The Dragon Waiting; John M. Ford; 1983

Fresh off netflixing season 1 of Game of Thrones, it's more War of the Roses with fantasy trappings!  

I bought The Dragon Waiting as a book-by-the bag from the public library's annual sale.  It's not bad, and does a very good job, I think, in imagining a Europe in which the Byzantine Empire is still a power through the 15th century.  Ford makes no attempt to orient you within his changed history.  I generally admire this; it can be great when you have to learn about the world as you go, but in this case was frustrated by a seeming lack of information by which I could orient myself.  Perhaps I would have enjoyed the novel more if I knew more of the history of England in this period, but a critical piece of information to understanding the history of the world -- the fact that, in this world, the Byzantine Empire survived and thrived because Julian the Apostate managed to quash Christianity and Islam -- was not at all evident to me until the epilogue.

I also have an issue with the structure of the novel.  He begins with three chapters that give us the backstory for three of his main characters; the fourth chapter, in which they and the fourth main character meet, begins on page 109.  The novel should begin on page 109, and the salient bits of the main characters' backstories revealed over time.  At the very least, Hywel's chapter could be axed.  

This won the World Fantasy Award for best novel, which, frankly, has a really weird history (Silence of the Lambs was a fantasy?  Who knew?), and Gene Wolfe praised it on the back cover, stating, "It may not become a classic; but it will become something better -- one of those books that are always loved by people who love books."  I don't think I agree, but I also certainly don't regret having read it.

A minor moving project

We pulled everything off the shelves in the (family?) room and pushed the shelves a little closer to the wall.  We no longer needed the extra space behind the shelves because we were moving the TV & stereo equipment to another location.  They were being moved because we needed to move the couch and chair in order to make room for...

... the "new" piano.  It's a very well maintained 1976 Yamaha GH 1.  The previous owners' kids are grown up, and now ours will learn on it.  Yay!

And then we suddenly had room for *more* books once the TV was moved! 

The Purple Powder Room Project

We hate wallpaper.  The penultimate bit of exposed wallpaper in our house came down over the weekend, in favor of a nice coat of fresh purple paint.



(Picasa album here)

Fun and Fancy Free (1947)

I got Fun and Fancy Free out from netflix in order to show the kids, but they rebelled and refused to even consider watching it: they would rather see YouTube videos of stop-motion Lego Star Wars projects.  I watched it after they went to bed; they were proven right in their choice.  I had fond memories of "Mickey and the Beanstalk", but had never seen the entire Fun and Fancy Free offering.  It begins with Jiminy Cricket singing and telling us not to think ahead and worry about the future, poking fun at eggheads who think too much (the anti-intellectual movement in the U.S. has always been alive and well!).  Then he introduces us to a short called "Bongo", which I had never heard of... and this should have remained locked in the vaults**.  Fast-forward, fast-forward, to the next host segment, featuring Jiminy party crashing Edgar Bergen's telling of "Mickey and the Beanstalk".  My recollection is that when Disney used to show this segment on TV, outside the context of Fun and Fancy Free, that Edgar Bergen's narration was cut.  I definitely don't remember Charlie McCarthy's remarks.  This was still fun to watch, but not as good as I remember it being -- or maybe I'm conflating it somewhat with "The Brave Little Tailor".

** The plot is essentially, "Bear escapes from circus, falls in love, and learns he needs to slap his woman around in order to achieve happiness,"*** thus pre-dating I Love Lucy in this regard by 4 years.  Reading the production description reveals some interesting ideas that make it clearer why this project was greenlighted, and also why it ultimately fails.  In the end, it either needed the longer treatment or needed to be cut further.

*** I kid you not.  At least she also slaps him around; it's a bear cultural thing!  Some humor just doesn't hold up over time.  In one of the host segments, Jiminy downs an entire cocktail.  Binge drinking is fun, kids!

In Time (2011)

In Time has a neat premise (time literally is money), a single interesting scene (because no one ages after turning 25, Justin Timberlake's "mom" is played by an actress who would normally be a girlfriend, but they have the same interactions as mother-son), and the rest is a mess.  

• I'm supposed to believe in a near-future Earth** that has genetically implanted clocks that can transfer time on contact, but all other technology appears stuck in the 70's... because, you know, widespread smartphone use in such a world would imply that Justin Timberlake's mom could simply call him and have him wire her some time, which would remove most of the tension from the movie (as currently constructed; bringing the rest of the tech more in line with the premise simply means you have to think a little bit harder when writing your story).  
• I'm also supposed to believe that the very rich have left their clocks with the design "feature" such that time can be stolen from them when they're unconscious.  
• I'm also supposed to believe that someone who has a million years to give away hasn't kept a year, a month, even a *day* for themselves as a safety net -- maybe the idea here is that Justin gives it nearly all away because that's the only way he can get thrills now; in fact, that could be a really interesting concept to explore, but if that was intended, it doesn't come through.

** The Wikipedia article says 2169 [citation needed].  I really don't believe that Cillian Murphy's car would look like Gene Hackman's from the French Connection, 200 years earlier.
 

