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algYesterday I...
1. Saw Inception with a friend of mine. Neither of us were impressed at all. At least I stayed awake! (She fell asleep.) I just don't get all the hype; this isn't stuff that's exactly complex, complicated, or new, and the whole thing was so painfully predictable. Plus it struck me as very much a "form over function" movie -- literally all about creating an idea (haha) that is supposed to look a certain way, often at the cost of the plot making sense and the characters being interesting.
I am of the opinion that there was a really cool idea for a movie at the core, but that movie should have been about Joseph Gordon-Levitt and mostly an intense character study, not worldbuilding and Leonardo DiCaprio. (Sorry, I don't remember their characters' names.)
NB, I did absolutely love JGL -- and Ellen Page and Ken Watanabe -- and would happily watch seven million movies in which they are action heroes and awesome.
2. Read Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
. This I definitely see the appeal of -- particularly for kids. Had I read this series when I was nine, I think I'd've been a lot more willing to overlook structural, plot, and story flaws in favor of how great all the imagery is, and how creepy the story is.
Since I am not nine, I have a hard time getting over the flaws. What particularly irked me is that Katniss continually has the emotional IQ of a stump. Okay, I get it, she has a hard time relating to and understanding the motivations of other people -- but she should be able to view their actions and come up with some semblance of a pattern. She's seventeen, not seven -- and even seven year olds can often figure stuff like that out, albeit instinctively instead of solely logically. So the fact that she continually couldn't figure out what was going on, but rather could only observe people's actions independently of putting the pieces together, was really on my nerves.
It might have been deliberate on the part of the author, so that the nine year olds reading it felt superior to Katniss when they figured out what was going on before she did, but that strikes me as a really risky way to captivate readers (plus the Gregor books had the exact same problem, which I complained about when I read them).
Another thing that was really on my nerves is that Katniss has known that the arena was a construct since the very beginning -- she talks about it in the first book, how the arenas are "built" and then left after the Games to be tourist attractions. She knows during the Games that the sky she's seeing is not the sky outside, but, rather, a constructed "sky"... and it never occurs to her to figure out how to tamper with it. Okay, fine, she was a little busy during the Games in the first book -- so why is it that despite all the "clues" in the second book (the emphasis on building the arena, the whole thing with the force fields over and over again), she still doesn't realize until ten pages from the end that she can take down the arena? Come on.
As soon as the throwaway character whose name I don't remember shows her that it's possible to see the "seam" of a force field, I thought, "Okay, so all she has to do is find the seam of the force field around the arena and somehow make it bigger, and then she will escape/bring down the arena. She should team up with a lot of the other fighters, instead of just a few, and they should bring down the force field around the arena, and have their own uprising on national television!"
But, Anna, you say, you are thirty, and a nine year old wouldn't think that or come up with that idea!
To that I say: BULLSHIT. I certainly would have gone there when I was nine, and nine year olds today are exposed to even more cool ideas and logical progressions (and media) than I was, so I bet a bunch of them figured that out.
To pick my third biggest problem, I'm also really disappointed with the structure of the books. I think it was a huge mistake to release them so far apart, because they do not stand alone at all. The strategy I would have picked would have been to release them a month apart, or once in each third of the year. That's a strategy used mostly with romance novel trilogies, as far as I know, but it would have worked perfectly for this trilogy. Of course, then the books would have needed to be done in paperback, to make them more widely affordable, and they'd've all needed to be written, and I don't know if that's totally doable for this author and company.
But since they are released so far apart, they really need to stand on their own, and I don't think they do that. They are not structured like they are supposed to be independent books, which the second book really drove home. It is clearly the middle book of a trilogy, and I found that very frustrating and annoying.
On the other hand? I did enjoy reading it -- which, to be honest? Cancels out everything I just wrote above, to a point. Because if the book had been badly written or incredibly stupid or really offensive, its flaws would be unbearable. Since I enjoyed it, since there's stuff about it I did really like, the flaws are just annoying. A small distinction, but an important one! I don't want my money back!
...Okay, and now the book meme!
Day 19 - Favorite book cover (bonus points for posting an image!)
I want to pause here and differentiate "favorite book cover" from "favorite book cover artwork" -- and also from "most effective book cover/book cover artwork"! They are all different things -- bad design on a book cover can ruin really good art, and bad art can ruin a good design, and sometimes good design and good art do not make a book cover that is effective in getting people to buy the book. That's just how it happens. (Of course, there's the argument to be made that by definition "good design and good art" is art and design that make people want to pick up the book. That is totally fair, too, but not my perspective -- hence the separation between "good" and "effective.")
