Mar 29

Biff, Minty Fresh, and Santa’s Little Helper of Death

I have a very quirky sense of humor. I find odd and random things funny as anyone who knows me or has read my more personal stuff knows. I find meaning in strange things and I sometimes get the feeling that I might live in a different reality than most folks. I appreciate these qualities in books I read too.

Santa's Little Helper of Death

The book that started my obsession

Christopher Moore understands me and my sense of humor.

Actually, my mom started me on Christoper Moore. She had picked up “Blood Sucking Fiends” and fell in love with his humor and we started reading everything of his we could get our hands on. “Blood Sucking Fiends” is a brilliantly funny take on a vampire book. I think it is actually more relevant now that we have been inundated with the teenage girl vampire infatuation trend. It is a vampire love story but not like anything a twilitard would swoon over.

So, anyway, I loved “Blood Sucking Fiends” but when I picked up “A Dirty Job” I knew Christopher Moore was actually a demi-god of humor gracing our planet with his tales of humor and delight. This book so clearly defined for me everything I would come to love of Moore’s quirky and touching perspective. The book is a story of a man who finds himself suddenly a widow and a single father and, oh yeah, becomes a Santa’s Little Helper of Death. This book started my obsession with all things Christopher Moore.

He is like all writers. He has some fan-freaking-tastic books and some just awesome books. I haven’t read a book by him that I didn’t find funny and interesting and even his “worst” book is still better a lot of books you can pick up but he has some truly exceptional books that provide an unique perspective into something meaningful.

Two of his books really exemplify this for me: “A Dirty Job” and “Lamb.” While “A Dirty Job” is funny and crazy in it’s circumstances, it is also an oddly sensitive look at relationships, family, grief, and adjusting to life as it throws crap at you like monkeys at the zoo of fate. The main character isn’t a super human or really special in anyway except that he has a big heart and does his best to do what is right.

“Lamb” is the story of Biff, Jesus’s childhood BFF. This story has so many places where it could have sent very wrong in the hands of a mere mortal but in the hands Christopher Moore it managed to be something truly special. This book is not a book for someone who has no sense of humor about their faith but I do think someone with faith and a sense of humor can read this book and enjoy it. Moore attempts to show us what is good about Jesus through the very human eyes of Biff. It doesn’t pretend to be realistic or even sacred, but I felt like he was truly trying to show the love and forgiveness that most of us have heard about our entire lives. I wouldn’t recommend this to everyone but I think the right people have a real chance of seeing something meaningful while still funny.

Okay, I can’t not talk about Christopher Moore and not talk about two of my other things about his books, okay well maybe it is one thing with two parts. His books create a unique world in a modern realistic setting. One of the ways he does this is by using the same characters and the same settings in various books. He develops side characters in different books so they add something just by simply being there. For example, there is a character named Minty Fresh, whose father was a dentist, in several of the books. He could have been easily a static comic character, he is a very large black man who dresses in mint green, but throughout several books you learn more about him and he is a certain treat for people who read all of Moore’s books. Moore also manages to do this with his books set in San Fransisco. He creates side characters that weave in and out of his San Fransico books and sometimes you even catch a glimpse of a main character from one book dashing in and out of Moore’s other books.

In summation, Christopher Moore is awesome. You should read his books. They are funny in strange way. Read Him!

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Mar 15

Albinos and Dragons

Albinos and dragons are a great start to any great trilogy. Throw into the mix two royal bastards, a telepathic mentally handicap man of large proportions, and vikings and the series is sure to win.

First book in the Tawny Man TrilogyThe Tawny Man series by Robin Hobb

Okay let me digress a bit then I will come back to point.

So I know I didn’t go into much detail about the first trilogy because I believe it is like telling some Bruce Willis’s character is dead and that is a sin. I can’t imagine trying to read the Tawny Man books without having read the Farseer series. Don’t try. Not only will you not have much of a clue what is going on but it is also just bad form. Hobb has another trilogy in between these two called the Liveship Traders. They are kind of related but I read them after I read Tawny Man and I did just fine. Liveship is freaking cool and I highly suggest picking it up if you like the first trilogy. I am a bit of a purist though, I read everything in order if I can.

