The book series is called the Bridge Chronicles, and the awesome person is Gary A. Ballard, the author.
Why? The Bridge Chronicles is fucking wonderful. It gets a good solid four from me. A coherent, realistic, believable (except for The Know Circuit, I have a few problems with that) storyline. Very good writing. Human characters with human characteristics. There are four books now, but I've only read the first three.
I would have finished them all in one sitting, but I had to go to Thailand for a little while and the glare from the sun doesn't work too well with the iPad.
(Yes, I read ebooks, no, it doesn't bother me. All I care about are the text and formatting, I don't give a single shit about whether I have the physical copy in my hands. I do plan to hunt down extremely pretty editions of my favourite books, though. I'm something of a hoarder, collector, whatever.)
And why am I pimping the author too? (God, the phrasing makes me uncomfortable.)
Because he has a blog, and from what I see, he's a very logical person who's more than willing to consider various perspectives. He seems to make his decisions based on a consideration of all the angles. (Or most angles, at least.) He's wonderfully coherent.
(I was sold after the single post about gun violence. (It's bloody difficult to do html on iPads, by the way.) Very cohesive and persuasive. Then again I was all for gun control in the first place, and also think "guns don't kill people, people kill people" is phenomenally stupid and blind. It's a crazy generalisation.)
Also Ballard is very coherent about how guns are the most efficient murder weapons available... And I really can't believe America doesn't have basic background checks and doesn't require people to prove that they know how to use a gun. Isn't it basic? Make sure that he isn't a psychopath or a total idiot before handing him a killing device?? America what are you doing?
Anyway, Ballard is the most human author I've ever seen. There's always this distance between actual published authors and the rest of us humans, you know? Like singers, actors, whatever. They sometimes feel like they're polished and hyperaware of PR. So they censor themselves like crazy. Ballard writes awesome introductions for his novels. Ballard also writes semi-personal blog posts about kind of controversial things that might damage his reputation or at least make his fans turn away.
(Hey, it happens. You know Ender's Game and its incredibly homophobic author Orson Scott Card or something? I read the first three books of the series, thought they were good, but somehow slightly off-putting. I didn't find out about the author's idiocy until much much later. And then I tried to read the fourth book and ended up feeling nauseous and mildly disgusted. Apparently he didn't preach much about religion or his personal views in the first few books, so that's why I was able to make my way through the books. Objectively speaking the first three books are good, though!! Really.)
(Also with the Lamplighter trilogy. I read the second? Or third book, and thought that I might like to read the others. I didn't actively like the book, but I'm a little OCD and not reading the whole series makes me incredibly frustrated. So I flipped the first page of the trilogy and the author starts thanking god for everything. I just couldn't. I got a little nauseous and annoyed. I mean, what, did you write that book or did you not? Give yourself a little credit. Your god couldn't help starving kids, but helped you write three books??)
Anyway, point is, Ballard is an awesome human being as far as I know. If he turns out to be a intensely religious person I would be intensely disappointed, but he'd still be logical and coherent, and I'd still like that about him. (But I'd think "irony" every time I think about him.) (Just like how I always think "oh the dreadful irony" whenever I read the 'personal beliefs' section on Orson Scott Card's Wikipedia page.)
So here you go. A book rec and a person rec. I hope I didn't fuck things up too much.
Showing posts with label book/movie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book/movie. Show all posts
13 March 2013
perks of being a wallflower: why i didn't like the book
Objectively speaking, it's a pretty good book. Nothing spectacular, but not bad either. As far as complete experiences go, it was an okay one. It was pretty coherent and cohesive, self-contained, etc. There's nothing much to criticize if you're going at it from an objective point of view, but once you get personal, you either hate it or love it.
And I hated it. Or rather I would have hated it, but I took into account how good an emotional experience it was, and toned down my dislike accordingly.
Why didn't I like it? Most people did. They also raved about the movie, but I suspect that if I watched the movie I wouldn't have enjoyed it much either.
The point was, the narrator was radically different from any narrator that I've ever read. The first thing I did was to look up when it was published, and it turned out to be 1999, and I thought "aha, this explains a lot", because the narrator was horrifyingly naive and innocent. In fact, if you read the book, you'll find out that he finds out about what 'masturbation' is when he's fifteen. Plus everything in the book was outdated.