I Love You Like a Tomato by Marie Giordano
was the first book I acquired and edited myself -- a really amazing literary historical novel -- and it took us a long time to find the right cover. It turned out, too, that what looked good on the hardcover and trade paperback was not the cover we wanted for the mass market edition of the book. I loved the hardcover and trade editions (still have my copies!), but the mass edition's cover really shines:
(click to embiggen)
As far as artwork goes... I cannot tell you that The Wayfarer Redemption by Sara Douglass
is a really good book, the kickoff of a really good series, or that the cover has an amazing design -- all of those things would be lies! But the artwork is awesome, especially the image of the heroine, and I am pretty sure that it's the first time I ever was really struck by great book art. Low res internet images are not the way to see this artwork -- it's in high res that the details are really beautiful. But whatever, here's a low res internet picture anyway:
(click to embiggen)
Feel free to, as always, share your opinion in the comments, or link to your own blog post! Please do not embed images in the comments section, but regular links are fine.
Other days of the book meme:
Day 01 - A book series you wish had gone on longer OR a book series you wish would just freaking end already (or both!)
Day 02 - A book or series you wish more people were reading and talking about
Day 03 - The best book you've read in the last 12 months
Day 04 - Your favorite book or series ever
Day 05 - A book or series you hate
Day 06 - Favorite book of your favorite series OR your favorite book of all time
Day 07 - Least favorite plot device employed by way too many books you actually enjoyed otherwise
Day 08 - A book everyone should read at least once
Day 09 - Best scene ever
Day 10 - A book you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving
Day 11 - A book that disappointed you
Day 12 - A book or series of books you’ve read more than five times
Day 13 - Favorite childhood book OR current favorite YA book (or both!)
Day 14 - Favorite character in a book (of any sex or gender)
Day 15 - Your "comfort" book
Day 16 - Favorite poem or collection of poetry
Day 17 - Favorite story or collection of stories (short stories, novellas, novelettes, etc.)
Day 18 - Favorite beginning scene in a book
Day 19 - Favorite book cover (bonus points for posting an image!)
Day 20 - Favorite kiss
Day 21 - Favorite romantic/sexual relationship (including asexual romantic relationships)
Day 22 - Favorite non-sexual relationship (including asexual romantic relationships)
Day 23 - Most annoying character ever
Day 24 - Best quote from a novel
Day 25 - Any five books from your "to be read" stack
Day 26 - OMG WTF? OR most irritating/awful/annoying book ending
Day 27 - If a book contains ______, you will always read it (and a book or books that contain it)!
Day 28 - First favorite book or series obsession
Day 29 - Saddest character death OR best/most satisfying character death (or both!)
Day 30 - What book are you reading right now?
1. Saw Inception with a friend of mine. Neither of us were impressed at all. At least I stayed awake! (She fell asleep.) I just don't get all the hype; this isn't stuff that's exactly complex, complicated, or new, and the whole thing was so painfully predictable. Plus it struck me as very much a "form over function" movie -- literally all about creating an idea (haha) that is supposed to look a certain way, often at the cost of the plot making sense and the characters being interesting.
I am of the opinion that there was a really cool idea for a movie at the core, but that movie should have been about Joseph Gordon-Levitt and mostly an intense character study, not worldbuilding and Leonardo DiCaprio. (Sorry, I don't remember their characters' names.)
NB, I did absolutely love JGL -- and Ellen Page and Ken Watanabe -- and would happily watch seven million movies in which they are action heroes and awesome.
2. Read Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
. This I definitely see the appeal of -- particularly for kids. Had I read this series when I was nine, I think I'd've been a lot more willing to overlook structural, plot, and story flaws in favor of how great all the imagery is, and how creepy the story is.Since I am not nine, I have a hard time getting over the flaws. What particularly irked me is that Katniss continually has the emotional IQ of a stump. Okay, I get it, she has a hard time relating to and understanding the motivations of other people -- but she should be able to view their actions and come up with some semblance of a pattern. She's seventeen, not seven -- and even seven year olds can often figure stuff like that out, albeit instinctively instead of solely logically. So the fact that she continually couldn't figure out what was going on, but rather could only observe people's actions independently of putting the pieces together, was really on my nerves.
It might have been deliberate on the part of the author, so that the nine year olds reading it felt superior to Katniss when they figured out what was going on before she did, but that strikes me as a really risky way to captivate readers (plus the Gregor books had the exact same problem, which I complained about when I read them).
Another thing that was really on my nerves is that Katniss has known that the arena was a construct since the very beginning -- she talks about it in the first book, how the arenas are "built" and then left after the Games to be tourist attractions. She knows during the Games that the sky she's seeing is not the sky outside, but, rather, a constructed "sky"... and it never occurs to her to figure out how to tamper with it. Okay, fine, she was a little busy during the Games in the first book -- so why is it that despite all the "clues" in the second book (the emphasis on building the arena, the whole thing with the force fields over and over again), she still doesn't realize until ten pages from the end that she can take down the arena? Come on.
As soon as the throwaway character whose name I don't remember shows her that it's possible to see the "seam" of a force field, I thought, "Okay, so all she has to do is find the seam of the force field around the arena and somehow make it bigger, and then she will escape/bring down the arena. She should team up with a lot of the other fighters, instead of just a few, and they should bring down the force field around the arena, and have their own uprising on national television!"
