The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) -- what to like

Thar be spoilers below.
 
There's a lot to like here.  The transition from the end of the first film through Beorn's land is fairly brief, but manages to retain nearly all of Beorn's actual character from the book, right down to Gandalf reminding the dwarves to send the ponies back to their master rather than risk his wrath.  Mirkwood is handled as having a general, hallucinogenic quality to its effects on the company, rather than the somewhat individual and haphazard dangers presented in the book.  Lee Pace is fabulous as Thranduil, whose role is increased in order to better draw the relationships between himself and the dwarves of Erebor.  It's particularly wonderful to compare and contrast Elrond, Galadriel, and Thranduil, and how they have been consistently presented as elvish, but with very different individual personalities. Tauriel's Bizarre Love Triangle was completely unexpected and not unwelcome.  Gandalf's exploration of Dol Guldur and the necromancer's revelation as the Enemy has a great look and feel, as does Smaug.  I really enjoyed that there are more displays of dwarven manual dexterity as they toss objects to one another, even if it meant making the escape by barrel "exciting".  The choice to interpret the Black Arrow as a projectile fired from a ballista is a very interesting one, though I'm a little saddened that the movie history of the Black Arrow means that it's unlikely the thrush will be needed to carry a message from Bilbo to Bard.  I'm also a little saddened that Azog can travel from near the Carrock to Dol Guldur within what appears to be the same night, and that the dwarves can travel from Laketown to Erebor in less than a day, but... bygones.

Muriel Spark

I've been thinking about how sequencing affects our impression of an author.

About a year and a half ago, I picked up Memento Mori, and immediately became a Muriel Spark fan.    Loitering with Intent confirmed that belief, and I followed it with Aiding and Abetting, The Finishing School, and A Far Cry From Kensington**, around the holidays, but none of these were as good as the first two I'd read.  Also somewhere in there, I started but couldn't finish The Mandelbaum Gate.

Over the course of this year, I've gone through Territorial Rights (April), The Abbess of Crewe (July), and The Ballad of Peckham Rye (September) with the same "these are all right, but not nearly as good as Memento Mori" impressions.  Why do I keep reading after seven relative disappointments?  Well, they're short.  I could complete each of these in no more than a few hours of reading (with the exception of The Mandelbaum Gate, which is why I dropped it), so there isn't a lot of risk in hoping for another Loitering with Intent.  Still, if I had read any of these other books first, I might never have discovered the ones I really like, and would have a lesser impression of Spark's abilities.

Now I finally came to The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (yay!  it was in the library!) and The Girls of Slender Means.  I can't say that I *enjoyed* these as much as I enjoyed the first two Spark books I read, but they are effective and affecting tales of British women in the aftermath of WWI and WWII, respectively.  

** To be fair, A Far Cry From Kensington may be much better if read after The Girls of Slender Means

Undesirable motor vehicle driver behavior

I arrive at a 4-way stop.  My left turn signal is on.  Three seconds later, a driver arrives at the intersection opposite where I am stopped.  They flash their lights at me to signal that I should go, sadly oblivious to the crossing guard and several grade school children in the walk that I need to cross in order to make my left-hand turn.

Stay safe out there, because some drivers won't see you, even if they merely have to glance in your direction to notice you're in plain sight, even if you're in that same spot at the same time every workday.

Cognitive dissonance; or, "Friending" on G+

If you use Google+, perhaps you've noticed that when someone adds you, it now doesn't ask whether you want to +Add or +Circle (or whatever the action used to be called) them back, but to +Friend them. Like this is Facebook or something.

Now, it would be one thing if I were simply snarking and whining about window-dressing, and it didn't matter whether Google uses +Add or +Friend to describe this action.  The problem is that, aside from the fact that after clicking +Friend, you're immediately asked whether the Noun (is a person, place, or thing) is a friend, or family, or acquaintance, or whatever, the act of Friending on FB is quite different from the act of "Friending" on G+.  

• On FB, Friending is a symmetric, two-way act. I send a Friend request to you, which you must accept before our posts show up on each other's walls.
• On G+, "Friending" is an asymmetric act.  I add you to a circle, and your public posts appear in my stream, but you can ignore me completely.  

Written like that, it sounds like a minor difference, but it's actually important and quite powerful**.  Conflating these very different actions by using the same term that FB uses actually makes it harder (IMO) for people to switch from FB to G+, because people have expectations about what it means to "Friend" someone, and if an action using the same term doesn't behave the same way, that will send them scurrying back to FB.

I guess I'll just have to be content for the fleeting moment that the e-mail notifying you that someone has added you to their circles still asks if you want to add them to yours...

** Okay, I was going to link to a page that clearly explains why this difference is important and powerful, but all I can find are pages from two years ago that aren't quite what I'm looking for.  Thought there would be more easily findable recent and relevant discussion.

Room at the Top; John Braine; 1957

I want to like this book for the good parts, but there's a vast cultural chasm of casual violence against women that simply cannot be bridged.

There's a love scene that begins well with a line from Alice:

"I'm all twisted.  This is a terribly moral kind of car."

...and as she and Joe are getting out of the vehicle:

She kissed my hands. "They're beautiful," she said.  "Big and red and brutal... Will you keep me warm?"

Hands that can do violence to you are sexy, Alice?!  Later, Susan and Joe have the following exchange:

"I'm not cold, so there."

"Don't argue. Or I'll beat you black and blue."

"I'd like that."

Susan would really like to be beaten?!  Or she thinks he'd like to beat her and by acquiescing to that he'll be sweet on her?!  Or they're just joking?  I'd like to think it's just a bad joke, but later Alice and Joe, in what I can only imagine was intended as part of a longer romantic passage:  

"This is the country for passion, darling."

I bit her ear gently.  "Is that a promise?"

"Anything you want," she said in a whisper.  "You can beat me if you like."

What the hell??!  If this were BDSM, I wouldn't "get it" but at least could accept it.  This feels like a complete mischaracterization of male-female relations.