Climbing K2

My Kindle2 came in the mail yesterday (27 Feb.), just one day after Daniel's Amazon Prime account got his delivered. Not too bad!
I was shaking in delight and the mailman teasingly almost didn't hand it to me because he could see how anxious I was (I was on my way back to work when I saw that the mailboxes on the opposite side of the street had their flags down) and we all know what bastards the Post Office turns people into. The nice FedEx lady delivered one of my Harry Potter books on a Saturday morning and just beamed because she was making so many people happy that day.
In my excitement, I am pinning people down and showing it to them. It's not like the cell phone I'm ashamed to admit I have, this is cool. I tell people I got it for my husband who I believe doesn't read as much as he used to because his vision has gotten very poor. He'll be lucky to even smell it.
Anyway, I'm still all crazy about this gizmo and then I read Roy Blount Jr.'s op/ed in the New York Times about how the audio function of the K2 is ripping off authors ... or has the potential for same.
I have yet to listen to a book read by the K2 because I didn't buy it to listen to it. I'm here for the e-paper. The audio function may be yards better than the computer-generated reading done on the Gutenberg Project books, but when you get down to it, you don't buy the audiobooks just to hear someone drone through the book. You (or rather, I) buy them for the performance. Jim Dale brought Harry Potter to life for millions. Stephen Briggs is currently making Terry Pratchett's Discworld come to life. When I went to the Kindle Store, I looked at the Discworld books that I love so much ... and eventually rejected them because I already own both book and audiobook forms of most of them. And if I want to hear them read, I want Nigel Planer or Briggs (or even Tony Robinson who does a brilliant job with the unfortunately abridged versions) read them, not some computer. I want a performance, and that's what an audio-book is.
Where else can I listen to these Kindle-reads? Plug them into the car audio system for long trips? With one of those droning voices? I don't think so. On an airplane? What? Do I look like I have noise-cancellation headphones?!
No, the audio function on the K2 is a toy, a gadget. I bought the K2 for the e-paper. I enjoy reading. I can see using the audio function only if my eyes wear plum-out.
I'm glad that (the ordinarily cuddly) Mr. Blount is looking after his fellow authors and he's right to bring this to our attention, but it's just a sales gimmick, not a threat to audio rights. It can't be sold separately from the text. It's ephemeral and, let's face it, not that great. You should have heard the Gutenberg audio try to come to grips with the broad Yorkshire accents in The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Any human could have done a better job with one lip tied behind their back. Of course, after a while even I managed to get into the story and ignore the hideous struggles with apostrophes.
Before I could finish this post (currently 28 February), Amazon.com seems to have balked. Sigh, just when I think I'm finally ahead of the curve! They will apparently leave it up to the author to allow or disallow this function on each book. Boy, that was fast! I would have thought that the lawyers would have worked all that out in advance, but apparently not - or else one side did not think far enough ahead while the other cagily did. Hmmmm.
A friend has pointed out that this audio function is no different that the book's purchaser reading it aloud. Good gravy, I hope I can read better than that!
I have since listened to the audio on the Kindle ... and it's no better than the Gutenberg reader. My favorite bit was rendering the Ms. (as in Ms. Smith) as "Millisecond Smith." This was from a book currently in print.
I now listen to the text-to-speech partly for the hilarity of these mistakes and partly because I get so into the material that when the time comes to drive somewhere, an appointment or something, I can't give up reading and I don't have to! I just turn on the text-to-read while I'm driving! You know, Mr. Blount, I'd never have discovered the joy of this function if you hadn't brought it to my attention.

Aww, Just SHOOT him, fer cryin' out loud!

Stalin's Ghost by Martin Cruz Smith

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
audiobook version

I should have checked out the hardcopy as well, because I got partway through and then just wanted to get it over with.

There is a lot that's good about this book. It's not often we get to see a Moscow police procedural, or at least I don't. I'm hoping this has given me insights into the Russian character and the current conditions in Russia, but I don't have enough information on the author to vet his depictions.

Again, the only problem I have is that it's not my sort of "thing."

The characters, while more than two dimensional are drawn with a heavy pen. The reporter is not only Jewish ... but hunchbacked as well. The love interest is a doctor AND has Chernobyl scars. The filmmaker doesn't just make porn, he documents his own gang-rapes (in other words, he's not just pathetic, he's stupid). All this serves to make the narrative more "gritty," I suppose.

