The Sunday Rundown

Reading:

I'm still working on "Fugitive Pieces". Anne Michaels is such a poet! Her crafting of dialogue and description continuously blows me away. Orienting myself in the setting is a bit difficult at times but having never read a book like this before, I can give it a pass.








Watching:

This is Lost Generation and it's pretty awesome.



Listening To:

This is awesome to clean to. I highly recommend it with socks on hardwood floors. Enjoy The Romantics "What I Like About You"

The Whispering Mountain - Joan Aiken

"Although the harp was dirty and broken, Owen thought it one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen, and he could not forbear passing his hand round the graceful, flowing lines of the frame, and then plucking with the tip of his finger at the last remaining string. The sound it gave out was low but piercingly clear; it seemed to fill the whole room with echoes."

Owen Hughes has a tough life. His crochety grandfather who runs the Pennygaff museum takes him for granted and constantly finds fault with his work. One night the Telyn Teirtu, the golden harp of legend is stolen from the museum and Owen is accused of the crime. He must recover it before his grandfather or the town of Pennygaff will forgive him. Fortunately he has a few allies to help him along the way. His good friend Arabis, her father and pet bird accompany him on a quest through a dangerous forest, into an underground system of caverns and into Castle Malyn. Unfortunately the castle is owned by the Marquess of Malyk who is obsessed with gold and his guest, the Seljuk of Rum has his own reasons for wanting the harp. Owen must outwit each in turn to reclaim the harp and return it to its rightful place.

My favourite character was Arabis. She's a bit off the wall, talks to her bird a lot but she's original. Owen on the other hand felt somewhat cliche. He's an orphan, the other children in the village bully him and he maybe kinda likes Arabis a little bit.

Aiken has a very lyrical style of writing that made for a very fluid read. I also liked the mythology incorporated into the book. Not only did the story incorporate several different creatures and stories from Welsh legend but they were seamlessly integrated into the story.

My main problem with the book was caring about the main characters. I didn't feel invested with them, despite enjoying Arabis' character. I was really looking forward to this book because it took place in Wales and I thought I'd be safe because this book won a Guardian Award in the 60s. I know other people who have enjoyed this book but it just wasn't for me.

Rating: 2/5

Community Rap

More awesomeness from "Community" thanks to DJ Steve Porter.

The Sunday Rundown

Reading: Hi guys. I just met with my bookclub for the first time and we discussed "A Study in Scarlet" and then went to go and see the Sherlock Holmes movie. I was pleasantly entertained, despite the inaccurate characterization of Holmes and Watson. Our book for next month is "Fugitive Pieces" by Canadian author, Anne Michaels.

I picked up a copy at the library as well as a copy of "A Dreadful Man", a book about actor George Sanders by his good friend, Brian Aherne.








Watching:

I've always had a special place in my heart for Buster Keaton. Out of all the old silent comedians he's my favourite, probably because he makes me laugh the hardest. For those of you who don't know him, Jackie Chan is the Buster Keaton of today, prop god and master of using the environment around him to get a laugh.



Listening To:

This is Japan by Coldplay set to old movie clips. It's a catchy little tune. Can you name the movies included?

Joel McHale is my god

Wow, I haven't seen this much snark since I last had an argument with my brother. I've loved Joel ever since I first saw "The Soup" and I laughed so hard when I saw this clip. In fact, I think I woke up my poor roommate who works hours opposite to mine. Sorry :(

It's by the same guys who did "Arrested Developement" so right away I knew it would be hilarious and it was.

The Stone and the Maiden - Dennis Jones

"Theatana's palms were damp with suppressed excitement. She folded her arms, and with her fingertips stroked the brocading of her cloth-of-silver sleeves. Below the window where she stood, the small paved rectangle of the Penitential Yard lay cold and gray in the dawn. The courtyard was deep in the oldest part of the Numera, next to the prison beneath the Bucelon Ravelin, and in the courtyard's center stood a double gallows."

A horde of barbarians are invading The Ascendancy, an ages old kingdom ruled by Archates, an incompetent fool. His daughter Theatana is a power hungry wacko and Erkai the Chain, an evil sorcerer has just returned from the dead. Mandine Dascaris, Archates' other daughter and heir to the throne, must deal with all three. Only the Signata, a long lost magic that will help her defeat her enemies but she can't do it alone. With the help of Key Mec Brander, a knight, they will defend the kingdom and preserve The Ascendancy.

I was pleasantly surprised by this novel. I read it last year on the plane and found myself unable to put it down. It's very typical of your straight forward fantasy novel with good versus evil, ancient bloodlines, powerful bad guys and a complex mythology but I was entertained.

