Monday, October 3, 2016; Book Meme Day 3
Oct. 3rd, 2016 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bearshortyToday was a work day and I was out of the house by 6:15am. I had two papers left to grade and that was fast enough to do on the subway. I got the email to sign up for Folder Review, where we meet with our Directors to discuss the papers so far, but I got it on the train. I couldn't do Google docs on my phone. By the time I got to campus Oct 20th was gone, so I ended up signing up for October 13th. It will be a time crunch and a lot of work this coming weekend, but, on the other hand, I will have the weekend of 15-16th free when we go visit Bear's parents. And I can enjoy all the Halloween/pumpkin/October activities with no guilt.
Work itself went well. We did lots of revision for Paper 2 today and I don't have to do any grading until Thursday. Yay. I didn't take lunch with me today, so I bought a chicken salad wrap, and it was pretty good. The way back took forever, though, waiting for the subway and having it terminate earlier so having to wait for another train.
RS Games started today. The stories are posted on AO3 this year, which I like. The first story I read today was already tugging at my heart. Remus/Sirius pairing is so great on angst.
I watched the 3rd episode of "Luke Cage" last night. I'm really liking this show. My Dad has been watching "Daredevil" and not feeling it. Then he checked out "Luke Cage" and he's already ahead of me. "Jessica Jones" is still my favorite of the three Marvel Netflix shows, but Luke Cage is certainly good.
- I love, love the use of music in this show. It just fits so well.
- As soon as Scarfe took off his tie while chatting to Chico I knew he would kill Chico, which added to the tension.
-The last moment with the rocket launcher and Cottonmouth's grin was pretty intense.
-The fight sequence at the 'Fort' was pretty cool to watch
-Mike Colter is very attractive
Book Meme
3. A book you found overhyped, and why
I find some classic sci-fi overhyped at times. Two books that come to mind are Ender's Game and Dune , especially Dune . My Dad gave me both for New Year present in 2010. I was excited. I read them and finished them and I can recognize why others love them so, but I just had issues with both of them. Maybe I was expecting more, especially of Dune. Ender's Game was ok, but I just hated the last chapter. It seemed to come out of nowhere and just soured me on the whole book. With Dune I just couldn't stand most of the characters. And there is only so much politics I can take.
I just looked at the tags for both books on my DW blog - here were my thoughts at the time I read each:
Dune:
"I started “Dune”. I need to turn off my overanalytical brain for it because gender stuff is already bugging me. I mean a female order, a supposedly pretty powerful one as well, needs a man to access the masculine and feminine truth and they can’t because even the best of them can only see feminine when taking a certain drug. Paul will be the The One. I keep reminding myself that this book was written in the 60s by a man. I suspect I will read this book slowly."
"“Dune” Since everyone raves about this book, I’m giving it more time but I’m still rolling my eyes. First the gender stuff was bothering me, but the second chapter is really just ‘Hi, I’m Evil and this will be my very Evil Plan. At least I’m not telling it to my enemies for no reason. But I will commit mistakes on Evil Overlord List just by not wanting to kill my enemy outright but by wanting him to suffer and know that I’m Evil. Cue Evil Laugh. And since I’m Evil, I must look the part and be very fat too and ugly. See and admire how Evil I am. And my first name is Vladimir just to emphasize by Evilness” I hope there will be some character complexity. The prose doesn’t suck, it actually flows quite well, I just don’t know if I can keep reading if I roll my eyes all the time."
"“Dune.” I was all slowly getting into the story, ignoring all the gender implications, so I could just enjoy the story. I liked that the traitor had complex motivations and he was not just randomly corrupted and there were some interesting developments and action. And then I read that the Evil guy on top of being very Evil, is also homosexual which was not described as a flattering characteristic. It feels like the author wanted to emphasize the character’s Evilness so he decided to add this little detail. Just so you don’t start admiring the intelligence of the Evil character, note that he likes young men, preferably enslaved and drugged so they wouldn’t ‘wrestle’ when the Evil guy was just in the mood for gay rape. Congratulations, book, on more clichés and appalling characterization. I’m almost done reading the first part of the book, so I will keep reading it, but there is a reason why I’m reading it so slowly. At least I like Lady Jessica character, one of very few female characters so far."
"I finally finished “Dune” today. I feel really sorry for Princess Irulan – why does she deserve that fate – to be a wife in name only because she is just a political pawn and a way for Paul to gain the throne. The book was alright in prose and general culture feeling but the plot and the characters just bugged me."
