New website! + naughty e-mail + Booklog: Week 8

[trinityofone]

siriaeve and amireal are amazingly generous/incredibly masochistic: they set up a new website for me. (Watch me never figure out how to update it properly!) We're still working out some kinks, but this should still be the most complete listing of my fic (including my old bad Buffy fic, oy) to date: check it out! Shiny! Pretty! Yay!

Not so yay: Yahoo!Mail has stopped working for me. Completely. It went down this weekend and is still not operational. Is anyone else having this problem? I'm going to see if I can get my barely-used gmail account working again, but until then I'm not getting comment notifications or anything. And my apologies to everyone I owe notes to! (Siria, Eliza, Cat, Wychwood, Ami...) I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

And even though I had a lame week of late work nights and lying around watching The Dead Zone a lot, here's this week's fairly pathetic booklog:

Week 8: 19-25 February 2007

44. 84, Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff — My first reread of the year; I got nostalgic for this collection of letters between a New York writer and a London bookseller when Siria wrote to me from Charing Cross. It was even better than I remembered—hilarious and sweet. And tragic: Helene keeps wanting to go visit her English friends, and she's never able to. And do you know why? Dental work! OH MY GOD, YOU GUYS! *clings to siriaeve, randomeliza, wychwood, megolas & others* We've already been kept apart once because of this! I miss you, and I don't want to keep on missing you until suddenly, 20 years have passed and you're all DEAD! *whimper*

...And yeah, then I started crying at work, which is what I get for reading while waiting for the proofs to come back around. But, uh...assuming you're not an emotional wreck like I am (and even if you are) I highly recommend this book. It is the very definition of delight.

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45. Smoke and Ashes, Tanya Huff — The third in Huff's Smoke series, which is in turn a spin-off of her Blood series. You don't really need to have read that, though; I've only read the first of the Blood books, and I'm following these just fine. More than fine—I adore these books. The first (Smoke and Shadows) was a little slow getting going, but they just keep getting better. And if you like humorous, meta, slashy sci-fi/fantasy adventures, then these books are tailor-made for you, man. The main character, Tony, is a PA on a Vancouver-produced vampire detective TV show, but what he knows and the rest of the people in the production don't is that all that supernatural stuff is real, and he has the somewhat awkward relationship with his vamp ex-lover to prove it. What I'm really loving about this series is that as supernatural things keep happening to Tony, his friends and co-workers don't stay oblivious, but become more and more involved; there's a great sense of community and family with this wacky little production company, and it's just terrific. Plus, the characters are hilarious, there's tons of meta-humor, and the slow build in the relationship between Tony and Lee, one of the stars of the show, is fantastic. Okay, and if that doesn't sell you: this third volume includes a threesome in the solution to save the world. World-saving threesomes: how can you not be all over that? *g*

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46. Girlfriend in a Coma, Douglas Coupland — From what I've read, this seems to be the least popular of Coupland's novels. (Although Coupland fans are weird: among his devotees, there's the least amount of agreement about what constitutes a good Coupland book that I've ever seen.) I can definitely see why, although there were things I enjoyed about it. The problem, I think, is that it feels like several books mushed together: there's the Jared-the-ghost plot (similar but less effective than dead!Cheryl's narration in Hey Nostradamus!), the late '70s vs. '90s plot, the actual girlfriend-in-a-coma plot...and just when you're adjusting to all of that, there's the post-apocalyptic plot. It's too much, and it really fails to come together, not just logically (not something I'm looking for in a Coupland novel) but emotionally—and that is something at which he normally excels. So, yeah: it's a mess. Not a "I regret reading this" mess, but as all of the really good bits are pretty much replicated in his other works, it does feel kind of extraneous. I mean, Coupland's written something like ten novels and a bunch of non-fiction, so unless you're a completist (which I am) there's really no reason to read this particular book.

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47. Hard Core Logo, Michael Turner — I still haven't seen the movie that was based on this, but I've absorbed rather a lot through fannish osmosis. I was surprised at how different the book was on some major points, but rather than go too deeply into that and risk spoiling people on either, I'll just say: this is an interesting, but slight, looked at a bunch of fucked up, dried up, punk rockers. It's written in verse and in other scraps—journal entries, interview bits, photographs—which is cool because it's different, but it does prevent Turner from being able to delve too deeply into any of the characters, their motivations, or even specifically what's happening. By which I don't mean it's confusing—not at all—it's just shallow, a passing glimpse. I think the film must go deeper, and I'm really itching to see it now. Plus, Callum. *eg*

Total Books: 47

Comments

[miscellanny.livejournal.com]

What's a really interesting read is Hardcore Roadshow by Noel S. Baker, which is the screenwriter's diary and covers everything from meeting Bruce MacDonald through casting and funding right up until the film wrapped. It's really well-written, and it gives an insight into how the characters of the actors form the way the characters develop through various drafts and the like.

And yeah, it mentions the changes that were made to the story, too. Each version works well within its medium, I reckon - I read the book before I really knew anything about the film, and really enjoyed it. And the film? Yeah. Watch it. Holy crap. I still get an adrenaline rush off it. :D

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that sounds really interesting! I'm intrigued by the adaptation process anyway, so... I think I probably ought to see the movie first, though. And the worst thing is: Siria burned me a copy a while back, and now I can't find it! Grr. Well, I suppose I can go harass the people at Hollywood Video...

[shoemaster.livejournal.com]

If you need a hookup for an .avi, just give a holler.

[trinityofone.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I may take you up on that! Let me scrounge around for Siria's copy one more time...

[miscellanny.livejournal.com]

*grins*

There was this whole thing where I accidentally got slightly obsessed and ended up with the book, the screenwriter's diary and the graphic novel before actually seeing the film. ¬_¬

If you like Turner's style, also, The Pornographer's Poem is a seriously weird and explicit and poetic book that took me a couple of reads to actually understand but is definitely worth a read. I'm not sure if I'd term it as enjoyable, so much, but it keeps me coming back...

Gonna have to beg my HCL back off foreverdirt, I think. XD

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

I totally second this recommendation. Also, listening to the DVD commentary (which you might be able to obtain in the usual places as an mp3 - I have it, but I won't be around to upload it, sorry) which was done some years later is worthwhile.

The whole process of novel into screenplay into movie fascinates me. As another commenter mentioned, the book is only dimly glimpsed in the movie.