Hell Island
A Matthew Riley book; I got it for free when I bought a couple of books in the “Fifty Amazing Reads” or whatever it was promotion. It was very short, but quite entertaining. I’ve only read one other Riley, and I quite liked it too, but the same things annoyed me – too much gratuitous use of italics, mostly, and a few too many exclamation marks! Again, though – as with Cussler – I quite like the adventures, so I am willing to put up with a few annoyances. As long as I have breaks between reading them, so I can partially forget about it in the meantime.
Borders 3 for 2 – Eragon, Inkheart, Trojan Odyssey
Even though it is part of the Evil American Empire Taking Over the World, I really do like Borders; especially their 3 for 2 tables. I know all about impulse buying and luring people in to buy things they don’t really need, and I don’t really mind that it sometimes works on me.
Eragon, by Christopher Paolini
I didn’t realise, until I got to the author bit at the end, that this was written by a teenager… although I had guessed that it was a first novel, by some of the clunkier bits in it. But I really loved this book; it’s got some good ideas and some great characters, and it’s obvious that it can be developed, probably into a trilogy – I know the second one is out now. I like that there are a couple of secrets not revealed and questions not resolved, and that these haven’t been played up too heavily in the story; there hasn’t been a whole lot of griping about them, nor have there been many clues, so I at least am not positive about how they will be resolved. I am definitely going to read the rest. I like being back with dragons!
Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
This book captured my heart. It’s fantastic. Whoever translated it was brilliant; I can’t even imagine how hard translation work like that must be. I love that there were quotes from different books, real books, at the start of each chapter; it’s such a nice touch, particularly when I knew and loved some of them – The Neverending Story (which of course was written in German originally), and The Princess Bride, to mention only two. It’s also given me some new books to find! But back to Inkheart… lots of people have thought about meeting the characters from books, but this is a whole new twist on the idea, and it was very well realised. The characters are wonderful, the intricacies of the plot are brilliant. It’s a kid’s book – teenagers maybe – which is partly obvious from the hints you get throughout that the heroine, at least, has a future after the adventure; my gosh, though, I would recommend this to adults with no hesitation. I’m also going to buy the author’s first book, Thief Lord, which I saw in the shop the other day.
Trojan Odyssey, by Clive Cussler
After Valhalla Rising, I swore that I would read no more Cussler books… it was all just getting way, way too tacky for me, and so formulaic I felt I could guess what Dirk and Al would say to each other. But then I saw this on the 3 for 2 table, and my itchings to keep following their adventures got the better of me. Even though I knew the writing would be a bit painful, I was willing to put up with it for the sake of the adventures. And I was as right as I knew I would be: the writing was a bit boring, some bits were excruciatingly average, but the adventure was a whole lot of fun. Given the ending, I am pretty sure this will be the last Dirk Pitt adventure. I really, really hope that Cussler doesn’t think he can continue the franchise with Dirk Jnr; that would be just wrong. I’m thinking now of going back to the old books and seeing for myself whether it was me or the writing that got old. But I don’t think I will read the other Cussler series; I just don’t have the emotional attachment to the characters to be willing to put myself through it.
Films I saw in the holidays…
… which was a while ago now, but what the heck.
Batman Begins
Fantastic. So well filmed; Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman were great in support, and I barely noticed Katie Holmes (‘ray). And Batman himself – well, he was brilliant. Played the dark and brooding very convincingly. I am definitely looking forward to the sequel, because this Batmas – with all new and improved gadgets – is very entertaining to watch.
War of the Worlds
Yeh. Not convinced. Thinking back on the book, I’m wondering whether it is actually the book’s fault. HG Wells did not exactly write a book that could be easily turned into a movie; I haven’t read it in years, but I think he was writing with less of an idea to character development than to exploring the concept of alien invasion and its consequences for the world. As a result, any movie (and what I’ve seen of the 50s version, while being an intersting commentary on nuclear USA, was crap) has to have some people-stuff inserted by someone else, and I just don’t think it works – not and still calling it War of the Worlds. I think Tom Cruise was actually quite weak in it, but then the character itself didn’t allow for much. There were some cool effects.
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Did I see it on holidays? Don’t recall; anyway. I liked it, in defiance of all the purists I think. The fact that it was started before Adams died made me feel a bit better about it. Yes, there were bits that were totally not in the book, but anyone who thinks those books could be successfull translated to the screen and be understood by total Adams-novices, which is a large part of the world, needs their heads read. I liked most of the insertions, actually, and I thought John Malkovitch was quite funny. Truly, though, Arthur was very enteraining, but for me the entire film was owned by Zaphod. He was perfect.
There was another movie we saw in Darwin, too, but I forget what it was…
The Island
Someone I know described this as The Rock (Sean Connery, Nicholas Cage) meets Minority Report, with a little bit of Matrix thrown in. Pretty much. I liked the story, and I thought it was developed well; the characters were mostly quite realistic, and the acting was great – Steve Buscemi is, as ever, very good, although I wouldn’t have recognised Sean Bean until the end if I hadn’t seen his name in the credits, since mostly he looks (unusually) very slick.
