| Veggie chili |
[Apr. 15th, 2012|11:37 pm] |
Well, if Christopher Bennett can blog about chili, so can I.
Start with some loud music on the stereo (Jesus and Mary Chain, Big Star, whatever) and a good brown ale or porter. Now you can begin.
( Read more... )
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| But wait, there's more... |
[Mar. 19th, 2012|07:13 pm] |
It's warm out today, to the tune of almost being actually hot. It's significantly warmer outside than in the house. This does not happen here. We often have snow in April. I do not want six months of Ottawa summer, I want seasons.
Anyway.
Less than a year to 50 and I still buy comics. I don't consume them the way I used to, though, picking up a stack every week and reading them right away. Instead, I go every few weeks, get the stack, read the magazines (Doctor Who Magazine, Star Trek, Locus, whatever), and pile the comics in a closet. Then every so often I sort them out and read a good long run of a title or two.
Just recently, I grabbed all of the issues of Madame Xanadu and Zatanna I hadn't read yet, as well as the first few Justice League Dark comics, and the first issue of the resurrected Night Force.
( Read more stuff about comics... )
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| Londonstani |
[Feb. 3rd, 2012|01:02 pm] |
A few years back Gautam Malkani's novel Londonstani generated some controversy. A novel about desi culture (young people of Indian and Pakistani descent) in the UK, it was expected to be a big hit -- the advance paid for it was immense -- but it died a sad and lonely death on bookshelves.
Anyway, I saw a copy and thought it looked interesting, a mix of the familiar (part crime novel, part coming of age story, etc) with the not so familiar (desi culture). And now, having read it, well, I'm not sure what to think. At times the vernacular used by the characters,mixing UK slang, Jamaican slang, words in different Asian languages, put me in mind of a cross between Irvine Welsh's use of Scottish dialect and Anthony Burgess's nadsat slang in A Clockwork Orange, and I thought we were going somewhere with a bit of literary ambition. Then the plot started kicking in and it felt more like a gang crime thriller. Then the commentary on desi and immigrant culture issues made it seem like a work of social commentary. Then the romance and other elements made it seem like a YA problem novel.
And then the twist ending... well, I'm going to spoil it.
( SPOILER )
Ultimately, it's hard to tell what the writer intended with this one. Was it just a big, ambitious book that got out of the author's control and didn't get the editing it needed? Did Malkani really know what he was trying to do and say with this novel?
Overall... it's often entertaining, it's interesting, but ultimately it's too much of a mess to really recommend. |
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| 2011 reading |
[Jan. 1st, 2012|05:18 pm] |
So, I decided this year to keep track of my reading.
( list of books )
Star Trek, Doctor Who, music, mysteries including several Hard Case Crime books, some Lovecraftian stuff, some Philip K. Dick, some literary fiction, a fair number of graphic novels, some good new fantasy and SF... and a Coronation Street novelization. Not a bad mix. Tagged some of the titles to get a sense of trends. As has probably been the case for some time, there's more Doctor Who than Star Trek, and more crime fiction than non tie-in science fiction or fantasy. |
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| Back to reality |
[Dec. 26th, 2011|06:35 pm] |
Just got back home after several days down south with the inlaws. Frantic, lots of running around, good times, glad to be home. Saw the US version of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, not bad, simplifed elements of the mystery, and the new lead is not as good as Noomi Rapace, but not awful either. Saw the Doctor Who Christmas special and my opinion of the Moffatt years continues to toboggan downhill. Glad to see snow on the ground here at last, and xmas on Taffy Lane looks as OTT as ever, with all the lights and traffic. Listened to some Eighth Doctor audios in the car on the trip and enjoyed them.
Back to work on Wednesday. |
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| Lev Grossman's The Magicians (spoilers) |
[Sep. 26th, 2011|09:42 pm] |
It's Harry Potter Goes to Narnia, except that Harry Potter is messed up not because of Voldemort but because he's a clueless, aimless, self-centered doofus. And he's a few years older.
What I remember of Grossman's first novel, Warp (it's been years since I read it), is that it was about a clueless, aimless, self-centered doofus who's just out of university, obsessed with Star Trek, and trying to figure out what to do with his life. The protagonist of The Magicians goes through pretty much the same phase, except that he's obsessed with the Narnia-like Fillory books and then discovers magic, Fillory, and many other things are real.
It could have been a disaster, on a par with Stephen Donaldson's Lord Foul's Bane, which introduced the most dickpunchworthy lead character in fantasy fiction. But it works. The protagonist has his good moments, and Grossman really does a good job of capturing both the wonder of discovering magic is real and the jaded and burned out disenchantment, so to speak, that comes of trying to figure out what to do with your life after that. And there are some genuinely well drawn settings and set pieces that borrow from the classics but have freshness and originality, too.
There's a sequel. I'll probably read it. |
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| Half-Blood Blues |
[Sep. 18th, 2011|07:01 pm] |
Ever read a review of a book by an author you've never heard of, maybe in a style or genre you don't often read, and thought, damn, I have to read this? And then it turns out to be as good as you hoped it might be?
Esi Edugyan's novel Half-Blood Blues is one of those books. Edugyan's a Canadian novelist and this is her second book. It's narrated by an American who played jazz in Germany and France just before WWII with a group of American and German musicians, the most talented being a black German trumpeter, and what happens when the Nazis move into Paris, and what happens fifty years later. Great writing and characterization, suspense and surprises, it's damn good all around. |
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| Dreamwidth? |
[Jul. 28th, 2011|10:26 pm] |
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In light of the ddos attacks, I wonder... Does lj clone Dreamwidth have the variety of communities that lj does, or is it mainly a fanfic place? Would it make sense to gravitate over there? |
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| L.A. Noire |
[Jun. 16th, 2011|09:43 pm] |
So the company responsible for Grand Theft Auto IV: Liberty City, quite possibly my all time favourite video game, releases a high profile game taken straight out of James Ellroy's LA Quartet (well, not officially). Oh, yes, that's for me.
And now I'm finished playing through the storyline and, well, I'm a tad underwhelmed. I miss the open sandbox world of GTA. L.A. Noire is a much more structured game -- you have to play through the episodes in the right order, and though you can take time out to go drive along the LA River basin or just generally explore how much of 1947 Los Angeles you can see (a lot) or look for tips o' the hat to classic movies, like Geiger's Bookstore from The Big Sleep, in general, you're on rails. It's like the Blade Runner PC game, in a way: go here, look for clues, interact with people to try to figure out what's going on... but with much, much better graphics and gameplay.
The thing is, it's not very noir. It's mainly a police procedural out of the Dragnet school, despite the occasional flashback cut scenes that reveal how various characters were connected during the war. A little more GTA-ness could have improved the noir element by fleshing out the characters. The conversations and activities the GTA protagonists have with their friends, employers, and even strangers do a lot to make their characters more rounded and believable. I didn't get enough of that for Cole Phelps in L.A. Noire.
Don't get me wrong, it's a really good way to spend several hours, as long as you keep your expectations under control. L.A. settings look great; the facial animation is well done (you have to watch people's expressions to tell if they're lying; there are even recognizable guest stars like Greg Grunberg). But a noir story should get me completely immersed in atmosphere, and that doesn't really happen here.
Maybe it's time to pop Blade Runner into the PC again. |
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