I rarely get to catch the sunrise on weekdays because I’m usually on the road by then, driving away from it. This morning, though, I didn’t go to the gym and because of that I got to see the gorgeousness of this morning’s sunrise. My photos don’t do it justice, but thought I’d share anyways.
Mar 252009
Mar 242009
Foundation's Edge - Isaac Asimov
1982
Oh, the Foundation series rears its head again. This one is the fourth book, set about five hundred years into the Foundation era. It was written about 30 years after the original trilogy was published. Asimov himself admitted to writing this book for two reasons: pressure from the fans, and the obsecene amount of money paid to him by the publishers. Apparently, they drove a dump truck full of money up to his front door, or maybe gave him the world’s biggest oversized novelty cheque. Anyways, due to the timeframe and the Scrooge McDuckiness of the whole thing, I was a little wary.
You know when things are going so well that you start thinking that something sinister must be going on that you simply can’t see? That’s the premise of this edition of the Foundation series. Foundation’s Edge continues the epic tale of political inter-planetary intrigue laid out in Foundation, Foundation And Empire and Second Foundation. We saw the Second Foundation “taken down” in the last book, but it turns out they’re not really gone. Things are going swimmingly for both Foundations, following the Seldon Plan so closely that it starts making people in both foundations start to scratch their heads. Officials on both sides send out people to spy on the other, trying to find out what’s really going on. Things come to a head at the planet Gaia, where a big showdown takes place, and everything comes together nicely. What side wins? You’ll have to read the book to find out!
I enjoyed this book. Overall, the book made a lot of sense and the story flowed nicely. There weren’t any huge gaps in logic, and overall I enjoyed the characterizations. Asimov tried to tie any book that took place on Earth or Trantor somehow into the universe of the Foundation, which actually really bothered me. Some of them made sense, but others were only very vaguely tied in and were completely ancillary to the story line. I’m looking forward to Foundation and Earth, which is the next book. Alan’s been reading the books after me and he’s enjoying them as well.
Threadless T-Shirt: Books Are Good For You. Love it!
Mar 192009
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
2001
American Gods tells the story of a man named Shadow and his journeys with the mysterious Mr. Wednesday. Mere days before he is set to be released from prison, his wife and best friend are killed in a car accident. On the flight back to the funeral, Shadow meets Mr. Wednesday, who seems to know everything about him before they meet. Mr. Wednesday hires Shadow as a bodyguard and errand boy, and they set off on a deeply bizarre trek through America, meeting with the forgotten and beaten down gods who came to America with the people of the old worlds who believed in them. Mr. Wednesday and Shadow’s goal is to enlist the assistance of all of the old-world gods in the war that is about to happen. The book tells the story of the lead up to the battle between the old and forgotten old-world gods and the new world gods, personified mostly as modern inventions (Internet, Telephone, Train, etc.). As gods are slowly forgotten, they lose their strength and become destitute, and they believe this turf war with the new god will save them from further decay.
My favourite section of this book was the middle part, where Shadow is stuck in a remote community in Wisconsin for the winter. I think Gaiman was able to capture both the positive and negative aspects of small town living effectively, and I thought the characters that Shadow meets in this town were not mere caricatures, but real people. Sometimes the dialog seemed a little stilted, but there wasn’t a ton of dialog, the book was mostly narrative, always from inside Shadow’s head. Also, I totally missed that Low Key == Loki until the very end.
American Gods was wonderful. It was dark and moody without being creepy, and there was a zombie and a leprechaun. What else does a good book need? I was frequently reminded while reading this book of The Long Dark Tea Time Of The Soul by Douglas Adams, which works with a lot of the same notions. However, this book is certainly not a comedy. With everything I read by Neil Gaiman, I become more and more interested in reading the rest of his work. Also, he was great on Colbert on Monday night, and his blog and Twitter feed are both pretty great.
Mar 182009
Kyle XY: Textbook case of how not to write a season / series finale
Here’s a hint to television writing: all episodes should feature at least a little closure on a story line, even if it is just a tiny piece of a larger puzzle. It makes the viewer feel like the plot is going somewhere. Season finales should wrap up the overarching plot line(s) of the season. It should do so more than two minutes before the end of the episode, and it should have some sort of denouement. If you have the chance, you can introduce a new mystery, or let the main character react to the closures they’ve witnessed. This show needed at least three more episodes in order to handle all the stuff that was done in this episode to make it work. Everything seemed half-assed.
Closure is important. I don’t even think as a season finale this episode did enough to create closure. You want closure? Here’s closure:
- After Cassidy told Kyle he was his brother, have Kyle say something sappy about how Josh Trager is his real brother, and then snap the crap out of his neck.
- Have Jessi bomb the shit out of Latnok, and then have a big group hug.
- Make Kyle pick between Jessi and Amanda, not that anyone really cares about that subplot.
- Declan and Lori don’t get back together because life’s not like that. They stay with their current boy/girlfriends and remain friends.
- Fade to grey.
Or, more realistically, but less spin-off friendly:
- Kill off Kyle and/or Jessi in the process of destroying Latnok. Have the rest of the points above stay the same.
