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InvisibleAng
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Name: Ang
Country: United Kingdom
Metro: Belfast
Birthday: 10/11/1981
Gender: Female
Interests: reading/writing, arts/crafts, music, movies/tv, videogames, web design, photoshop, bookcrossing
Expertise: procrastination, categorisation, list-making, glitter glue
Occupation: writing
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
4/27/2002
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| R. is in hospital with what is probably a kidney stone. He's having tests tomorrow and then we'll know what's happening... hopefully. | | |
| What I read in AugustAs ever, some have linked reviews on BC (by InvisibleAng), others on
Amazon. It was a good month for reading, with my concentration
improving in leaps and bounds, and a vague theme of nostalgic biography
early on. Oh, and whatever I read next will be my 50th book this year!
It's going to be a lower-than-usual average by the end, but whatevs;
I've had things to preoccupy me...
Moondust: In Search Of The Men Who Fell To Earth, by Andrew Smith
- An unusual idea which makes for a compelling and sometimes moving
book. When journalist Andrew Smith realised than only nine of the men
who had walked on the Moon were still alive, he felt compelled to
interview them before the day came when none of them survived; when
nobody would be around to tell us what that experience had been like.
In catching up with them and many others in the NASA space programme,
he investigates what the dreams of going into space and walking on the
Moon have meant to the world and to the individuals who actually did it
- and why so many of them came back changed men.
As
one Amazon reviewer points out, the book is 'unashamedly subjective':
Smith talks a lot about his personal reactions to both the original
Moon landings and his encounters with these very interesting and
sometimes extraordinary men. But it's neither fanboy hagiography or
sensationalist screed: Smith points out that the Moon landings and
their consequences affect our culture in complex ways, and raise a lot
of questions about our society, both then and now. Above all, the book
is full of a sense of wonder that beautifully counterbalances the
cynicism necessary to deal honestly with the personal grudges and
budgetary limitations that had a major effect on what the Program could
achieve.
The book awoke in me a long-buried childhood obsession
with space, and I defy any reader to resist going out to look long and
hard at the next full Moon...
The Books of Magic, by Neil Gaiman - If ten volumes of The Sandman
have not satiated your Gamainia, this should be your next port of call,
whether on its own or as your introduction to a constantly clever and
surprising ongoing series.
It skips around the universe and eternity as young Tim Hunter learns
what it means to be a magician, from magic's primordial origins in the
depths of human history to the various magical beings from the DC
'verse who are still around in modern times.
A Young Man's Passage, by Julian Clary
- Funny, sweet, bitchy and poignant by turns, this book does exactly
what it says on the tin, detailing Clary's growing-up years and
experience of fame in occasionally naughty levels of detail. I really
like how he relates his relationship with his parents, particularly
when he reprints the letters he got from them at college, sarcastically
(see where he got it from?) thanking him for including dictionary
definitions of the big words he'd used in his letters home, but
reassuring him that his parents are not completely ignorant and did
understand his communications, thank you. Heh.
Where Did It All Go Right? Growing Up Normal In The 70s, by Andrew Collins
- Curiously enough this riposte to the misery memoir sub-genre was
published in 2003, long before Waterstones had a Traumatic Lives
section. Early on it threatened to be rather dull for obvious reasons,
but I ended up getting hooked, perhaps by the novelty of the author
including extracts from his diaries, and the fact that he still has
every single one, having kept a diary since the age of six. I wish I'd
done that. It's all rather nice and soothing.
How To Lose Friends And Alienate People, by Toby Young - Young is a British journalist who tried to make it big in the States by working on Vanity Fair.
Unfortunately, he had entirely the wrong temperament, no common sense,
and the ability to magnetically attract trouble of all kinds (so
basically, he's a bit like Bella from Twilight, of which more
below). It would be easy to suspect that his guilelessness was a front
to allow him to make a good story out of his experiences, but nobody
could be this crashingly inept merely as a ruse, and despite his
evident personal failings, it's rather humbling how he recounts every
last cringe-making detail of his descent to rock bottom AND wrings some
very fine social commentary out of it.
