8 posts tagged “books”

Tagged reading

Jan 13, 2008
9 comments

i got tagged by EvilWombatQueen

Here are the rules

1. Grab your nearest book.

2. Open the book to page 123.

3. Find the fifth sentence.

4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.

5. Tag 5 different people.

---------------------------------------

WELL, i have... just a sec...five books hanging out in the living room with me - i've read all of them and they're still up here because i haven't put them away downstairs in my bookroom yet - so, i'm picking the book nearest to me as i sit on the couch!

"Cats went in and out of the witch's house all day long. The windows stayed open, and the doors, and there were other doors, cat-sized and private, in the walls and up in the attic. The cats were large and sleek and silent."

--- from the short story "Catskin" by Kelly Link in her book, Magic for Beginners

i've never tagged people, and, like EWQ, i wouldn't want people to feel obligated - but i think this is really cool - so, i'm tagging Chezza, Stephel, LBeeze, aries67, and Carlisa - everyone else is welcome to join in:)

"Who wants to live forever?" - Queen

May 14, 2007
6 comments

well, would you? - want to live forever?

well, in movies and books, one of the ways we most often see immortality (except for a stake or beheading) through the eyes of vampires - they're mostly evil - so in some sense, they pay for their immortality by giving up their souls - the message here would be - immortality is bad - to take this message even further

there's Angel

Angel - Season One (Slim Set)

- a vampire with a soul but turned evil (he used to be really, really evil) once he reached pure happiness/bliss - which, in this case, meant hitting the hay with his lady love, Buffy, The Vampire Slayer - so, in his case, you can be a vampire, have a soul, be largely immortal, but can never be with the woman you truly love - well, that's punishment for you (i always wondered whether the same applied to Spike) - who else do we have?

ah, well, there's Nick Knight from Forever Knight (Canadian) - a vampire who's good, because he wants to be human so badly - he's a cop and saves the innocent to make up for being evil, i guess - very similar to angel - not sure about the whole soul bit this time around - he's always having to fight his evil side, especially when surrounded by fellow vampires like the beautiful and somewhat evil Janette, who he can have safe sex with:) (Janette eventually fell in love with a mortal, became mortal herself, and promptly died) - Nick's other vamp is his "sire" Lucien, who has a radio show and mocks Nick's every attempt to be good - well, in this case, Nick is wealthy, can have a sort of love life and doesn't seem to face too many negatives, except NOT be able to reciprocate the mortal medical examiner's love because he may loose control and kill her by accident - sort of a negative - but seems less poignant than Buffy/Angel

Underworld (Widescreen Special Edition)

the best woman vampire i know is Seline, from Underworld - she's sort of "redeemed" by falling in love with a mortal who turns into a vampire/werewolf super-hybrid (or something) - she's pretty kick-ass and gets to love who she wants, even though they're being hunted to the death - not bad, really - but all in all, there's definitely a price for being immortal

ok, enough with the vampires, but they are popular

another immortal i've watched is Duncan MacLeod from Highlander

Highlander The Series - Season 2

- here, you're born immortal and you only find out after you've died unnaturally first - then you're stuck at whatever age you were, like vampires - which can be bad, especially with that pesky "there can be only one" clause - you have to fight another immortal to stay alive and not have them rob your strength and power from you - you can't really hide, because immortals can "sense" each other, so hiding forever is not really an option - however, Duncan could get a lot of action, but it seems he's mostly a one woman man in the series - unfortunately, (or fortunately) - immortals are sterile once they turn immortal - so, that could be good, actually - so, here we've got immortals basically human in every way, but there is a price for this immortality in that there are a number of immortals trying to cut your head off all the time

Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul

Mort

we also come across immortality in different kinds of gods, goddesses, demons

Sympathy for the Devil

and other mythic beings - the "great sacrifice" sometimes involved giving up said immortality - often for love - other instances of immortality come as aliens with really long life spans of hundreds of years, which is almost as good as immortality in a human's eyes probably - there are people who "ascend" to a higher beings - but that usually involves leaving your loved ones all together, forever - so that's really the same as dying almost, as far as anyone else is concerned? - i guess being in "ghost" form would

Ghost Whisperer - The Complete First Season

constitute a certain kind of immortality - it does seems that many of us would like to think of our deceased family members are hanging

