Ever Bethany

I've been meaning to post about some of the stuff I've been reading/watching but the list has gotten to the point of madness.

Also, I am probably running a slight fever.

So pick, what should I tell you about?

I am watching/finished watching lately
j-drama
Gokusen
Nodame Cantabile

k-drama
Wild Romance (stopped)
Color of a Woman
Greatest Love/Best Love
(Scent of a Woman, Secret Garden, My Sassy Girl movie, My Girlfriend's An Agent, My Tutor Friend movie older but not reviewed)

movies
The Thief Lord
Sleepless in Seattle
The Dark Knight
The Green Lantern
Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast (not watched yet, will soon)


books I'm working on
Extraordinary: How My Fairy Godparent...
Chime (having a hard time with it, so grim)
Entwined (not started)
Never Never

manga
House of Falling Leaves (samurai)
Captive Hearts (Vampire Knight author's earlier work, WAY CUTER)
Azumanga Daio
Black Bird
Annarasumanara (Korean web comic)

Basically, you can pick a category, or an item.

I am predicting I will respond about most of these anyway, at some point, if only in comment rabbit-trails...



This looks like a ton of stuff, but I'm trying to take the view that inputting stories to my brain is productive to my chosen discipline. Because the whole guilt thing has been making any visible changes to the pattern. >,<

"Orson Scott Card sold a new steampunk series aimed directly at the YA market to Anica Rissi at Simon & Schuster's Pulse. Agent Barbara Bova of the Barbara Bova Literary Agency sold World English rights to the first three books in the as-yet-untitled series, which is scheduled to debut, in hardcover, in Spring 2011."   {rest of the article}


On the homepage at SFScope, which also has really relieving article about Realms of Fantasy's sale (!) that will keep it from going under.


But still moreso Orson Scott Card working on a YA steampunk fantasy!

This is right up there with the Colfer sequel for Hitchhiker's Guide...




In thematically related news of less import: I am currently working on my Asian-Cowboy-Punk outfit, for the con perhaps. Draft pictures to come soon?

To be contrary, since this is the only meme I've seen many times without wanting to get up and do it, even once,
I hereby tag:
topayz4
dawtheminstrel
jeffsoesbe
jeanhuets
ckastens

Let me briefly mention that this ought to be a quick meme--closest book to you and all that (though in my case, which book is the closest? Today it was easier than most days). But actually, I had to save a jar-lid full of diotomaceous earth (sp. non-confirmed) which is a non-poisonous bug-killer of the crushed seashell variety to keep it from being blown over my bed even MORE by the lovely spring breeze.

But Plus for the lovely spring breeze!
 

The great question in life of today is--if a book's bad, do you go on reading it?

I've got Maximum Ride here. I have it for a friend's recommendation (though that was a bit of a warning, actually) and a study. At least I thought a study.

Turns out, the Avatars books by Tui T. Sutherland are actually thought provoking in the way I need to put perspective on my lame little supers book. And this...well it's got that way of writing, which is crutch-ridden, overspoken so I can't enjoy a sentence of it. Not a one. Especially since the 14 year old girl sounds like what in a random pass I'd figure was a 17 year old boy.
Sexist? I still will claim there's a difference.
Even a precocious tomboy girl with a lot of stress on and violence to deal with I'm not sure would sound like so bit-off sentence male.

The problem is not that it couldn't work. But because J Patterson is a guy, it makes me suspect he doesn't have the chops to imitate how a girl talks.
I think this is a problem unique to me, but I'm just not that impressed.


I think I'm going to use my time reading something I like better. Or watching the Fullmetal Alchemist mini-series volume this same friend loaned me. Because while I'm agonizing about how to read all the stuff I'd rather not that she's excited about, I don't have any reservations about borrowing some of the anime.
I know I'm going to come off as picky to her. Which I am.
I don't put up with stuff I don't like.
I do like lots of things, though! I mean, is it a crime to avoid that sort of lazy writing you dislike most?

Mini-review for posterity
All-American Girl (Meg Cabot): kudos for a red-head goth girl heroine who blushes as easily and immaterially as we all do--I *heart* voice--though there's no significant difference in underpinning plot from her other books.

Whooosh. I'd forgotten, not how Two Towers ended, but how much of a cliff-hanger it was! The emotional investment of the Tower of the Moon sequences is just really strong; I love how Sam just unfolds in that fourth volume. The way he mimicks Gollum is just a beauty to behold. Grim Sam=priceless.

I was much struck with how taking The Ring was "against his nature"...he thinks he's made a dreadful mistake, but that's when we have the inkling that while not quite so fey and fell as Frodo (take that alliteration and stick it in your hat), he's a fair stout Hero himself.* The foreshadowing of that talk they have before they come out of Ithilien (Tolkien, like good storytellers everywhere, knew the value of letting up occasionally), of the story they're in is so hobbit-like, yet very much suited to the high task, just as Pippin and Merry's banter is suited to the extremes of their natures. Can wear armor about the Shire without being ridiculous because they have a high sense of humor about it, you can tell. Back to Sam and Frodo's talk (I dearly love a digession or two), in the movie I don't remember it coming so early, so I was surprised it WAS a foreshadow.

And back to the beginning in a merry round of mummery,

I was surprised, the first time, how the Two Towers movie did not end on the slamming of the doors. To me, it seems a perfect ending to a Volume Two of Three. Then again, it had to tie things up. But the pacing there was pretty much the only thing that threw me into "Wait; the book was different!" mode. {Besides the Legolas stairs surfer/Oliphaunt slayer thing. But we won't talk about that.}

{I was thoroughly shocked to find the counting game between Gimli and Legolas in The Book, on that note. Pleasantly surprised, actually, to think the humor was to be credited to Tolkien.}

Tolkien r/labu-r/labu...

*Funny, how he thinks he's ruining everything—Heroes do tend to ruin things, if only for the antagonist, but realistically...that's a little simplistic. Sam is only ruining himself, though the whole mess with Gollum does come about. The fact is, the breaking of Gollum's trust is what ends up getting them rid of the One Ring after all. The trouble he causes in that way (taking the ring, and before that in his unsubtle suspicion) all serves the purpose. Ruining himself, in that wearing the Ring, for that time, means Havens for him after all, when I think...Sam should have been buried and become part of the soil of the Shire.

But prices must be paid. If the Gollum made everything right in the end, and if Frodo was always a little too elven for his own good, Sam is a price—for the Shire, and Frodo, and Sam himself.