I haven't read anything since I finished Stasiland. I decided I'll finish reading a book I started a long time ago, but I haven't really had time to read this week.
I'm going to DC in 2 weeks to watch the German men's soccer team play the US men's team. I'm rather excited, even if the majority of the stars won't be there because of the timing of league play. It'll be a chance to see world-class soccer in person. It's a friendly, so they're not limited to three substitutions, which means Jogi gets to try out different players and formations than he would with the A squad. And Miroslav Klose will be there, so hopefully he'll get to play.
I'm taking Amtrak up, so of course my brain decided to give me an anxiety dream about that this morning, where I got to the station and realized I'd forgotten to print my ticket, and then I went to the bathroom and forgot my purse and camera in the stall, and then I went to get on the train but it was a bus and it was night and I couldn't get the work done that I'd planned to because I get motion sick. So I dreamed that I got my phone out to call Ben and tell him how much my trip sucked and then my alarm went off. Pleasant start to the day.
And that's the Friday miscellany for this week.
May 17, 2013
May 15, 2013
Anime you should watch: Black Lagoon
Black Lagoon Sunao Katabuchi/Madhouse, 2006
Lagoon Company, a team of pirate-mercenaries in the South China Sea, is hired to hijack a cargo ship and take a hostage. Unfortunately for Rokuro Okajima, his company doesn't ransom him and writes him off as dead. Rokuro takes on the nickname Rock and joins Lagoon Company. Hijinks ensue. (By "hijinks" I mean violence and piracy.)
This show is very violent! There are shootouts and bombings and lots of guns. If Die Hard is too violent for you, this show will be, too.
Lagoon Company is made up of four people once Rock joins them. Revy (the fanservice gal in the picture there) is very hot-headed and usually shoots first and asks questions later. She terrifies Rock a bit, but they both have a strange attraction to the other. Dutch is the brains of the operation. He's an African-American Vietnam vet. Benny is a blond American computer hacker with a penchant for Hawaiian shirts. He's on the run from the FBI and the mafia.
Lagoon has some rather formidable opposition around the lawless city of Roanapur (fictional): the Chinese mafia (the Hong Kong Triad), headed up by an homage to John Woo characters played by Chow Yun-Fat; Hotel Moscow, a Russian mafia, headed up by Balalaika, a cigar-smoking woman with a major burn scar on one side of her face, who was a captain in the Soviet Army during their war in Afghanistan; and the Colombian cartel, plus various and sundry unaffiliated gangsters, bounty hunters, and mercenaries, a yakuza group, and some neo-Nazis.
The Church of Violence uses a Catholic front to cover illegal arms dealing. Revy knows Eda, one of the "sisters" there, from childhood, and they have a rather friendly-antagonistic relationship.
There is, actually, an overarching plot, involving a lot of background political manipulations. The relationships between the members of Lagoon and their foibles, and their relationships with the other gangsters, play a fairly big role in the series. It's not always a shoot-em-up.
If you like action movies, you can watch all 24 episodes free at Funimation. (US-based readers only.)
Lagoon Company, a team of pirate-mercenaries in the South China Sea, is hired to hijack a cargo ship and take a hostage. Unfortunately for Rokuro Okajima, his company doesn't ransom him and writes him off as dead. Rokuro takes on the nickname Rock and joins Lagoon Company. Hijinks ensue. (By "hijinks" I mean violence and piracy.)
This show is very violent! There are shootouts and bombings and lots of guns. If Die Hard is too violent for you, this show will be, too.
Lagoon Company is made up of four people once Rock joins them. Revy (the fanservice gal in the picture there) is very hot-headed and usually shoots first and asks questions later. She terrifies Rock a bit, but they both have a strange attraction to the other. Dutch is the brains of the operation. He's an African-American Vietnam vet. Benny is a blond American computer hacker with a penchant for Hawaiian shirts. He's on the run from the FBI and the mafia.
Lagoon has some rather formidable opposition around the lawless city of Roanapur (fictional): the Chinese mafia (the Hong Kong Triad), headed up by an homage to John Woo characters played by Chow Yun-Fat; Hotel Moscow, a Russian mafia, headed up by Balalaika, a cigar-smoking woman with a major burn scar on one side of her face, who was a captain in the Soviet Army during their war in Afghanistan; and the Colombian cartel, plus various and sundry unaffiliated gangsters, bounty hunters, and mercenaries, a yakuza group, and some neo-Nazis.
The Church of Violence uses a Catholic front to cover illegal arms dealing. Revy knows Eda, one of the "sisters" there, from childhood, and they have a rather friendly-antagonistic relationship.