The Ship Who Searched, by Anne McCaffrey and Mercedes Lackey
- The premise is that in the far future, people born with profound
physical disabilities can have their nervous systems wired up to
starship technology, with the Brainship as a hyper-sensitive body
surrounding the original physical one. These 'Shellpersons' have their
own education and culture, and partnered by 'softperson' Brawns, they
make their lives running cities and flying across the universe in a
variety of capacities, from law enforcement to supply runs, the aim
being to buy out their contract so they can go where they choose. Tia
Cade is unique, though, in that she took on her machine body after
catching a virus which incapacitated her at the age of seven. This is
the story of how she lives her life, and gets to know her partner,
Alex. Tia is definitely not your Passive Disabled Fictional Cliche.
I'm
still not sure how I feel about the ending, but the book includes
positive portrayals of characters with disabilities, and doesn't shy
away from subjects that shock the general public, such as the fact that
- gasp! - disabled people have sex lives too. The world-building is
excellent and the societal, legal and employment web in which
Shellpersons live their lives raises many interesting questions, from
cost vs. benefit to independence - it's interesting that Shellpersons
have Advocates to prevent their being exploited by their employers, and
that the novel acknowledges that the whole set-up could be said to be
inherently exploitative. The book is part of a series, and I'll be reading more.
The Hound Of Ulster, by Rosemary Sutcliff - Rosemary Sutcliff retells the ancient Cúchulainn
mythos with her inimitable flair for language, but even she can't save
these tales from being incredibly annoying. I desperately wanted to be
more enthusiastic about Irish mythology's precursor to Conan the
Cimmerian, but these are basically stories where shit happens, and then
more shit, and then more, and most of it happens because the men are
too proud and too dumb to listen to the women. Yes, I do realise that
one cannot always be revisionist about these things, but...
The
sheer epic stupidity of characters makes no sense. Cúchulainn's son
will come to him when he's of age, telling no man his name until he
reaches his dad, wearing his dad's ring. When such a youth, the best
fighter seen since the young Cúchulainn, turns up, Cúchulainndenies
that it could possibly be his kid despite the overwhelming evidence
that his genes are at play, not bothering to announce his own name and
thus give the lad the opening he needs to confess his true identity.
Cúchulainn kills the boy in single combat and then goes all angsty-woe
over the body, having finally seen the ring and gone, "Oh noes!". I
WANTED TO LOVE MY HERITAGE, I SWEAR, BUT THIS IS INFURIATING. What
disturbs me most is that there's no apparant, over-arching moral
consequence to any of this; the idea that the menfolk are slaves to a
version of 'honour' that conveniently allows them to loot and pillage
the countryside but lets them ignore truth and love is mentioned only
once, by Cúchulainn's wife Emer in a moment of exasperation.
There
are some isolated good things, like the dignity of Cúchulainn's death
scene, and the fact that his character is fleetingly appealing and at
least breaks the warrior hero stereotype by being small, dark and
youthful-looking, but overall it just made me wish I had a Gáe Bulg
handy to dispatch most of the male cast.
Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer - Yep. This one. *grins* I didn't find it too annoying, and it even got to be quite fun. But hey, I read an Anite Blake: Vampire Hunter book recently; Twilight would've had to plunge a fathomless nadir of awfulness to even begin to eclipse the memory of that.
If
you've left the concerns of highschool behind, it's pretty dull to
begin with, hotting up only when Edward's vampire nature is revealed to
the lovelorn Mary Sue Bella. And yes, everything
you've been told is true: Bella is one of those slightly geeky,
non-threatening to parents, unbelievably well intentioned characters
intended to stand for every insecure teenage girl, so that insecure
teenage girl readers can feel good about themselves when the romantic
hero tells her, "But you're putting yourself down too much; you're
actually the loveliest girl ever to exist!" And that might be harmless,
if not for the unfortunate conflation of
breaking-into-your-sweetheart's-home-to-secretly-watch-her-sleep with being-really-in-love-and-wanting-the-best-for-your-girlfriend.
Unlike
most readers in fandom, I've been unable to summon up the moral outrage
I know I should feel about this, though I'll admit that I wouldn't pass
the book on to my teenage neighbour. (Plus, I think she'd see right
through that nonsense.) I'm far more intrigued by the fact that
Stephenie Meyer, despite claiming never to read or watch vampire stuff,
has nevertheless managed to incorporate every single cliche of the
sub-genre into her work.