Setting the mystery in Russia gives the author a chance to explore all those hard-boiled 1950s-type scenes, but with a fresh coat of paint: cell phones, exotic locales, etc. Still, it boils down to people trying to kill the detective, the detective being misunderstood, losing the girl, getting the girl back, losing the girl, the obligatory hellacious family life that made him completely different from both parents (which seems so unlikely). All in all, it was good -

but setting up the gun assembling scene? That just killed it. The gun is now on the stage and I was just waiting for it to pay off. Hurry up, Smith, let's just get the gun put together and get it over with. It was pure torture waiting for that.

And, bad guy has a gun, why suddenly decided to use a shovel? Why bury someone to come BACK and kill them? I just wanted to bang my head on the dashboard. And he'd been doing so well up to then. (In my mind I drift back to that great scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Jones rolls his eyes and just shoots someone. The story goes that the scene was changed from a whip-duel because Ford was ill, but this was just sooo much better. Shoot them! You have a gun! USE IIIIIIT!)

Otherwise, it was pretty good. Reader was okay, but should probably lay off the whiskey and cigarettes.


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And That's the Truth! (phhhhbbblllllt!)

Truer Than True Romance: Classic Love Comics Retold! by Jeanne Martinet

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Whatta great scam! Take the old True Romance comics you read as a child that ruined your prospects for happiness by setting up unrealistic expectations in the romance department and, using the same artwork, totally rewrite them! This merited some actual guffaws! And that was just from the original material that was provided for the contrast! I mean, it took me several minutes to get it through my thick head that "NY Restaurant Menu Typist" was a career in the original, not the parody!
Ahhh, this really took the bad taste out of my mouth from the previous graphic graphic novels!


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Posts When Her Heart Stops Hammering

The Doll's House by Neil Gaiman

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
This falls into that category of Wow, Good But Don't Make Me Read It Again. I'm familiar with "Der Sandman" by E. T. A. Hoffmann but I took a chance on this book anyway. O Weh's mir!

This was a bit gruesome for me and I'm sorta glad it normally hides in the Adult Graphic Novels because "graphic" really describes it. Okay, you have to use a bit of your imagination to finish the picture, but ...

I'd like to know if stories like this satisfy the reptilian part of our brain and when order is restored, we can then feel satisfied that a) we got to enjoy something really violent, grotesque, bloody, gratuitous and b) we know that it is wrong and those people are punished and we're better than that.

Or does this just encourage some of us to go out and do it?

Can't be the latter, or I'd run out now and find people's eyes to gouge out instead of huddling under an afghan hoping I can get the imagery out of my head.

Neil Gaiman, do you actually make this stuff up or do you just hunt for it in headlines? I don't know which is worse.

The story, though, is artfully crafted. There does seem to be a bit of extraneous storytelling (the guy who lives forever) that doesn't seem to have anything to do with this particular plotline. I don't think I'll be picking up any more of these to try to work that out, though.

The artwork doesn't have the grace and clarity of American Born Chinese and the layout strains the limits of my ability to follow. Parts of the narrative are not nicely laid out left to right, but we are talking about dreams. And I'm wondering ... is the Sandman drawing based on Gaiman?

Phew!

Well! Back to that nice, fluffy Stalin's Ghost! Only one serial killer there!


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Same Old Same Old ... Yum

Death of a Gentle Lady by M.C. Beaton

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
This is the reading version of Raisinets: nothing surprising in the bag, same old wrinkles larded up with familiar flavors, but gawd doncha love 'em?

Hamish's star system of babes grows ever larger, and while they have to die to escape his gravitational pull, they never seem to get close enough for a satisfactory relationship. I know I've said over and over that if you've got the sexual tension thing going, your biggest mistake is ruining it with a happy couple (see Sayers's Lord Peter series and the old Remington Steele program), however, it's been 20-some books now, Ms. Beaton! Time to move on! It's just painful now seeing all these women floating around him like so much debris.

This time Hamish goes outside the EU for fresh meat. Blair goes totally over the top. The victim is as unpleasant as ever, and an outsider (or Lochdubh would be a ghost town by now). And Beaton stoops to having the village put on a production of "Macbeth." Even using the same formulaic sentences (Hamish always going sibilant when angry - can guarantee that sentence will be worked into every single solitary book), the same failed relationships, the same characters (except murderers and murderees), Beaton somehow prevents this stuff from going completely stale. The villagers should only be two-dimensional cartoons, but I see them as whole for some reason. Maybe it's from seeing just one of the tv series with Robert Carlyle (totally wrong physically for Macbeth but so darn cute in that).