There is, actually, an overarching plot, involving a lot of background political manipulations. The relationships between the members of Lagoon and their foibles, and their relationships with the other gangsters, play a fairly big role in the series. It's not always a shoot-em-up.
If you like action movies, you can watch all 24 episodes free at Funimation. (US-based readers only.)
May 13, 2013
Book review: The Ghosts of Berlin
The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape, Brian Ladd, 1997.
I forget where I heard of this book, whether it was a "you might like" on Amazon or a recommendation from someone on the internet, but I added it to my wishlist and it appeared in my hands for my birthday.
It's no secret, not if you've spent any length of time talking to me or read anything I've published, that Berlin is my favorite place in the world. So clearly, a book about the history of Berlin told through its architecture would be right up my alley.
Indeed it was. Ladd divides the book chronologically, mostly, and starts with the walls: the famous one and the one before that, which had been the city wall. He talks about Old Berlin, which he groups from the city's foundation in the 13th century to the end of the Hohenzollern empire (1918), then moves into the metropolis (1920s/Weimar), the Nazi period, divided Berlin, and the capital of the new Germany.
He includes a photograph of Albert Speer's model of Germania, the city Hitler wanted to build over Berlin, which is breathtaking (in the bad way) in its sheer scope. It includes the Reichstag--which is not a small building--dwarfed by the Great Hall. It's obscene and appalling, and reading the various plans Speer and Hitler laid for Berlin's renovation made me turn to Ben and say, exasperatedly, "Nazis!" then read him the offending passage.
For me, the most interesting part was comparing the city as it is now (or was at my last visit in 2010) to the way it was when Ladd wrote the book over fifteen years ago. The final plans for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe hadn't been decided! I'm actually quite happy that the plan presented as the leading design isn't what was eventually implemented, because a slab of granite or metal with 6 million names engraved on it doesn't give anywhere near the sense of walking through the gravestone-like stones that are there.
The Spree Arc plan for the government quarter wasn't implemented the way it was planned in the early 90s, either.
I found this book highly interesting and informative. I would recommend anyone with an interest in modern German history, including the confrontation with the past regarding Nazism, to read this book. I would also recommend having Google Maps open nearby or a recent tourist map so you can orient yourself to the places and street names and see how things did or didn't turn out according to plan.
I forget where I heard of this book, whether it was a "you might like" on Amazon or a recommendation from someone on the internet, but I added it to my wishlist and it appeared in my hands for my birthday.
It's no secret, not if you've spent any length of time talking to me or read anything I've published, that Berlin is my favorite place in the world. So clearly, a book about the history of Berlin told through its architecture would be right up my alley.
Indeed it was. Ladd divides the book chronologically, mostly, and starts with the walls: the famous one and the one before that, which had been the city wall. He talks about Old Berlin, which he groups from the city's foundation in the 13th century to the end of the Hohenzollern empire (1918), then moves into the metropolis (1920s/Weimar), the Nazi period, divided Berlin, and the capital of the new Germany.
He includes a photograph of Albert Speer's model of Germania, the city Hitler wanted to build over Berlin, which is breathtaking (in the bad way) in its sheer scope. It includes the Reichstag--which is not a small building--dwarfed by the Great Hall. It's obscene and appalling, and reading the various plans Speer and Hitler laid for Berlin's renovation made me turn to Ben and say, exasperatedly, "Nazis!" then read him the offending passage.
For me, the most interesting part was comparing the city as it is now (or was at my last visit in 2010) to the way it was when Ladd wrote the book over fifteen years ago. The final plans for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe hadn't been decided! I'm actually quite happy that the plan presented as the leading design isn't what was eventually implemented, because a slab of granite or metal with 6 million names engraved on it doesn't give anywhere near the sense of walking through the gravestone-like stones that are there.
The Spree Arc plan for the government quarter wasn't implemented the way it was planned in the early 90s, either.
I found this book highly interesting and informative. I would recommend anyone with an interest in modern German history, including the confrontation with the past regarding Nazism, to read this book. I would also recommend having Google Maps open nearby or a recent tourist map so you can orient yourself to the places and street names and see how things did or didn't turn out according to plan.
May 10, 2013
Friday things
I finished Ghosts of Berlin (did I already say that last week?) and read the entirety of Stasiland. I'm not sure what's next, but it might be one of the books about soccer I got for Christmas.
I started making curtains for my office, but I haven't finished them yet.
