2009 in books (pt1)

As usual I've been both cranky and ill.
Someone (irritating) at work today said,
"...but i've seen you be cheerful and friendly before"
and before I could remember the cover story I replied
"It was a LIE."

So, it's out in the open. On the other hand, once one has cultivated even a minor reputation for eccentricity, nothing after that needs to make too much sense to be shrugged off as "just another thing." So you can tell the radical truth and it becomes outrageous entertainment.
"What do you think of so-and-so?"
"I love him and obsess over him in the long nights of my solitude."
Cue uproarious laughter.

It couldn't be any better if I actually wore a Jester's outfit.
But I digress.

For anyone who hasn't noticed it is pretty much the middle of the year. I considered some kind of sincere post, but I'm not up to it. The only goal-related thing I would say is that I am happy with my reading list so far this year, which has held up rather well despite being flooded this month by a series of works by Stephenie Meyer. The tally stands at 28 books in total and of these, 13 are non-fiction! Nearly exactly half!! WOOT! (gently mimes punching air so as not to dislodge reading glasses.

Of these, what books can I recommend to you my tasteful and clever audience?

A good question.

From January, Six Easy Pieces by Richard P. Feynman. Very thoughtfully re-published by Penguin in their charming $10 range (thank you Penguin and good idea going back to classic jacket designs!). Get into some Physics - it is already in you!!



February yielded some good quality reading in the form of The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton (another Penguin $10 winner). A novel about Tesla called The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt and a collection of Essays gifted to me by Mez called How to be Alone by Jonathan Franzen. I felt pretty clever by association after those highlights.



March needed a new flavour, so I read the new SF by Richard Morgan - The Black Man and I really liked it but I recommend it to SF readers with some qualifications (depending on your taste). The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman was lovely and had a little unsaid, which I like. The real standout this month was finishing The Invisibles by Grant Morrison which was a loaner from MsJaye and one of those books that infects and gives one a fever. I got through the fever, and now I can't wait to find out what I'm inoculated against or prepared for. Turns out I love anarchistic-chaos-magic. I want to do it again! (BTW for snobs - be warned - that one's a comic.)



April was quiet, I read some non-fic that was a bit dull and I re-read a favourite novel and then read a French SF novel called Babylon Babies (by Mauice Dantec, but I don't remember the translator. It wasn't Nicole Kidman so don't sweat it). I'd read some mixed reviews and of course the film (Babylon AD)was hopeless but actually i thought that the book was good. Not quite as fully anarchist chaos magical as The Invisibles, but possibly a good enough chaser. Lots of good themes and a clever central character and plenty of wild tech. I would like to read more SF from NESB (non english speaking background) as the flavours and textures are less predictable (all of which was pretty much removed for the film. Poor Vin Diesel. I bet he loved the original script.)



So May was not a big reading month, I was pretty sick, but I did finish Kimono: Fashioning Culture by Liza Dalby which I got on a whim and then was able to read nearly half of during a day of travel. It was fascinating, and I feel slightly more informed now when I watch Japanese cinema, or see modern women wearing Kimono. Actually, I'll fess up and say that I went out of my way to re-watch Memoirs of a Geisha just so I could look at all the kimono.


June, ah June. June has been the month of escapist reading. Binging on one-night-reads is something we all do sometimes, but that doesn't make me proud. In the middle of that I finished What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Darwin Knew: From fox-hunting to Whist - the facts of Daily life in 19th-Century England by Daniel Pool which I had been very eagerly awaiting. I was anticipating a detailed and exhaustive book, but actually this book ought to be subtitled "In Which Things that are Almost Obvious from The Context of the Novel are explained in length oftentimes using Quotations from Self-same Novels. Perhaps you ought to read more proper history books?"
Ah well. More than half of this puny book is pointless. I'm trying to think of a redeeming feature .... um .... it has some nice etchings.

I love to keep lists of books, I wish I'd given-in to the urge a long time ago instead of feeling furtive and dirty for wanting to do so. In a lot of ways it is a more interesting way of tracking the tides and flavours of my life than the dates of trips or the odd event. Movies and Knitting have both taken up a lot of time that I would otherwise have spent reading. But that's ok - ther'e more to come in the great Western Genre exploration, and Riley very nearly has his own bespoke cardigan.

