Movie: Baby Mama (15-word Review)
Ending went conventional but still worth seeing. Several laugh-out-louds. Great walking-away lines.
Entries Tagged as 'Movies'
Book: Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
I had high expectations for this one and accordingly, the first chapter left me in shock. Am I reading Twilight? How can I be drowning in a sea of schmaltz and cheese? Is the rest of the book like this?
Fortunately, no.
As a novel, Prodigal Summer
Each strand focuses on a natural element (coyotes, moths, chestnut trees) and a main character. Kingsolver shows how each is a part of the world at large. By now, we should all be familiar with food webs and the interlocking dependencies of any ecosystem but what’s impressive is Kingsolver’s ability to demonstrate the dependencies and interrelatedness of the human world both as an extension of and as a mirroring parallel to the natural world.
Just as animals and plants do not live in isolation, neither do people and their communities. At the beginning of the book, the three main protagonists are all isolated in their own ways. Their isolations are the results of their own choices and states of mind—whether they realize it or not.
As the novel progresses, they start to see their connections and we, the readers, are able to see an even greater part.
The way the structure of the novel reflects the personal journeys of each character, which go on to reflect the larger overall theme, is impressive. It shows great skill, and I appreciate that it is not heavy handed in its presentation.
My one criticism is that the problems faced by each strand’s characters are revisited and verbalized too often. We don’t need to be told in every dozen pages things that have been assuredly well established.
Because there isn’t enough variety, I think the resolutions to each storyline are too slow in coming. Each tale could have progressed more quickly and in fewer chapters.
But in a way, the pace of the work also takes its cue from the natural world that Kingsolver wants us to notice. Her descriptions are rich and beautiful.
After reading a whole bunch of twentieth-century minimalist novels like Wittgenstein’s Nephew and Junky, this was a shock to the system.
The novel is going to move and change at its own pace. It’s going to go through repetitive cycles. The reader is just going to have to sit back and enjoy what’s in front of him/her because short of artificial modifications, there really isn’t much to be done.
No, Kingsolver probably didn’t intend for this effect, but this is something I got out of the overall reading experience.
New Author Challenge: one completed, fourteen to go.
Stephenie Meyer is No Joss Whedon
I was in Borders over the holiday shopping season. On their wall, they had a screen playing video clips of author soundbites.
Stephenie Meyer shows up to say how surprised she was at Twilight
She says that every author has to blurb their book in their pitches… okay…
And she said that she challenges anyone to write an eleven-word description of Twilight and not make it sound like a bad episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Schreeech! Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold on a minute!
I snapped my head up just in time to see the camera pan out and reveal a gaggle of tweens sitting at Stephenie’s feet twttering away in agreement.
I started Twilight who knows how long ago and am now stuck on page 229 because the writing is god-awful. I could live with the characters. I can live with the plot. But the writing. The actual words on the actual pages. They just hurt me.
At least I’m now stuck on page 229. I was stuck after paragraph one for several months before that.
Now let’s count things off.
- The worst episode of Buffy is still better than this stuff.
- To imagine that she is even close to Joss Whedon is amazing to me.
- Just how much does she owe to Buffy?
- Couldn’t she pick Dark Shadows or something more meriting of her comparison?
- If any of those girls started watching Buffy, they’ll see how much better it is. The series holds up, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, it does.
- Yes, I know I’m overreacting.
- I’m not really overreacting by that much.
- I repeat my incredulity that the Harry Potter generation is embracing Twilight.
- I optimistically got New Moon at the same time as Twilight. Seriously, does it start getting better soon? Perhaps at page 230?
- Grr…Arg!