Mandine and Key make an interesting pairing. Their relationship slowly evolves throughout the book and is put to the test more than once. Their are also some interesting additions to the fantasy novel mythos such as the cataphract, a horse/cat/bull mix that serve as mounts for the knights of The Ascendancy. Jones does a good job of creating a full world with its own rules and inhabitants. Another positive that I noticed is that Jones is Canadian. Can-Con is always a plus in my book.

My problems with the book stem from the plot and characters. Key's background seemed too cliche in terms of his family history and frankly, I'd read it before in half a dozen books. He and Mandine just happen to get thrown in together and low and behold it was fated they should meet. As for the plot it starts with a punch but the tension starts to dissipate towards the middle. This series has definite potential and was an enjoyable read but the story needs to step it up in terms of tension and originality.

Rating:3.5/5

New TV series: Boardwalk Empire

I love the Roaring Twenties. It was modern dabauchery at its best. Alcohol had been outlawed, giving rise to rum running, speak easies and crazy teetotallers. This new series will debut in the fall and is brought to you by Martin Scorsese. But before you get too excited, know this, the story will have to be damn compelling as the show is mad expensive to produce. Get this, the first episode cost $50 million to produce. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

Alan vs. Alan

These guys look nothing alike right?


You know, I always thought that Alan Arkin was that guy off of M*A*S*H. You know, Hawekeye. I've only ever seen clips of the show but apparently it was really really popular. It's a little fuzzy but I remember there was one guy who kept dressing up in women's clothing and the Colonel kept popping up in random movies. I'd always get funny looks when I said "Hey, it's that guy from M*A*S*H!" They were always getting into trouble, somewhat like the guys from Hogan's Heroes.

But duck, you say, that show's even older. How do you know about that? Well, in addition to my lollygagging around the internet I also happen to love old movies. Put "The Great Escape" together with YouTube and you have the spinoff, ta da, Hogan's Heroes. And did you further know that the actor who played Corporal Newkirk in the show, Richard Dawson, was also in a movie called "The Devil's Brigade" based on a true story about Americans and Canadians fighting as a commando unit in WWII? I call this train of thought, 'baconing' after Kevin of course. Anyway, back to what I was talking about before I got sidetracked.

I don't think anyone my age has ever even heard of the show so imagine my surprise when I read that Alan Arkin was starring in the movie I was watching on tv and then some other guy showed up in his place.

"Wait, what! That's not Hawkeye."

I had to come to the internet, head hung low as I wiki'd the show and found some guy named Alan Alda had played the character. Alan Arkin is a completely different guy who just happens to share a first name with Alda.

This isn't nearly as embarassing as those years I kept mixing up Kevin Costner and Bruce Willis though. But that's another story.

The Sunday Rundown

Reading:I just finished "Powers" and will eventually be doing a review on it. I also received a lovely book in the mail this week from Canadian author Cathy Marie Buchanan called "The Day the Falls Stood Still" and can't wait to get started on it!












Watching:I found this adorable commercial courtesy of Neatorama. The musical choices suit the piece perfectly don't you think?



Listening To:After hearing this song on CBC I had to hear it again. I don't believe Canada's participating in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa but the theme song called "Wavin' Flag" is sung by a Canadian named K'naan. Enjoy!

Persuasion - Jane Austen

"Anne, with an elegance of mind and sweetness of character, which must have placed her high with any people of real understanding, was nobody with either father or sister; her word had no weight, her convenience was always to give way -- she was only Anne."

Anne Elliot has been a pushover her entire life. Her family uses this to their advantage and her detriment. Her father, Sir Walter loves looking at himself in the mirror and spends money like water. Her sister, Elizabeth follows in his footsteps, ever concerned about social standing. Lady Russell, a close family friend, stands in for her deceased mother; eight years ago she advised Anne to break off the match between herself and a young naval officer, Frederick Wenstworth as he would have no means of supporting her due to his reduced circumstances. Against her own wishes Anne followed Lady Russell's advice and has regretted it ever since, especially considering she still has feelings for Frederick.

One of the best parts about this book are the characters. I loved Sir Walter because he's such a slimeball. I was amused every time he opened his mouth. If you doubt the humour of his person, read on. "Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character; vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man. Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did, nor could the valet of any new made lord be more delighted with the place he held in society. He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliott, who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion."

As well, I liked seeing into Anne's thoughts, comparing them to her dialogue. The readers see she's a caring individual, not playing at consideration like her father. Everyone takes advantage of her kindness for their own ends though, leaving her vulnerable.

I did want more developement in terms of a subplot. Usually with other Austen novels there are subplots that have their own set of problems and resolutions. These seemed pushed aside, only mentioned in passing in "Persuasion". While Anne's story is more than enough to keep the reader's interest, it would have been nice to flesh out a few more stories about the characters we meet. Also, Austen's writing is engaging and elegant but at times requires a second readthrough to capture all the little nuances.