Overall, worthwhile. Some superfluous explosions and chases, and some scenes that just made me impatient because of their patent absurdity, but those were fairly minor. The ending… well, you can probably imagine. It is Hollywood, after all.
National Treasure
We saw this on the weekend. It was about as silly as expected; attempting, in some ways, to mimic Last Crusade – but at least there, it was clear where the treasure had come from, and the clues made a modicum of movie-sense. The same cannot be said, alas, for this movie. It was entertaining, I’ll admit, and Nic Cage was not nearly so painful as he might have been; Sean Bean was a lot of fun and could have had a lot bigger part, in my mind. I might watch it again… in maybe 5 years, when I’m in the mood to be mildly amused.
Movies of the last few weeks
Hmm, do you get the feeling I really haven’t blogged here in a while, and have a lot to say as a consequence?
I watched a little bit of Batman and Robin the other night. It just made me feel contemptuous. It didn’t even manage to be camp. Urgh.
Collateral was… well, a bit weird. A bit motion-sickness-inducing, actually, what with all the hand-held camera, let’s-make-it-feel-as-if-you’re-there action. An interesting storyline – a fascinating one in a lot of ways, actually – and Tom Cruise really was quite good; so was Jamie Foxx.
Finally saw Pitch Black, having seen The Chronicles of Riddick at the movies. To be honest, it must have been Vin himself pushing for the sequel, because the original really was nothing special except for his character, who I really quite liked. About the most interesting thing was that half the cast were Australian; probably it was filmed here. Oh, the lighting for the surface of the planet was also quite cool – might have been a result of a low budget, too, though.
Murder at 1600 was really nothing much to write about. Wesley was entertaining. I think the most interesting thing was them making him a Civil War buff, with his battle sets, and then it being incorporated into the film. That, and the fact that the next day I found out my Yr12 history teacher is also into doing those sorts of things, but possibly even more extremely.
Dirty Dozen
When I was at the video store the other, I saw The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission. It had Lee Marvin, and Ernest Borgnine, and I thought that it might not be too bad. How wrong I was. It’s appaling; I’m watching it at the moment. Even Lee is wooden and stilted. Very sad. I’m blaming the script, personally; it’s very close to the original, in some ways, but with no panache; quite different in others, but really bad.
Ice Station Zebra
Another MacLean Op Shop purchase. I saw the movie years ago – I’m not even sure I saw all of it – so when I saw the novel I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed, partly also because it is MacLean. And it was good: another one where I was indeed mildly surprised at the resolution. I like it when that happens.
I have to say that being in a submarine under the polar ice-cap is not my idea of fun, and I’m just as happy never to get closer to it than through this book. Hmm, interesting – two books with ties to the Arctic, this and The First Horseman. As close as I’d like to get, thanks.
The Dark Crusader
Alistair MacLean is always good for a romping adventure story. I’ve read a few, although sometimes I get confused between him and Jack Higgins, which isn’t at all fair on either of them; I think partly it’s because they’ve both written Eagle books (Where Eagles Dare and The Eagle has Landed), and they have somewhat similar styles and subjects. Guns of Navarrone (only going by the movie; got the book somewhere…) seems like something Higgins could have written.
Anyway, this was another Op Shop purchase. I was expecting a near-trashy adventure – villains get done, hero gets girl and a commendation from the tight-lipped boss – and for most of it, I wasn’t disappointed. I read it in a bit over a day; it wasn’t at all heavy going, and it just unfolded nicely. It certainly kept me interested, and I was shocked and amazed by the conclusion; it was very well done indeed – I hadn’t expected a thing. Of course, with these sorts of books, I deliberately try not to work out what will happen in the end, just for the pleasure of being shocked: No, it can’t have been him!
I must admit, though, that I’m glad this wasn’t the first MacLean I’d read, otherwise I probably wouldn’t go looking for others; it wasn’t that great, although I still would recommend it for light holiday reading.
The First Horseman
I love Op Shops, especially their book sections. The St Vincent’s in Queenscliff, on the Vic coast, has the standard arrangement of 50c/paperback, and a lot of junk that you have to sort through to find anything worthwhile. But at 50c each, I think it’s worth spending a bit of time – and for me, $3.50 went an amazingly long way.
One of the books I got was John Case’s The First Horseman. Never heard of him, or it – although he also wrote The Genesis Code, which sounds familiar. Standard blurb – why, who, what? – clearly this was going to be about some sort of plague, but it’s not for a while that you find out it’s about someone doing bad things with the influenza virus. Written in 1998, it’s still quite a relevant topic, I think – bioweapons, etc, although currently North Korea (who get a look-see in this) are threatening with nuclear arms, not bio.
I liked it; not quite as trashy as I had expected, but not exactly the sort of thing to make you think particularly hard either. A nice range of characters: the not-beautiful-yet-still-appealing female scientist, intrepid journalist, etc etc… Some nice plot developments too; I wasn’t sure whether I liked the family stuff being put in, but I think in the end it served to deepen the main character a bit, which was fine: it didn’t detract from the story, either. I do like a book that is fine with hurting its main goodies, and not giving them superhero endurance (something like McLean in Die Hard).
I’m going looking for The Genesis Code.
Randomly Yours, Alex 