thegoblinsgo's Journal

2:50pm: The Meaning of Night and The Monkey and the Tiger
I just read The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox and The Monkey and the Tiger by Robert Hans Van Gulik."

The Meaning of Night, the fictional confessions of a Victorian-era murderer, was interesting, but also depressing. While it successfully explored the inevitable tragedies brought about by revenge, violence, and moral corruption, I always get a little frustrated when reading about this sort of thing. The novel did a great job pulling off the historical context and amazed me with its in-depth details. The plot was also sufficiently murky and twisted, it had a great hook for an opening, and the suspense was built well in the beginning. On the other hand, the characters were purposefully unlikeable and the plot revelations often came to the reader 100 pages before they came to the characters. Additionally, the suspense began to peter off once the basic plot elements had been revealed (half-way in), but the narration just kept going and going. Overall, nice idea, merely decent execution. The rambling narrative, obvious shortcomings of the main character, and endless parade of failures may have been totally intentional, but that didn't prevent them from becoming a little tiresome. I would still recommend it to people who like twisty historical murder stories.

The Monkey and the Tiger, on the other hand, I would probably not recommend. This book contains two short stories about Judge Dee, a fictional historical Chinese detective. I love historical detective fiction, and the author clearly knew a lot about and had a great respect for Chinese culture. The stories, however, were light and only midly interesting. The first story lacked suspense and had a predictable ending. The second story had a better ending, but took far too long to introduce the "mystery."

10:26am: Sorcery & Cecelia :: Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer
First off, it should be noted that the afterword explains how this book was written as a friendly game between authors. It was, therefore, not originally intended for publishing. The plot was made up as the game went on, not thought out in advance. This is a partial excuse, although not a full one.

The book is very cute with interesting ideas. The writing is very entertaining and does a great job combining historical fiction with humor and magic. And depite the disclaimer above, the plot doesn't suffer very much. It was fun to read and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone interested in the creative premise. The characters, on the other hand, were disappointing. In the fist place, they are pretty cliche, which is part of the point, I believe. They're meant to resemble the stereotypical kinds of characters found in actual 19th Century Literature, which they do. However, they take it too far. Their actions were predictable, and the twists were unsurprising. Worse, the two main characters, Kate and Cecelia, who takes turns writing letters to each other, were nearly indistinguishable in terms of characterization. This issue was made worse by the fact that their plots seemed to mirror a little too much. Did both spunky, intrepid girls really need to run into handsomely mysterious jerks who both turn out to actually be sensitive, heroic wizards? And did both couples really need to follow the old hate-to-love formula and end up together? I would have liked a little variety better.

5:44pm: Les Liaisons Dangereuses :: Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Well, I just finished Les Liasisons Dangereuses and it was pretty interesting, even striking at a few points, although certain others were just too slow moving. I didn't mind the format of a collection of letters--hey, Dracula is written that way and it works--except that, on occasion, some correspondence became very repetitive and began to drag. That aside, the only real problem I had was in the role of Valmont as lover. He was amusing, charming, and vicious when writing to Merteuil, but his letters to the Presidente were obnoxious, whiny, and astoundingly presumptuous to the point where he blamed her for everything he said and did and repeatedly contradicted himself. Now, this may or may not have been Laclos' point about seduction and the language of love, etc., but it was very hard for me to sympathize with the Presidente's emotions where there is only a scanty account of his behavior outside of his letters, and the letters themselves didn't seduce me in the least bit. In a story where there is almost no third person account of action, it is especially important that characters' voices and motives come across, and this was the only place where the letter-writing format fell flat for me, leaving me unfortunately a bit detatched from the drama at the end of the novel. Overall, it was an interesting character study and provided some suspenseful dramatic thrills, but I would definitely recommend it more to people who aren't already acquainted with the ending from some movie version, as much of the suspense is otherwise lost.

8:01pm: The Woman in White :: Wilkie Collins
Ok, so now I read The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, a student of Dickens', and it was very interesting. The first quarter or so moved rather slowly and I wasn't sure where it was going, but a little ways in it really picked up. As soon as the sisters went to live with Sir Percival, the tension really built up and I practically found it a page-turner. I really did. It wasn't exactly scary--Collins' work lacked the style and approach to create real terror--but it was definitely tense and kept my interest up. Of course, the writing was still very wordy and slow-moving, so some people would undoubtedly find it immensely boring. But I have to say, I really enjoyed reading it. I guess the ending got a little slow again, too. Maybe I just didn't like anything written from Walter's perspective! Heh. I thought the Count and Marian were the most interesting characters by far, and the concept of a villain who seems so benevolent and harmless on the outside, and yet whose every move simply reeks of ulterior motives, was a very intriguing one. Overall, an enjoyable read despite its length.

4:46pm: Book Club: Great Expectations
Great Expectations / Charles Dickens

Although its been many years since I read Oliver Twist--and it may not be fair to compare--I liked Great Expectations a lot more. The style of writing and the presentation were charming, personal, and less superfluous than I remember them in that other Dickens classic. The caricatured characters were amusing and appropriately annoying by turns, and the story, although slow-moving, was fairly interesting and lively. One thing that struck me about the novel was that its various parts almost could have come from three separate books. The first part seemed more or less a character study for various extreme persons, with a little suspense over Pip's adventure with the convict thrown in at intervals. The second part might have been a social and moral critique dealing with the London scene, the corrupting evils of wealth, the coldness of law, etc. I have to admit that this part of the book pleased me the least. At this point, I could only feel at best mild irritation at Pip and his constant foolhardiness and ingratitude, with the only redeeming feature being that he seemed to despise himself as much as I did. The thid part was the most surprising, featuring a suspenseful and dark foray into the world of escaped convicts, complicated flights, and muder attempts. This was the most riveting to me, despite what seemed a rather abrupt change in Magwitch's character. I liked the ending, most particularly that Pip was forced to swallow his own pride and suffer some consequences of his actions. I really would have preferred the original ending, where there is no implication of his getting together with Estella, because it seemed to complete his lesson about his earlier follies. Having them reunite, while much happier and perhaps needed in such a dreary finale, justified Pip's naive love of a rather unworthy person based on her looks and feminine wiles.