Is this the inevitable result of a
new author trying to make the subject matter her own without showing
too much gore or sexual behaviour, and so ending up with the same angst
and moral dilemmas that characterised Buffy and the Vampire Chronicles?
Or is this an author who, already feeling pressured by the number of
Mormons who must be looking to her as a cultural ambassador to the
mainstream, might be influenced by that mainstream more than she can
admit to her religious community? (Anne Rice should call her sometime.)
Either way, interesting times are ahead... indeed, with the leak of her
alternate take on the book (from Edward's POV), and the ensuing
back-peddling, it seems that interesting times are already upon us. | | |
| July reading list (a tad late)I've been meaning to get back to posting monthly reading lists for a while, especially after seeing how interesting LJ's rebness
makes hers. So here we go again - the ones that have been registered on
BookCrossing at this point have my reviews (username there is
InvisibleAng) linked, otherwise it's Amazon.
Sorry it's not behind a cut, but since I need to use bold etc., that would be a rather unsafe option. :S
So, here's what I read in July...
Old School,
by Tobias Wolff - I adored this; it earns the rare accolade of joining
my permanent collection. It's also responsible for the classics bender
that followed. (You can get it on Amazon.co.uk, by the way; I just
linked to the .com because it is the one with a detailed review.)
The End of the Affair,
by Graham Greene - this is another book I will have great difficulty
giving away, though I feel that I must for the simple reason that you
can find modern classics anywhere. I fell in love with the Neil Jordan
film a few years ago, and I'm ashamed it's taken me so long to get
around to the book. It's very astute on the subjects of faith, lust and
love, and the situation depicted was close to the author's own heart.
The Girls of Slender Means, by Muriel Spark - this didn't appeal to me as much as The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. It was hard to care about the characters until the devestating final events...
Out of my Time: Poems 1967 - 1974, by John Hewitt - okay, a primer for the Norn Ironly challenged: This is John Hewitt, a poet from Northern Ireland who had much to say about the nature of the place and the people. This
is the bar, named after him, which is the Belfast BookCrossers' usual
meeting venue. But the reason I have this book is more personal: it
contains a poem about my father and his linguistics work, which I
intend to transcribe here one of these days...
Nine Stories, by JD Salinger - when stories here are good, they're more fun than The Catcher in the Rye.
When they're bad, it's because the society the characters inhabit
renders them shallow, and/or because the stories are snapshots rather
than being fully formed.
Dubliners, by James Joyce - I approached this with trepidation because I remembered having to get my head down and dash through Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
in order to have any hope of reaching the end. But it was much easier,
stylistically, to get through, if a mixed bag enjoyment-wise.
X-Men: Days of Future Past,
by Chris Claremont, John Byrne and John Romita - well, it's a classic
within its fandom. ;) It's interesting to read stuff from that era now,
years after I was fully immersed in X-Men stuff, and to find it
relatively unsophisticated compared with later works. Which isn't to
say that it's not good, or that it doesn't offer a reasonable dose of
time paradox and alternate future. (Don't buy from that link, though;
it is available more cheaply. This page is linked for the review.) I'm
curious as to how the hard-hitting God Loves, Man Kills reads now...
Heart of Darkness,
by Joseph Conrad - I wanted to like this much more given that it's a
classic and all, but the restraint vis-a-vis Kurtz just seems plain out
of place in light of how Conrad goes into rhapsodies of description
over everything else...
Postcards from the Edge,
by Carrie Fisher - I love Carrie Fisher to death, and there are lots of
good things here in her first novel, including a female protagonist
who, unlike those in many other contemporary novels, actually has
something to say about life and an insight into herself. But for me,
nothing beats Delusions of Grandma, and if you only buy one Fisher book, it should be that.
The Books of Magick: Life During Wartime, vol.1, by Si Spencer and Dean Ormston - this collects issues 1 - 5 of an ongoing series which was cancelled after 15 issues. The series was an alternative take, with adult-oriented content, on an existing series, The Books of Magic
(note the lack of a 'k') which had originally been conceived by Neil
Gaiman, who continued to act as advisor/Brit-picker to the writers who
followed. Confused yet? Well, that is a sign that you should definitely
not buy Life in Wartime until you've got a passing familiarity with the original. C'mon, get there before the movie adaptation does... | | |
| Govt: naw, we won't reprimand that homophobic MLA. Not our job!I must emphasise that the title is my paraphrase of the Government's position on the Robinson affair.
