Christmas and Books (and The Spirit)

There's two presents this year that might make the Best Present Ever list. I've had some good runs of Christmas presents in the past; like the time Dad got me a first edition The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, or the boxes of Lovecraft another year, or the Stellarscope that Mom got me that I've still got the box and all the parts for. I mean, like, ten years later, how likely are you to have the actual thing, all it's bits, and keep them in the box? And you've used it hundreds of times?

Well, maybe there's three presents. Gina did crotchet me a sweet hat. I don't think I've ever gotten a real home made present before.

The other two are a Sony PRS-505 with a two gig card and the All About Me book my Mom won in a gift exchange. I mean, that is if she fills it out. If she fills it out it'll be the best present ever.

As for the Sony PRS... If you love books it's like a whole new level of awesome. The battery lasts forever, the screen is so excellent- Kevin and I went to Lenox Mall for his Mother's Christmas present and they've got a Sony Style store which had the PRS on display, and it's screen looked like it was a picture pasted on which made us a little disappointed since we wanted to see it in action... Until the screen changed and we realized the screen looks so good for pictures it might as well be a pasted on image- the screen looks great in every light at every angle. And half the time when I'm looking at it some part of me is screaming "THE FUTURE IS NOW!" and remembering the panel tv screens in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Granted, the Sony Connect software that comes with it looks like iTunes and acts like it's got all the functionality of a dismembered Barbie head. It just doesn't work. Thankfully there's Calibre which does work. But other than the Connect software it's about a million times more awesome than I dreamed it might be.

I can finally read the unabridged Count of Monte Cristo! Finding an unabridged copy is nigh impossible- I've got one but it was two years looking and it's in a collected edition with some other Dumas books and about the size of all the Harry Potters put together. And the $200 worth of classics Sony gives you includes all of Shakespeare's plays, The Modest Proposal, and a bunch of George MacDonalds I haven't seen since I was in elementary school plus a hundred something other books...

As for the Count... I'm about 700 pages in of 3100 and it's an incredible read. I have this little tiny bible print copy that I nearly finished before deciding if it'd been cut down so much (to about 700 pages) that I really wanted to read the whole thing. I got to the part this afternoon where M. Morrel is nearly ruined and his daughter has to go alone to get the silk bag and I nearly wound up crying for the misery of him and his family and how the Count did him a good turn. And the writing is so old fashioned and yet completely fresh- It's one of best books I've ever read.

The other one I keep looking at, picking up, reading a few pages, and putting back down and going back to the Count (while still casting eyes back at the book) is Crystal Soldier by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. It's the first space opera type thing I've read in a long time that I've really loved. And Jela is one of those characters who just sticks with you.

Which just goes to show digital books don't replace paper ones.

(I saw The Spirit this afternoon. It was the worst. movie. ever.)

blah blah blah

Haven't felt like I had much to blog about recently, despite things going on.

Flogging Molly concert was great. I've never been to the Tabernacle, and it's a hell of a place for a rock concert. (It got damaged in the tornado, by the way). Used to be a church, and it's painted on the inside- looks like some talented kids got in there while it was closed one night, did the place up, and when the owners came back in the morning they left it as it was. Funny seeing all those pipe organ bits behind a punk rock band.

I rode the Marta to get there, from Perimeter Mall. In all the times I've ever ridden it I've never been sure what gives it the bad rap. I use it to get to the airport when I fly, and mostly that's so early in the morning it's only business types. Different riding it at night, mostly because I like all the lights outside the window in the darkness. Easy to pretend you're flying through space. Family panicked a little when they found I was going alone. I just don't know any other fans of the band, and I wasn't going to miss the concert because of that; it's like waiting for someone else to see a movie in the theater and they can't ever make it until the thing is on DVD. I hate that. Anyway, Marta- well lit, police every where, lots of other concert goers to walk the block and a half from Peachtree Center Station which had an escalator so tall that on the way back down I had to sit on the steps to feel like I wasn't going to keel off into space. And it's got one of those lovely white-rectangular-tile walls against the escalator.

