review » Mostly Harmless

Eleanor Rigby

May 152009

Douglas Coupland - Eleanor Rigby

Douglas Coupland
2004

Eleanor Rigby is told as a memoir, written by Liz Dunn. She looks back at the point in her life when her son Jeremy came into her life. She was 36 and he was 20, and suffering from a very progressive form of Multiple Sclerosis. It also recounts the events that lead up to Jeremy’s birth and adoption. The book then jumps to the present, where Liz meets with Jeremy’s father for the first time since he was conceived. Like most of Douglas Coupland’s books, this book isn’t so much about plot as it is about capturing moments and moods, exploring concept. Though there are lots of plot points, this book is really about one woman’s loneliness, and about how her son’s life and death lifted that veil of loneliness, if only for a short period of time.

I enjoyed this book. It wasn’t one of my favourite Coupland books (those being Girlfriend In A Coma, All Families Are Psychotic, and Hey Nostradamus!), but I really felt like Liz was a real person, an every woman who you could pass on the street without noticing. I didn’t really connect with her personally, but I certainly empathized with her, and I can’t deny that I wanted to see her have a better life than she did. It was a nice break from sci-fi, though. Also, I have now read all of Douglas Coupland’s novels (except God Hates Japan, which was only published in Japan, in Japanese).

Starship Troopers

Reviews No Responses »

May 032009

Robert A. Heinlein - Starship Troopers

Robert A Heinlein
1959

I’m so done with sci-fi for a bit. Ugh.

I did not love this book. Liked it more than Stranger In A Strange Land, but meh. Wanna read a soldier’s memoirs? In space? Then read this book.

Otherwise, don’t. I didn’t find it entertaining or fascinating. I didn’t feel like I had any idea of what the main character was about, his motivations, his reactions to the events of the book. I couldn’t connect with any of the characters, as they all seemed like automatons rather than people. And maybe that was the point, but like I said before, meh.

All in all, not my type of book.

Foundation And Earth

Reviews 1 Response »

Apr 152009

Isaac Asimov - Foundation and Earth

Issac Asimov
1982

Foundation and Earth picks up almost immediately after the events of Foundation’s Edge: Foundation councilman Golan Trevize, historian Janov Perolat and their new companion Bliss, head off in search of Earth, a mythical planet where it is suggested that human life originated. They hop from planet to planet, mostly hostile, in search for clues to the location of the planet that most people think does not even exists. That’s really the plot. Eventually, they end up on Earth and we learn what happened to it many millennia before.

This is one of the books that Asimov wrote in exchange for a dump truck full of money, and somehow it feels like he phoned it in. It wasn’t a terrible book by any extent, but at the same point, it didn’t feel like he was trying to add mystery and intrigue to the book. It felt very much like straight line the characters went in to reach Earth.

Also, I think that some time in the 1980s Issac Asimov must learned about sex, because he wrote about it quite a bit in this book. Asimov is good at many things, but should not be writing about sex. It just doesn’t fit his style, or the tone of the previous books in this series.

If you don’t feel like reading 500 pages, here is a re-creation of the book, in under 100 words:

Planet X: No, we don’t know where Earth is, but we do know about Planet A.
Foundationers: Well, let’s go to Planet A.
Planet A: No, we don’t know about Earth, but have you heard about Planets B and C?
Foundationers: Let’s try Planet B.
Planet B: GRRR! WOOF! (it was full of feral dogs)
Foundationers: Eek! Let’s go to Planet C.
Foundationers: (on planet C) hey look, there’s a carving that has the coordinates of 50 worlds. Let’s go to the first one!
Planet D: Let’s have sex! I don’t know what you’re asking us about.
Foundationers: Let’s go look at that star, it’s close to here.
Foundationers: Hey, look it’s Earth. Let’s ask that person over there what’s going on.
Earthman: Welcome to Earth. How may I help you?

Obviously, other stuff happened on the planets they visited, but it mostly felt like filler.

My verdict: Stop with the original trilogy and then read the robot books. I’m going to read the prequels, but only because we already own them.

Foundation’s Edge

Reviews No Responses »

Mar 242009

Foundation's Edge - Isaac Asimov

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.

Coraline

Life 1 Response »

Feb 092009

Coraline Poster

Coraline [2009]

This past Friday night, Alan and I went to see Coraline in 3-D. The film was quite enjoyable. I’m not convinced I loved the 3-D experience, because I found it very hard on my eyes, but the film was beautiful and fanciful and just the right amounts of creepy.

First off, this is not a kid’s movie, though I think a lot of kids would love it. Based off a book by Neil Gaiman, it’s a story about a girl who finds a portal to a parallel universe in her new home. The parallel universe seems perfect at first, her neighbours are more fun, the food is much better, and her parents build a world that revolves around her needs. The only drawback? Everyone has scary button eyes that hint that this parallel world may be far creepier than it seems at first glance. This film is about Coraline’s adventures uncovering the truth about this parallel world.

Coraline was made by the same people as made The Nightmare Before Christmas, and the colours and look of the movie was just incredible. I really enjoyed the movie and would recommend it to pretty much everyone I know. As for the 3-D experience, it was used to enhance the movie, and didn’t feel like a gimmick, but I’m not sure my eyes would love to see it in 3-D again.

Older Entries

Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha

Mostly Harmless

Eleanor Rigby

Starship Troopers

Foundation And Earth

Foundation’s Edge

Coraline

2011 Bookstravaganza

Pages

Recent Posts

Categories

Blogs

Webcomics