Still watching Attack on Titan, Hataraku Maousama!, Gargantia, and Valvrave. Titan continues to be brutal, Maousama continues to be fun, Gargantia continues to be good, and Valvrave is only getting worse every week. I swear it was written by twelve year olds on a sugar high. There is no logic in the show. It is horrible.
I started making curtains for my office, but I haven't finished them yet.
Still watching Attack on Titan, Hataraku Maousama!, Gargantia, and Valvrave. Titan continues to be brutal, Maousama continues to be fun, Gargantia continues to be good, and Valvrave is only getting worse every week. I swear it was written by twelve year olds on a sugar high. There is no logic in the show. It is horrible.
May 8, 2013
Anime you should watch: Psycho-Pass
Psycho-Pass, Gen Urobuchi (writer), Naoyoshi Shiotani (director), Production I.G 2012-13
The Sibyl System was introduced to bring about a peaceful society. Through monitors spread throughout the cities like security cameras, it can measure people's crime coefficients--a reading of their mental state that shows how likely the person is to commit a crime, also known as the Psycho-Pass.
The Public Safety Bureau has Criminal Investigation Divisions, who are sent out to crime (or potential crime) scenes to apprehend the criminal. The story begins with Akane Tsunemori's first day on the job at MWPSB's CID 1.
Akane's senior partner, Nobuchika Ginoza, is a hard-line, by-the-book cop. Her team of Enforcers, latent criminals who have agreed to work for the PSB, includes Shinya Kogami, a man who doesn't play by the rules. Tomomi Masaoka is the oldest of the Enforcers, so frequently called "Old Man" by his teammates that I had to go to Wikipedia to remember his name. He was a detective in the time before Sibyl, and he didn't weather the transition well. (He also has a metal arm, the presence of which is never explained.)
It starts with a criminal-of-the-week setup, like police procedurals do. But they uncover a link between several seemingly unrelated crimes, who turns out to be a person Kogami has been investigating for several years as the culprit of another set of crimes, Shogo Makishima.
The setup is indeed very Minority Report, and around episode 14, Makishima deftly puts a lampshade on it, by discussing Philip K. Dick (though the book he refers to is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?).
The opening flash-forward scene, where Kogami and Makishima are fighting in a tower, is very reminiscent of the Cowboy Bebop episode "Ballad of Fallen Angels," and it actually occurs in an earlier episode than I expected. There is kind of a Spike-Vicious vibe going on between them.
There are twists and turns, and the series ends exactly the way it needs to (while leaving an opening for a sequel, clever writers...). It didn't end the way I wanted it to (because I've got my own particular narrative kinks and I really wanted Akane to make a different choice), but it ended in the only way that would have been consistent with the way the world was presented.
The entire show is 22 episodes long. US-based readers can watch it free at Funimation. You lucky people won't even have to hang from the cliffs for a week like I did!
The Sibyl System was introduced to bring about a peaceful society. Through monitors spread throughout the cities like security cameras, it can measure people's crime coefficients--a reading of their mental state that shows how likely the person is to commit a crime, also known as the Psycho-Pass.
The Public Safety Bureau has Criminal Investigation Divisions, who are sent out to crime (or potential crime) scenes to apprehend the criminal. The story begins with Akane Tsunemori's first day on the job at MWPSB's CID 1.
Akane's senior partner, Nobuchika Ginoza, is a hard-line, by-the-book cop. Her team of Enforcers, latent criminals who have agreed to work for the PSB, includes Shinya Kogami, a man who doesn't play by the rules. Tomomi Masaoka is the oldest of the Enforcers, so frequently called "Old Man" by his teammates that I had to go to Wikipedia to remember his name. He was a detective in the time before Sibyl, and he didn't weather the transition well. (He also has a metal arm, the presence of which is never explained.)
It starts with a criminal-of-the-week setup, like police procedurals do. But they uncover a link between several seemingly unrelated crimes, who turns out to be a person Kogami has been investigating for several years as the culprit of another set of crimes, Shogo Makishima.
The setup is indeed very Minority Report, and around episode 14, Makishima deftly puts a lampshade on it, by discussing Philip K. Dick (though the book he refers to is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?).
The opening flash-forward scene, where Kogami and Makishima are fighting in a tower, is very reminiscent of the Cowboy Bebop episode "Ballad of Fallen Angels," and it actually occurs in an earlier episode than I expected. There is kind of a Spike-Vicious vibe going on between them.
There are twists and turns, and the series ends exactly the way it needs to (while leaving an opening for a sequel, clever writers...). It didn't end the way I wanted it to (because I've got my own particular narrative kinks and I really wanted Akane to make a different choice), but it ended in the only way that would have been consistent with the way the world was presented.
