The cranky one has a bone to pick with …silly book reviewers. First repeat after me "it is okay to read formula novels". The literature police will not come for you. Even they realize that formula novels can be great entertainment and lots of fun.
I recently read a novel that I felt was a very good example within its genre which happens to be the thriller novel. I began to read some other readers reviews and many of them criticized the novel for being formulaic. Well duh, Of course it is formulaic, many novels within genres are. (BTW don't spam me for this comment, yes I know that there are novelists who do bring originality to their work within various genres)
Mystery novels generally have a murder, a sleuth, and the resolution to the murder; romance novels have two protagonists who may initially hate one another but initially fall in love and then have a happily ever after. Many people read the same author because they know there will be familiar motifs with the works of the aforesaid author.
I myself enjoy Robert Crais because I know Elvis is going to be conflicted, Pike is going to be enigmatic and that there will be at least one really good shootout.
If you are going to review a novel within a formula then critique writing, character development ete. Formula authors can fall flat and its perfectly fine to point out problems, just don’t trash the book because it is exactly what it purports to be.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
nostalgia
This past weekend I indulged in two separate yet entertaining types of activities that brought back a wave of nostalgia.
On Saturday my husband and I took my mother in law to the Monterey Bay aquarium as she had not been there before. The current exhibits of the seahorses are awesome by the way! Joe Bob says check it out. We then took seventeen mile drive over to Carmel and it was this combination that made me nostalgic. I’ve taken both my parents and a wide variety of friends to these spots over the years and it was fun to try and remember who I was with when we saw the tide pools, where that little shop was where they used to sell folk art rugs, where my ten year old nephew (now in his thirties yikes!) swam for hours etc.
Then today we went and saw the new Star Trek movie. I had a lot of trepidation going in as I’m a hardcore trekker from way back. I remember watching it when I was probably no older than six or seven initially. I had some of the lines memorized and to this day one of my college roommates still does. Yes I am and was a geek and used to get pounded regularly for it. Funny how those folks who used to make fun of Star Trek now also remember it fondly.
In any case I didn’t think I was going to enjoy a reimagining of the myth but it turns out for the most part I did. I loved Simon Pegg as Scotty and wished that he had been introduced sooner, Anton Yelchin was fun as Chekov and I think I now have a crush on Karl Urban’s McCoy (Sorry Deforest). I wasn’t so excited with Chris Pine as Kirk nor with the underlying relationship of Spock and Uhura. The movie did lots of little references back to the original and overall it was a fun way to sort of revisit a past favorite. Do go in with a totally open mind and just go with the reimagining, trying to get this movie to mesh with the other treks my cause a headache. Oh, and as I told my friend who actually lives in Iowa just laugh and ignore the fact that they didn’t get it right.
On Saturday my husband and I took my mother in law to the Monterey Bay aquarium as she had not been there before. The current exhibits of the seahorses are awesome by the way! Joe Bob says check it out. We then took seventeen mile drive over to Carmel and it was this combination that made me nostalgic. I’ve taken both my parents and a wide variety of friends to these spots over the years and it was fun to try and remember who I was with when we saw the tide pools, where that little shop was where they used to sell folk art rugs, where my ten year old nephew (now in his thirties yikes!) swam for hours etc.
Then today we went and saw the new Star Trek movie. I had a lot of trepidation going in as I’m a hardcore trekker from way back. I remember watching it when I was probably no older than six or seven initially. I had some of the lines memorized and to this day one of my college roommates still does. Yes I am and was a geek and used to get pounded regularly for it. Funny how those folks who used to make fun of Star Trek now also remember it fondly.
In any case I didn’t think I was going to enjoy a reimagining of the myth but it turns out for the most part I did. I loved Simon Pegg as Scotty and wished that he had been introduced sooner, Anton Yelchin was fun as Chekov and I think I now have a crush on Karl Urban’s McCoy (Sorry Deforest). I wasn’t so excited with Chris Pine as Kirk nor with the underlying relationship of Spock and Uhura. The movie did lots of little references back to the original and overall it was a fun way to sort of revisit a past favorite. Do go in with a totally open mind and just go with the reimagining, trying to get this movie to mesh with the other treks my cause a headache. Oh, and as I told my friend who actually lives in Iowa just laugh and ignore the fact that they didn’t get it right.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
ETSY
Discovering a new way to spend money in these hard financial times is wrong, correct? What if, by spending your money, you would be helping small local artists?
I love handmade things, especially those things that are a little folk arty and or have an originality to them.
Unfortunately for my wallet, I have discovered Etsy and... there are a whole lot of talented folks on this website. I got sucked into the art section and haven't been able to find my way out. For those of you not so interested in art check out the other categories. Yes, there is some amateurish stuff but, overall, I've found some very nice, authentic pieces and frequently reasonably priced. Who knows, maybe one day my stuff will be up there and you can then support another local artist!
I love handmade things, especially those things that are a little folk arty and or have an originality to them.