Hrm. What else?

I guess since I haven't got a call from the police I'm not being called as a witness so I can probably talk about this... I went to Steak and Shake Saturday night, and arrived just in time to see a customer rough up one of the employees in the parking lot. Over a bunch of nothing. But my long career in retail and waitstaffing made that no surprise. It's not like I don't get upset about things, but mostly they're "what's the meaning of life?" kind of things or some great injustice (personal or worldwide) not... Steak and Shake. And this guy was totally off the handle. Mind boggling.

That's the same day one of the customers copped a feel on me, too. Must have been a weird day.

I love SciFi. I love space operas, but most of the time I love them better as movies or tv shows. I'll try reading a book now and then and there's always something off about it that I don't like. I'm struggling to think if there's even one scifi book on my shelves. Possibly not. Well. There's one of those Padawan Obi-Wan and Master Qui-Gon adventures for little kids, but I'm partial to that team up. Anyway, I went to Borders last weekend to pick up my new Torchwood novels, only they didn't come in, and I'd braved the cold to get there, and Jamie was being really nice (he's one of the store's customers, and a fellow Torchwood/Doctor Who fan, and he works at Borders and said he'd hold my books for me) so I went to look for something else to use my coupons on since they were going bad the next day. And after all my years doing retail I pulled that thing that customers do sometimes that's completely unhelpful to employees.

Me: Hey, Jamie? There was this book on the New SciFi/Fantasy/Horror/Romance table about a month ago, and it's not there now.
Jamie: What was it?
Me: Uh. There was a girl space pilot? And a soldier guy?
Jamie: ...
Me: There was a space port on the front cover.

So, he's doing what he can, and I'm remembering one Christmas at Barnes and Noble where a lady came in, and asked what a book was that had a green cover and had been on a table over in one of the isles (those little end table looking things that move around) a year ago. (I actually found it for her, can you believe it? And the table wasn't even there when she came back to ask). This is when I run into Mark Brummel, another of Dr. No's customers, and actually one of my customers that I knew from Barnes and Noble, and it was actually kind of funny to see him because I'd told him I was going to be there, and he said he wouldn't that night.

(Maybe a month or two ago I was there, and this kid came up to me yelling a lot and asking if I was "That girl from the comic store?" and I said yes, and he yells for me to stay right there and then just runs off. If it was a cartoon something would have fallen on me, right after that. Turns out he's Mark's kid, and he went to go get his Dad. This is also the night I first saw Swordbird, which has to be the most insanely creative rediculous thing I've ever encountered. Charles, theoretically, how would a bird fight with a sword?) (The other funny thing is I've got a really bad memory, especially for people. And I hadn't seen Mark in about six or so years since Barnes and Noble when he came into Dr. No's and I remembered him, but he's also the only person I've ever met who had epilepcy, so that's probably why. Also, one of my coworkers almost beat him up)

So now it's a joke that when I see Mark in our store I tell him if I'm going to Borders. And he said he wasn't, but then he was there, and I told him about the book that I couldn't remember anything pertinent about, and met his wife. She was nice. None of that "how do you know my SO? why are you talking to them?" stuff. I hate when people get like that. Both of them are nice, and so are their kids.

I realize this book is never going to be found, unless I go on cobbcat.org, then onto Galileo, and from there to Novelist, which has got to be the best thing ever. You can search for books by plot on there, and I'm not happy about the fact I'm going home empty handed so I call one of my library coworkers who knows the ins and outs of the system and can get on Novelist for me. And while I'm on the phone I lean on the shelf, then turn to see what I'm leaning on.

And I'm not kidding you, I went over the shelf two or three times, the whole SciFi thing not facing the front doors because I recalled seeing the book that I was looking for on that shelf when I was at the store months ago and that meant I could half the alphabet in my search, and just as he's asking me what to put in Novelist, there's the freaking book I've been looking for. Go figure.

