the jester and the monk went out one night

New layout. Yay! After I complained in some previous post that I had no inspiration for a new layout I went out to a scrapbooking store (for class supplies) and saw a paper design that I liked (the diamond pattern) so I matched it up with this image I’d found earlier while on the lookout for old woodcuts (for class). I like it all right at the moment. Will probably tire of it soon. But I think I can wrangle the layout into a non-overflow one once that happens.

I still have to work on style for the text. It’s what kept me from making this post yesterday when the layout went up, but since I spent most of today working on my book (for the same class mentioned previously), I never got around to finishing it, and would rather say yay new layout before it’s done than a few days after it first went up.

I’ll probably split the “sidebar” into three sections instead of two. I’ll probably toss in the RSS feed from LibraryThing and Last.fm. I feel somehow like I’m following the latest trend by doing that, but oh well. It’ll make this blog look less abandoned in between posts. XD;

I also want to add a colophon. Why? I’m a dork I guess. I love the idea of it. I first read one in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I had no idea what it was, but I liked knowing what typeface they used. It edged me a little bit deeper into loving book design. *grin*

blonde-haired dude in a cape

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?

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

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.