Also, he doesn't relate. To people. Throughout the book I thought that maybe the author was making a point, about how a normal person (the reader) would react to a person who was emotionally stunted. Because it seemed pretty consistent.
At first I was fed up with the narrator. He was such a kid. He was disturbingly naive. He couldn't relate to anyone even when it was as simple as breathing. He annoyed me on a personal level, because I especially detest people who are peacefully oblivious to the atmosphere.
Also his writing was strange, stilted, and awkward (okay I get it, I think he didn't use contractions) and I thought "he's fifteen and he's writing an informal letter". I mean, I compared him with myself. When I was fifteen I was practically an expert at writing things that flowed. I'm not saying that I was better than most people, because most people at fifteen are experts at writing things that flow. It is not difficult.
And that fit the pattern - normal people (you, the reader) often get frustrated at people who are in any way impaired at all.
I thought that the narrator must have some impairment. Yet the writing was ambiguous but suggestive, so it wasn't until (page 128/510 on the ebook) - "I used to play sports when I was little, and I was actually very good, but the problem was that it used to make me too aggressive, so the doctors told my mom I would have to stop" - that I figured out that he really did have a legit issue somewhere.
So then I actively tried to make myself tolerate his narrative. Whenever I read something that made me think "why the fuck can't he do the obvious thing?" or "why the fuck doesn't he get it?", I immediately told myself to back off, because he had a legit issue and I didn't exactly think the protagonist of The Fault in Our Stars was whiny. And if I could tolerate a physically disabled person, I should be able to tolerate a mentally disabled person.
So it didn't help. At all. He was every bit as irritating and unrelatable as ever. And I couldn't help but think that it was how a normal person would react in real life, too. Upon finding out about the impairment, the person tries to regulate his annoyance, but it doesn't help much.
The narrator was just so different. He was spacey and participated in dangerous behaviour and didn't worry about his future or about money even though he admits that his family isn't rich. It really says a lot about what ten years or so can do to us. Nowadays every kid with middle-class parents worries about money. Because there aren't any second chances, and if you make the wrong choice now you might starve to death later because no one cares about whether you live or die.
There are basically different spheres of society that people live in. And the experiences are radically different, and there's no way to relate unless you've experienced it. And in the circle I live in, no kid would ever consider taking weed or LSD or even smoking. They might think about it or talk about it but in the end no one wants to endanger their future.
That's how different my life is from the narrator. I am completely unable to relate on an emotional or empathetic level. Intellectually I understand everything, but emotionally it's only so much wet cotton wool. I did not like the book. There was something mildly off-putting about it, and throughout the reading I kept getting sucked into the narrator's spacey narrative, and I started feeling spacey and asperger's-like, and I did not like that feeling.
And then [SPOILER] in the end I find out that he's apparently really fucking smart even though he has great gigantic problems with relating to humans and then I just conclude that he probably has asperger's and that I didn't like him because he was too different from me. The end.
edit 30/11/15: His risk-taking behaviour was incongruous with what I know about asperger's. So I did a search and turns out he's canonically depressed, with hints of PTSD. I still... don't really get it. None of the canon explanations actually explain his weird way of writing, oddly naive manner, inability to connect, and rick-taking activities. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
But objectively speaking it was a pretty good book.
Then again I think every book I've read is a pretty good book, because the effort put into making it a book that sells makes it pretty good. Any book by default garners a rating of three from me. Four is rare. Five is one out of every hundred.
And this book gets a three.
But I do have to repeat. It's not that this is an actively bad book. It's just that I don't actively like it. And it makes a bit of difference.
edit 30/11/15: now that I think back, the book was a bit boring. I couldn't wait to end it. That's not a good sign. It still gets a three, but I think that nowadays there are few teenagers who could connect with the book in a meaningful way.
(I finished the book in an hour or a bit more. How long did you take?)
And I hated it. Or rather I would have hated it, but I took into account how good an emotional experience it was, and toned down my dislike accordingly.
Why didn't I like it? Most people did. They also raved about the movie, but I suspect that if I watched the movie I wouldn't have enjoyed it much either.
The point was, the narrator was radically different from any narrator that I've ever read. The first thing I did was to look up when it was published, and it turned out to be 1999, and I thought "aha, this explains a lot", because the narrator was horrifyingly naive and innocent. In fact, if you read the book, you'll find out that he finds out about what 'masturbation' is when he's fifteen. Plus everything in the book was outdated.
