Patrick Gage Kelley

I saw this movie this past weekend after it sat around my apartment for waaaay too long from netflix. Now I realize why it did, it simply wasn’t very good. I felt next to no attachment to our literary heroine, there wasn’t enough poetry recited, and it was boring. I sort of expected there to be a lot of poetry being read and it to be boring because of that, but instead there wasn’t enough poetry and that seems to have actually made it more boring.

And actually, it wasn’t that I felt no attachment to her, it was worse than that, they actually managed to make her out to seem totally insane and pretty worthless. I will have to accept that whoever wrote this just doesn’t like her and the film reflected that. Most of all this makes me want to go read Birthday Letters, which I haven’t. (Yes, it makes me want to go read her husband’s work more than her’s–but like I said, his movie really hates on her.) So please don’t see this movie, just go read a book.

p.s. that’s really her, not Gwyneth though they do look quite similar.

BookGroup and I went and saw The Golden Compass this weekend since it came out and I hear it made something like 26 million dollars states side which I guess puts it in the questionable area for getting some sequels made (overseas went real well though). I enjoyed the movie quite a bit which is good because I was really worried after seeing some pretty negative reviews.

I thought the movie was a reasonable interpretation of the book, I would have prefered if it was longer and if there were less scenes with Lyra riding a bear or being sucked into some sort of dust world. I think more politics/religion/Lord Asriel would have made the movie better, in a general sense. The only thing that really bothered me was their incessant reminding of the audiance that they are calling the alethiometer, the golden compass. Especially since that was not even the intent:

My first discovery was the phrase THE GOLDEN COMPASSES (plural, note). This comes in Milton’s Paradise Lost, a poem which inspired me a great deal. The line refers to the Son of God taking ‘the golden compasses, prepared / In God’s eternal store, to circumscribe / The universe, and all created things.”

In other words, these were compasses to draw a circle with, not a compass to find your way with. I liked the phrase, and the trilogy became temporarily, during the publication process, The Goldem Compasses. And we finally settled on Northern Lights for the title of the first book.

Meanwhile, in the US, it was being read by the editors at Alfred A. Knopf. Someone decided (mistakenly, but firmly) that the title referred to Lyra’s alethiometer, which could be regarded as a sort of golden compass, but of the direction-finding and not circle-drawing sort. (source)

Look Lyra, there is your alethiometer which we call a golden compass!

Which of course is not what he meant at all, but – let’s drill it in to the audience’s head kthx?

Lyra? What is that silly bag you are wearing, could it be an alethiometer which I would on some occasions refer to as a golden compass?

The bears were pretty impressive and only reminded me of the coca-cola variant during the (far too long) scene where Lyra and Iorek travel to the magic shack.

Also their general use of anbaric technology was pretty interesting, in the cars & zeppelin & hot air balloon. Also the slide projector used right at the beginning seems to be a more advanced piece of technology than most of their methods of transportation.

But really, they can go ahead and make the next two movies, especially if someone else is going to write the screenplays. The aesthetic was great, the dialogue at times needed work.

Lyra, are you saying that you, with your alethiometer which reminds me strongly of a golden compass, want to ride me?

Yet in opposition to the above, BookGroup continues. One of the projects that has gotten going and really gone quite well for me here at Carnegie Mellon was getting my little book group going. Last week we met to discuss our “October” book Baudolino (my review and elliot’s review ).

(image by phoosh via flickr)

Next month we should also have a great meeting, down at the waterfront, to discuss Sirens of Titan and also The Golden Compass (Northern Lights), and then see the movie of the latter (which I am quite excited about). And then soon the year will be over so I need to finish up all the books I have laying aorund here half started, as I am behind for the year. Maybe December will be a little lighter on the work, and a little heavier on the reading (somehow I doubt it).

Sidenote: doesn’t everyone wish reading to the rain was still called booknest? Yeah, me too.

Also, look for a post coming up about Libraries (Seattle is pretty, and Koolhaas is way better than Gehry, kthx), Anti-Libraries, and more Umberto Eco.

Now, I am off to read (cheating by finishing up The Prophet of Yonwood, yay for children’s books).

Amazon made the internet vomit a little with the announcement of Kindle an e-book reader (seriously are we calling these things e-book readers still? It is more like an ugly little laptop that doesnt have programs). Oh wait, my biases snuck out there in the parenthesis. To be forthcoming: I really like books and am immediately worried that technology is going to usurp some sixteen hundred years of papers and ink.

However, as much as in my heart I will want a massive library in each of my future residences, I am drawn to technologies that make things easier. For instance, it would be very convenient if I could have a device, with a nice, high contrast screen, that worked in sunlight, and I could comfortably read books and academic papers on.

(image: Sarah Tew/CNET Networks)

The Kindle, is not that device. Sure some of the details are unclear (I have no idea if it works in direct sunlight), but it is ugly, expensive, far too integrated with Amazon, and it can’t read PDFs.

Let’s read a line from the Kindle User Guide (chapter 8):

In addition to purchased content, you can read your personal documents on Kindle as well. If you have files formatted as Kindle, text, Microsoft Word, HTML, or image files like GIF or JPEG, you can e-mail the files as attachments to your Kindle e-mail address. Amazon will convert the files if necessary and send them back to your computer for free or wirelessly to your Kindle for a small fee, whichever you prefer. For more information on transferring, converting, and e-mailing your personal documents, see Chapter 8.

