It's about time....

I talked about a book.

In particular, Captain Corelli's Mandolin. I must admit, it's the first book I've read by Louis de Berniéres, but it certainly won't be the last.

Berniéres has a singular ability to convey exactly what he means in a relatively short number of words. He is succinct in a way few people, and even fewer authors, are.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin is about a great deal of things. Love, and war, and music, and betrayal are the most general themes. Most books containing those four elements would turn into a pathetic attempt at all four and failing on every count. But for some number of failures, there must be a success--and Berniéres is just that.

By objectively observing the characters he comes into contact with, Berniéres paints a unique portrait of not only the people of the island but of both Greeks and Greece. We come to understand the country, not as a place with lots of old buildings, but as a place that is as just as alive as any of the people who inhabit it. Berniéres makes Greece breathe, and become a legitimate character in the story.

What also makes it such a striking book, in my opinion, is that since we see everyone objectively as they tell their parts of the story and through other's eyes during their bits, we begin to understand them as if they were a part of our daily lives. Because of this, it becomes impossible to pigeon-hole any of them. We are presented with their thoughts, and other's opinions about them, and sometimes the reasoning for them, and their spoken words, and their actions, and if we're very lucky, sometimes their backstory, and with all of this information and the politics, Berniéres leaves it up to the reader to decide who and what everyone is.

m.

Awesome cover courtesy of amazon.com.

Drool-worthy shelves, even if I do look like an idiot.

There are a few downsides to living in a dorm room halfway across the country from your own room, let alone in one halfway around the world.

The biggest one, of course, being the lack of cohesion in my books.

My favorites went away with me to school, and then that collection was added to by way of gifts, textbooks, Half-Price Books, the occasional B&N gift card, and the sale of a deceased prof's entire 9,000 tome library.

Some books got shlepped home, and others got dragged out, eventually resulting in me needing more bookshelves no matter where I am.

And then I decided to study halfway around the world and brought with me only two books: a short novel entitled Stonehenge, but only because my mom had just bought it for me and it's sick and wrong to only take one book anywhere. The second was Les Miserables.

Thank goodness for iBooks, that's all I have to say.

I have an excessive attachment to print, though, so when I saw this particular room belonging to (yep) a Mr. Gaiman, I was instantly smitten. It's like the Powell's of home libraries

I want a room like this. Actually, I would like several rooms like this. I would also like this selection at this moment.

m.

see more photos at http://blog.shelfari.com/ronbrinkmann/2009/08/gaimans-bookshelf-details.html Which is also where I stole the ones you just looked at.

Patterns

There are a few things in my life I'm good at.

Okay, I like to believe there are more than a few things. But that's not the point.

I've always been a reader. I love the stories, but, in addition, I love words. Often, I've wondered if being good at spotting and/or developing patterns (another thing I'm not too shabby at), has something to do with the speed at which a person reads. Leaving behind my love of the stories, I'm a considerably fast reader, it seems like, and although I've never timed myself, I can move through a document faster than a number of people I know.

I once asked my mom--I don't remember what lead up to the question--if, when she read, she heard someone "reading" in her head. She said yes.

This has lead me to a new theory. When you read, your brain skips the smaller words and fills in the blanks. I think that the more patterns you recognize (the pattern of words within the sentence), the faster you become. Because you read (really read) fewer words, you have the ability to move faster through the text.

I also think it possible to read faster if you don't hear someone in your head.

Although I think this is a pretty good theory, I didn't have much to base it on until I came across something called "spreed." It's fascinating. They hold that you can become a faster reader simply by reading faster than your brain can read to you. To prove this, they feed you one word at a time (you have to tell it to) at 300 wpm, and then tell you to play around with it until you find a speed that seems comfortable. Although it can be harder to read a book like that (in part, because you don't get words fed to you one-by-one in a book), it gives you, I think, more confidence to read a document faster than you think you can.

It's not too bad for some impressive, if insane, bragging rights. For instance, I know I can read at least 600 wpm. I just...choose to leave out some of the minor details.

m.

Review; III

In future, I will try to not do everything all at once.

Publish This Book is the most irreverent book I've ever read, but also one of the funniest. It's all about getting a book published (hence, the title). On the other hand, it's depressing to hear about how difficult it is to get something published.

Despicable Me is worth seeing.

It's clever, and it's highly entertaining to hear Steve Carell doing a Russian accent (and then to hear O. imitating it is even better, since she actually is Russian), but more than anything, it's highly endearing even though it's easy to figure out the plot from just the trailers. Unlike, say, Avatar, which you could figure out from the trailers, but then didn't give you much else (yeah, I know. Sue me, I didn't like it).

The minions are wonderful.

However, the best line belongs to Vector, the bad guy (well, the "more" bad guy):

"I'm Vector: a villain with both direction and magnitude!"

Vellum, by Hal Duncan...

...is beautifully written, but the only way to do it is to ignore the fact that time is a linear thing. Don't bother unless American Gods is your favorite Gaiman book.

But....

I did it. I finally gave in and saw it:

Inception.

I'm odd when it comes to movies. If the plot's not good, there's nothing in the 'verse that can make it good. (I'd say "think Twilight," but there just isn't anything good about those movies.) On the other hand, there are some movies I avoid because I don't like the lead.

I've never been a huge DiCaprio fan (he's too hit-and-miss for me), but the plot looked too good to ignore--plus, I love Ellen Page.

So I saw it.

I think the best way to describe it is a cross between The Matrix and Ocean's Eleven (the remake, not the original).

It was less Memento mess-with-your-mind than I thought it would be, but sleeping through half isn't really an option. They delve into the dream-within-a-dream idea, and play with the chemical makeup of dreams, and the fact that your brain incorporates what's going on in the world into your dream, and how you don't realize how weird a dream is until you wake up.

In short,

go see it.

m.