The Ship Who Sang

out watching over us until they've "helped us" and then move on to a "better place" (and the more i think about that, the more creeped out i feel) - i gotta admit, an old fashioned ghost story scares the crap out of me every time, even if the ghosts are benign - then there these really interesting instances in

The Island

sci-fi literature - liveships - like in Anne McCaffrey's books - in this case, a person who is greatly incapacitated in body but not in mind can be transplanted into a spaceship - and have a new life, likely very greatly extended - would you go this far to keep yourself vital and living? - very cool - i think sometimes they tended to go nuts, though - that would be the price - and how about in the movie, The Island (never mind the actiony bits) - where clones are created for paying rich people - whenever they need parts, they just harvest them from the clones - i imagine that could extend one's life way past a normal life span - all you need is a bottomless bank account - people have those these days - i think in a few hundred years, this may not be altogether implausible

there are tons more examples, but i'd be here for a while - and i'm not immortal:)

but, i guess there's no "guilt free" immortality - and it seems you can always be killed somehow - so maybe it would end up being a matter of dodging death rather than living life - would you eventually be bored? - would it bother you to see the people you love die year after decade after century? - would the logistics and sheer paperwork of having to lie your way through your existence be too much? - would seeing the world move on and change be worth all this? - i don't know
and does our fascination with immortality in movies, tv, books largely stem from our fear of sickness, disease and death? would you want to stick around for a few hundred years? - to be around in the future? - to see where this is all going? - our world, our universe?- who wants to live forever?
if there ever is a secret of immortality - a veritable fountain of youth - how far would we go to make sure no one or everyone could drink from it? - pretty damn far, i imagine

whatever the case may be, i still think the idea of immortality prompts some really interesting debate even if it's entirely impossible

**also on my Dreamer and Thinkers group

Dreamers and Thinkers

Apr 25, 2007
Post a comment

visit and/or join My Group on all things sci-fi/fantasy and life - (for newbies - find the link under the My Groups link the left side of this page)

Human and Robot Togetherness

Apr 20, 2007
2 comments

Sonny?

i watched "I, Robot" for the third time a couple months ago - i really liked the movie

Data

- i think the CGI is fantastic and i thought casting Will Smith was inspired (i still love Fresh Prince) - i am a little biased because my good friend,Glen, worked on the movie (he works for WETA) - anyways, i just got to thinking that i really don't think humans and robots could co-exist- have any of you ever those animation shorts inspired by the Matrix?- you know the one in which the robot is giving the humans an apple? - i found that one absolutely heartbreaking - let's not even get started on the Terminator mythology - sometimes, it's hard deciding who to root for - humans do suck a lot of the time - but, we have our good points - and robots, well, they could be indestructible and completely soulless - or not, but i imagine they could be very efficient and could run things fairly well - i don't know, I'd trust DATA with my life, would you? - i mean, machines do malfunction and all of the sudden they're evil? - i'd say humans do their share of malfunctioning themselves - and what about the melding of the two, like in liveships - sort of golem like in the Robin Hobbs books - different, but it's not human for sure - or in the liveships a la Anne McCaffrey

The Ship Who Sang

- like a brainship - where a human consciousness is melded with a piece of machinery - would that be better? - sounds cool - and certainly far, far, far off in the way-never-happening of sci-fi/fantasy-ness but fun to think about - so back to the future - no, i do not think that humans and robots/computers/androids could

Car

co-exist very well - humans are egotistic and way too full of themselves and many think they're infallible - it is easy to see how we could be doing a fine job of destroying each other without even bringing robots into the equation - i could see how we would want to have robots as basically slaves - humans like slavery - somehow, it's in our nature to think we're better than each other and to keep other people down - it's a behavior we have to be taught out of, i think - but, then we have that pesky thing called a conscience - and possibly something else called empathy - and some of us might not enjoy seeing even metal being enslaved - how would we handle this? - especially since we have media which doesn't exactly give us an optimistic view of the future with or without robots - assuming AI is even ever going to be possible - any new takes on the matter?

**from my Dreamers and Thinkers group

BTW - the picture set next to Dreamers and Thinkers...