Anyway, the Tawny Man books start with our hero Fitz being emo and pouting in a remote cabin with a kid he randomly found and adopted. Fitz had a rough go of it in the last trilogy and decided to go live a simple life. He is writing some histories and farming. Then the Fool shows up and screws it all up.

In the first books, the Fool was an ambiguous character that Hobb left still shrouded in mystery. He was this colorless person whom didn’t seem quite human that always talked in riddles in the beginning of the books. By the end we find out a little more about him but we all had a lot of unanswered questions.

So the Fool shows up on Fitz’s doorstep and he has obviously changes. He is now more golden of color and is more richly dressed. When I read the books the first time I felt that he was constantly internally sighing at Fitz’s self centered moaning. He is basically one of the main forces that gets Fitz out of his lethargy.

Another transgression is order. I don’t think it will ruin anything by saying that Fitz lived and at the end of the first series there is a pregnant queen left in charge of the country. Also, in the first series they were fighting a terrible cult that had used terror to take control of a people called Outislanders. I bet you can guess that Fitz and his crew wins.

So years later when the Tawny Man picks up the queen has a royal son. She is a good queen, yadda yadda yadda. They have increased relations with the Outislanders (whom I will now call the vikings) instead of keeping hostilities going. Well in order to help promote relations the queen promises said royal son to a daughter of a powerful viking clan. All hell breaks lose.

I loved the first trilogy but this one is even better. I think a big part of this is because I am so in love with the Fool and Hobb focuses heavily on the relationship between Fitz and the Fool. Actually, all of the relationships are more complicated in this trilogy, I think Hobb knows these characters better for this trilogy and Fitz is older and a more complicated character so his perceptions and feelings have more depth.

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Mar 12

My Trip to the Library Today.

Today was a crazy busy day and that is why I am not writing this until 8pm. I predict the next two weeks will be pretty crazy. This week I promise to get all the posts up on the normal days but I make no promises about what time I will post them. The week of March 21st through the 24th I can’t even promise that I will post anything at all. Anyway, I went to the library today and I checked out eight books, even though I know I will have to call and renew them, because I wanted three series that I have wanted to revisit. Two of them are connected and I think would make an excellent book blog.

First Book of the Farseer TrilogyRobin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy

I have read ten Robin Hobb books consisting of three trilogies and the first book of a fourth series and all of them are connected in a fantastic world she first introduces us to in her Farseer Trilogy.

Assassin’s Apprentice is the first book in the trilogy and in it we meet the series unlikely hero (I am a sucker for an unlikely hero) and most of the cast of characters that many will span through two separate series. (One character manages to be in three series.) She also introduces the readers to the world that this and another series takes in along with the magic that this world contains.

The hero of this series is FitzChivalry Farseer, who is a bastard son of a dead favored prince. The reader meets Fitz as a little kid after he gets left to the royal family. No one really knows what to do with him so he is left to be raised by his father’s stable man, Burrich. His grandfather, King Shrewd, sees the potential tool he has in Fitz and also the potential danger inherent in having a dissatisfied bastard heir. Shrewd makes a deal with Fitz to take care of and educate Fitz in return for Fitz’s loyalty. Shrewd decides to train Fitz to be the assassin for the crown.

First, I love that the hero is a bastard and is trained in an unusual way. Most books would have Fitz (FitzChivalry, by the way, is not really a name but more of a label meaning bastard Of Chivalry) be a rightful king with his rightful throne stolen from him by some evil plot. Fitz is a bastard and Hobb unapologetically write a world that does not leave him much room to take the throne. I also love that Fitz is trained to be an assassin. It takes away any pretty veneer of polite court politics. I think it makes her books much more believable.

Second, I love the magic in this world. Robin Hobb write a world with two forms of magic and plays with the idea of a high magic and a low magic.  The high magic is the magic that is supposedly linked to the Farseer royal line and it is best described as telepathy. Anyone who has this magic can see events or influence minds of people far away. They can also control the perceptions of others. The low magic is a beast magic that allows the person to “hear” what animals are thinking and develop a rudimentary connection with most animals and it also for someone with it to connect deeply with on animal allowing for a type of symbiosis with them. This magic is considered wrong and shameful. People who can develop these links are often burned at the stake. As expected, shit hits the fan when Fitz develops this magic.

