Posted by barb on Oct 18, 2003 in
Books by Ann Brashares
This is the sequel to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants , which I enjoyed. In the first book, Carmen, Lena, Bridget, and Tibby found a pair of “magic” jeans that flattered each of their diverse figures. They passed it around during their first summer spent apart during their 15 years of friendship (i.e. their whole lives). Each experienced profound and life-changing events in the jeans.
This book chronicles their second summer. Lena and Carmen stay home in Bethesda — Lena working in a clothing store full of beige clothes her mother loves, and Carmen babysitting. Tibby heads off to a summer film program at a University a few hours’ drive away. At the last minute, Bridget decides to run off to Alabama to try to reconnect with her grandmother, and her summers as a child (before her mother died). At first, the pants seem to be failing the girls, but then their magic starts to kick in.
As with the first book, the girls face real-world problems, and in the end start to pull the pieces of their lives together — mending broken relationships, healing broken hearts and finding their old selves again. Brashares handles these real-world situations with sensitivity and a bit of humor. Once again, she has produced a compelling, sincere book for and about teenaged girls and their friendships.
Posted by barb on Oct 14, 2003 in
Memes, Etc. I took the Which Fantasy/SciFi Character Are You? quiz.
Apparently I’m Galadriel —
At Andrew’s suggestion, I went through and answered the quiz with the exact opposite answers to find my archenemy. That turned out to be Darth Maul:
Yeah. That makes sense.
Posted by barb on Oct 13, 2003 in
Movies 3/5 stars
CIA analyst, Jack Ryan, chases down a terrorist group who has gotten their hands on a nuclear bomb with plans to detonate it in the United States.
This is the fourth Jack Ryan movie so far. The most memorable are Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger — the two with Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan. This latest installment introduces Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan, and seems to pull back the hands of time a bit (Ryan has just started dating his future wife, whereas in Patriot Games, his wife and child are threatened by IRA terrorists). While I’m not, in general, a huge Ben Affleck fan, I think he did a good job in taking up the Jack Ryan torch.
Posted by barb on Oct 13, 2003 in
Books by Caleb Carr
In the year 2023, information comes at a fast and furious rate. In order to process it all, people can’t afford to scrutinize all the information with the care that it might require. This is the perfect environment for false information to be diseminated.
While investigating the murder of a friend, Dr. Gideon Wolfe finds evidence of faked information — information pertaining to the assassination of the United States president. His subsequent investigations put him in the middle of a jailbreak, and right into the group perpetuating the deceptions.
I could not get into this book as much as Carr’s other novel that I’ve read, The Alienist . For one thing, I could tell that it had been serialized, because every single chapter had to end with some kind of leading or shocking sentence. That got a bit old. Also, like a few other books that I’ve read lately by other authors (e.g. James P. Hogan), this one was a bit too preachy on the state of the world today.
All in all, not bad, but not great.
Posted by barb on Oct 12, 2003 in
Movies 3.5/5 stars
Two LAPD officers (Joe Gavlin (Harrison Ford) and K.C. Calden (Josh Hartnett)) investigate the murder of a rap group who was just about to make it big. Gavlin moonlights as a real estate agent, and has all his money tied up in a house that just won’t sell. Calden moonlights as a yoga instructor, which also provides a ready-supply of women.
The movie was fun, though at times a bit confused. This is Ford’s first real foray into comedy, and while I had reservations going in, I found him to be up to the challenge of a new genre. Of course, I’m still more at home with the action hero Ford or even romantic lead Ford, but I think that he could certainly pull off more comedies.
Posted by barb on Oct 3, 2003 in
Games We had tried signing up for the September 18 section of this class, but were moved to the September 25 section. Then Isabel came through DC, and disrupted the September 18 class, and ultimately caused our section to be moved to today.
Totally worth the wait!
The class introduced us to board games designed for adults. Especially those types of games that require strategy over luck to win. We started by playing “Through the Desert,” a German game in which you try to build up caravans. You earn points during game play by taking over water holes and reaching oases. Once game play has ended, you also earn points by having the longest caravan of various colors. The game was quite engaging, and I found that I wanted to pay attention to what everyone was doing, rather than just being interested when my turn came around. I think Andrew and I will end up buying this game soon.
The second game we played was “Trans America”, which is a railroad building game. Each round, you have a set of cities, one each from the south, east, midwest, west and central US, which you need to connect with railroad. I don’t think either Andrew or I found this game as engaging as “Through the Desert”, though still far more interesting than other chance-based games.