One wonders just what an MLA or MP would have to say before it would become the Government's constitutional responsibility.
(Note: the UK has no written constitution.)
Meanwhile,
the psychiatrist Robinson referred to in her comment as being able to
'cure' homosexuality has resigned from his post as part-time adviser to
the politician, as well as temporarily standing down from his hospital
job.
Interesting times all round... | | |
| There's nothing like a well-deserved bit of telly snark...I'd thank Bonekickers for giving me the opportunity if it wasn't
such a pathetic excuse for television... granted, I went in expecting
it to be a bit shite, but it was much worse than I expected:
-
Cardboard Christians stereotyped as either power-hungry and
other-worldly or meek and other-wordly. I can't tell you how much this
bothers me. I'm not a Christian any more, but I was for much of my life
and a lot of my friends still are. It frustrates me no end that if I
see a Christian character on TV, 99 times out of 100 that person will
bear no resemblance to any Christian friends I've ever had.
Look at the part where Magwilde writes off Viv's parents as
god-botherers, and that's only treated in the script as a Mean Thing To
Say because Viv's parents are dead, and not because "god-botherer" is a
nasty, derogatory term. So, well done, BBC, on yet again finding a
whole cross-section of society who it's okay to diminish and
stereotype.
- Not to mention that the production values were
just so horrible during the scenes with the modern Templars being all
prayerfully angsty - ugly Big Brother-type camera angles, stupid
tension-generating music that audiences are now so accustomed to that
it generates no tension, and that blue filter that's so popular these
days.
Same goes for the broadcasts by the evangelist - it's
so angelically fluffed up with lights and tone of voice and so forth
that the guy plays as very creepy, and just doesn't come across like
anything I've SEEN on British TV. As for the evangelist's personal
appearance, I really lolled when I saw the black leather gloves,
television's reliable shorthand for Gestapo officers. I half-expected
him to come back to life at the end, after being burned alive, such was
the action movie style of the final ten minutes. It's like Indiana Jones
in thirty seconds as performed by bunnies, only not performed by
bunnies, lasting much more than thirty seconds, and not remotely
entertaining.
- Let's not get started on the archaeologists. I
did like that one glimmer of humour when Magwilde (why do these kinds
of characters always have such artful names? just once I'd like to see
a Carol Blenkinsop who fights crime while conducting archaeololgical
digs, or something) asked the creepy phonecaller to identify himself,
but otherwise the archaeologists were as much a collection of cliches
as the Christians.
- Where Christianity and archaeology meet:
OKAY. O-KAY. Let's get one thing straight. Regardless of the excitement
of unearthing things nobody's seen for centuries, regardless of any
beliefs they might have or once have had, the archaeologists are not
going to go all silent and reverent over a (very unrealistic-looking)
lump of wood because the Templars who'd been carrying it believed it
was part of the True Cross.
Real archaeologists would go,
"Oh, look, it's another bit of the True Cross. What is that, the
eleventy-billionth to be found or rumoured in the whole of history?"
because in medieval times the trade in holy relics was brisk and any
major church worth its salt had a bit of the True Cross, or the bones
of a saint, or the foreskin of Jesus Christ (yes, really
- at one point, several churches claimed to have it at once). Not all
Christians even buy into the idea of relics, or if they do, they don't
necessarily treat all relics as equally likely to be genuine.
- In the end, the show's biggest problem is that, in addition to all of
the above, it doesn't do what it set out to do. It was supposed to
distill what people love about Time Team and other popular history/archaeology shows into a cult TV-type format, but so obviously misunderstood why people love Time Team and the like in the first place...
All
the same, I had been hoping to somewhat enjoy it. Someone (forget who,
wave if you read this in the cross-post) on my IJ flist was saying that
they don't find much to like in recent TV; that they couldn't find
something that made them want to be a fan. I miss that too... though by
coincidence I have the last ep of Doctor Who taped. I hadn't
been watching it but I'm sort of curious about how they pulled the
ending off, based on rumours... will watch it and report back. | | |
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