You are currently browsing the daily archive for November 19th, 2007.
Okay, four things happened in the last week that are causing me to pseudo-cheat on my 52 books in a year goal. Here they are, in order…
1. I found an amazing blog called The Dairi Burger, which brilliantly ridicules books I used to read as pre-teen called Sweet Valley High books (you can read more about that here). This caused me to think about what books I really did love as a teen and what it was about them that was so great…the kind of books that in my mind still manage to seem good and that I suspect will at least hold up partially over time (note: this would NOT include the SVH books).
2. I wrote a book…a while ago. It’s not a bad little book, but it’s not the great American novel that I (and everyone else it seems) so desperately wants to write. I’ve had to accept that maybe this book (and the two parts that go with it – yes, it’s a trilogy, *sigh*) just is what it is,. And maybe that it is just a middle ground between the young adult books that were a bit above the norm and and quite a bit below the great American novel that I’d like to write someday. Maybe I’m just not ready to write the great American novel…maybe I never will be. But perhaps I should go back and re-read some of this YA material and see if I’m nuts, or if it really does hold up pretty well?
3. I read I Am Legend this past weekend and really enjoyed it. I would consider it the middle ground of which I speak above. It is certainly more intelligent than a young adult novel and has more ramifications and themes behind it, but it is certainly too “pop” by today’s standards to be considered a ”Great American Novel” whatever the hell that even means. Although written in 1954 it was certainly pretty revolutionary for its time and would probably not have been called ‘pop’, but we live now, so I’ll deal with now. So this is maybe the vague middle ground that I am looking for. I read it in a few hours, which makes me feel like it cannot be so important, but I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy in a few hours and I not only thought that was brilliant but it won the damn Pulitzer Prize! Perhaps the real problem here is that I need to redefine my definition of “Great American Novel”. More on that later, back to the point at hand…
4. I found (and by found I mean located on the internet and purchased very deliberately) a few of my long lost favorite young adult novels. I plan to re-read them as “research & development” and if it helps me toward my 52 book goal because they each only take two hours to read then so be it! Yea me! Anyone want to argue with my well documented justification here? Go ahead, give it a shot…
As a compromise, I promise not to count any more than 6 of these books, as that is officially how many books I am behind in my book a week goals…deal? Here’s a little teaser preview…
#40. Rosie Little’s Cautionary Tales For Girls. By Danielle Wood. Short Fiction. 3.5 Stars
I enjoyed this collection. It’s a beautiful little book, the shape and feeling of some of the awesome McSweeney’s imprints, although not quite with the same detail as McSweeney’s. I liked the idea behind this book, some stories are told first person, from the perspective of Rosie Little and others are told third person and are mostly women somehow connected to Rosie (although that is not always directly indicated, but rather just subtley implied). Each story is separated by word chapters such as Virginity, Love, Trust, Beauty, etc. I found most of the stories to be well written and at least somewhat powerful and I admit to crying a bit on the Love chapter, which tells me it was at least very powerful for me.
Like I find in all collections, this collection a bit uneven with some truly powerful stuff and some ho-hum stuff. Regardless I enjoyed every cautionary tale and liked that I felt transported to a slightly different/fantastical world than ours, though not too far that I felt lost. My one real complaint, other than the previously mentioned uneven-ness is that each short piece has an excerpt wedged into the middle called “Notes From Rosie” and that basically acts as a little aside to something going on in the story. These were sometimes lovely, but overall I found them distracting. And when they weren’t brilliant, but just so-so inserts I found myself a bit annoyed. I appreciate what Wood was going for and it was a unique and interesting idea, but for me it just wasn’t quite successful.
Ugh. This was so painful guys. The lead actor was the worst, most wooden actor I think I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing, but none of the performances were good and the effects were not good, not even for 1981, and it just seemed so dated and weak. Just terrible, and then to top it off we watched The Omega Man as well, which was equally brutal. Probably a worse movie overall, but with Omega I had less hopeful expectations. Let’s just hope I’ve gotten the bad movie watching out of my system as Margot At The Wedding; Southland Tales; I’m Not There; and hopefully The Night Porter are all on tap for the long Thanksgiving weekend. I’m really only worried about Southland Tales…fingers crossed though.
Check out good reviews of both The Omega Man and Scanners by Adam on his blog.
#39. I Am Legend. Richard Matheson. 3.5 Stars
This was a great piece. I read it less because of the upcoming film and more because of what Adam told me it was about, which is awesome.
For the uninitiated, I Am Legend is a pretty remarkable story about a man that is the last survivor in a world plagued by “vampires”. I’m hesitant to give away much more so as not to spoil the story plot(s), as that is the best part of the book, it’s a pretty interesting idea, and certainly for its time (written in 1954) it must have been mind blowing in its revolutionary thinking. From reading Legend it is no surprise that Matheson was one of the primary brilliant minds behind many of the Twilight Zone stories. Overall the story idea was what won me over, and what is the strength of Matheson’s piece. I found some of the writing to be a bit weak, and the ending to be rushed, when it should have been milked for all its brilliant revelations, but overall it was a fast and interesting read.
After reading I Am Legend, Adam and I watched The Omega Man, a 1970’s film starring Charleton Heston, which is loosely based on Legend. And when I say loosely based, I mean they took some of the awesome ideas and then went off on their own with terrible terrible ideas (including but not limited to: monk’s robes, sunglasses, “badass one liners”, a stereotypically black power “hot mama” character, young white kids with innocent little faces, and bad white make up) and made a truly horrific movie. It was cringe-inducingly bad. We plan to also watch The Last Man On Earth this week, also based on I Am Legend, which I doubt, but hope, will be better. As for I Am Legend, the upcoming Will Smith vehicle, based on previews, I am cautiously optimistic, from what I have seen there are far more similarities to the original story, and thus a more interesting film.
At the risk of going into a full blown rant, I must say Hollywood pisses me off to no end with their assumption that they can somehow better an author’s original vision. Of course some changes must be made to a novel as film is a different medium and therefore there need to be adjustments to make a story effective in a new medium, but most of the things I see Hollywood doing to films has nothing to do with adjusting for the medium and more with pouring ideas into the “hollywood machine” and mushing things together until they get something nice and bland prepared for the idiotic masses and then cranking them out one after the other like barbie dolls. It’s so very arrogant. I don’t understand why they bother in acquiring an author’s original vision and then not trusting that vision to lead them through. Ahh…it makes me tired just thinking about it.
I Am Legend…3.5 stars, and recommended to anyone who likes Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian stories.