Ender's Game:
"I finally finished “Ender’s Game” today. Overall, I liked it but I didn’t love it and I can’t point to why on both. My favorite parts about it were psychological methods of training a boy into a commander and Peter and Valentine’s use of the internet to influence the world (very prescient of the author). The battles and games after a while got a bit tedious. The last chapter felt completely out of place – not a surprise, since the author rewrote it later to match the sequels he has written. After looking on Wikipedia about the content of the sequels, I have no desire to read any of them since the plot sounds a bit silly and far-fetched. I think I would have liked the book much more without the second half of the last chapter and “Speaker of the Dead” part."
Work itself went well. We did lots of revision for Paper 2 today and I don't have to do any grading until Thursday. Yay. I didn't take lunch with me today, so I bought a chicken salad wrap, and it was pretty good. The way back took forever, though, waiting for the subway and having it terminate earlier so having to wait for another train.
RS Games started today. The stories are posted on AO3 this year, which I like. The first story I read today was already tugging at my heart. Remus/Sirius pairing is so great on angst.
I watched the 3rd episode of "Luke Cage" last night. I'm really liking this show. My Dad has been watching "Daredevil" and not feeling it. Then he checked out "Luke Cage" and he's already ahead of me. "Jessica Jones" is still my favorite of the three Marvel Netflix shows, but Luke Cage is certainly good.
- I love, love the use of music in this show. It just fits so well.
- As soon as Scarfe took off his tie while chatting to Chico I knew he would kill Chico, which added to the tension.
-The last moment with the rocket launcher and Cottonmouth's grin was pretty intense.
-The fight sequence at the 'Fort' was pretty cool to watch
-Mike Colter is very attractive
Book Meme
3. A book you found overhyped, and why
I find some classic sci-fi overhyped at times. Two books that come to mind are Ender's Game and Dune , especially Dune . My Dad gave me both for New Year present in 2010. I was excited. I read them and finished them and I can recognize why others love them so, but I just had issues with both of them. Maybe I was expecting more, especially of Dune. Ender's Game was ok, but I just hated the last chapter. It seemed to come out of nowhere and just soured me on the whole book. With Dune I just couldn't stand most of the characters. And there is only so much politics I can take.
I just looked at the tags for both books on my DW blog - here were my thoughts at the time I read each:
Dune:
"I started “Dune”. I need to turn off my overanalytical brain for it because gender stuff is already bugging me. I mean a female order, a supposedly pretty powerful one as well, needs a man to access the masculine and feminine truth and they can’t because even the best of them can only see feminine when taking a certain drug. Paul will be the The One. I keep reminding myself that this book was written in the 60s by a man. I suspect I will read this book slowly."
"“Dune” Since everyone raves about this book, I’m giving it more time but I’m still rolling my eyes. First the gender stuff was bothering me, but the second chapter is really just ‘Hi, I’m Evil and this will be my very Evil Plan. At least I’m not telling it to my enemies for no reason. But I will commit mistakes on Evil Overlord List just by not wanting to kill my enemy outright but by wanting him to suffer and know that I’m Evil. Cue Evil Laugh. And since I’m Evil, I must look the part and be very fat too and ugly. See and admire how Evil I am. And my first name is Vladimir just to emphasize by Evilness” I hope there will be some character complexity. The prose doesn’t suck, it actually flows quite well, I just don’t know if I can keep reading if I roll my eyes all the time."
"“Dune.” I was all slowly getting into the story, ignoring all the gender implications, so I could just enjoy the story. I liked that the traitor had complex motivations and he was not just randomly corrupted and there were some interesting developments and action. And then I read that the Evil guy on top of being very Evil, is also homosexual which was not described as a flattering characteristic. It feels like the author wanted to emphasize the character’s Evilness so he decided to add this little detail. Just so you don’t start admiring the intelligence of the Evil character, note that he likes young men, preferably enslaved and drugged so they wouldn’t ‘wrestle’ when the Evil guy was just in the mood for gay rape. Congratulations, book, on more clichés and appalling characterization. I’m almost done reading the first part of the book, so I will keep reading it, but there is a reason why I’m reading it so slowly. At least I like Lady Jessica character, one of very few female characters so far."
"I finally finished “Dune” today. I feel really sorry for Princess Irulan – why does she deserve that fate – to be a wife in name only because she is just a political pawn and a way for Paul to gain the throne. The book was alright in prose and general culture feeling but the plot and the characters just bugged me."
Ender's Game:
"I finally finished “Ender’s Game” today. Overall, I liked it but I didn’t love it and I can’t point to why on both. My favorite parts about it were psychological methods of training a boy into a commander and Peter and Valentine’s use of the internet to influence the world (very prescient of the author). The battles and games after a while got a bit tedious. The last chapter felt completely out of place – not a surprise, since the author rewrote it later to match the sequels he has written. After looking on Wikipedia about the content of the sequels, I have no desire to read any of them since the plot sounds a bit silly and far-fetched. I think I would have liked the book much more without the second half of the last chapter and “Speaker of the Dead” part."