My favorite thing about this trilogy, though, is the characters. Many books have a great central hero but have weak supporting characters. Robin Hobb makes her supporting characters just as memorable as Fitz. I actually am far more in love with Burrich and the Fool than I am Fitz. Burrich is Fitz’s main caretaker and his replacement father figure. He is gruff and drinks too much and sometimes has rough manners but Burrich has a heart that won’t quit. It becomes clear early on that Burrich is an honorable man that will do anything to protect and care for those he loves.

The Fool is in three of her trilogies because he is just that interesting of a character. THrough much of the Farseer trilogy he is a bit of an enigma. He is the albino court fool for King Shrewd and he seems ageless and sometimes even his gender is ambiguous. As he takes a larger part in the events around Fitz you realize that he is a lot more than he seems.

So I had planned on writing about the second trilogy that all of these characters live in but I think now, after seeing the length of this blog, that I save it for Tuesday.

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Mar 10

Those Certain Books

I have many, many favorite books. (I was about to go into an semi-apologetic spiel about how my use of the word favorite is incorrect there because favorite is a superlative therefore there cannot be multiples but then I went and got my learn on and found out that favorite is not superlative. I don’t know why I felt the need to share this except that I am sometimes amazed by how my own thought processes work.)

Anyway, I think I am like many avid readers that I have many books that I love and can read multiple times. I have books that engross me or highly entertain me. There are authors I have read everything I can get my hands on or have series that I read like a starving man eats. I have series that I have read several times but I can’t read out of order because I might know what happens but I love the way things unfold that it just pisses me off to not read them in the order the author wrote them.  If given the opportunity to by all the books I loved, I would get Border’s Bookstores out of bankruptcy. But, with as many books as I love, I still have a few certain books that mean more to me than other books.

I know everyone has those certain songs that came a long at the right time in their lives when they needed to hear whatever the song was about. For example, Modest Mouse’s “Float On” came a long when I was going through a period of struggle and confusion. The song’s simple message of just keeping moving through the crap because sooner or later life is bound to get better was exactly what I needed to hear. Florence and the Machine’s “Dog Days” is an other example because certain lyrics remind me so much of what it was like to suddenly realize I was madly, insanely, deeply in love.

I have books like that. There are a few books to which I have a deep emotional connection. I am not going to go into great detail about them in this post because I think they deserve their own separate posts but I felt I needed to explain the difference between these books and my regular favorite books.

I love Robin Hobb books, especially the the books with The Fool in them. They are fascination stories. Her concept of magic is fascinating. Her characters are interesting and easy to get emotionally involved with. I think about the world she paints constantly. None of her books are those certain books for me.

So what makes those books become one of the pivotal books for me? I think it is because certain books either teach me something about myself or help me choose who I want to be. I can pick up these pivotal books and get something meaningful from them every time.  When I go to the library next week I will probably check out a slew of Brent Week’s  books and it will be like slipping into something familiar and warm but I won’t find the same meaning as I will when I reread “To Kill a Mockingbird” again. Scout teaches me something new and wonderful and horrible about people every time.

Does it make any more sense yet? It really doesn’t to me either but maybe after a few posts I will be able to make it clear.

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Mar 08

Genre Talk: Science Fiction

If it can be said that fantasy is defined by containing some element of the fantastic or magic then science fiction is all about the technology. Just like fantasy, though, sci-fi is a lot more than its base elements. There are many different kinds of science fiction that is written for many purposes.

The first flavor of sci-fi is space operas. Space operas are the space adventures like Star Wars or others stories were the hero goes jetting about the universe saving the world. Now just because it is a space opera does not mean that it lacks any substance. In many ways, I think Star Trek (yes, I know it is a show not a book, cut me some slack) falls in the category of a space opera since all but one of the series are about people on space ships zooming around the universe interacting with alien races but it is not all fluff. I have heard some very intelligent people argue the social implications of Star Trek. (This goes into a sci-fi rant I have later. I might even get to it today.)

Awesome Flipping Book

Amazing book

One of my favorite flavors of science fiction is called cyberpunk. Worlds in cyberpunk tend to be grittier and filled with a blurring of the lines between humans and machines. Elements like cybernetic implants and highly advanced artificial intelligence are very prevalent in cyberpunk.  William Gibson’s books and short stories also embody another popular element in cyber punk with the highly urban settings and encompassing urban sprawl. His books and Philip K Dick’s books (more specifically Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) also epitomize another big element of cyberpunk, the blurring of the lines of what makes us human.

