Category Archives: Reviews

I was reading a movie review someone had posted in their blog, and they’d started it out by saying, “wow.” While I did have a slight urge to say that about this movie, I didn’t want to seem so blown away. Don’t get me wrong though… it really was quite good. Josh and I really liked it a lot.

If you want the quick review I’ll say this: go see it now.

To further enhance that review I’ll say this: go see it now, especially if you like romantic movies.

Remember how that movie Ever After completely catered to romantic saps, but in the end it was probably the best movie of 1998 (at least I thought so)? That is an excellent movie with excellent music, but not something that everyone would think to watch while saying to themselves, “that one looks good!”

I tend to feel that way about Stardust. For one, it looks like it could be a cheesy fantasy movie. Maybe almost geared towards younger children. On the other hand some people have thrown around the term “scifi” which could easily scare somebody off if they imagine scifi to be all aliens invading other planets. The great part about this movie is that it’s none of these things (well, ‘cept the fantasy part).

I’ll do a quick and dirty paraphrase of the plot for you. Young man knocks up girl in alternate reality. Resulting bastard almost as dimwitted as his father, a trait which sends him on a personal quest to woo a brain dead blonde that turns into a quest to keep alive a much smarter blonde. Things get tough, they meet Robert DeNiro, they meet Michelle Pheiffer, things get even more hairy and in the end everyone is happy. Except for Michelle Pheiffer.

It actually is quite good. If you have any smidgen of romanticism in you, go see this movie.

Oh yeah, and the score is awesome.

So it looks like I got duped. Not just me, but Josh too. Josh always heard this Jack McDevitt series talked about in terms of this book, “Chindi,” and the next book, “Omega.” Neither of us ever figured that there was a first book. A book called Deepsix.

Alas, it looks like that was the case. After going to the Amazon page for the book today to get a link I skimmed the page and discovered that this was book two. When I first figured this out I was quite annoyed, but now that I’ve started writing this post I’ve realized that I didn’t really notice while I was reading the book, so I shouldn’t knock it too much. It’s a good sign for a book really, in the end.

On to what I thought eh? I actually quite enjoyed the book. It was one of those wide-reaching “big” feeling books, yet it didn’t feel like a space opera. That kind of thing I have trouble with sometimes, because I’m not always in the mood for them. The book starts out with our main character, Hutch, who is a well-received space pilot. Some crazy group of people thinks there’s something more out there in space and they need her to fly their new-fangled ship.

Basically the story is their adventure, but while the implications of this adventure could affect their whole world, much of that is only slightly touched on, which I actually really liked. There is the requisite travel between worlds, the untimely death of well-liked characters, and aliens!

This book really wants you to keep reading it without putting it down, and it’s hard to turn a book like this down when it’s asking you so nicely. I read it over the course of a few days while in California with Josh.

Apologies for not making this review more in-depth, but I have to do some other stuff before I leave Tully’s today. Maybe I’ll edit this entry later, but I probably won’t get around to it, heh.

All in all… 4 out of 5 stars.

In case my faithful readers don’t know, I’m not above lowering myself to shamelessly pimp things.  Thus, I am here writing this post now to mention that I’ve added a bunch of books to my BookMooch Inventory.  I encourage you to check it out; not to sign up and mooch anything, but to let me know if you just happen to want one.  If you live near me I’ll just hand it over to you, and if you don’t I’ll mail it out to you no problem.  If you want more than one, go for it!  I’ve got an abundance of books at the moment (especially romance) that friends and family give me to post.  Now I’m overrun with books and points… so get your greedy fingers ready and take take take!  I command thee!

I just finished this book last night, and I have to say that it was quite enjoyable. Since it was written in the 1600s, you have to really use your brain to get past the writing style. Very, very wordy… it will often take a paragraph to get across a point that by today’s standards would only take two sentences.

Apart from that, it was quite a fun story about our two young friends, Aurelian and Hippolito. They go off on a little trip when they chance upon a town holding a large party celebrating the marriage of two rich young folk, causing our young friends to hang around and attend. Of course, this is a masked ball, so nobody knows who they really are.

Both Aurelian and Hippolito manage to meet young women at this ball and fall head-over-heals for them within minutes, and the comedy of errors that ensues makes the story quite fun. The book is only around 100 pages (a standard for Hesperus Press, the publisher), so I can’t really talk more of the story’s plot without giving too much away.

I would definitely recommend this book if you’re looking for a fun way to exercise your brain and learn some new words. It’s quite a fun little glimpse into the past to see how a writer of those times would write a short story romantic comedy.

As always, if you’re interested in borrowing it or any other books I’ve got just let me know.

What too say about a book telling the tale of someone who was imprisoned in the most famous Nazi concentration camp? There isn’t much that I will say about it, other than that it was yet another very moving account of what happened. Along with Elie Wiesel’s Night, I would recommend this book. Below I’m going to put a passage from the introduction, written by Richard Seaver.

While they are a tiny minority, there are many others who simply prefer to block it from their minds. And even assuming one knows and does not turn away, one may well ask: What is the point of dwelling on the subject? Why rake over cold ashes, stir up old animosities? Would it not be better to forgive and forget, turn toward the future rather than look back in anger on the fading past? Fair questions indeed. The answer comes from the victims themselves. “These victims of Nazi atrocities,” Meyer Levin once wrote, “hid fragmentary records of their experience, they scratched words on walls, they died hoping the world would some day know, not in statistics but in empathy. We are charged to listen.”

I’ve finished another book! Although to be fair I finished it on Monday morning, and since then have read yet another book, which puts me in the position to decide the next one that I’d like to read.

This book was quite excellent I thought. This is only the second John Varley book that I’ve read, although I have a few of his on the shelf. Mostly I just read somewhere online that he was a good author, so I started mooching his books from BookMooch. Mammoth was a pretty good standalone book which at the very least told me that he was talented at writing and thinking up fun SF stories.

This one really ventures more into the sci-fi realm, because it’s set in a more obvious future. The premise is that previous to when our story starts, aliens attacked the earth and anyone that wasn’t already living on Luna (the moon) perished. Since then the human race has flourished on Luna, Mars, and a few other planets in our solar system. Our main character, Hildy, is a man who is a reporter for one of the big tabloids and increasing starting to worry about his tendency to try and commit suicide.

The planet has many, many new innovations. Society has gotten to a point where people don’t really need to work at all… the Central Computer (also known as the “CC”) pretty much takes care of anything people need. They can directly interface with the computer and have information sent to their brain, it monitors the life signs of every human, regulates the air filtration, etc. You get the point.

Our character Hildy keeps getting “miraculously saved” just in time whenever he tries to commit suicide, and after each attempt he’s not exactly sure why he did try in the first place. The book follows his attempt to talk to the CC and find out why this is happening to him.

The book goes into great detail about what society is like on Luna, and it’s all incredibly interesting. People can get a sex change without batting an eye… most ailments can be fixed with a few nanobots, hence an increased lifespan of about 300yrs on the older end.

You can definitely see why John Varley is so acclaimed while reading this book… despite all of the information, background, and plot lines that are thrown at you, you don’t feel bogged down or overwhelmed by all the information. I can easy get confused when reading a book that has too many plot lines to follow, but I didn’t have much trouble at all with this one.

The character development was great and I had no trouble getting pulled into the story and making it to the end. I was quite excited to finish the book while reading it, and it was easy for me to make a connection with Hildy.

I won’t say much else about the book, other than to say that I thought it was a fun book with a nice overall theme to it, tackling some issues that I don’t often see in sci-fi. I definitely plan to read more John Varley in the future… I suggest you do too.