Also, he doesn't relate. To people. Throughout the book I thought that maybe the author was making a point, about how a normal person (the reader) would react to a person who was emotionally stunted. Because it seemed pretty consistent.
At first I was fed up with the narrator. He was such a kid. He was disturbingly naive. He couldn't relate to anyone even when it was as simple as breathing. He annoyed me on a personal level, because I especially detest people who are peacefully oblivious to the atmosphere.
Also his writing was strange, stilted, and awkward (okay I get it, I think he didn't use contractions) and I thought "he's fifteen and he's writing an informal letter". I mean, I compared him with myself. When I was fifteen I was practically an expert at writing things that flowed. I'm not saying that I was better than most people, because most people at fifteen are experts at writing things that flow. It is not difficult.
And that fit the pattern - normal people (you, the reader) often get frustrated at people who are in any way impaired at all.
I thought that the narrator must have some impairment. Yet the writing was ambiguous but suggestive, so it wasn't until (page 128/510 on the ebook) - "I used to play sports when I was little, and I was actually very good, but the problem was that it used to make me too aggressive, so the doctors told my mom I would have to stop" - that I figured out that he really did have a legit issue somewhere.
So then I actively tried to make myself tolerate his narrative. Whenever I read something that made me think "why the fuck can't he do the obvious thing?" or "why the fuck doesn't he get it?", I immediately told myself to back off, because he had a legit issue and I didn't exactly think the protagonist of The Fault in Our Stars was whiny. And if I could tolerate a physically disabled person, I should be able to tolerate a mentally disabled person.
So it didn't help. At all. He was every bit as irritating and unrelatable as ever. And I couldn't help but think that it was how a normal person would react in real life, too. Upon finding out about the impairment, the person tries to regulate his annoyance, but it doesn't help much.
The narrator was just so different. He was spacey and participated in dangerous behaviour and didn't worry about his future or about money even though he admits that his family isn't rich. It really says a lot about what ten years or so can do to us. Nowadays every kid with middle-class parents worries about money. Because there aren't any second chances, and if you make the wrong choice now you might starve to death later because no one cares about whether you live or die.
There are basically different spheres of society that people live in. And the experiences are radically different, and there's no way to relate unless you've experienced it. And in the circle I live in, no kid would ever consider taking weed or LSD or even smoking. They might think about it or talk about it but in the end no one wants to endanger their future.
That's how different my life is from the narrator. I am completely unable to relate on an emotional or empathetic level. Intellectually I understand everything, but emotionally it's only so much wet cotton wool. I did not like the book. There was something mildly off-putting about it, and throughout the reading I kept getting sucked into the narrator's spacey narrative, and I started feeling spacey and asperger's-like, and I did not like that feeling.
And then [SPOILER] in the end I find out that he's apparently really fucking smart even though he has great gigantic problems with relating to humans and then I just conclude that he probably has asperger's and that I didn't like him because he was too different from me. The end.
edit 30/11/15: His risk-taking behaviour was incongruous with what I know about asperger's. So I did a search and turns out he's canonically depressed, with hints of PTSD. I still... don't really get it. None of the canon explanations actually explain his weird way of writing, oddly naive manner, inability to connect, and rick-taking activities. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
But objectively speaking it was a pretty good book.
Then again I think every book I've read is a pretty good book, because the effort put into making it a book that sells makes it pretty good. Any book by default garners a rating of three from me. Four is rare. Five is one out of every hundred.
And this book gets a three.
But I do have to repeat. It's not that this is an actively bad book. It's just that I don't actively like it. And it makes a bit of difference.
edit 30/11/15: now that I think back, the book was a bit boring. I couldn't wait to end it. That's not a good sign. It still gets a three, but I think that nowadays there are few teenagers who could connect with the book in a meaningful way.
(I finished the book in an hour or a bit more. How long did you take?)
12 February 2013
movies that suck: cloudy with a chance of meatballs
I like animated things. Sometimes (often) they're a lot wittier than normal movies, simply because animation isn't limited to what's feasible (within the budget). I love How to Train Your Dragon. The Rise of the Guardians is awesome too.
I did NOT love Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. In fact, I was mildly irritated by the movie, and then I started fuming because that movie just makes me angry.
