my first fansite/informational site. (The Ikyuusan one doesn’t count because uh I didn’t do anything with it. I don’t really count my guinea pig site either because there’s not much info there, just little random articles, and really bad writing on my part for the bios.) It might also be construed as copywrite infringement. :o Somehow. I don’t know. I don’t suppose so. I guess I’m just paranoid. Wow this is a huge paragraph. *cuts in half* … It’s still big.

There was a bug on my car this morning. I crawled in the passenger side because it wouldn’t get off the driver side. It looked like some sort of stinging wasp/hornet thing, so I didn’t want to make it angry. (I tried kicking it off with my foot, but he was pretty high up and I couldn’t hit him right, so he just lifted up his back leg to wave back at me. XD;;) The midsection, er the part connecting the thorax and the abdomen (I’m totally assuming that’s what they’re called; I haven’t had basic biology in a long time) was reeeeally thin, as thin as his legs, and I thought he was dying, but I don’t really know. (I actually said “WTF is that?” out loud. But not “duble-yoo tee eff is that” because that’s lame.) It didn’t have stripes like a bee or a wasp. I don’t know.

Enough of thinking about bugs. I guess the people upstairs decided 2 am was late and they wanted sleep, so they shut their dog up. Good night.