I am absolutely positive there is a term for the rest of science fiction about technologically advanced societies. I just don’t know it and I am not in the mood to go searching for it. But, there is another more popular area of science fiction about futuristic societies doing futuristic things. Some of these are highly technical and intricate. I guess these would be considered along the line of “hard” science fiction. Issac Asimov is one big example of this.  I haven’t been a big fan of this kind of sci-fi since  they seem somehow cold to me. They are more interested in the technology than the people. I am probably absolutely wrong here though and I need to go back and reread stories.

It is now time for my big science fiction rant.

Ursula K. Le GuinScience fiction catches a lot of crap. People look at it as a bunch of nerds thinking about aliens and gizmos. This is true in some cases. I think, though,  science fiction always the author to make observations about society in an effective way. Think of it this way; science fiction allows a certain distance from the problems that the author is commenting on. It is much more comfortable to discuss prejudice when it is about aliens and not making automatically triggering our social sensitivities. It is much easier to discuss racism when the colors involved are blue and green and not black and white. Gender roles are much easier to examine when it takes place on some ungodly frozen planet with aliens with changeable gender rather than men and women in a modern setting. This is the purpose for science fiction, to allow us to examine ourselves from a safe distance so we can understand not only our prejudices and roles in lives but also what makes us human. (Go read some Le Guin and William Gibson, you will be a better person for it!)

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Mar 05

More Fantasy Talk

I know, I know, I said today I would write about Sci-Fi but I didn’t know I would be at that Tina’s house today when I wrote that. I can still write while I am here but I do not feel like I can give the proper attention required for a post on the genre of science fiction. Instead I have decided expound more on an idea that Renee brought up in a comment.

She said that everything she reads now after Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter seem to mirror them. She is absolutely right but I think there is a reason for that.

Lord of the Rings includes all of the major elements of high fantasy. It has all of the classic races, the adventure that is necessary for a good high fantasy story, and it has the same magic that is so recognizable. Races like elves and dwarfs have been running through people’s imaginations for centuries. It seems to me that there is something very primal about imagining a race of forest dwelling near-humans that have ethereal qualities to them. I think that same force is present in dwarfs because so many cultures have small humans who live under ground.

Also, all high fantasy has the adventure and epic battles.  The basis of most fantasy is the conflict between good and evil. The battle between good and evil in LotR is on a massive scale. Some books will have one good wizard fighting a bad wizard or even one good group versus a bad group. In Lord of the Rings, it is the ultimate ancient evil gathering all of the evil in the world in order to destroy all that is good in the world.

Another element of high fantasy that LotR has is named or magical swords. Bilbo and Frodo used Sting the dagger that glowed in the presence of orcs and goblins and Gandolf had Glamdring. Another named sword was Aragorn’s sword, Anduril, which is the reforged version of Narsil. This isn’t new to LotR. Excalibur is just one example of the magical or named sword. It was a common theme in folk tales.

The premise of a school for young wizards like in the Harry Potter series is not a really common one but the comic X-men was a very popular franchise about a school for children with mutant powers.  Other elements of her stories are from fairy and folk tales. Now there is several books about kids going to some form of magical school. Peter Jackson and the Olympians is one example. The kids are demi-gods, not wizards, but it is a similar idea. The Charlie Bone series is the same thing. He is a kid that gets sent off to a boarding school when he shows special powers. The boarding school is an arts school that also has kids who have similar special powers. Unlike Hogwarts, Charlie’s school is a creepy scary school with frightening teachers and is highly regimented.

 

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Mar 03

Genre Talk: Fantasy

Modesitt

The first book in the series I am currently reading.

So, this might shock some of you but my favorite genre is fantasy.  I know some of you never saw that coming because I *seem* the type to like fantasy but I think fantasy gets a bad rep.

Interjection: before I even begin discussing fantasy I need to lay down one thing. Fantasy and Science Fiction are not the same thing. They may seem like it it to the non-nerd but they are different genres with different elements  that rarely intermingle.  You are not going to see a space ship in a fantasy novel. Saturday’s blog is going to be about sci-fi.

