When I walked up to the post office, I stumbled across a couple of pianos.
April 2, 2011
Source Code
The three of us were engaged in this movie while watching it but it didn’t leave us much to talk about afterward. We cared about the characters and the outcome of their struggle. The movie wisely chooses to keep its focus very narrow rather than distract us with too much backstory, subplots, or secondary characters. We learn about the situation and the world as Jake Gyllenhaals’ character does, and this
April 1, 2011
April Fool’s Day 2011
Begin to search for “Helvetica”. Google Helvetica Before you finish, not only does search autocomplete, it changes all the fonts to Comic Sans. Google Comic Sans Be sure to follow the link. Google is hiring autocompleters.
March 26, 2011
Jane Eyre (Fukunaga)
No movie adaptation of Jane Eyre is likely to please me; the most I can hope for is that I don’t wince too much. Jane Eyre was my first favorite book, the first book I connected to. Our relationship began when I was 14, seeing the Susannah York/George C. Scott adaptation on TV’s Hallmark Hall of Fame. By that all other adaptations are judged. This 2011 version leaves me cold.
March 22, 2011
Hunch
“Hunch personalizes the internet by getting to know you and then making smart recommendations about what you might like.” — About Hunch Yesterday I played around with Hunch for a couple of hours and by the end of the day I felt I still hadn’t realized any benefit. I’d told it a lot about me but it still didn’t seem to know anything about me. For example, given my responses
March 1, 2011
With Respect to the Japanese
With Respect to the Japanese was published in 1984 as the Japanese economic juggernaut loomed over the US. At that time, Americans eyed Japan with the twin emotions of fear and wonder. What’s happened to American companies? Why don’t we have anything like Sony or Toyota? (This was before Apple, Amazon, and Google.) This is a cross-cultural guide to explain how our nations’ communication and management styles differ. This slim
March 1, 2011
The Last Colony
The saga continues. And we’re back to first person narrative and the voice of John Perry. Yay! I think John Scalzi finally gets the balance between dialog and description right. (Except between pages 199-203.) The Last Colony is a very satisfying tying up of story lines and themes. Quotes and Notes 2011-03-02. Added after reading all three books in the series. You never forget where you come from. — p
February 28, 2011
The Ghost Brigades
The Ghost Brigades opens with a rock. I didn’t find this the most promising of starts. If just finishing Old Man’s War hadn’t left me with the desire to explore more of John Scalzi’s universe, I would have been tempted to stop after the first page. Luckily, the importance of rocks pans out quickly so I didn’t feel too cranky having to sit through description. Contrast it with the opening
February 27, 2011
Old Man’s War
AJM encouraged me to read some science fiction that was written a bit more recently. After all, just because I started reading science fiction in the 1970s and stopped reading science fiction in the 1970s, doesn’t mean I should restrict myself to reading science fiction from the 1970s. He suggested Old Man’s War for two reasons; it is an alternative riff on the themes of brain transplant and identity that
February 25, 2011
I Will Fear No Evil
Spoilers Ahead The premise is much more intriguing than its execution. The brain of a dying rich old man is transplanted into the body of a young woman who has been murdered. The whole book could delve into the meaning of identity and gender but all it does is talk about sex. I don’t think it ever actually describes anyone having sex (current romance fiction is more explicit). But everyone
February 19, 2011
Life Among the Savages
Shirley Jackson is the original Mommy-blogger. Or would be today. In her day she sold her stories to women’s magazines. Life Among the Savages (four children and small town locals) is grimly comic. Her wry observations are delivered in a deadpan tone. You can sense that it wouldn’t take much to push her into setting the same scenes of domestic madness a bit more horrifically as she did in “The
February 18, 2011
The Mote in God’s Eye
I pulled The Mote in God’s Eye off AJM’s stack of books to be discarded. I’d read another Niven-Pournelle novel, Oath of Fealty in the mid 1980s and enjoyed it. AJM didn’t like their style and abandoned The Mote in God’s Eye early into it. One of the things Niven-Pournelle do well in both books employ an ensemble cast to tell the story from multiple viewpoints. They even include a
February 13, 2011
The Girl’s Guide to Hunting and Fishing
These days it seems that anything written by a woman gets lumped into the “chick lit” bin. However, I think The Girls’ Guide… truly qualifies for that label and it reminds me that I’m really not a girly girl. I’ve never seen a single episode of Sex in the City either. I like the main character, Jane. She is self-deprecating and has a wacky sense of humor. I found the
February 12, 2011
Shanghai Diary
I finished reading Shanghai Diary within 24 hours of buying it. The memoir of an eleven year old girl who, in 1939, retrieves her father from the Gestapo and escapes Germany with her parents is a compelling read. In any Hollywood movie, the escape would have signalled the happy ending. However, most of the world had already closed its borders to Jewish refugees, and Ursula’s family flees to the only