5:37pm: I was trying to decide which quote from Space Ghost Coast to Coast episode Snatch to put in my AIM profile, when, in going over them all, I was reminded that that whole episode is gold. It was like trying to choose between Mint Mint Chocolate Chocolate Chip and that Peanut Butter Cup stuff at the ice cream place x 10. Now SG:CtC on the whole is a bit hit or miss, but there isn't a single line in that whole episode that I don't find downright hilarious. Although the rust never sleeps part just might be my favorite. Maybe. Maybe not.

Gold, I tell you.

3:39pm: Hab' gerade eben Writ in Blood von James A. Moore fertig gelesen. Es war ein komisches Buch, etwa ein Mischmasch von drei verschiedenen Gattungen. (Die dritte errinerte mich an Buffy the Vampire Slayer, mit einem maennlichen, sadistischen Buffy. Und das ist nicht wirklich als Kompliment gemeint.) Leider war es auch etwas langweilig, da die drei Geschichten nur teilweise zu einander passten, und keine wirklich erschreckende Sachen im Buch vorkamen. Und das soll "quite possibly the best horror novel since Salem's Lot" sein, laut einem Rezensent. Was ich ganz am Ende des Buches mitbekam: Dies ist eigentlich nur der erste Teil der Geschichte. Und damit meine ich wirklich ersten Teil, oder veilleicht die Einleitung zu einer Geschichte, denn allein enthaelt es fast nichts weiteres im Form von Abenteuer oder Intrige als das, was an der Rueckseite des Bucheinbands zu lesen ist. Ich bin etwas enttaeuscht.

--

( More-English )

3:42pm: Fox Trot
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http://home.comcast.net/~ghostpirate/colorbynumbersmall.jpg

Hahaha. Pretty geeky that I actually colored it in! Of course, we knew it would somehow be Paige. :D
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10:02pm: Obviously, I could care less...
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Hey, that cool website that everyone ever should read... it also had another 'favorite' of mine on it:

I could care less

I hate it when people say this when they mean they don't care. Do they even listen to themselves speak? If you could care less, you must be caring at least a little bit, because it would be possible for you to care less than you do. In other words: your interest isn't at the very bottom level, because it could be lower.

If, on the other hand, you couldn't care less, you don't care at all, because there wouldn't be any way for you to have less interest than you do. Your interest level is at rock bottom.

EXAMPLE OF USAGE:

Andy: Did you hear the Packers lost their last game?
Anna: Andy, I couldn't care less about the Packers. I find football really boring.

OR

Andy: Why do we have to have history class? I couldn't possibly care
less about a bunch of dead guys from hundreds of years ago!
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6:44pm: You shouldn't've used "shouldn't of"
Cool stuff: http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html

An interesting debate, although I'm not sure where exactly I stand. Personally, I always say "every person has a right to his own opinion," etc, or if I feel up to uttering the extra syllables, "to his or her own opinion." Then again, I am not really a big fan of supposed PC rules. As a woman, I feel decidedly unoffended by the use of 'he,' 'his,' or 'him' to describe a theoretical person. The same way I am never offended if I am part of a group which someone addresses as "hey, you guys..."

One that does bug me (and how!) is "should of" and "shouldn't of," etc., etc. Hey, I don't have perfect grammar by any means, but seriously, have contractions becomes so much a part of speech that people have forgotten what words were originally used to make them? Somewhere in their subconscious, people must be aware that they are expressing the sentiment "should have," so why do they forget/not realize they are saying "should've" just because they've softened the 'v' sound in pronunciation? Ok, I admit, "shouldn't've" is a bit of an odd one, but then again, you would never write "I of got to go to school" or "You of totally convinced me on that point," would you? Would you?! Just remember, a 'should' can't usually belong to anyone or anything, so please never combine it with the word "of," which according to dictionary.com, means "belonging to or connected to," among other similar things, but never "have" (although, I guess the meaning could be somewhat similar to the word "having," but that's another story).

Interestingly, if you type "shouldn't've" into wiktionary.org, you'll immediately be redirected to "shouldn've," a valid alternate spelling. I still prefer "shouldn't've."

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001291.html
http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000204.htm - short and sweet!
http://www.xeromag.com/cheat.html - something everyone ever should read. (Ok, I make a few mistakes too, but "I shutter to think..." How? HOW?

Actually, that part at the bottom of the last link, about when punctuation marks belong inside quotation marks, is my favorite. Unfortunately, I've heard a lot of conflicting rules about this, and am still sometimes at a total loss. Damn quotation marks...

This all reminds me of a really interesting day in an Enlgish Lit. class from frehsman year where the prof was saying, people frequently misspell (or rather, misuse) common words nowadays because we live in a world where verbal communication (radio, phone, t.v.) is receiving a lot of stress. This is reminiscent of the very early days of writing, when words actually didn't have official spellings, and authors just spelled them however they liked, using pronunciation as a key. Today, as then, people increasingly learn new words and phrases through hearing them, and therefore, actually don't know what they're saying word-wise, even though they know the meaning. They're just sort of mimicking what they've heard (see above: "I shutter to think"). Will the extreme rise in computer/internet/IM use cause a return to learning language through reading and writing? With the rampant use of netspeak and other lazy, ignorant, and downright indifferent ways of communicating on the web (u all no wat i mean), I think not.