Apr 19, 2007
Post a comment

Hubble/Spitzer nebula image

photo created by the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes - amazing isn't it? - if you like this image and would like to see more, visit http//hubblesite.org - you will be blown away by the beauty in the universe

The Neverending Story - in my friend Rebecca's words

Apr 19, 2007
Post a comment

The NeverEnding Story

Rebecca (who is doing her Ph.D in English at Princeton) - is one of my best friends in the whole world and emailed me a very sweet letter after reading my blog - anyways, one of the things she wrote to me was about the movie, The Neverending Story, which was also one of my favorite movies when it came out - here's an excerpt of what she said (just in case she doesn't come do this herself)

"...the first fantasy/scifi movie i ever saw---and I'll confess, it had me in tears. It was the Neverending Story, and it scared the buhjeezus out of me. But, in retrospect, it was rather an awesome and sublime type of fear---the idea of another world existing in close proximity to ours, and the more frightening idea of its possible termination. A lot for a little kid to face on the big screen..."
- Rebecca

As for me? I really wanted that gigantic dog/dragon to be my close and personal best buddy:)

**from my Dreamers and Thinkers group

Chronicles of Narnia - Why I didn't see the God stuff when I was little?

Apr 19, 2007
Post a comment

Right - when i was about 11 or so, i got a fantastic pressie - the full set of The Chronicles of Narnia - as you do, when you're a voracious reader, i gobbled all the books up in a very short time and absolutely LOVED them - and of course re-read them over and over again (especially "A Horse and His Boy" - i think that's the title), which was my favorite one) - who wouldn't want to open a wardrobe into another land, have awesome adventure that include all sorts of talking creatures and a giant, shaggy, huggable lion and then also find out that you are also royalty! - and i loved Tumnus! - i remember watching the BCC version of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and sobbing hysterically when Tumnus got turned into stone - so cool on so many levels - well, i don't know what happened to that set but recently (i'm now 33), i purchased the set again and re-read it - and WOW! - the Christian overtones were overwhelming! - things i'd never read into it before just screamed out at me - i recently saw the movie and the whole Aslan on the altar bit was just... - Wow! - things i'd never even remotely have thought while i was reading it as a child - reading it now: after 17 some years of Catholic&Christian upbringing followed by almost 17 some years of deprogramming from the Catholic&Christian upbringing - i hate to say that it almost completely destroyed my enjoyment of the book for a little while - the roaring adventures i had read about in these books as a young girl were tainted by grown-up knowledge - you know when you're young an wide-eyed and innocent - that's when the firsts of things are truly enjoyable i think - when you can't insinuate any Other into you experiences - it was like i was betrayed by my own mind - anyways, i'm lucky, i can revert back to that 11-yr old girl's mindset whenever i want to (made possible by having to live in my own mind a lot because i have to find stories to write myself and also made possible by the fact that i have no children, so can act like one whenever i want to - at least in my head) - so, although my recent experience reading The Chronicles of Narnia may not have been as thoroughly enjoyable as it once was, I still really love them as simply fantastic adventures - and ones i would still dearly love to imagine myself immersed in

Thoughts?

**from my Dreamers and Thinkers group

Welcome! to my Blog - also - Please join Dreamers and Thinkers if you are so inclined!

Apr 18, 2007
Post a comment

I like to say that from the first fantasy book I read - or from the first sci-fi book I read, I was hooked for life - i must have been about nine when I first read Tamora Pierce's Alanna: The First Adventure -

Alanna: The First Adventure (Song of the Lioness)

To this day, I read her Lioness Quartet practially every year (and to my absolute but until now, private embarassment, act out loudly Alanna's part with a ridiculous Brit accent) - I wrote to the author after I

Dune (1984) [HD DVD]

had gotten married (10years ago - wow!) and to my delight, she wrote me back a very sweet letter! How many fans get a personal letter from their favorite author of all time!!! - My first recollection of watching a movie of this genre is mixed with the beginning of not altogether happy period in my life - My parents had gotten divorced and I was visiting my dad - it was like midnight - i was in my bed watching my tiny-ass little purple portable black and white tv - i couldn't fall asleep and somehow ended up watching "Dune" - the Dino DeLaurentis Dune - can you imagine - on a four inch by four inch screen? - i was blown away - and of course it took two nights to watch the whole thing - now, you may debate the merits of the actual movie now, but to my very young self, i thought i had literally slipped into another world under the covers of my bed - And, of course, I was eternally in love with Kyle McLaughlin for the rest of my adolescent life! - My point is, I'll never forget that feeling.