It's Crystal Soldier by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. It's really good. Really, really good. One of the semi-main characters is a tree. It's really not, but M Jela Granthor's Guard (the real main character- seriously, that's his name) kinda treats the tree like it's a main character, and it grows on you (Cliff, make a joke here). Him and his pet tree. I like Jela and his tree almost as much as I like Damien Vryce and Gerald Tarrant as a team up. (They're CS Friedman characters, from the Coldfire trilogy). It's good. Nothing has really happened yet kinda. It probably has, but I'm liking the universe and the writing so much I'm not trying to figure out what's going on- Jela and the tree could spend the rest of the book walking around space ports and I'd probably enjoy it. It's too good to try and figure out, I guess.

And now, finally, Torchwood Episode 11 has finished, so I'm going to go watch it. After I spell check this. Yay.

Rec-ing Ball: Torchwood "Slow Decay" Novel

I've had a fair amount of fandoms over the years, starting with Forever Knight and those long summers in Florida where I discovered mailing lists and fansites. It's funny when you didn't think there was anything out there like that; people who wanted to exchange thirty emails about why someone in some show did something. Mailing lists are kind of dying out for fandom, replaced by forums and livejournal comms, so far as I can tell; I still remember when I'd check my old Juno account and have the box full with altered song lyrics and sub requests for fanzines. Hell, I still remember the cost of fanzines.

Torchwood and Doctor Who novels aren't quite as expensive as fanzines, but they're up there, and the ones I keep reading are good, which puts them in the category of Kinder Chocolate. Guilty pleasures, and addictive ones. Thank god for Borders sending me coupons every week.

I'm still in deep fandom love with the Ninth Doctor, Rose, and Jack, so the first Doctor Who novel I picked up had all three of them in it. Jack's a hoot in it, and so is the caveman, and while it's not classic literature it's one of the better tie-in novels I've ever read. In fact, all the tie-in novels I've read/perused for Doctor Who and Torchwood have been pretty awesome. You can read the whole thing in one sitting, which I guess makes it less like the aforementioned German chocolate and more like a carton of chocolate ice cream. You get to the end and you're wondering where the whole book went. I read all of Only Human on the flight back from Vegas, with all the other passengers around me asleep, so I spent some time trying not to giggle too loudly.

Read Monsters Inside all in one sitting too, and then when I was watching the "Boom Town" episode of season one of Doctor Who I was amused to hear it mentioned in passing. It's less giddy than "Only Human", but still good. Maybe not carton of ice cream good, or maybe not chocolate flavor. And no Jack, despite where I'm guessing it goes in continuity.

There's a gap between "The Doctor Dances" and "Boom Town". At the end of the first one they've just rescued Jack and the Doctor doesn't trust him, and by the time the next episode starts Jack is one of the team. He's allowed to tinker with the TARDIS, left on his own in there with no fear of him hieing off with the time machine, and the Doctor and Rose are amused enough with his flirting that he flirts with both of them, without any censure, but in the previous episode the Doctor didn't appear to trust him any farther than he could throw him. It made me wonder how many adventures were in between one episode and the next... Unless it's a reality tv show, I don't really think any show has a lot of one episode ending and the next starting immediately, except maybe in the case of 24. I figure the episode ratio is something like, that one really exciting day of the week for the characters, or that one day a month where it all really just goes to hell. What shows on the tv is the highlights, and leaves out all the other stuff. In any case, "Boom Town" references the adventure Rose and the Doctor go on in the "Monsters Inside" novel, sans Jack. Made me wonder where he was at during the novel.

