Beautiful Handcrafted Animals

First off, and so it doesn’t get buried in what could be a long and rambling post, I just read Jeanne DuPrau’s City of Ember, which you may have seen a movie trailer for.

I picked it up on the Kindle, mainly because I was curious about the movie.  Also because, on the Kindle, it was very inexpensive.

I found myself enchanted.

This is, simply, a beautiful book.  Oh, the ending has that sort of, “oh crap, I’ve been telling this nice story, but now stuff has to happen,” feel to it, but you can move past that.  The language in here, the spirit you can feel as you read, it’s simply a wonderful book.

The story continues, but don’t focus on that.  Focus, instead, on this great little book.  It may be, technically, classified as a Young Adults book, but that shouldn’t stop anyone from reading it.

Most highly recommended.

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Okay.  now that I’ve made sure that doesn’t get buried, I suppose there’s some other stuff to talk about.

First, I’m re-reading Gregory MacDonald’s first Fletch novel.  This is notable for the simple reason that I’m actually carrying around a physical book, as opposed to reading it on the Kindle.  Now, to be fair, the reason I’m doing this is because it’s not available on the Kindle.

But, I was curious what would be the first book to make me, “break” from the Kindle, and wouldn’t you know it but it’s an oldie.

The danger now is that I’m going to get caught up and discover, a week or so from now, that I’m re-reading all of them.  Not that that’s a bad thing, of course (the paperbacks DO weigh less than the Kindle, I guess).

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Before reading the above-gushed-over City of Embers, I read Douglas Preston’s, The Monster of Florence.  Now, for some background, you may or may not remember a movie from the 90’s, I think, called, The Relic.  It wasn’t very good, but it was based on a book that actually was quite good.

The Relic was written by Douglas Preston and his writing partner, Lincoln Child.  Since The Relic, they’ve written a good number of books together and I’ve read (as far as I know) every one of them.  I used to wait for them to hit paperback, but somewhere along the way they got good enough that I’ve been picking them up in hardcover.

Until the Kindle, of course.

I picked up The Monster of Florence for $9.99.  Let me give you an idea what the experience of reading this book is like.

First, you’re reading what seems like a pretty interesting True Crime story about a serial killer.  It’s a horrific story, made a bit more interesting by the fact that, according to Preston, The Monster provided at least some of the basis for Hannibal Lecter.

Which is pretty cool.

A little past the midway point, though, the book stops being horrific and becomes genuinely terrifying.

Not because the killer ramps things up, no.  In fact, around the midway point, there are no more killings or attacks.  The book shifts focus away from The Monster and to Preston and Italian Reporter Mario Spezi.

I won’t go into too much because it’s really worth reading for yourself, but the two of them first decide they’ll set to solving the (still unsolved) crimes.  Then they become implicated in the killings.  Then things get really nasty.

I read this book and told my wife, “honey, I am NOT going to Italy.”

It’s a hell of a read, though.  Your mind will boggle at the avenues the Italian investigators took in persuing The Monster, including the missed opportunities, it would seem, to catch him.

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We also saw the movie, Pineapple Express.  It was funny as hell and it annoyed me even more.

Without going too much into it, let me say this: if you’ve ever been the designated driver when your friends are smoking up, drinking, or whatever, and you wanted to throttle them, this movie will piss you off.

They have somehow managed to capture almost perfectly what it’s like to WATCH people get high and become complete idiots.  Is there comedy to this?  Of course.  But does it also grate under your skin to where you want to scream at the screen, similar to, say, snatching the remote from your friend’s hand when he can no longer operate it on his own?

Oh, hell yes.

We also went back and saw The Dark Knight again, this time in Imax.  It was sold out opening weekend, so we had to, “settle” for a normal theater.  Poor us, I know.

I don’t know that TDK was vastly improved by being in Imax, but it was nice to do, nonetheless.  Also, as we waited a couple weeks, the movie wasn’t as fresh in our minds.  Jessy, of course, says she’d go back again, and has been offereing to friends who haven’t seen it yet that she’ll happily accompany them.

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Speaking of Jessy, she finally finished reading Watchmen this week.

The book’s been out, what, twenty years, so I’m comfortable giving vague spoilers.  If you havent’ read it — shame on you! — go read it and then you can finish the last bit of this post.  Don’t worry, we’ll wait for you . . . . . . . okay, now that you’ve read it, we can continue.

She didn’t like the ending.

And not because she didn’t like the ending itself, she just didn’t like that it was basically a “Villain Speech Ending”.

We talked about it briefly.  My basic stance is that the point of the book, in many ways, is that direct violence by a superhero or heroes is not an actual solution to the problems which plague the world of Watchmen.  The resolution which, “saves” the world is, by its very nature, not an active one.

However, I can see the problem she has where, after all the twists and turns and this and that, it comes down to one character giving a speech.  “Explaining my master stroke,” is I think the way the book puts it.

I find that to be an interesting objection.

I’m not sure how one might fix that, or what another way to finish things off might be.

I think the point there at the end is that the heroes think they’ve solved the mystery, but they really have no idea what’s actually going on.  Why?  Because they simply cannot conceive of the scope of things.  And when they’re told what’s really up, all they can really do is shrug their shoulders and deal with it.

It’s a powerful message.

As I think about it, I’m realizing that the, “Republic serial villain speech” does work as a way to close things out.  Because the alternative is that Nite-Owl, Silk Spectre and Rorschach would be able to figure things out for themselves and I think a very big, central idea is, like I said up above, they cannot conceive of the scope of the plan.

Then again, I’ve probably read Watchmen at least twenty times, maybe more.  Sometimes just a chapter here or there.  I keep meaning to read it again, in order, including the appendices, to get the full effect.

So, I’ll have to put that on my To-Do List.

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