1. Kamikaze Girls
This movie tells the story of an unlikely friendship. When Momoko, who loves lolita style and French Rococo, meets Ichigo, a Yanki in a girl biker gang, her life is turned upside down. This is the Japanese version of a teen movie, with lots of humor and style to spare and rife with Japanese pop-culture. I would say that this movie is enjoyable overall, but especially for those interested in Japan and its pop-culture.


2. Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter
The straight to DVD companion movie to the big screen Watchemen includes the animated short film "Tales of the Black Freighter"(which was a pirate comic about a survivor of a pirate attack, who learns the meaning of "The road to hell is paved with good intentions") and "Under the Hood" (a documentary based on the autobiography of Hollis Mason, the first Night Owl), both of which appeared in the original graphic novel of Watchmen.

It really shows Zack Snyder's passion for the graphic novel that he insisted on creating these aspects of the book that would have been thrown out by most directors, because they are not immediately pertinent to the story. However, they are important thematically. While I agree that Watchment is not for everybody, if it is your cup of tea, then I suggest you get the companion DVD and watch these extras as well, because they expand upon the world and make it come more alive.


3. Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, by Mary Roach
Having already tackled the subjects of human corpses (Stiff) and the afterlife (Spook), Roach once again takes on the taboo in Bonk. As the title suggests, she looks at the science of sex -- from viagra to female libido to erectile implants to sex as a health benefit -- and she does so in her straightforward, unflinchingly humorous style.

This book will probably make you blush; it made me blush. It also made my jaw drop, and I would keep looking around sheepishly to see who might be watching and judging me read this book. Oh, and I laughed, too.

This may or may not be a book for those who have inhibitions about discussing sex, as it is definitely unabashed about describing anatomy, though purely in a scientific way. There is much to be learned in this book, much that needs to be learned, and much that is purely amusing for the sake of anecdote. Bonk was a very enjoyable, though sometimes disturbing, read.


4. Click, by David Almond, Eoin Colfer, Roddy Doyle, Deborah Ellis, Nick Hornby, Margo Langan, Gregory Maguire, Ruth Ozeki, Linda Sue Park, and Tim Wynne-Jones
After their famous photographer grandfather Gee dies, he leaves his grandson Jason some signed photographs from famous sports stars and his granddaughter a box of seven shells. These mysterious items begin the unfolding of mysteries that carry across decades.

Ten authors came together to write this novel, each writing one chapter, more of a series of short stories. It's amazing to me how well these stories weave together to make a complete picture, not just a random assortment of stories, but truely a novel. The book is well written throughout, and the characters are interesting. This is a genuinely sweet and touching story, and definitely one of my new favorite books.

Proceeds from the sale of this book are donated to Amnesty International, which makes a good deed out of enjoyable entertainment.


5. Otto; or, Up with Dead People
This is a gay zombie movie. That's the simple explanation. Here's how Netflix describes it:

Controversial filmmaker Bruce La Bruce's irreverent take on zombie movies centers on a cheerless, undead teenager named Otto, whose quest for love and acceptance outstrips his hunger for flesh. Feeding on roadkill, Otto wanders the streets contemplating his existence and looking for a job in this unapologetically campy German import.

This movie can be a little confronting, in that there are a few short explicit sex scenes (I'm warning you now, because I was warned, but the warning didn't keep me from being surprised either). However, if you can get past sex (which comprises a very small portion of the film), Otto is very creative and very interesting from an intellectual point of view. Definitely worth a look, just make sure you can handle the sex, and don't watch it with someone who is going to freak out.

Philease Fogg makes a hasty and rash bet of 20,000 pounds that he can travel around the world in 80 days. He immediately sets off, dragging his newly hired servant Passpartout along for the journey. He meets with many adventures and possible delays that risk preventing him from reaching his destination in time, including Fix, a detective who has mistaken Fogg for a bank robber.

The film versions of this books often make this story more exotic and fantastical than it really is, turning Fogg into some sort of an inventor, who sets off in his journey in an air balloon. But Fogg uses regular means of travel in this books, ships, trains, and even on elephant, but there are no balloons. Verne did pen another adventure story, called Five Weeks in a Balloon, in which travels travel across Africa in a hot air balloon (this is on my list to read).

That being said, I enjoyed Around the World immensely. Because the book was orginally written as a serial, the chapters are each vignette in which Fogg and his companions meets an obstacle and then over comes it. Verne's characters are something like caricatures, but the have enough depth to be fully entertaining.

This is only the second book of Verne's that I have read, but he is fast becoming one of my favorite authors.

Tyson describes the rise and fall of Pluto as a planet. He looks at how Pluto was first discovered, Pluto's cultural significance (mostly in the U.S.), the new evidence that demoted Pluto, and the heated debates that resulted.

