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Hi! I hibernated all weekend, using the computer pretty much only to double-check the recipes for scones and buttermilk waffles. It was pretty amazing, although I don't know that I'd want to make a habit of it -- I came home to quite a lot of email, and over 200 entries in my Google Reader. Ack! While hibernating, I read a lot, and cooked a lot, and watched a lot of tv with some of my close friends.
I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
-- I know, I am the latest. Will it surprise anyone to know that I was thoroughly unimpressed? Sorry, but if I can figure out your whole mystery and guess some of the surrounding drama before I'm even a hundred pages into a 500 page book... well, the book is going to have to work a lot harder for my esteem. Frankly, I am pretty shocked that people read this book and were surprised by anything in it -- most of it seemed cliche, predictable, and boring to me.
I was also not impressed by the quality of the prose, the ridiculousness of the "hero," and the amount of graphic descriptions of sexual assault/rape, and torture-murder. The loving way the rapes and torture-murders are described contrasted pretty strongly with the scant, fade-to-black consensual sex scenes. There were a lot of things I didn't like about this book, but that topped the list. I was really not surprised when I found out that the original Swedish title of the book is Men Who Hate Women -- that is far more appropriate.
Anyway, I feel like I am the only person in the world who's saying this, but save your money -- if you've read one mediocre book with a predictable mystery about a serial rapist, you've read them all. Take your ten dollars and buy yourself a copy of Bound
instead. Helloooooo, Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly. Whew. I wish they would make a million more smart, clever, sexy, funny, noir movies in which they are lesbians. Watching it for the nth time this weekend, I kept forgetting it was made in 1996 -- it stands up really well. What I'd forgotten since the last time I watched it was that the beginning was so damn campy and hilarious -- and I clutched the hand of the friend watching it with me during the suspenseful bits, even though not only have I seen it before, but I practically have it memorized.
It did a really good job at taking away the bad taste in my mouth from that terrible book.
And now: the tv meme. Just today and tomorrow and then I will post my version of this, which I've made for books! I am pretty excited to do the book one; I was going to wait until August, but I might end up just doing it now, since I'm so excited. I hope that many of you will do the book meme along with me -- I love hearing about what people are reading!
Day 29 - Current TV show obsession
I don't have one right now -- I'm not watching a lot of tv at the moment, since I'm doing a lot of editing. But, of course, Leverage started a few weeks ago, and White Collar's second season kicked off last week, two shows I really dig. And over the weekend, after watching Bound, I was introduced to the cartoon Invader Zim. Whoa! What a great show -- genuinely hilarious on several levels. The basic premise is that Zim is an alien, a member of a race who wants to take over the universe. But Zim is annoying and not very good at his job, so they give him what is basically the alien invader version of "make work" -- they send him to a planet no one's ever heard of that there are no plans to invade. Earth! And they give him a quickly-assembled-from-trash robot assistant named Gir (pronounced GRRRR) who is even more hilarious than Zim. And, of course, Zim ends up living next door to a kid who is obsessed with aliens (and knows Zim is an alien, but no one believes him!). The kid's sister is great, and loves video games, and the kid's dad is a mad scientist.
There are a bunch of episodes on Netflix that I can stream instantly to my computer, so I think I'll be working my way through the episodes at night before bed.
( Other days )
Hi! I hibernated all weekend, using the computer pretty much only to double-check the recipes for scones and buttermilk waffles. It was pretty amazing, although I don't know that I'd want to make a habit of it -- I came home to quite a lot of email, and over 200 entries in my Google Reader. Ack! While hibernating, I read a lot, and cooked a lot, and watched a lot of tv with some of my close friends.
I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
I was also not impressed by the quality of the prose, the ridiculousness of the "hero," and the amount of graphic descriptions of sexual assault/rape, and torture-murder. The loving way the rapes and torture-murders are described contrasted pretty strongly with the scant, fade-to-black consensual sex scenes. There were a lot of things I didn't like about this book, but that topped the list. I was really not surprised when I found out that the original Swedish title of the book is Men Who Hate Women -- that is far more appropriate.
Anyway, I feel like I am the only person in the world who's saying this, but save your money -- if you've read one mediocre book with a predictable mystery about a serial rapist, you've read them all. Take your ten dollars and buy yourself a copy of Bound
It did a really good job at taking away the bad taste in my mouth from that terrible book.
And now: the tv meme. Just today and tomorrow and then I will post my version of this, which I've made for books! I am pretty excited to do the book one; I was going to wait until August, but I might end up just doing it now, since I'm so excited. I hope that many of you will do the book meme along with me -- I love hearing about what people are reading!
Day 29 - Current TV show obsession
I don't have one right now -- I'm not watching a lot of tv at the moment, since I'm doing a lot of editing. But, of course, Leverage started a few weeks ago, and White Collar's second season kicked off last week, two shows I really dig. And over the weekend, after watching Bound, I was introduced to the cartoon Invader Zim. Whoa! What a great show -- genuinely hilarious on several levels. The basic premise is that Zim is an alien, a member of a race who wants to take over the universe. But Zim is annoying and not very good at his job, so they give him what is basically the alien invader version of "make work" -- they send him to a planet no one's ever heard of that there are no plans to invade. Earth! And they give him a quickly-assembled-from-trash robot assistant named Gir (pronounced GRRRR) who is even more hilarious than Zim. And, of course, Zim ends up living next door to a kid who is obsessed with aliens (and knows Zim is an alien, but no one believes him!). The kid's sister is great, and loves video games, and the kid's dad is a mad scientist.
There are a bunch of episodes on Netflix that I can stream instantly to my computer, so I think I'll be working my way through the episodes at night before bed.
( Other days )