Twilight: The Neutered Boy-Band of Vampire Films

Sometimes I leave a series of books to build up, so that then I get to read them in a binge. The Stephanie Meyer Twilight series is one I've saved, so all comments about this film are based simply on the film. Such as it is.

I Pine, I Swoon. I Pine Again.
Wuv, twoo Wuv is tough for vampires, especially if they got turned in their teens. One episode of Moonlight showed just how nasty this can be - 170 years of acne would turn me into a serial killer too. Thankfully for the Cullen nest they all had really good nutrition and clean pores before they became "vegetarian" vampires. Not that I'm going to pick this film apart on plot points. No Sireee, that just wouldn't be sporting. Besides, that's not why one goes to see fare like this. No, one goes to sigh over perfect cheekbones and the lips of an ... angel wouldn't quite be right, but let's just say that I'm surprised that Robert Pattinson didn't insist on equal billing for his hair/lips and jaw. They certainly get the bulk of the screen time. Rightly so. there's not a lot of dialogue getting in the way of the brooding. You get a fair amount of time to look around too, and I've gotta tell you, the scenery in this film is gorgeous. After 10 years of drought, I would watch this just for all the rain scenes and the über-green forest. But I digress. Where was I? Oh yeah - pining for a love that cannot be.

Forbidden Love
*sigh*
For masochists, there can be a deep satisfaction in the denial of pleasure. A tautness to the desire that builds and builds to a blunt edge of pain and it is the pain itself and the endurance of it which becomes a muted pleasure (of a kind) until the eventual release (yes, even masochists get release, unlike Twilight fans). These children hash around at it and it pretty much goes nowhere but I'm betting the books give it a better build-up. It is, after all, the kind of thing that is easier to understand with an internal monologue. Otherwise you're just watching people with a kindof pained expression on their face and you wonder - are they having gut cramps? There's not really a lot of denial going on here either, she pretty much just throws herself at him and it is he, the gallant vegetarian vamp who turns his head away and says no. So she tries again. Who can blame her, he sparkles like a My Little Pony unicorn and declares he feels "strongly protective" of her. Woo - the kids are *wild*!

Bring Back the Teeth
Colour me weird, but I always found that it was the danger that made the Vamps sexy. There's no fangs in this film. There's a little eyeball action (the black guy gets red ones, but Darth Maul's were way scarier) and no blood. OK, a tiny smear in the big confrontation when her (SPOILER ALERT) femoral artery is meant to bleeding out ( I promised I wasn't going to get picky, but c'mon guys you bleed out of a femoral artery in something of the order of 3 minutes - let's not pick that part of the story for some wooden dialogue and pissing around with moral qualms), but only one of the 6 vamps in the room seems to have even a twinge about the snack spilling.
Ok, I'm not even going to go there. I'm totally backing out of this critical direction.


Why Her?!
I get that she would go for him. He can play Debussy (despite the massive handicap of his hair/eyebrows/lips), can climb huge firs in an effortless scramble, sparkles like a My Little Pony unicorn (did I mention he sparkles?) and he lives in the stunning architectural mansion in the forest. But she's a whiny nobody who's only allure seems to be that she smells good. I think Rum Balls smell good, but I don't date them. I think cigars and carrots smell good, but I don't tie myself up in knots wondering if they like me. Oh, and he can't read her thoughts, where he can read everyone else's. Big Woop. I can read most people's thoughts too when they're this complicated: QUOTE "Sex. Money. Sex. Sex. Money." UN-QUOTE nothing startling there.

And So...
If you like your boys pretty and your vampires fangless and all Emo-fied, then you'll probably laugh a lot less in this film than I did and possibly even think it's a pretty neat love story. Basically, this film is an utterly hi-larious trashy b-grade teen flick and I recommend we all get wasted and go see it together, and laugh our guts up. I can't wait for the second one. We'll watch The Craft first tho - ok? and Heathers for afters.
Remember - pine, then swoon.