( Read the rest of the review )

This poetry lives in the adolescent, in that its focus remains for the most part superficial. Since this book of poetry is directed toward a young adult audience, this is not a bad thing.

Many of the poems center on body image, fashion, popularity, finding self, boys, and the like. They revel in the insecurities of the teenager. If I had read this when I was in high school, I would have been amazed, thinking, This is me. She knows. I would have believed.

Even the language itself remains very on the surface. The breaking of the lines often seems arbitrary, and the descriptions tend to be repetitive (the first things to be noticed are the shade of the eyes or the color of the hair).

There is no punctuation throughout the book, except the odd question mark. Sometimes it helped the poem, allowing the thoughts to run into one another, the way they actually do in our minds, undeliniated. Other times this was a hindrance, causing confusion in the lack.

Block brings in mythology and fairy tales to help bring these poems depth and life. And every once in a while, she breaks away into something sublime, and I find myself wanting to linger over a line. I reread it, savoring it on my tongue. And there are those few poems where I have to pause and be still for a minute after finishing, because I just need to be there for a moment before I go back to read the poem again.

Moll Flanders describes how she fell into whoring (her words) and thievery. Basically it's a long rambling tale of her life as she moves from one husband to the next, sometimes marrying one husband while still "technically" married to the last, and leaving a litany of children in her wake (whom she seems to have little interest in at all, despite assurances otherwise).

The point of the story is that this is supposed to be a tale of the misfortunate, as tales about thieves, murders, and other miscreants were very popular at the time period.

It had enough to it that I was able to keep trudging through it, as she fell into one misfortune after another (kind of like watching a train wreck). But I have to admit that I was severely disappointed in the book, because I so loved the movie. True, the movie had been Hollywood-zed big time, but in my opinion this is one of the very rare cases where this was a good thing. Moll was more naive in the movie, not so much trying to con her way through live but falling into the necessity so as to survive, which is part of what appealed to me. The book's Moll lacked that innocence, and was openly deceptive and conned many men (from fear of poverty, true), and there was very little to redeem her.

Tar and feather me, if you like, but in my opinion the movie was more enjoyable than the book.

This is what I read this past year:

77 books (according to my LibraryThing records, but I know I've read more than that as I have not been a perfect record keeper)

12 nonfiction
12 comics/graphic novels (does not include the manga I read, which I should really start to keep track of)
6 poetry
17 YA books
41 scifi/fantasy
7 horror
5 romance
17 mainstream/literary fiction
15 audio books (yes, I'm counting these even though I didn't technically "read" them)

I know it doesn't add up, but some of them overlap, and besides I'm not perfect. :)

( These are some of my favorites. )
( These are the ones I didn't really enjoy. )

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
How do you raise a child in a world that has no future? How in a world so bleak do you hold on to hope?



McCarthy's The Road answers these questions for me. This is a deceptively simple story. A father and a son walking a road in a post-apocalyptic world that is devastating and horrifying. It seems like not much is happening, and in a sense not much is. These are two people wandering a burnt and nearly empty world, just trying to survive. They are trying to reach the ocean, an entirely arbitrary goal, but a point, a destination, a direction in which to aim their wandering.



The prose is plain and poetic, and the redundancy of the dialog anchored me in the characters. I especially liked the repetition of the word "okay," which can have a multitude of contexts and meanings.



As bleak as this book is, it makes me believe in people. The way people can still love, can still hold on and be thankful for what little goodness they have, which is at the very least, who we have with us. And, for me, there is hope in that. Hope in that people can still be good, can still love and do right by each other. For me this book was deeply moving and touching, because at its heart, if you take away the dystopia, you have a father and a son, holding on to each other.


View all my reviews.

Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Dhalgren was probably the most literary science fiction I have ever read. I suppose I say that because it had little to do with plot, in the sense that there really wasn't one. But the characters and their interactions are very interesting. Also, I really enjoyed looking at the way people try to assemble--not meaning--but some shape of a life from a society that has collapsed.



Definitely a book that will challenge people's ideas on sexuality, as well as race, gender, and how to define art. Some of it was rather intense for me to read, so I would not recommend this book to anyone who is easily offended.


View all my reviews.

When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech, for Better And/Or Worse by Ben Yagoda

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Not many writers can tackle the sometimes tedious subject of the parts of speech. Ben Yagoda's fascination with the English language is clear, and I couldn't help but take part in his excitement, joy, and occasional irritation that is involved in defining and determining proper usage of the parts of speech.



Each chapter takes a stab at the sometimes shady definitions of the parts of speech. Quotes and anecdotes from famous editors, writers, and pop culture icons bring the language to life.