Anyway, back to Torchwood and "Slow Decay". Even if you don't like Torchwood, or know anything about it, you might like it. You might just like the writing. Which is really, really good. It's so good, against all the tie-ins I've ever read, it almost needs to not be a tie-in novel. And I wish the author would just write something else fictional, because he's got skills. God given skills. Raining fire skills. Jack's dialog is just inane enough to make you question why the whole show isn't just him talking about things, the whole forty-five minutes of the show. And the aliens in the book are just icky enough for you to really understand why there really needs to be a Torchwood. It's all fun and games when it's Weevils and alien empathy machines, until something comes along that's the proverbial poking the eyeball out.

Andy Lane, if you can hear me, write something else. I don't care if it's Torchwood, though that'd be nice, or if it's something with the Ninth Doctor, Rose, and Jack in it from that convenient gap in the episodes. Hell. Re-write the phone book. I'll read it.

This is just a part where Jack and Gwen were having a chat on the roof top at the beginning of the book:

"Where can I get a coat like that?" She asked.
"You have to earn it." Captain Jack Harkness said without turning around. "It's a badge of office. Like bowler hats in the Civil Service."
"They don't still wear bowler hats in the Civil Service." She replied scornfully. "That went out back in the 1950s along with tea trolleys and waistcoats. And I speak as someone who worked alongside loads of Civil Servants when I was in the police force." She caught herself. "I mean, when I was *really* in the police force, not just *telling* people I'm in the police force to avoid having to tell them that I hunt down alien technology for a living."
"I bet they still wear them." Jack said. The wind ruffled his hair like a playful hand. "I bet when all the Civil Servants arrive in their offices in the morning they lock the doors, unlock their desks and take out their ceremonial bowler hats to wear where nobody else can see them. Like a kind of administrative Klu Klux Klan."
"Have you got some kind of downer on the Civil Service?"
He still didn't turn around. "In an infinite universe," He said. "there are undoubtedly planets out there where the entire population has grey skin, wears grey clothes and thinks grey thoughts. I guess the universe needs planets like that, but I sure as hell don't want to have to visit them. I prefer the thought that there's a planet of Civil Servants then there's also a planet where everyone has an organic TV set built into their back, and you can just follow people down the street watching daytime tv to your heart's content."

And that's just from the first two pages! And he uses "whilst" several times in the book too. Of course, Jack wears a waistcoat in one of the later episodes, so that shows what Gwen knows about awesome men's clothing going out of style.

Read it. Read. It.

John Barrowman's Another Side

John's new CD premiered about a week ago in the UK. You can get it on Amazon, but be prepared to pay for it. Possibly with severed limbs and kidneys.

That said, the CD is good. Really good. Especially if you like to sing along. John sings really well and I'm not sure if he was going for a theme here, or what, but I swear it's almost every song we've all ever sung in the car or shower. And in the case of "All By Myself" sung badly.

If it was titled "John Barrowman's Ultimate Sing Along" it wouldn't be inaccurate.

First, we have "All out of Love", which he manages to sound very sweet in. Then "You're so Vain" which I saw on the youtube clip when he was on the National Lottery. I like it a lot better on the CD, because the video dancers in the background were way out of sync and the studio recording sounds so much better. I have nothing to say about "She's Always a Woman to Me" and "Your Song". "Time After Time" sounds completely different from every other cover of the song I've ever heard, which I have to give him major kudos for. "Everything She Does is Magic" is preposterously good. I've almost started singing along in public in time with my iPod, and I'm going to pretend I didn't do some goofy footwork dance move on the stairs. Thankfully no one was watching. But John can dance too! He sang the song on Strictly Come Dancing the other night, which I think is sort of like Dancing with the Stars. "If You Leave Me Now" is cute, and very seventies sounding. And "Heaven" (which it took me a moment to recognize, since it sounds similar to his cover of "Time After Time") startled me. It was one of those club anthems a few years ago, when it seemed a new remix of it was playing on the radio at least once a week. Part of me wants a techno remix of his version, honestly.