So basically, we see this really intelligent kid who invents awesome things but doesn't always think it through completely. And then everyone starts laughing at him. His mom is the only one who believes in him but then she dies. And then he grows up and then his dad is always disappointed with him and he's basically the local freak.
So after a string of failed inventions, he invents this machine to turn water into food. (The city somehow only eats sardine or something, I never figured it out.) Okay, and then an accident happens, the machine is launched into the sky (and it never falls back down, despite not being built to fly) and then it starts raining food, ha ha ha.
A sexy female weather woman is sent over, and to impress her, the protagonist builds this thing to communicate with the machine and tell it what food to make. Blah blah blah the sexy female is actually really intelligent too, but stopped tying her hair up with scrunchies and wearing her spectacles because she was bullied for 'not being attractive'??
So then the machine starts mutating and the food starts getting weird and basically turns into a global disaster and now he has to stop it. Yay. Sexy female reports back to the news station but the stupid idiot disses her for looking like a nerd and just cuts her off. Male protagonist writes a 'kill code' by waving his spindly arms around. Flies up, loses kill code, calls dad to send kill code to phone...
...yes but his dad apparently doesn't know how to use any kind of technology. Very realistic, but let's move on. Weird shit happens up in the sky, dad mistakenly sends dancing cat file instead, male protagonist saves the day with old failed invention, yay.
What makes me angry is that the male protagonist is portrayed as a freak...code is portrayed as 'arm-waving magic stuff'...designing and building is portrayed as 'more arm-waving magic stuff'...and the male protagonist has a spaceship thing in his backyard! Which is apparently his lab. Ha ha ha.
This movie tried to mix lame with hilarious, but failed so badly that I can't even begin to tell you how bad it failed. I am unamused. This movie is so over stereotyped that I just want to barf all over it.
First, this movie is for kids. And you show impressionable kids that "bullying is okay, the victim is tots okay after that". And you tell kids that nerdy geeky people are freaks. Yes good one there. Very good moral education you've attempted.
And then the sexy female sidekick. I didn't know you had to tie your hair in scrunchies and wear spectacles to be an intelligent female. Actually, neither did the kids, but now they do! Nice job. /rolls eyes. The amount of stereotyping here is making me nauseous, and I'm not exaggerating. Throughout the movie I just wanted to punch the screen, and only held back because I paid a lot of money for this fragile iPad.
Scrunchies and spectacles does not make someone clever, and long blonde hair does not mean someone is stupid.
Also, we have a magic policeman in the movie, who alternatively abuses the citizens and dotes on his little boy. Also he can magic jump like a monkey. Yay for realism. Oh, did I mention that he's black? Or something. He was busy abusing the protagonist. Stereotyping. I have this urge to slap my forehead with my palm. Loudly.
Oh, and the dude at the station who disses the sexy female because she wasn't attractive enough? He's a douche and he never gets that karma back. Nope, no retribution for the rich white sexist man. Kids will learn so much from this movie.
Also, the sexy female could have just pulled off the scrunchies and spectacles. It takes like one fucking hand to do that. The point is to tell everyone about the impending disaster, surely she can sacrifice a bit of her intelligent girl pride. I mean, what's more important, remaining true to yourself or saving the world? Oh, or maybe the directors could've just NOT made a doouchebag anchorman.
God, by this point I'm so frustrated that I don't even want to think about this movie any more. There's nothing realistic about anything in this movie. No realistic reactions, even, and that's like the easiest part. Want a realistic reaction to getting hit in the face? Hit someone in the face and watch their reaction. Duh.
The entire movie feels like some tired people got together and made a movie all about stereotypes. I'm picturing a forty year old man drinking coffee and saying "I think she needs to be blonder". Yeah, kids might like it, but they learn nothing good from it. And basically no one else can enjoy such bad, unenergetic animation.
As I watched the movie, I became more and more sleepy. I could feel the creativity bleeding away. I could predict exactly what was going to happen. The characters are supposed to be intelligent but can't see solutions right in front of them.
Basically I learned that stupid people make stupid movies, and then other stupid people think that the stupid movie is great and it ends up being branded as an awesome movie because everyone is stupid.
I'm depressed and I have no faith left for the universe. Kill me now, before someone makes me watch another movies as stupid as this. I think I might be a masochist. I hate myself. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is a shitty movie and I hate the world.
I did NOT love Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. In fact, I was mildly irritated by the movie, and then I started fuming because that movie just makes me angry.
