Whatta Fiasco

What a strange and creepy Roman Polanski film. A man (played by Polanski) rents and apartment and discovers that the previous tenant attempted suicide by jumping out of the apartment’s window. Then begins a strange obsession that finds him increasingly identifying with the girl and becoming estranged from reality. Disturbing and strange, but not entirely convincing. And very much a product of the 1970s.

I wasn’t at all sure about this one when I picked it up. What the heck do I know about Stagger Lee? Which makes me a pretty decent auience for the book. Part history, part story telling, the book peers through a wide variety of versions of this story and all the songs that have come out of it. Every now and then the art work misses for me, put the story pulls on through, continuing to captivate.

[powells]

Three separate stories involving the Monkey King, a young boy adjusting to his new, overwhelmingly caucasian school, and another boy dealing with the mortification of visits by his painfully stereotyped Chinese cousin, Chin-kee. All three main characters are struggling with ssues of self identity. Each story line has its charms (and squirm-inducing moments) but they all come together before the end, and the resolution was satisfying. This book deserves the positive attention it’s received.

[powells]

Bless the length of the publication process. I remember reading about this book on her blog as she was reading it and wondering if I was spoiling the book for myself. Ha. Not at all. It was only after I restrained myself from throwing the book against the wall that I half remembered something about a pronoun shift that had been missed. (Did she really write about that? She must have. I do recall the discussion about the gender and pronouns of the character getting changed during the writing/editing process.) Apparently it’s pleasant to have an author consistently use gender neutral pronouns in an appropriate way. But that only makes it all the more jarring when one gendered pronoun slips through, and at a disconcertingly apropos time in the plot.

Anyhow, pronouns aside, the book has some wonderfully rendered aliens. Strange and beautiful, even if I can’t help but think of them as the evolutionary descendants of Asimov’s Venusian v-frogs in Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus. No real reason to associate the two except for the workings of my brain. But there’s also the parallel between the way they are treated by the human characters in the story. In fact, it bothered me a lot that the human supporters of the froggies in Undertow called them “froggies”. It made me squirm. It made me question their good intentions. I enjoyed that.

[powells]

What a fun movie, and how very Neil Gaiman it is. Bravo. And I’m not a huge fan of either Michelle Pfeiffer or Sienna Miller and it was still a gorgeous film.

[imdb]

I’ve very much enjoyed her Vorkosigan novels so I was curious what she would do with out and out fantasy. Took me long enough to get around to it, but it turns out she’s not too shabby at this either. I’ll be reading the rest in the series, but I don’t expect Miles Vorkosigan to get supplanted.

[powells]

Oh yes. Very good. If you enjoyed Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle because it was so long, then this book might not be for you. The vocabulary word for the day is epistolary. As in, this is a pistol-packing epistolary novel. Quite the neat trick.

[powells]

Yet another book about chess and chess players. (There’s one more of these on my list before it peters out for now.) Where The Kings of New York looks at the lives and experiences of high school age players, this one dives into a more mature set. The author and his guide dive into the seediness of chess shops, the corruption found in some rather bizarre parts of chess bureaucracy, and what meaning it brings to a life. All the ugly sides of chess played at in Kings of New York are played out here, and it’s not pretty. Oddly, it’s not entirely pessimistic either.

Oh, and this book indirectly led me to an appreciation of YouTube. It had some very compelling descriptions of just what blitz and bullet chess look like when they are played, so for a lark, I went to YouTube to see if I could find any videos. Wow. Yes. And it’s just as amazing as described. You can search for blitz chess there too see what I’m talking about. Very cool.

[powells]

The handling of shifting, intertwined points of view was perhaps not as facile or as clear as it could have been, but this is still my favorite book of his so far. And I must admit that the mystery identity gambit was handled much better than I had expected, even if I didn’t find it entirely convincing. I wish that I had, but it kept my attention.

[powells]

More headlong action in this follow up to Crystal Rain. The plot fairly hurls itself along, but I’d like it even more if we had a better chance to get to know the characters. There are some kick-ass interesting characters here and all sorts of neat ideas, but things are too busy happening to dwell much on them. A shame. I still enjoyed it

[amazon]