So here is the stereotype: some young man goes dashing off on a horse to save some beautiful and helpless dame. Along the way, he finds a few people to help him with his quest. Most often he also finds that he has some magical powers. In essence, this is the basic plot line of almost every fantasy story ever written. It does not mean fantasy is bad.

Anyone who has ever heard me talk about writing at any length knows I hold certain beliefs about writing. One of those beliefs is that there are a limited number of plots in this world. If anyone reads enough books across enough genres they begin to see that in actuality all of the stories they read share core elements with each other. The only difference between books is the details the author puts into the books.

Lemme break it down in a different way. In literature there is the concept of the archetype. Archetypes are sort of a common theme or element that is common in all writing, kind of like universal metaphors. They range from things like the great flood (look at how many cultures have great flood stories) to the journey of the hero. (Joseph Campbell is the king of the hero’s journey but he gets his own paragraph.) I had a professor in college, Dr. Kelley Logan, who was focused on the psychological elements of the works we studied. She also happened to be a Jungian, who named archetypes. Before her class, I had noticed them but I hadn’t fully understood what they were or their importance.

Anyway, one of the most common archetypes is the hero’s journey.  Another thing my education introduced to me is Joseph Campbell. He was a mythologist (I am pretty sure I made that word up) that wrote a this fantastic book about the commonality of heroes across cultures. What he outlined is the basic format for every single fantasy novel I have ever read.  This does not mean that fantasy is unoriginal but I think it means that it appeals to the same primal part of some of us that enjoy metaphor and the fantastic.One a great side note, George Lucas recorded at Skywalker Ranch many videos of Joseph Campbell talking about his life’s work because it inspired so much of Star Wars. The videos are amazing and made me rethink a lot of my assumptions about my world.

I love fantasy because it allows the same story to be told but with great creative elements. They are all the same coming of age tales that we see in books about any real world decade but they have more metaphor and creativity. I also think it takes a quite a bit of skill to make a character relate able if they can wield magic or are masters of strange arcane things like sword fighting or anything else you would see at a renaissance fair.

Okay time for another interjection. There is this common idea that all fantasy takes place in some medieval setting with horses and swords. This is just high fantasy as I understand it. Some fantasy, known as modern fantasy, take place in more modern settings. They just have to involve some element of magic or of the fantastic. Some of my favorite books and authors are modern fantasy writers. I am not going to go into a lot of specifics because I know I will want to write about them at greater length later in the month but a few stellar examples of fantasy writers are Neil Gaimon, Jim Butcher, or Christopher Moore.

I just reread over this and I think I have rambled enough for today. I promise there shall be more later.

 

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Mar 01

Oh Thank God it is March

Welcome the fifth month of my crazy experiment. I, for one, am glad that it is no longer February. My visitors dropped in February but I think it is because I finally split up my two blogs and so the traffic has to adjust and I don’t see many people accidentally finding my blog while searching for wal-mart.  I will not let this set back harm my enthusiasm! I will continue to blog! I will continue to have themes! I will continue to over use exclamation marks to prove that I don’t need outside approval! (Really, I am quite needy and do require outside approval not matter how much I try to cover it with punctuation bravado.)

Anyway, March is book month. I have been threatening to have a book month for ages now. Well, I am making good on my threat. Like I said Saturday, later this month I am flying half way across the country to spend a few days with my boyfriend and I am fully expecting to be a total wreck at any moment. I do see the humor in planning for one’s insanity but I think it is Tina wearing off on me.

I pick books for an insanity month because I love them and it will be second nature to write five hundred words about one of my great loves.  When I was little my mom would always fall asleep if she tried to read to us so she would sit in bed with my sister and I and have us “read” to her. We would make up stories to go along with the pictures. I loved it. She never made us feel like we had to get it right and go along with the story, she just let us create our own little worlds to go along with the pictures on the pages. I am sure this is a big reason I have loved telling stories my entire life. I also think this is why I tried to convince my grandmother’s neighbor that we had a house trained horse when I was six. It used the litter box and everything.