Oddly, I can't abide the Agatha Raisin stories, but I'll line up for these packets of sticky sweets each time.


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This man is soooo adorable .. when he's not playing a psychopath.

Newbery Winner

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I really like books that don't flash the answers right at you. If I were a kid reading this, some of it wouldn't be quite so obvious (Ms. Lupescu, f'rinstance). And while we didn't get beaten over the head with the answers, the clues were obvious to Ms. Smarty-Pants-Me.
Some unfortunate Harry Potter parallels come up (unfortunate in that some know-it-all like me would say there were Harry Potter parallels: 11 year epiphany meaning it is now time to go to school, family killed, prophecy of a child defeating some evil power, blah-blah, yadda-yaddah). All of this is unfortunate because no one sat around saying dismissively, "Oh that Harry Potter story sounds just like The lives of Christopher Chant by Diana Wynne Jones." Now any story with supernatural elements and a kid in it is going to sound like Harry Potter.

But this book is not like Harry Potter. It's a one-off story that takes Bod from toddler to adulthood. He is raised by kindly folk (for the most part) and we learn it takes a whole graveyard to raise a child - ho ho ho. I love the fiddly details, ghosts that are introduced by the inscriptions on their headstones: "Thomes Pennyworth here he lyes in the certainty of the moft glorious refurrection was already waiting." There is much to like about the book even though this isn't really my type of book. I actually burst into tears when I heard on NPR that Gaiman won the Newbery ... even though I'd already heard about it from the ALA feed into Second Life. In fact, I was pretty much crying over all the awards that day. That the audiobook for Terry Pratchett's Nation had won an award really tore me up.

I came to Neil Gaiman through reading Terry Pratchett. They collaborated on a book and I've slowly worked into some of the Gaiman oeuvre. There is a lot of creative work that I think is brilliant, but I don't have to read/watch again (the original "Alfie" comes to mind) and this book falls into that category. If you know a kid who needs a quality book - especially those hard-to-find-reading-material-for creatures, boys - this would be a prime candidate. (Most of them will appreciate the girl in the book being trundled off and her memory erased.) [Suddenly Marf remembers she has a great-neph who loves Goosebumps and is in need of reading material - heh heh!:]

Our library's copy of this book is in the teen area - which comprises Grade 6 and up. I'm not sure about placement of this book. I suppose because everyone is murdered in the first few pages someone decided this should be a teen book, but it's no worse than the Grimm's folktales of fingers being cut off and people rolled in barrels studded with nails. We're more sensitive these days to exposing kids to violence, even though it's offstage (the murders were done before the book starts although the murderer still has one more to kill). I imagine someone picked this up, read the first two pages and tossed it aside saying "Teen book!" and that was that. Pish and tosh, say I.

Also, let me say that I have nothing against serial books or comics and I think kids should have access to plenty of that but an occasional "meaty" book like this is nice to stretch them. Please, please, though don't denigrate trashy reading and force kids to read hard stuff all the time!


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It's Not Your Father's Boobtube Anymore

Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Video games are getting more complicated and so are tv shows - and that makes our brains work harder, so Johnson says. [I suspect I read this before because it all sounded really familiar.] Guess it's that entropy thing again - You start out really simple and then things get all complicated and disordered. Our brains have to make sense of non-linear shows like The Sopranos or video games such as ... The Sims, I guess - not sure. I'm not really a gamer. And I don't call Second Life a game. I do understand that once you've defeated a game, you no longer have interest in it and need to move on to another challenge.

There are videos I watch over and over to get all the little references out of, which is what they aim for now, the after-market where it's not enough to watch something once, but over and over so you have to buy the whole video, watch it endlessly, watch it with all the foreign dubbings and subtitles (okay, maybe that's just me), and then blog about it or go to some website where they hash over the finest details (ever go to any of the Harry Potter fan websites?) and write fan fiction. Isn't that just a more adult version of the Whole Reading method?


Good writer; I enjoy his stuff.


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As an afterthought, I really enjoy the Goodreads site which allows me to copy my whole review I wrote there and paste it in a regular blog, bringing the cover along with it! Yay!