Yagoda comes to the defense of those parts of speech and grammatical uses that having been getting a bad wrap over the years, such as adverbs, adjectives, and more. He reveals the source of the almost superstitious hatred against such uses, explains why the hatred is unfounded, and offers examples from famous and well-loved authors who have broken the 'rules' and used this kind of language to powerful effect.



As I read, I found myself paying extra attention the Yagoda's use of words, his own sentences in describing the language illuminating in. As the he predicted I will be forevermore shifting 'only' back and forth. This is an excellent book for any english language aficionado.








View all my reviews.

The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
As the third book in this excellent series, I thought it held its own. The writing remained excellent and the characters returned to use even more complex and defined.



However, I did not this one to be as pleasurable a read as I had the previous two. Maybe that is because this is the darkest of the three books, with each character being forced to faced the darkness within themselves -- all their fears and even their own ugliness. It therefore makes sense that our heroine is going to make mistakes that, unsure of what to do and bearing the great burden of all the magic, that she should foolishing wish to hold onto the power she has fought so hard to protect. Each mistake, eash bad decition came straight from the heart of her, from her fears and doubts, but all this foolishness made it harder for me to get through. I kept finding myself not wanting to read more, not wanting to know more, not wanting to see how bad it was going to get, for it was clearly going to get worse. And I loved her so much and wanted to protect her from all her bad decisions, but I couldn't, I slowly faced this book and watched her work her way through her troubles, bravely, nobly, foolishly fighting to figure out what is right.



In the end it was the brutal reality of life that made this book hard for me to read. But also like life, one must struggle through the confusion and troubles to get to the light somewhere at the end of it all. Truely a lovely and satisfying end to the series.


View all my reviews.

My birthday gift from my sister this year was a ticket to see Roger Waters performing music from the Dark Side of the Moon CD.

It's been almost six months since my birthday, but last night I finally received my gift last night, and the wait was well worth it.

Roger Waters was amazing, and he had an amazing back up band. This one woman, whose name I don't know, had this incredible voice that could just melt you. They performed songs from both The Wall and Dark Side of the Moon, many of them were my favorites, such as "Money," "Wish You Were Here," and "The Wall" (which was performed in the encore).

He also performed a new(er) song, he wrote about how he was hitchhiking in Europe and the Middle East in the sixties, and an Arab family put him up for the night. It was about their generosity despite their poverty and how that moved him. And it was about the world today, and this stupid war in the Middle East. I wish I knew the name of the song, because it was so beautiful that I cried.

And there were so many more great experiences, spending time with my sister and brother and our friends. It was an incredible show.


And speaking of my brother and sister. Happy Birthday, Blake and Nicole! I can't believe you're twenty-two today. Look at us, somehow we've all manage to become adults. How did that happen?

The memoir, The Last Time I Wore a Dress, tells the life story of a young girl who is placed into a mental institution for being an inappropriate female. Basically she likes to wear pants, run around, act like the boys, kid of like a tom-boy. Well, no, that's not entirely accurate, because there's more to it than that. It really starts out with escalating conflict between her and her father, but that doesn't remain the focus, eventually it comes around to the fact that she's not girly enough.

( Cut more for ranting than for spoilers. )
Anyway, to get back to the book . . . I think it's wonderful. It's one queer woman's experience, and very specific to her, but definitely worth the read.

x-posted to womensbookclub

I spent a good portion of my reading time last month finishing The Once and Future King by T.H. White and The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley, mostly because I wanted to be able to compare the male and female point of views of the King Aurther legend that each represents. 


Cross posted to a_book_a_monthand womensbookclub.

When I first picked up this book, I assumed it was nonfiction, based on the title. But, well, it's not.

The Romantic Movement by Alain De Botton tells a very usual tale. Alice, a sensitive, insecure twenty something, falls for Eric, an emotionally disconnected male. The story leads the reader through their meeting, relationship, and eventual break-up (not a spoiler because it's on the back of the book).

But the story is told with the tone of a man giving a dissertation. The novel is littered with diagrams, quotes, and various references to philosophy, religion, and literature, all presented as though it were evidence to back up the narrators observations of the characters. This lent the novel an intelligence I didn't really expect. But at the same time, Alice and Eric are almost relegated to specimens, which the scientist has been observing as they interact with each other and environment.

At first this feeling of observation distanced me from Alice, despite the fact that Botton fleshes her out well. She feels like a real person, but not a person I can care about, because it didn't seem like I could get close to her. Alice's daily life was, after all, so often interjected with a philosophical track on why she and other people of the same type feel in that way.

But if you can take a delight in thinking about philosophy, Botton's discussions are really quite enlightening and intelligent (you can also tell he's well read). Besides, the book comes around, warming up, and by the end it reveals scenes that are beautiful, poignant, and very touching.