The entire show is 22 episodes long. US-based readers can watch it free at Funimation. You lucky people won't even have to hang from the cliffs for a week like I did!
May 6, 2013
Book review: Without a Summer
Without a Summer by Mary Robinette Kowal, Tor 2013.
I've reviewed the other entries in the Glamourist Histories series (Shades of Milk and Honey and Glamour in Glass), and this is a delightful third book.
Vincent and Jane are recuperating from their injuries during the Battle of Quatre Bras, where Napoleon was defeated, and Jane's younger sister, Melody (20), is beginning to despair of ever finding a husband. Vincent and Jane get a commission to do a glamural in London, and they decide to take Melody with them to be Out during the Season.
1816 was known as the Year Without A Summer. At the time, the link between volcanic eruptions and cooling wasn't known (remember 2010?), and it took much longer for news of volcanic eruptions in Indonesia to reach northern Europe. In Kowal's alternate historical world, people are blaming the continuing winter and the crop failures that result on coldmongers, a specialized type of glamourist who can make things cold. Typically, they keep groceries cool on the way home in summer or make ices in winter. The populace is dissatisfied, and they attack coldmongers in the street.
Vincent's estranged family invites him and Jane over for dinner. It is readily apparent why Vincent was pleased to become estranged from them.
Jane overhears their employer's son discussing plans to march on Parliament, and she (and Vincent) slowly unravel and become deeply entangled in a web of plots.
One recurring theme throughout the book is prejudice: against the Catholics, the Irish, the Irish Catholics, the Indians, the poor, coldmongers. It's very effective without being ham-handed.
If you read and enjoyed the other books in the series, you will enjoy this one as well. If you haven't read the others, and you enjoy Jane Austen or Georgette Heyer, what are you waiting for?
I've reviewed the other entries in the Glamourist Histories series (Shades of Milk and Honey and Glamour in Glass), and this is a delightful third book.
Vincent and Jane are recuperating from their injuries during the Battle of Quatre Bras, where Napoleon was defeated, and Jane's younger sister, Melody (20), is beginning to despair of ever finding a husband. Vincent and Jane get a commission to do a glamural in London, and they decide to take Melody with them to be Out during the Season.
1816 was known as the Year Without A Summer. At the time, the link between volcanic eruptions and cooling wasn't known (remember 2010?), and it took much longer for news of volcanic eruptions in Indonesia to reach northern Europe. In Kowal's alternate historical world, people are blaming the continuing winter and the crop failures that result on coldmongers, a specialized type of glamourist who can make things cold. Typically, they keep groceries cool on the way home in summer or make ices in winter. The populace is dissatisfied, and they attack coldmongers in the street.
Vincent's estranged family invites him and Jane over for dinner. It is readily apparent why Vincent was pleased to become estranged from them.
Jane overhears their employer's son discussing plans to march on Parliament, and she (and Vincent) slowly unravel and become deeply entangled in a web of plots.
One recurring theme throughout the book is prejudice: against the Catholics, the Irish, the Irish Catholics, the Indians, the poor, coldmongers. It's very effective without being ham-handed.
If you read and enjoyed the other books in the series, you will enjoy this one as well. If you haven't read the others, and you enjoy Jane Austen or Georgette Heyer, what are you waiting for?
May 3, 2013
In-progress Friday
I finished reading Without a Summer, so expect a review of that on Monday. I'm still reading Ghosts of Berlin.
I'm going to see Iron Man 3 tonight. I may have thoughts on it for next Monday, or I may not. We'll see. I'm not a film reviewer per se; I just have opinions.
Still working on a novel that wants to be a novella. I'm going to have to add a lot of padding to this thing.
On that subject, a question for discussion: When you're reading speculative fiction, how realistic or plausible do you want your explanations of how things work? Do you want the writer to have done the math and worked out the physics problems, or are you happy with a bit of handwavium thrown in? Does any of that matter as long as it's consistent within the rules set up by the author that govern the world (magic, superpowers, FTL travel, etc)?
I'm going to see Iron Man 3 tonight. I may have thoughts on it for next Monday, or I may not. We'll see. I'm not a film reviewer per se; I just have opinions.
Still working on a novel that wants to be a novella. I'm going to have to add a lot of padding to this thing.
On that subject, a question for discussion: When you're reading speculative fiction, how realistic or plausible do you want your explanations of how things work? Do you want the writer to have done the math and worked out the physics problems, or are you happy with a bit of handwavium thrown in? Does any of that matter as long as it's consistent within the rules set up by the author that govern the world (magic, superpowers, FTL travel, etc)?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)