Unfortunately for my wallet, I have discovered Etsy and... there are a whole lot of talented folks on this website. I got sucked into the art section and haven't been able to find my way out. For those of you not so interested in art check out the other categories. Yes, there is some amateurish stuff but, overall, I've found some very nice, authentic pieces and frequently reasonably priced. Who knows, maybe one day my stuff will be up there and you can then support another local artist!
Thursday, March 19, 2009
zombies as love interests, really?
Alright first of all I've got a bone to pick. I like being scared so badly my hair practically turns white so I am not real excited at the way things have gone for some of my favorite horror archetypes..
In the past several years romance writers have taken the horrific out of a variety of horrific and/or mythical figures (vampires, werewolves, demons etc) and turned them into fluffy harmless objects e.e.angels. This begs the questions as to why the angels had to tell the shepherds “be not afraid” if they are so cute and cuddly…
In some cases it's not all fluff, a little bit of the cruelty remains but then a tortured soul is added so that our heroine can “save” the love object or, if they are the being in question, be saved. Hollywood had a lot to do with the shift in image and writers followed suit and began to change the mythos to make these beings more palatable.
Some of the changes are kind of ooky. In a lot of these stories there is also an underlying wife beater element to them. He bit too hard or he crushed my ribs turning into a werewolf but he didn’t really mean it. Let's ignore this aspect for the time being as that could turn into a disseration for some enterprising English major. So way do these reformed archetypes appeal? As a general rule there is not only the tortured being angle but there are the good looks, charm and in many case wealth that goes along with these types. So if you are fifteen (or fifteen in spirit which many adult women seem to be)you develop a little crush.
However, zombies are well zombies. To start with they are dead and not just dead but rotting, meat falling off the bones dead. They generally have no other thought processes other than to eat you. They don’t have any higher brain function left. No time for romance when there is always a primordial hunger to eat flesh. Even with some of the conventions being bent in modern movie making – they are fast, they have basic reasoning skills etc it is still a huge stretch to understand how they can be made into love objects. I could actually read one of these books but…
I’m not sure I can take the plunge and have the whole zombie allure thing ruined for me. I like being scared silly and just don’t want the thrill of being scared to death ruined with thoughts of zombies sucking face not to eat someone but to lurve them, bleech! Puleeze people leave my zombies be!
In the past several years romance writers have taken the horrific out of a variety of horrific and/or mythical figures (vampires, werewolves, demons etc) and turned them into fluffy harmless objects e.e.angels. This begs the questions as to why the angels had to tell the shepherds “be not afraid” if they are so cute and cuddly…
In some cases it's not all fluff, a little bit of the cruelty remains but then a tortured soul is added so that our heroine can “save” the love object or, if they are the being in question, be saved. Hollywood had a lot to do with the shift in image and writers followed suit and began to change the mythos to make these beings more palatable.
Some of the changes are kind of ooky. In a lot of these stories there is also an underlying wife beater element to them. He bit too hard or he crushed my ribs turning into a werewolf but he didn’t really mean it. Let's ignore this aspect for the time being as that could turn into a disseration for some enterprising English major. So way do these reformed archetypes appeal? As a general rule there is not only the tortured being angle but there are the good looks, charm and in many case wealth that goes along with these types. So if you are fifteen (or fifteen in spirit which many adult women seem to be)you develop a little crush.
However, zombies are well zombies. To start with they are dead and not just dead but rotting, meat falling off the bones dead. They generally have no other thought processes other than to eat you. They don’t have any higher brain function left. No time for romance when there is always a primordial hunger to eat flesh. Even with some of the conventions being bent in modern movie making – they are fast, they have basic reasoning skills etc it is still a huge stretch to understand how they can be made into love objects. I could actually read one of these books but…
I’m not sure I can take the plunge and have the whole zombie allure thing ruined for me. I like being scared silly and just don’t want the thrill of being scared to death ruined with thoughts of zombies sucking face not to eat someone but to lurve them, bleech! Puleeze people leave my zombies be!
I see dead people
Quite a few of my work associates, friends etc have dropped dead in the last couple of years. For some reason I've been dreaming about them alot lately. If it isn't my poor dead cat, it is my co-worker who died of complications from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. I know this sounds odd but I think I can lay at least part of the blame on oct-mom. See I used to have this friend at work and we'd eat stories up like octo-mom. We'd relentlessly pursue any news, dissect her life, state how we could do things so much better and so on. Since this woman is still in the news I get the urge frequently to send an e-mail to my friend so we can dish. Problem is she too died earlier this year and I still haven't processed it. She wasn't that much older than me so that is always freaky. After all we never think of ourselves as old do we? When we hit 30 we think that's not so old, then 40 hits and then...can't wait until I'm in my fifties and still think I'm a young thing. We'd lost touch over the past few years but the thing is I can hear in my head almost exactly what she would have said. I miss her and I wish I'd kept more in touch.
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