The final game was “Wooly Bully”. In this game you lay down tiles with town, pasture and/or forest (and sheep) to enclose the largest number of your sheep as possible (in one enclosure — I missed this point, so totally missed the point of the game). This one was also fun, and the teacher mentioned that it can be quite fun with just two players (the other games wouldn’t be as good for two players). I think I liked this one more than “Trans America”, though “Through the Desert” was my favorite of the evening.
Most of these-type games come from Europe. American games tend to be more in the category of luck or party games. This can make these more engaging board games hard to find in American game shops. A good web site to find these types of games is Fun Again. Some games to look for are those that have won the “Spiel des Jahres”, Germany’s Game of the Year award or Deutscher SpielePreis. The Germany award tends to be more family-oriented while the Deutscher award tends to be more strategy games, though for many years the same game has won both awards.
Posted by barb on Sep 28, 2003 in
Movies 4/5 stars
According to legends among the Whangara people, Paikea rode on the back of a whale, leading his people to New Zealand, where the tribe still resides today. Modern times, though, are difficult on such an old tribe. The chief is always the first born son. However, the first born son of the existing chief, Koro, has only one living child — a girl, Pai (acutally Paikea, after the ancient whale rider). Koro refuses to see that Pai could be a wise leader, simply because she’s a girl.
I must confess that part of the reason I wanted to see this film was because I love whales, and was hoping for gratuitous whale footage, and I got it (though it wasn’t really gratuitous). Whale Rider is an excellent story, and one that can be applied to so many different areas. Women continue to struggle to prove themselves in every profession, including that of tribal chief. And I must admit, that even after the film was over, I was still angry with Koro. He represents the worst obstacles that so many women have had to overcome just to do what they know in their hearts they are meant to do.
[Odd note — IMDB says that if I liked Whale Rider, I might also like The Godfather Trilogy. Hmmm. Methinks there’s something seriously wrong with their recommendation system.]
Posted by barb on Sep 28, 2003 in
Movies 4/5 stars
I was beginning to feel like the only person in the world who hadn’t seen this one. I kept putting it off, because I knew that it was long, and didn’t end happily. But I’m glad I finally saw it.
Braveheart is the story of William Wallace and his journey to free Scotland. As a boy, his father and brother are killed trying to free Scotland. When he grows up, though, Wallace wants to remain out of the fight, until his secret lover is taken from him by a noble.
I imagine that this film would have been spectacular on a large screen; though, it would have also been harder to watch. There is a lot of fighting and blood, which started to get to me (I had to stop paying close attention during the third or fourth big battle). Overall an excellent film, despite that.
[Odd note — IMDB‘s page on Braveheart has this note at the bottom: “If you like this title, we also recommend… Conan the Barbarian.” Yeah, because Conan has the same high cinematic standards as Braveheart.]
Posted by barb on Sep 25, 2003 in
Books by Tim O’Brien
According to O’Brien:
A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor sugest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie….As a rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscentiy and evil.
These felt like true war stories.
Don’t get me wrong, it was a great book. But it was hard to read. At the same time, it was hard to put down…no matter how much I wanted to stop. The stories were too — compelling? weird? frightening? Real.
I have a themed release in mind for this book, but first my boyfriend wants to read it.
Posted by barb on Sep 23, 2003 in
Books by R. L. Stine
I had picked these up to release this week (Banned Books Week), and thought I ought to read them first, to make sure that they weren’t really offensive (they weren’t, of course).
The Haunted Mask (#11) Carly Beth has always been easy to scare, so naturally the kids at school take advantage, and scare her all the time. This year, however, she decides to get back at them by wearing the scariest Halloween mask she can find. The store owner warns her that she will regret getting that mask because it’s too scary, but Carly Beth assures him that for her purposes, it can’t be too scary.
The Horror at Camp Jellyjam (#33) Wendy and Elliot are stuck on a road trip with their parents. The trip of a lifetime. But an accident separates them, and Wend and Elliot end up at a sports camp in the middle of nowhere, wondering where their parents are. The counselors seem a bit too happy to be there, and after a couple nights, Wendy notices that campers are disappearing once they receive six medals for winning sports. When Elliot is on the verge of this sixth medal, Wendy stumbles on to the truth of Jellyjam.
These books are harmless fun. The entire Goosebumps series has been challenged in several school districts and libraries by narrow-minded people who believe that ghost and monster stories can lead only to the devil. If they find it so offensive, perhaps they should just not read the books. In fact, perhaps they should just stick their heads in the sand so that they can’t open their big mouths anymore so that the rest of us can get on with our lives.