So this means Amazon is going to take text and JPG files and convert them into magic Kindle files (because these files supported by every computer for at least ten years aren’t good enough?) over e-mail and will send them directly ot my Kindle if I pay them. Convenient. And they won’t even translate PDFs.

So basically this “service” (that is what Amazon is calling it because of the subscription costs), is likely to soon be replaced by a new better version–this thing reeks prototype to me– with PDFs?, a color screen?, more than one font?, and maybe a real RSS reader, not just allowing me to choose from the blogs Amazon has approved for me, or worse some far better competitor that can then not read any of my Kindle books (DRMed up to heaven), and then I have a four hundred dollar brick.

And really, is a small tablet laptop not going to take the place of all these e-readers. The concept was good when laptops were big and bulky but they are getting smaller and lighter and the screens are improving. My current laptop does most of the things I would want this reader to do, if the screen was good enough to see in daylight, and flipped all the way around, I think this contest would be over. Or maybe this contest is over, and Amazon is just hoping to make some cash until everyone else notices.

Either way, my precious books are still safe.

I hated Half Blood Prince. Harry became a perfect angel and I can’t deal with the role reversal that occurred between Harry & Dumbledore. Even with the release of Hallows there are plot holes. But worse, and I did not write this in my Hallows post, but I have told a number of people that she lost at least a star or her two for her messy epilogue.

And by messy epilogue I mean, she neglected in writing her seven volume fantasy opus to finish. She created a marvelous world and a cast of interesting characters; and most importantly she created a media frenzy. Unfortunately, the media is obviously more important to her than the literature.

And by messy epilogue I mean, she forgot that her duty as an author is to tell a story in her novel. Not write a novel, and then later give out the juicy details. Not write a novel, and specifically mention characters who have never existed in just the last five pages to elicit future questions that she can answer in interviews. And while people may have said I was overreacting I think we can now put that to rest and say that JK is pretty clearly a media-whore.

This weekend JK Rowling outed Dumbledore in a question and answer session. And there is even more back story than we knew, he fell in love with Grindelwald. But none of this is in the story. And while I am not against Dumbledore being in love with Grindelwald I don’t believe the books deal with such issues of sexuality and reading into them for that goes far beyond the text we have been given.

As Ross Douthat of The Atlantic Monthly said:

It seems like a case of J.K. Rowling trying to retroactively bestow a level of adult complexity on her characters that they don’t possess on the printed page. A writer confident in her powers wouldn’t feel the need to announce details like this after the fact.

It is all part of the same problem, the books are not complete, she wants more attention, she wants to continue giving interviews and keep fans excited. There are over 700 news articles today about Dumbledore’s sexuality. There are forthcoming plans (of hers) to write an encyclopedia of Harry-Potter-relevant-facts, but even that will never be a complete account of each new detail she comes up with.

And by messy epilogue, I mean this seals the fate of the books; if she keeps talking more of the story will exist from her mouth than from her pen. It is likely a failing of mine that I want the story to be in the book not told to me later by the Times, I want the literature to be a piece of artwork created by the author, not a device to support their growing ego.

Note: I don’t hate Dumbledore for being gay. Gay wizards are cool. I am all for gay wizard buttsex I just would prefer if the porn would have been in like chapter five, not just in the space between JK’s ears

The photograph is borrowed from Amy, she e-mailed it to me this morning. For those of you who don’t follow the Buffalo weather scene, they got hit with more than eight inches of snow on Thursday, breaking the record for snowiest day in October since records on Buffalo’s weather started being recorded. Yes, that was the snowiest day in October in the past 137 years.

So my parents lost power on Thursday and just got it back this afternoon (Saturday) and during that time the melting snow caused the basement to get soggy. Which is bad.

I am told we had four or five inches of water down there before the power got back on through the use of a borrowed generator. This means that most of the books on the bottom shelves all the way around are in trouble, as well as all the bottom boxes. And to make matters worse, as the structural integrity of the boxes on the bottom of the box towers grew weak upper boxes cascaded into the toxic ooze. Which is worse.

Or this is what I am told. I think the new plan is to go home this weekend now, after my Machine Learning midterm on Thursday which I am going to fail, and try to figure out what is salvagable and then make a list of books that need to be replaced. Which is going to make me cry.

I am guessing based on my memory of what was down there, how many were in ziploc bags, how many were still boxed, etc., we probably lost around 600 books. Sad days.

Well, I went to Rochester for two days, after the Panic! at the Disco and Dresden Dolls concert on Wednesday at the Dome Theatre in Niagara Falls. I am waiting to put up pictures, but Jess has to send them to me, becuase I didn’t take my camera I just used hers, and she hasn’t done that yet even though I told her to. Slacker.

But Rochester, was good, had a meeting, went and saw Superman Returns – more soon – had dinner with Amy and Ben, etc. Then Amy and I skated in Rochester for two hours today, came back and worked on the basement for eight hours straight – with Phluff for maybe five. We got a lot done, the A’s are done being scanned; B, C, D, F, and H, are step one alphabatized; E is ready to be scanned; and we are nearly ready to move G, I, J, and K into place.

It was really a lot of good work, we rebuilt seven of the cheap shelves, built the last three nice shelves, and got all the rest of the toys out of the way. I should remember to take pictures and throw them up here before we start tomorrow. Oh, and we are at 924. I think we will hit one thousand tomorrow. I think I might actually be able to get all the way through P before I head off (August 1st?)

The plan for tomorrow is to skate to downtown Buffalo, and then eat some tacos, drive back home, and work for another eight hours or so, maybe with a break to go to Coldstone.