However, prize of the whole album is his cover of Nina Simone's "Feeling Good". I had to listen to Nina sing it this morning and Michael Buble too, to catch everything about it. "Feeling Good" is one of those songs I don't think I've ever heard covered well enough that I thought it stood up in awesomeness next to the original. I've never watched Six Feet Under but I love their commercial featuring the song. Makes me wish I could skate. Nina is a hard one to top, simply because I think she's so incredibly sultry at it, and it's a sultry song. Even the background music sounds sultry. It's perfect. And that makes all the covers automatically fail somehow. Michael Buble sounds like too much of a good boy to really carry it off, even if the instruments seem to get it more than he does in some places. Up until the first "And I'm Feeling Good" he sounds like he has no business singing it, and then all the sudden the trumpets start up and he suddenly sounds like the cat that got the canary. Unfortunately by the time he's almost about to sing that line again, he's back to good. The trumpets carry the rest of the song, really, and I know I'm nitpicking about his tone; he does a good job with it regardless, especially at the end when he gets passionate sounding and his voice frays.

John starts the song off sounding lovelorn, which is brilliant. And by the time he's gotten to the first "good" he's worked himself into a raspy tone. He doesn't sound as sultry as Nina, but I've pretty much given up on anyone ever matching her in that category. He sounds really, really good, and I don't know much about acoustics but it sounds like where-ever he's singing is big and empty because there's a slight echo of his voice. Somehow that really works. He ends it well too; he carries "feeling" only slightly longer than I can, and spends the last minute of the song rasping the lines in a very sultry way. What I was disappointed by was the band the put him with. There's not one trumpet. A lot of strings, which do this clever shivery thing, and some cellos, and a piano. No trumpets.

Now, if someone out there had clever music software and could put John's voice with Michael's background music, then we might have a real challenger to the awesomeness of Nina.

On a non-musical note, his cover picture is to die for.

Rec-ing Ball: Day One

Copypasta'd from 9/8/07:

Hey Guys,

The idea for this came last weekend, when I was chatting with one of the customers who regularly shops in the comics store I work at, Dr. No's. He comes in pretty much every week and we have a very similar taste in movies; maybe it's more like we both think the same ones are great. We chat every weekend, almost, about what movie we saw recently, how good it was, what was great about it, what's another great movie...

And for once we got on the subject of books. The "Dark is Rising" movie is coming out soon, and it was one of my favorite book series as a kid, next to Narnia, and I keep telling the guy I'll bring him my copy of the book to read, at which point I wound up telling him a few more great books, and he tells me he's off to the Library for them.

Not ten minutes later he's back in the store asking me where I come up with this stuff to recommend (or rec, since I'm such a fandom geek online).

Mostly I just pick it up along the way, like for The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (which I told him he has to read, if he wants to know what real horror writing is). I worked at the library the book came out and we had about thirty copies (or more) between 17 libraries, and the holds on the book were in the hundreds on each copy. That's like waving a flag for either controversy or greatness, and they had a sale on the book at Sam's Club so I picked it up.

The book scares me so bad I can't finish it. And it's so Hitchcock about it, where nothing happens to the characters but you're about to start screaming if something makes a noise in the room because the tension is amped up so high. Plus it's got vampires, a favorite of mine, and it's sort of secret society-ish, with a lot of history.

My advice: Don't read it late at night.

Or anther book that seemed to fall into my lap: The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst. It has a brilliant title, and originally one of the worst covers I've ever seen. I mean, ugly and nondescript. The cover you see now, if you follow that link is pretty, and awesome, and moody; just like the book deserves. It's even poignant, and if you read the book damned if it doesn't wrench at your heart every time you see it. It came across the counter at the library often enough that I recalled it, and kept wondering what it was about.

Finally I checked it out, and it's one of those read-it-in-one-sitting books. I don't usually read stuff that's not about magic and vampires and guns, ect, and this book is so slice of life... Basically, the main character comes home to find his wife is dead and the only witness is the family dog, and it turns out the husband is a linguistics professor at a college. Every other chapter is about how he met his wife and how they fell in love, and the other chapters are about him coping with his grief over her loss and trying to teach the family dog to tell him what happened.

