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Nov. 8th, 2002 08:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sesanaI've read three books recently, Star Wars: Cloak of Deception, Coraline, and Not So!
Cloak of Deception: This may be the last Star Wars book I ever read. It was very good, I have to say. Set back in the days of the Old Republic, just before Episode One. Very much a political book. Shady politics, but that's hardly surprising. The dialog was mostly dead on, but the prose was dull dull dull. It was way too wordy. Who would ever describe a large nose as being a "rudder of a nose"? I mean, honestly. Put down the thesaurus. Also odd how the book references the Jedi Apprentice series several times, and yet the characterization of many of the Jedi characters is quite different from in the books. Somehow, Obi-Wan seemed less mature at 25, in Cloak of Deception, than he did when he was 16 or 17 in the last Apprentice books. But at least there wasn't too much "action". I don't like reading action scenes in books, because they don't translate well for me. On the whole, it was a pretty good book, though.
Coraline: Neil Gaiman's "young adult" novel. I read this book in an hour, because I couldn't look down. It was just that good. Very creepy. Gaiman's good at writing for all age groups. His children's book is wonderful, too.
Not So!: Well, this was dissappointing. It claims to be a book about history myths, along the lines of Lies My Teacher Told Me. Eh. The writing style was boring, and he definitly had an agenda. He spent twenty pages talking about how Native Americans weren't all peace loving, and barely mentioned what Columbus did. And he claimed that, because the "majority" of presidents were faithful to their wives, that it would be difficult to write a book about presidential adultery. Er, not so. It wouldn't be hard to write a book about JFK's adultery, much less the adultery of every president ever. And his believability plummetted when he shot down the Sally Hemmings story, which has since been proven by DNA. Oops.
We're also watching The Celuloid Closet in one of my soc classes. Good God, I'm loving this. I think I need both the doc and the book. The clips are fascinating. Some of them are just wonderful, some of them are unsettling, but they're all gems. And Charlton Heston really is a big fat idiot if he didn't realize the homoeroticism of Ben Hur. It's meant to be that way. Bwa. And I wish to God I would have jotted down the name of the movie with the "snails or oysters" scene. Somebody be kind and think of it for me?
My Geology class is driving me nuts. We've done nothing but busy work for the whole damned class. The kind of worksheets that you do in high school, where all the answers are there for the finding, if you know where to look. Bah. This is supposed to be an upper division class! Not that I mind it going a bit slower, but still. Not this slow. Oh, and the textbook we have is bloody worthless. It's called Fossils of Ohio, and it cost a fortune, but we've only used the damned thing once. *Once*. Fortunatly, I didn't buy it, I got it from the library. The rest of the information we're searching up comes from these info packets we were supposed to mail away for. I got mine by printing them from the internet in the college computer lab, but I would've had to pay a fortune in shipping and handling otherwise. Grrr. And he hasn't decided yet what the final project is going to be! We only have a month!
Cloak of Deception: This may be the last Star Wars book I ever read. It was very good, I have to say. Set back in the days of the Old Republic, just before Episode One. Very much a political book. Shady politics, but that's hardly surprising. The dialog was mostly dead on, but the prose was dull dull dull. It was way too wordy. Who would ever describe a large nose as being a "rudder of a nose"? I mean, honestly. Put down the thesaurus. Also odd how the book references the Jedi Apprentice series several times, and yet the characterization of many of the Jedi characters is quite different from in the books. Somehow, Obi-Wan seemed less mature at 25, in Cloak of Deception, than he did when he was 16 or 17 in the last Apprentice books. But at least there wasn't too much "action". I don't like reading action scenes in books, because they don't translate well for me. On the whole, it was a pretty good book, though.
Coraline: Neil Gaiman's "young adult" novel. I read this book in an hour, because I couldn't look down. It was just that good. Very creepy. Gaiman's good at writing for all age groups. His children's book is wonderful, too.
Not So!: Well, this was dissappointing. It claims to be a book about history myths, along the lines of Lies My Teacher Told Me. Eh. The writing style was boring, and he definitly had an agenda. He spent twenty pages talking about how Native Americans weren't all peace loving, and barely mentioned what Columbus did. And he claimed that, because the "majority" of presidents were faithful to their wives, that it would be difficult to write a book about presidential adultery. Er, not so. It wouldn't be hard to write a book about JFK's adultery, much less the adultery of every president ever. And his believability plummetted when he shot down the Sally Hemmings story, which has since been proven by DNA. Oops.
We're also watching The Celuloid Closet in one of my soc classes. Good God, I'm loving this. I think I need both the doc and the book. The clips are fascinating. Some of them are just wonderful, some of them are unsettling, but they're all gems. And Charlton Heston really is a big fat idiot if he didn't realize the homoeroticism of Ben Hur. It's meant to be that way. Bwa. And I wish to God I would have jotted down the name of the movie with the "snails or oysters" scene. Somebody be kind and think of it for me?
My Geology class is driving me nuts. We've done nothing but busy work for the whole damned class. The kind of worksheets that you do in high school, where all the answers are there for the finding, if you know where to look. Bah. This is supposed to be an upper division class! Not that I mind it going a bit slower, but still. Not this slow. Oh, and the textbook we have is bloody worthless. It's called Fossils of Ohio, and it cost a fortune, but we've only used the damned thing once. *Once*. Fortunatly, I didn't buy it, I got it from the library. The rest of the information we're searching up comes from these info packets we were supposed to mail away for. I got mine by printing them from the internet in the college computer lab, but I would've had to pay a fortune in shipping and handling otherwise. Grrr. And he hasn't decided yet what the final project is going to be! We only have a month!