I actually remember one of the first books I ever read. It was this big purple book with a tree on the front. It had many different stories in it that got more difficult. The first story was about a monkey in a tree and the second story was about a lion who let birds take hair from his mane until he was bald. I was so proud of myself. I also remember that my sister would help me read it because it was her book before it was mine. She helped me learn to read and to drive. Big sisters definitely have good points.

So, anyway, books this month. I should come up with a plan on how I want to handle this. I should decide to write about a book, author, series, or genre for each blog but I am not going to. I am going to wing it. That us the great thing about calling it an experiment and not producing the blog for someone, I can do what I want and if it doesn’t work, do something else as long as it stays on theme.

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Feb 26

Bai-Bai February

This is my last post of the super wal-mart month. I once again proved that I could bullshit my way through a month worth of blogs about anything. I am still very glad that it is almost March. I have my topic picked out and it is a fairly easy one since next month promises to be crazy and I really don’t know if I will be posting the 21-24.  The draw of the Florida sun and vacation time might be stronger than my desire to torture my readers.

This month has taught me a few things. First, I go to wal-mart more than I think normal people do. Second, I am really bitchy about wal-mart. Third, I always come home with some sort of story. I also talk to everyone. I pretend it is part of my charm. I am that crazy woman.

Today I went to wal-mart, again. As I was turning into the parking lot Cee-Lo Green’s “Forget You” came on the radio. I sang it at the top of my lungs but only using the real words.  I got some strange looks. I continued to sing it, mostly in my head, but sometimes not, as I wandered around getting my stuff. I had a blast. People looked at me like I was off my rocker and some smiled at me. I was the crazy lady at wal-mart and I loved it.

Yep that is the story. I like it. Be back in March!

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Feb 24

Wal-mart Invades the Interwebz

So it is no big secret that Wal-Mart wants to take over the world. It reminds me of the corporation in Wall-E, Buy-N-Large, with its logo on everything. (The rampant consumerism in that movie also reminds me of wal-mart.)

Side note: I am about to throw some information at you about Wal-Mart from it’s Wikipedia site. Most people who have been around me while I was doing a research paper know I do not consider Wikipedia a credible source since any schmuck with an internet connection can write an article and post it. I consider getting serious research material from Wikipedia about as reliable as asking an eight year old boy about sex. The jest might be right but there is A LOT missing.

Anyway, wal-mart, according to Wikipedia, has over eight thousand stores in fifteen different countries under fifty-five different names. I am not going to list all of the different countries or names because I am simple not that interested but, needless to say, wal-mart is pretty damned ubiquitous. In fact, I think if wal-mart where to join forces with Starbucks and AARP, they could take over the world. (I am a little frightened by AARP because they seem to be garnering more and more influence in the world. I see a conspiracy of mammoth proportions, but that could be just me.) As I have written before, wal-mart of the southern identity for decades now. It has started to invade the internet now too.

Obviously wal-mart has it’s own website. I have shopped it a few times actually and I hate it.  You would think that such a massive corporation would spend the money to make a really effective and usable website for it’s main web presence but I think they drank too much of their own Kool-Aid and bought it at a discount. I know that as a mal-mart shopper of multiple decades I should understand that value and bargain are not synonymous and most of the time cheaper means crappy plastic that breaks. I also thought that someone at the wal-mart headquarters would realize that a great website would make them more money than a crap website and, in the end, be a better value. Anyway, Walmart.com sucks because it so clunky to navigate. Bah. So wal-mart’s other web presence is what everyone else says about it.

I googled walmart and I got some interesting stuff. The first thing that came up that wasn’t either multiple ways to get to wal-mart’s website was peopleofwalmart.com which has become an internet phenomena. It is a place where people go to upload pictures that they take of people at their local wal-mart. Every time I get ready to go to wal-mart I examine myself and ask myself one vital question: do I look decent enough not to show up on POWM? If the answer is yes, then I go. I think if the answer is ever no, I might end up in therapy. Please. I contribute to a site called urlybits.com (formally the daily shite) and the founders of that site also have a site isviral.com and they have a great video of a woman getting mad that her mother ended up on POWM and going to FoxNews about it. It is epic on so many levels.

Most of the other search results were people talking about how much they hate wal-mart. People hate wal-mart. They write about it, a whole freaking lot. I was shocked by how many site there were talking about the various ways wal-mart is evil. People really hate wal-mart and after writing about it for a month I actually understand.

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