It sounds goofy every time I say that, but it's not. He's not expecting the dog to speak, so much as maybe point at cards, or type a simple keyboard, like some animals have been taught to do (wasn't there a horse that did that? and a dog that had a barking code? I seem to recall it from Ripley's or a show on animal oddities), and it's so sad and sweet, and you can tell how much he's struggling with loosing his wife...

Anyway, read it, you'll cry. I did.

So, I rec'ed him those two, just like I'm recing them to you. Which is where I got the idea for this blog.

Rec-ing Ball: Dark Angel

Copypasta'd from 9/8/07:

I just finished watching the first episode of Dark Angel, and while it's not the best show I've ever seen it's certainly not the worst. Of course, I'm only one Ep in, so that opinion might change. I'll probably come up with a rating system eventually...

Hrm, so, pros...

She's a chick who can (apparently) kick ass. I like that in a show. I used to watch Buffy, I love La Femme Nikita (in any incarnation). I like the post-apocalyptic thing going on, but time will tell on how believable it is and how much they really invest into the world they've created. Also, there's action, and guns; things I like very much. And there was even a part with spy-speak and black-ops suits. Jessica Alba is pretty, and Michael Weatherly is eye candy. And she's got a mouth on her. I love mouthy characters and the insults and mouthy-ness are pretty good so far. Her friend at work is snort-worthy funny, and I like the odd array of superpowers she's wound up with.

Cons:

Like I said before, I like the "universe" this is set in, but I'm not sure how much they believe in it. They better believe in it, or this is going to be goofy and unlikeable. Imagine if Buffy hadn't been as "believed" in as it was. I want it to come across as real to the characters, basically. We'll see how this is in a few more eps. And while Jessica Alba is pretty, she's got a seriously pouty face. (I'm not watching Buffy at the moment but every time I looked at her she reminded me of Angel in season 1 or 2 with his "woe is me, I'm a vampire" face). She looks like she could sulk for her country, if that was an Olympic sport. There were a few parts where I cringed at her makeup, which looked downright whore-ish (but she was playing a whore right then, so...) and during the same scene she wore what I'm going to forever think of as the Worst Dress In The Whole Entire World. I know I've seen worse, but oh my god was this bad.

But really, it was a good hour or two, and I had a good cup of coffee watching it, and it only cost me five dollars for the season, so I'm not complaining. And from what I saw on the Internet (namely imdb's reviews) I was sure the show was going to be nightmareishly bad. It's not. And the reviewer on there was right; a lot of the show seems to be coped from somewhere else, but that's fine if it's done well.

As for ep 1, I'll rec it.

Rec-ing Ball: Acursedly Delicious Coffee

Copypasta'd from 9/8/07:

It was so good now I can't sleep. And when I say good I mean strong Irish Cream flavor.

I know a lot of people don't like coffee, that it tastes like dirt, that it's an "acquired taste" and generally that means things taste bad.

To me, it's like the Holy Grail of drinks. It's hot, it keeps your hands warm, it makes you completely unable to sleep, and when you add just the right amount of sugar and milk (or whipping cream) it becomes an unholy food source that can jack you up high enough to bounce off walls. Thankfully I don't add that much sugar any more...

Tonight's sleeplessness is deliciously brought to you by Millstone Coffee Company. The flavors are always great, and by great I mean slightly hedonistic. I'm a big fan of chicory coffee which is by another brand, but when it's a red letter night (I'm a freak, I love coffee at night) or I want some seriously special coffee I get the Irish Cream flavor or maybe the Chocolate Velvet. French Vanilla isn't bad either.

And I think almost all the flavors come in Decaf and Regular, so you can choose if you want to stay up til almost four in the morning blogging or go to bed at a regular time.