But, Anna, you say, you are thirty, and a nine year old wouldn't think that or come up with that idea!
To that I say: BULLSHIT. I certainly would have gone there when I was nine, and nine year olds today are exposed to even more cool ideas and logical progressions (and media) than I was, so I bet a bunch of them figured that out.
To pick my third biggest problem, I'm also really disappointed with the structure of the books. I think it was a huge mistake to release them so far apart, because they do not stand alone at all. The strategy I would have picked would have been to release them a month apart, or once in each third of the year. That's a strategy used mostly with romance novel trilogies, as far as I know, but it would have worked perfectly for this trilogy. Of course, then the books would have needed to be done in paperback, to make them more widely affordable, and they'd've all needed to be written, and I don't know if that's totally doable for this author and company.
But since they are released so far apart, they really need to stand on their own, and I don't think they do that. They are not structured like they are supposed to be independent books, which the second book really drove home. It is clearly the middle book of a trilogy, and I found that very frustrating and annoying.
On the other hand? I did enjoy reading it -- which, to be honest? Cancels out everything I just wrote above, to a point. Because if the book had been badly written or incredibly stupid or really offensive, its flaws would be unbearable. Since I enjoyed it, since there's stuff about it I did really like, the flaws are just annoying. A small distinction, but an important one! I don't want my money back!
...Okay, and now the book meme!
Day 19 - Favorite book cover (bonus points for posting an image!)
I want to pause here and differentiate "favorite book cover" from "favorite book cover artwork" -- and also from "most effective book cover/book cover artwork"! They are all different things -- bad design on a book cover can ruin really good art, and bad art can ruin a good design, and sometimes good design and good art do not make a book cover that is effective in getting people to buy the book. That's just how it happens. (Of course, there's the argument to be made that by definition "good design and good art" is art and design that make people want to pick up the book. That is totally fair, too, but not my perspective -- hence the separation between "good" and "effective.")
I Love You Like a Tomato by Marie Giordano
was the first book I acquired and edited myself -- a really amazing literary historical novel -- and it took us a long time to find the right cover. It turned out, too, that what looked good on the hardcover and trade paperback was not the cover we wanted for the mass market edition of the book. I loved the hardcover and trade editions (still have my copies!), but the mass edition's cover really shines:(click to embiggen)
As far as artwork goes... I cannot tell you that The Wayfarer Redemption by Sara Douglass
is a really good book, the kickoff of a really good series, or that the cover has an amazing design -- all of those things would be lies! But the artwork is awesome, especially the image of the heroine, and I am pretty sure that it's the first time I ever was really struck by great book art. Low res internet images are not the way to see this artwork -- it's in high res that the details are really beautiful. But whatever, here's a low res internet picture anyway:(click to embiggen)
Feel free to, as always, share your opinion in the comments, or link to your own blog post! Please do not embed images in the comments section, but regular links are fine.
Other days of the book meme:
Day 01 - A book series you wish had gone on longer OR a book series you wish would just freaking end already (or both!)
Day 02 - A book or series you wish more people were reading and talking about
Day 03 - The best book you've read in the last 12 months
Day 04 - Your favorite book or series ever
Day 05 - A book or series you hate
Day 06 - Favorite book of your favorite series OR your favorite book of all time
Day 07 - Least favorite plot device employed by way too many books you actually enjoyed otherwise
Day 08 - A book everyone should read at least once
Day 09 - Best scene ever
Day 10 - A book you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving
Day 11 - A book that disappointed you
Day 12 - A book or series of books you’ve read more than five times
Day 13 - Favorite childhood book OR current favorite YA book (or both!)
Day 14 - Favorite character in a book (of any sex or gender)
Day 15 - Your "comfort" book
Day 16 - Favorite poem or collection of poetry
Day 17 - Favorite story or collection of stories (short stories, novellas, novelettes, etc.)
Day 18 - Favorite beginning scene in a book
Day 19 - Favorite book cover (bonus points for posting an image!)
Day 20 - Favorite kiss
Day 21 - Favorite romantic/sexual relationship (including asexual romantic relationships)
Day 22 - Favorite non-sexual relationship (including asexual romantic relationships)
Day 23 - Most annoying character ever
Day 24 - Best quote from a novel
Day 25 - Any five books from your "to be read" stack
Day 26 - OMG WTF? OR most irritating/awful/annoying book ending
Day 27 - If a book contains ______, you will always read it (and a book or books that contain it)!
Day 28 - First favorite book or series obsession
Day 29 - Saddest character death OR best/most satisfying character death (or both!)
Day 30 - What book are you reading right now?
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-12 09:41 pm (UTC)I just this second saw this bookcover and am utterly in love with its pretty. But the book itself sounds ARGH NO.
http://www.amazon.com/Halo-Alexandra-Adornetto/dp/0312656262
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-12 09:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-13 01:39 pm (UTC)...and I agree, that book you linked has a lovely cover but a dreadful blurb! *g*
(no subject)
Date: 2010-08-13 04:01 pm (UTC)