Monday, January 19, 2009
January 19, 2008: Wishes, books, pastimes, and trivia
My birthday was Saturday! Cue a large Amazon purchase, as detailed below:
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, soundtrack and DVD - I love everything about this, especially since I'm finally over the fact that it made me feel like I'd been sucker punched. It also made me a Joss Whedon fan, as you'll see in a few other items on the list. It's also extremely quotable. I am still attempting to push this onto my friends. They had a lot more luck with a few entries farther down.
Coraline - I have this odd habit (based on two events, so perhaps it's only the beginnings of one) of only reading things Neil Gaiman wrote after finding out there's a movie. The corollary to this is only reading the things that were made into movies. It happened with Stardust and now this. Of course, I tend to really like the movies. There's this one scene in the film version of Stardust of Yvaine walking - any more details would be a spoiler, but it's about 2/3 through - and it's gorgeous, iconic, and adjective-inspiring.
I didn't have to be a film-induced fan. It'd make sense if I wasn't. I could have gone by the Tori Amos connection. Or that it'd help to be more familiar with his work since I follow him on Twitter. (Tangent: There is no way to talk about Twitter following that does not sound creepy and stalky.) I didn't know there was a movie until after I got it into my mind to purchase this. Oh well. I'm a film-induced fan, I guess. At least I can read the book first.
The other thing about this is that the plot, from what I've read, seems to fall squarely into the "child discovers magical world" theme. I love almost anything like that. I carved a secret passage into a hedge at my old house because of this. (It was beautiful, too. I may have written about it, but you headed in through an ivy patch, past a lot of dried-up thorny vine sticks which I hacked through, and into the part with all these white flowers where the sun broke through.) From what else I've read, it supposedly subverts this. I will soon find out how.
How Not To Write A Novel - I don't even know why I need this book. I am phenomenally succeeding at not writing a novel. Supposedly it is amusing, though. Everyone enjoys being amused.
Firefly and Serenity - Sure, I'm a fan now. It doesn't help my standing with my friends that I tend to like and dislike the opposite characters as them, though.
Repo! The Genetic Opera soundtrack - This is strange. I hate horror movies, for the most part. I hate gore for its own sake and the whole self-feeding nature of the genre, and I never saw the point in watching things like this ironically. So a while back, when it was first announced that Sarah Brightman was going to be in this, I was a bit taken aback at how excited I was at the prospect. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when I mentioned it offhand and showed my friends the trailer.
Fast forward to now, when we watched it. This is one of the worst movies I have ever seen (the worst was Angelina Jolie's Tomb Raider, for the record) and yet I like it. The gore does nothing for me. Neither does Paris Hilton's presence. The music, though, is great. Hence my purchase of the soundtrack (the film, er, might be impending.)
Goblin Market soundtrack - Yes. Soundtrack. There was a musical. An Off-Broadway adaptation with music by Polly Pen. In layman's terms: Christina Rossetti with sopranos! How can it be more perfect? I don't know. It will definitely get reviewed.
The 10th Kingdom - All I really know about this is the amount of Wikipedia blurbing I could stand before I thought I'd be getting horribly spoiled. So not much. I do know, however, that Miriam Stockley sang one of the songs on the soundtrack. "Wishing on a Star." Not many people can make a Rose Royce cover sound this otherworldly. (The Cover Girls version, incidentally, isn't bad, but it's completely different.) If this is anything like its soundtrack, it is already amazing. Besides, I tend to like fantasy-ish works like this.
Claire Clairmont and the Shelleys - Finally bought this; it was warming my wish list for quite some time. It was either this or the letters, but I figure biographies are better to start with than letters. Incidentally, I suspect that at least part of the reason why I'm fascinated by her is her name.
The Swan Princess - I watched this when I was a child, loved it, then rediscovered it last year. I don't even remember what reminded me of it. Anyway, despite my loathing for their marketing, and my awareness of all their questionable aspects, I still like Disney-style movies. This one isn't by Disney, but it has all the same elements. Lovely songs, some truly beautiful scenes, most taking place on the lake, comic relief. I love what I love. That is all.
Assorted books. The Changeling by Joy Williams, Ibid by Mark Dunn, Little, Big by John Crowley, and some books by Max Barry. I don't really remember the reasoning behind some of them, but they were on my wish list and books are easy additions, being inexpensive.
Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy - I can take or leave modern poets. I don't like Billy Collins, for instance, because everything I've read of him reminds me in a negative way of the sort of stand-up comics whose routines consist mainly of pointing out everyday occurrences in a minimally funny manner. "Have you ever noticed that red lights always take forever? What's up with that?"
I love Carol Ann Duffy, though. I was torn between this, which I've already read, and Mean Time, which I haven't, but this won out. The poems here are lyrical, haunting, and sometimes just skirt the edge of cliche, but I haven't read any major objections (in fact, I was introduced to her on one of the forums which takes a hardline stance on that sort of thing) so I don't feel bad. Even if I had, I wouldn't. The book is gorgeous. I don't know if the one I ordered will live up to the library book I checked out (and, er, still need to return, now that I think about it). It had a red cover with gold writing and just looking at it was like looking at something timeless. Not so much a book as a monument. I almost want to keep it.
Camille - Le Fil and Juliana Hatfield - How To Walk Away - I mentioned the Juliana Hatfield. I'm also really looking forward to listening to this by Camille. She has a newer album out, but this is the one that grabbed me because there's so much crazy and wonderful vocal stuff going on. It's a cappella music (it might not be strictly a cappella, I haven't listened to it in its entirety yet) for people who like things other than Sweet Caroline covers.
And even after this, I have things on my wish list. I will live someplace with lots of bookshelves. I'll be Rapunzel in a media tower.
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A lot of people I know are doing the 50 Book Challenge. I figure I'd join the festivities! My only criteria here:
1. Nothing I read for class. This is arbitrary, I know, but I was going to be reading them anyway.
2. Nothing I've already read. No comments necessary.
3. No children's picture books. That's just silly.
This counts, however: Non-fiction, young adult books, children's chapter books, plays, short story collections, graphic novels, and anything else that I get the idea into my mind to read.
So we have, so far:
John Green - An Abundance of Katherines: I was recommended this as a reasonably intelligent YA book. As I read it, all I could think of was how much the author really wanted this to be made into a Judd Apatow movie. You could replace Hassan with Seth Rogen and have the same book. I despise Judd Apatow. There are worse things you could read, though, and any book that tosses in amusing footnotes is all right with me.
Tom Perrotta - The Abstinence Teacher: I'm a fan of his, and the book didn't disappoint, even if the character 180 about a third of the way through was a bit too noticeable. (This isn't reading into it. In the material at the back, or in an interview - I forget which - Perrotta pretty much came out and said that Tim's character did a 180.)
M. T. Anderson - Feed: Another YA book. I enjoyed this one quite a bit, though. I like dystopias (IN FICTION. In FICTION. Not in real life.) and this was pretty well done. A lot more lyricism than you sometimes get in YA. My only quibble is that Violet falls a bit too neatly into the Stargirl (tangent: there's a sequel to this? I'm almost afraid to read it.) manic pixie dream girl mold, but their relationship isn't the point, so it isn't as irritating.
3/50.
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I've been playing Scrabble on ISC a lot lately. People on ifMUD linked it to me, and I have to say, it's the best Scrabble site I've found on the Internet, mainly because it has the benefit of being actual Scrabble and not the terrible approximation that is Yahoo! Literati.
The problem is that I am a lot worse at Scrabble than I thought. I've picked up some things. Scrabble with QI, ZA, and XU is a lot different than Scrabble without. You want to play more like a New York Times crossword than an elementary school crossword, generally (i.e. parallel is often better than perpendicular.) Nevertheless, my ranking lags behind everyone else I know who is playing it. Clearly I should recruit some people who are worse than me.
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Trivia:
- The bell tower in Chapel Hill looks remarkably like a very large full moon if you're looking at it through the trees. It startled me at first.
- In Carrboro today I saw some violets which were near-frozen. All colors, too. It startled me, to be honest, that they were just alive. How are they alive? It's cold here for North Carolina!
- If I ever need to laugh, I go onto YouTube and watch Mario romhack videos. You probably look skeptical, but the good ones are among the most fun things on the site (also fun: the Pachelbel Rant.) If you're familiar with the source material, which you are, and if you like schadenfreude, which you might, it'll work for you.
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