So basically, we see this really intelligent kid who invents awesome things but doesn't always think it through completely. And then everyone starts laughing at him. His mom is the only one who believes in him but then she dies. And then he grows up and then his dad is always disappointed with him and he's basically the local freak.
So after a string of failed inventions, he invents this machine to turn water into food. (The city somehow only eats sardine or something, I never figured it out.) Okay, and then an accident happens, the machine is launched into the sky (and it never falls back down, despite not being built to fly) and then it starts raining food, ha ha ha.
A sexy female weather woman is sent over, and to impress her, the protagonist builds this thing to communicate with the machine and tell it what food to make. Blah blah blah the sexy female is actually really intelligent too, but stopped tying her hair up with scrunchies and wearing her spectacles because she was bullied for 'not being attractive'??
So then the machine starts mutating and the food starts getting weird and basically turns into a global disaster and now he has to stop it. Yay. Sexy female reports back to the news station but the stupid idiot disses her for looking like a nerd and just cuts her off. Male protagonist writes a 'kill code' by waving his spindly arms around. Flies up, loses kill code, calls dad to send kill code to phone...
...yes but his dad apparently doesn't know how to use any kind of technology. Very realistic, but let's move on. Weird shit happens up in the sky, dad mistakenly sends dancing cat file instead, male protagonist saves the day with old failed invention, yay.
What makes me angry is that the male protagonist is portrayed as a freak...code is portrayed as 'arm-waving magic stuff'...designing and building is portrayed as 'more arm-waving magic stuff'...and the male protagonist has a spaceship thing in his backyard! Which is apparently his lab. Ha ha ha.
This movie tried to mix lame with hilarious, but failed so badly that I can't even begin to tell you how bad it failed. I am unamused. This movie is so over stereotyped that I just want to barf all over it.
First, this movie is for kids. And you show impressionable kids that "bullying is okay, the victim is tots okay after that". And you tell kids that nerdy geeky people are freaks. Yes good one there. Very good moral education you've attempted.
And then the sexy female sidekick. I didn't know you had to tie your hair in scrunchies and wear spectacles to be an intelligent female. Actually, neither did the kids, but now they do! Nice job. /rolls eyes. The amount of stereotyping here is making me nauseous, and I'm not exaggerating. Throughout the movie I just wanted to punch the screen, and only held back because I paid a lot of money for this fragile iPad.
Scrunchies and spectacles does not make someone clever, and long blonde hair does not mean someone is stupid.
Also, we have a magic policeman in the movie, who alternatively abuses the citizens and dotes on his little boy. Also he can magic jump like a monkey. Yay for realism. Oh, did I mention that he's black? Or something. He was busy abusing the protagonist. Stereotyping. I have this urge to slap my forehead with my palm. Loudly.
Oh, and the dude at the station who disses the sexy female because she wasn't attractive enough? He's a douche and he never gets that karma back. Nope, no retribution for the rich white sexist man. Kids will learn so much from this movie.
Also, the sexy female could have just pulled off the scrunchies and spectacles. It takes like one fucking hand to do that. The point is to tell everyone about the impending disaster, surely she can sacrifice a bit of her intelligent girl pride. I mean, what's more important, remaining true to yourself or saving the world? Oh, or maybe the directors could've just NOT made a doouchebag anchorman.
God, by this point I'm so frustrated that I don't even want to think about this movie any more. There's nothing realistic about anything in this movie. No realistic reactions, even, and that's like the easiest part. Want a realistic reaction to getting hit in the face? Hit someone in the face and watch their reaction. Duh.
The entire movie feels like some tired people got together and made a movie all about stereotypes. I'm picturing a forty year old man drinking coffee and saying "I think she needs to be blonder". Yeah, kids might like it, but they learn nothing good from it. And basically no one else can enjoy such bad, unenergetic animation.
As I watched the movie, I became more and more sleepy. I could feel the creativity bleeding away. I could predict exactly what was going to happen. The characters are supposed to be intelligent but can't see solutions right in front of them.
Basically I learned that stupid people make stupid movies, and then other stupid people think that the stupid movie is great and it ends up being branded as an awesome movie because everyone is stupid.
I'm depressed and I have no faith left for the universe. Kill me now, before someone makes me watch another movies as stupid as this. I think I might be a masochist. I hate myself. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is a shitty movie and I hate the world.
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