Overall I wish I hadn't waited so long to read this book. While "Pride & Prejudice" may be considered the best known Austen novel, I enjoyed "Persuasion" far more.

Rating: 5/5

Stand into Danger - Alexander Kent

"The mist darkened and edged aside as the anchored ship loomed into view. the boat was approaching her starboard bow and past the long tapering jib-boom. Like Bolitho's new uniform on the wey jetty, the Destiny seemed to shine through the drifting muck. From her lithe and buff hull to her three mastheads she was a thoroughbred. All her shrouds and standing rigging were freshly blacked down, her yards crossed, and each sail neatly furled to match its neighbour."p12

Richard Bolitho is now an officer, newly promoted to third lieutenant. His jump from midshipman's berth to wardroom is a significant one and he's been assigned to a new ship, Destiny. The crew has been tasked with a secret mission in the Caribbean involving revolutionaries. Britain is currently at peace but there are stirrings in the American colonies. Along the way Bolitho runs into pirates, storms and illness. He also must decide where his loyalities lie as his captain makes it clear that his command comes first, before king and country.

This story is chock full of action. We not only flashback to where Bolitho meets his trusty coxswain Stockdale, we also get great battles on land and sea. Bolitho gets romantically involved and comes close to death. The variety within the plot keeps things interesting.

I really liked the dynamics among the crew. Captain Dumaresq was just the right amount of crazy to frustrate both the reader and Bolitho. This story also showed how Bolitho handled his new responsibilities. He's not just one of the crew anymore and has trouble adjusting as an 18 year old trying to tell men three times his age what to do.

It's been my experience that romance in books or movies about war tend to ruin the plot. It's no different here. The romantic subplot was unnecessary and detracted from the story. Overall though, I really enjoyed this book and am looking forward to reading the next in the series.

Follow Richard in his next naval adventure in Sloop of War.

Rating: 4/5

People's Choice Twilight Awards

I couldn't stop laughing when I saw this. Enjoy!

101 Book Challenge

Welcome to the fifth annual book challenge. The sad thing is that as the years pass I never seem to get any further on this lst though I do manage to get a lot of reading done.

Beowulf

Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart

Agee, James - A Death in the Family

Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice

Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain

Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot

Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March

Bronte, Charlotte - Jane Eyre

Bronte, Emily - Wuthering Heights

Camus, Albert - The Stranger

Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop

Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales

Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard

Chopin, Kate - The Awakening

Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness

Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans

Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage

Dante - Inferno

Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote

Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe

Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment

Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy

Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers

Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss

Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man

Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays

Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying

Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury

Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones

Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby

Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary

Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang - Faust

Golding, William - Lord of the Flies

Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter

Heller, Joseph - Catch 22

Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms

Homer - The Iliad

Homer - The Odyssey

Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God

Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World

Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House

James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady

James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw

Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis

Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior

Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird

Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt

London, Jack - The Call of the Wild

Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - One Hundred Years of Solitude

Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener

Melville, Herman - Moby Dick

Miller, Arthur - The Crucible

Morrison, Toni - Beloved

O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find

O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night

Orwell, George - Animal Farm

Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago

Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar

Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales

Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way

Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49

Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front

Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac

Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep

Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye

Shakespeare, William - Hamlet

Shakespeare, William - Macbeth

Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream

Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet

Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion

Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein

Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Sophocles - Antigone

Sophocles - Oedipus Rex

Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath

Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island

Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin

Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels

Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair

Thoreau, Henry David - Walden

Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace

Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons

Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Voltaire - Candide

Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five

Walker, Alice - The Color Purple

Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth

Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories

Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass

Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray

Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie

Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse

Wright, Richard - Native Son

New Template & Glitches

I decided that to usher in the new year I'd like a new template. Unfortunately when I saved my old template it wouldn't open again so I lost a lot of information. Including all of the movies I'd watched in the past year.

I'm also experiencing some bugs. For some reason my profile pic won't show up and just when I thought I'd got navigation buttons for my template, they turn white when I hover over them. I have the color of the text and background for hovering set to colours other than white but that doesn't seem to help.

But I'm optomistic. Eventually I'll figure out how to fix these and be able to create book and movie lists year to year.

The Sunday Rundown

Reading I'm still working in "A Study in Scarlet". It strikes me that Holmes' 'amazing deductions' are mostly just assumptions. But Doyle frustrates the reader in part two by keeping the reveal from them. Instead he jumps into a description of the great desert of America that the Oregon Trail crossed.











Watching: Let's start the year on an optomistic note. I found this while browsing YouTube and loved it! They look like they're having so much fun.



Listening:

I found this group by accident. They're French but sing in english. "1901" by Phoenix.