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Susanna Clarke’s remarkable debut novel is 800 pages of a dry, witty, rambling, shaggy dog story. Set during the late 18th and early 19th century Clarke weaves a tale of an England where theoretical magic is common but practical magic has been lost to the ages. Mr Norrell (Clarke eschews punctuation on abbreviations) arrives on the scene as a bookish practical magician who wishes to revive the practical magic in England–on his terms. Jonathan Strange, who isn’t introduced for at least 200 pages, eventually joins Norrell as England’s only other practical magician.

A solid story from cover to cover, although I felt that the end was both predictable and a little forced. I don’t know that I’d agree with the frequent comparisons of an “adult Harry Potter,” but the novel does a great job of straddling the lines between literature, historical fiction, and cheap/trashy/fun fantasy. The character sketches were particularly delightful (although occasionally a little too over the top) as were the hundred or so footnotes. This would make a great summer book to savor on warm lazy days.

Dang. This movie is BAD.

I’d like to just leave it at that, but I suppose I owe a bit more explanation. Sigh.

Ok, so we’d heard good things about this movie, although in hindsight, the good things were from a friend with a big ol’ crush on Viggo Mortenson, so we see now that his opinions regarding this film were likely just a tad biased. Just a tad.

Based on a “graphic novel” (which I still like to call comic books), this is the story of a man with a happy perfect family, running a diner in happy, perfect small-town America. Everything’s all hunky-dory and gee-swell, and he and his wife have a VERY healthy sex-life…the director doesn’t want us to have ANY doubt about that. One day, these criminals show up at his diner and threaten to kill folks, and Viggo save’s the day with some cool moves and good shots and kills the bad guys and is this local hero. Soon after, some maffia folk show up looking for him, calling him Joey, and he’s like “I’m not Joey, I’ve never been to Philadelphia”, oh but, no surprise, it turns out he IS Joey and he used to be a nasty killer. Oh, his family is mad. Especially his wife. She hits him, he nearly strangles her, and then she’s REALLY mad so she fucks him in the stairway to show him just how MAAAAAD she is. It’s an incredibly unsexy “love” scene.

Anyway, I won’t bore you with the rest of the plot, because the plot itself is kind of irrelevent. What makes this movie bad is the poor directing, bad sense of timing, and the dull, dreary, completely useless music score by Howard Shore. The feel of the movie is exactly the same throughout. It drags. It’s unexciting. Poor use of film time. You don’t empathize or care about any of the characters.

I think the story could have made a good movie…if they had kept us in suspense about his real identity, and actually made it shock us a bit when we find out who he really is. I’m not usually one to demand more action in the movie, but I actually think this movie would have been more entertaining and interesting if it had more action, suspense, and a faster pace. As it is, you feel like the director is going through the motions: …and then this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens… without giving the story any shape or momentum.

But really, it could all just be summed up by saying: Dang. This movie is BAD.

With AIDS cases increasing and child provety on the rise, I am flabbergasted at how the conservatives in America have chosen contraceptives as their new battleground. It goes beyond the morning after pill and RU-486, some have decided that any and all forms of birth control are tantamout to abortion. All in all it is a very interesting article.

“Ipods are for the 90s.” –Kai

I had been masterminding a plot for years to get an mp3 player that comes with a camera and a phone, but the fundage just wasn’t there (for a variety of reasons). Yes, the iPod craze had been in full swing, but I couldn’t help thinking: Why buy another device and then carry around multiple expensive devices around in multiple pockets, when I can find some device that combines them all into a single brick of technology that fits in a single pocket. Yes, I had looked at PDAs, but they were way to big to fit in a pocket and they were way too expensive and feature-laden for what I need in a mobile setting.

Finally, I settled on a Cingular 2125 Smart Phone for a couple reasons. First, I got a big discount. This is key. Important technology purchases must also be accompanied with some big discount. Second, it has all the features of an ipod, plus a camera, internet access… oh, and a phone. Bingo. (And it was Cingular, who I am bound to as concubine.)

As intended, and as I had fantasized, after a couple months I am now an addict. Previously, I had an iRiver with 256Mb of memory, which was enough for a couple days–but the iRiver doesn’t have any automated synchronization. With my new phone, I find myself sitting in front of my computer blissfully watching my selected auto playlists in Windows Media Player synchronize automatically. No more complicated searching for audio files with inane filenames like “1 audio file.wmp”. Plus, the phone charges while it syncs.

But the real excitement came later, when I discovered the excellent display and browser support. Basically, if the website doesn’t use frames and doesn’t depend on Flash, I can browse to it. That means, every day for a couple hours, as I commute on the bus over Lake Washington, I listen to my latest favorite music (without having explicitly copied it there) and surf the internet and check email and gaze out across the glistening waters at sunset–in luxury. Then I get a phone call, so the music automatically pauses and I speak into my handsfree headset/headphones. Then the call ends, and the music automatically continues from where it left off.

The downside is that T9 is a stupid acronym. I have no idea what it stands for, although my latest guess is that T has to do with “type” and 9 has to do with the number of keys on a phone that have letters (okay, that’s really only 8, but I’m still guessing I’m right), and did I mention it’s a stupid acronym? How about instead of T9, they replaced it with a symbol that is actually intuitive and discoverable? How about that, you freaking idiots. Why am I so passionate about this? Because I am a texting maniac. Fellow alien, Susan, and I ravenously text each other like wild monkeys. But without the knowledge of how to toggle to this mysterious T9, my texting was reduced to endless pecking at keys and the inherent frustration. It wasn’t until a collegue pointed out what T9 means. My experience with this feature is an important lesson: I am over 30.

Also, Cingular only gave me the option of getting the Plantronics Bluetooth headset, which I did, and I am now hooked on the wireless headset option. Yet, the little rubbery thingie that goes in my ear fell off, rendering it useless (until I get some epoxy). Get the Motorola instead. And then you, too, will be walking around like a mindless zombie with a connection to the mother ship.

Yes, and then the Razr came out with the iTunes crap, but who wants to be tied to a specific distributor for music? I want to listen to everything and anything and not be tied to draconian DRM (as opposed to just the normal oppressive DRM).

Anyway, it’s all about convergence of technology onto a single, pocket sized device. Now, I just gotta figure out how to keep my keys from scratching this thing all to hell.

–Postscript: Yep, I just looked on Wikipedia, and T9 means “Text on 9 keys” (which is wrong because you actually need 12 keys to get it to work). Not only is it wrong, but iTAP is better. With iTAP, I don’t have to type the whole word. Oh well, a single complaint does not measure up to a tsunami of joy.

Meh.

I liked Middlesex (by the same author) but this one disappoints. Told from the perspective of a never-identified narrator, this fictional memoir of the summer when 5 sisters all committed suicide is distant, vague, and emotionally dry. I didn’t feel anything for the sisters, and I never bought the seemingly incorporeal narrator and his friends’ fascination with the girls. Who could believe that a book about 5 suicides could be so drab and dull?

I’m curious, though, about the movie… it’s not a book that very obviously translates itself into a movie, so I’m guessing they took some artistic license with the story and characters.

Not recommended.