A Game of Thrones (season 1)

For the viewer who watched the Lord of the Rings movies and thought, "what this needs is a little -- no, a lot of -- softcore porn," HBO brings you... Game of Thrones!  Apparently, if you put in enough T&A, the fantasy genre becomes acceptable to mainstream audiences.

We recently finished disc 5 from Netflix, and I have to say that the TV series may actually be better than the books.  It helps that the casting is excellent (with the exception of Daenerys' hideously bad blonde wig) and that someone as extraordinarily talented as Peter Dinklage is available to play Tyrion, but the single most important difference might be the skill of the writers on the series.  They've used everything that was best in the novels while also notably improving the characterizations of characters like Cersei, Joffrey, and Sansa.

I read the first three books back in 2000 (y'know, when the series was still cool, before Martin ruined it with a book devoted to largely to Sam's sailing expedition), so it's possible that I'm transferring my disappointment in the book series to a preference for the TV series.  At any rate, I'm holding out hope that the TV series can correct some of the problems with the Jordanization** of the novels.

** when a fantasy series spirals out of control and becomes an unreadable mess; the phenomenon is named after Robert Jordan, whose Wheel of Time starts reasonably promisingly, but gets bloated around book 5.

The Computer Connection; Alfred Bester; 1975

Another Nebula finalist.  With some of these finalists from the 70's, you go in with some trepidation, because while the winners tend to be good, the field is not so deep.  But this was Bester, na?  I was ready to love the Computer Connection.

Let's say Bester's 20-year absence from novel writing was not kind.  NYT reviewer Gerald Jonas's conclusion that it "cannot possibly be as much fun" for the reader as it was for the writer is spot on, I think.  There seems to be a lackadaisical approach to the writing, plotting, and research behind the novel that undermines one's ability to believe in the story and ultimately makes me want to throttle the committee that made this a Nebula finalist.  It's been a couple of weeks since I finished, but these are the problems that still burn in my mind: 

• Let's introduce new languages and then not use them.  Bester introduces Black Spanglish as a "common tongue", and writes some of the dialogue in this way, but Our Hero "translates for his diary" whenever Bester is too lazy to write in Spang.  All I can think is: Did Faulkner take days off when he was tired of writing in the way his characters talked?  No, no he didn't.
• Compost is faster than you think.  Instead of burial or cremation, bodies are put into the Compost Heaps.  When someone dear to Our Hero dies and is sent to the Compost, Our Hero goes into an amnesiac fugue state for three months, goes to Ceres, goes to Saturn, and when he comes home, goes compost diving in the hopes of finding a body, or even a skull.  Nuh-uh.  It's gone, even without the interplanetary travel.  See, for example, table 1 on page 2 of Pennsylvania's handy guide to Dead Animal Composting.  The worst part about this is that the easy fix is for him to go compost diving immediately after coming out of the amnesiac fugue; he might have believably had some unrealistic hope of finding something at that point, especially since he's just barely started to deal with his grief.  After the interplanetary travel...
• Pluto is closer than you think.  Humanity is struggling to mount a manned flight to Pluto (it's the opening premise of how the Chief makes his great discovery), but they can take jaunts to Ceres and there are mining colonies in the rings of Saturn that have been there long enough to severely reduce the amount of material in the rings.  I just don't believe that this level of infrastructure exists in the solar system while Pluto, about four times as far away as Saturn, remains out of reach.  Again, there's an easy solution: pick something farther out than Pluto.  Make it an inter-solar voyage.

I'm still pretty sure the Demolished Man was really good, but it's been 11 years and I'm worried maybe it's like one of those childhood memories that's rosy with age, like my fondness for Carole and Paula in the Magic Garden.

Aw, who am I kidding?  The chuckle patch is still hilarious.

The Bread Bike!

The August First Bread Bike just came by!**  I was the first to hear the "fresh bread!" call, but the kids, as usual, were the first to burst out the front door.  I don't know what I love best about this, but maybe it's that you get the same thrill as running after the ice cream truck, but for something that's actually good for your body (um, Sarah and I get the jalapeño cheddar, but it's still better for us, and tastier than, a Good Humor bar).


This isn't to say that we completely forego ice cream; we're not monsters, but we prefer to walk to the Bagel Cafe and Deli for cremees.


** The information in their post might not be up-to-date for 2012.  They come through our neighborhood on Fridays.

Paradise; Toni Morrison; 1997

I'm sad to say that I cannot bring myself to finish a Toni Morrison novel.  Thankfully, it's simply this particular Toni Morrison novel.  Sad things, terrible things, can and do happen in The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved, but those novels also contained at least the slightest glimmer of hope or grace or the possibility of salvation.  Not so Paradise, which begins with senseless murder and is an unrelentingly depressing disquisition on human nature for 160 pages (hardcover), or half the book, at which point I couldn't take any more. No más.

Instructional video of the day: Surviving mass murder in the workplace

Thanks, City of Houston, for making our lives a little bit safer, and our morning youtube breaks a lot more fun:

• "Remember what's important.  You, not your stuff."  Unless it's company-confidential.  Then be sure to secure shred it before leaving the building. 
• And whatever you do, try not to be in meetings with people who fall apart under pressure.  They'll just attract the shooter to your location.