Friday Finds (Jan 27)

FRIDAY FINDS… is where you share the book titles you discovered or heard about during the past week. These can be books you were told about, books you discovered while browsing blogs/bookstores online, or books that you actually purchased. This event is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

As usual MizB asks the question:

What great books did you hear about/discover this past week? Share with us your FRIDAY FINDS!

For once I didn’t find anything for myself this week, but had to content myself with the books I already have. I did find something for my daughter, though. I was checking out the new releases for the Kobo and discovered that a series of seven e-books had been released for The 39 Clues series. The series is called Rapid Fire and is an e-book only release. So I downloaded them to my Kobo and she’ll probably read them next week when we travel to Sault Ste. Marie for a swim meet. My lack of personal new finds should give me time to tackle my almost out of control TBR pile.

Booking Through Thursday – Writing or Riveting? (Jan 26)

This week Booking Through Thursday asked the following:

What’s more important: Good writing? Or a good story? (Of course, a book should have BOTH, but…)

As BTT wrote, a book should have both. If I have to choose I’ll pick writing over story. I like a good story, but bad writing drives me crazy. I can’t finish something if the writing is bad, but I have been known to finish something where the good writing is the only redeeming factor.

WWW Wednesday (Jan 25)

To play along with this weekly book event, hosted by Should Be Reading, just answer the following three (3) questions…

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

What are you currently reading? I am currently reading Greenvoe by George Mackay Brown. This has been a great read so far and I hope to have it done by the weekend. This was GMB’s first novel and is the story of one week in the (fictitious) Orkney community of Greenvoe. Some of the characters remind me of people I knew growing up.

What did you recently finish reading? I finished a couple of good books this week – Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson and Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick. Robopocalypse is awesome! Once I got into it is was hard to put down. Wonderstruck was great as well. It was written in the same style as The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Both these books are well worth checking out.

What do you think you’ll read next? I’m hoping to read either The Double by Fyodr Dostoyevsky or The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs. Both of these are part of my reading challenges for this year, so I’ll see which of them takes my fancy the most or maybe I’ll just start them both and have them on the go at the same time.

Teaser Tuesdays (Jan 24)

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My teasers this week are:

I heave my bag in through the window and climb in after it. Such is the only mode of entry into this house.

From page 66 of Greenvoe, by George Mackay Brown. From the back cover: ‘Greenvoe, the community on the Orkney Island of Hellya, has existed unchanged for generations. In this, his first novel, George Mackay Brown has recreated a week in its life, mixing history with personality – from minister to marxist – in a brilliant sparkling mixture of prose and poetry.’

This book is from 1972, but I never read it when I lived in Orkney. It is only since I left there that I have really started to enjoy and appreciate the work of George Mackay Brown. I’m really enjoying this one as it has such rich Orcadian-type characters. It probably won’t be the last time I read it.

3D – is it really worth it?

The little movie theatre in Elliot Lake, where I live, doesn’t show movies in 3D. This is not through choice, but because it doesn’t have the equipment. We are fortunate to have a movie theatre at all, one with 2 screens as well, in a ‘city’ of less than 12,000 inhabitants. The theatre is independent and locally owned. It is open Tuesday through Saturday, with movies always starting at 7pm. The only exception to this is the occasional Saturday or Sunday matinee at 2pm. Entry is $7.00 for adults and $6.00 for children and seniors. The four of us in my family can see a movie and have snacks for $40.00 or less, which is a fairly reasonable night out these days. I’m glad our movie theatre doesn’t have 3D capability. For one reason, it would put the price up. For another, I just don’t think that 3D is worth the extra money.

I had been hoping that the (re)introduction of 3D in recent years would be a passing phase, but it seems that it is here to stay and just continues to grow out of hand. With Disney now announcing that many of its Pixar movies, among others, from the past 20 years will be getting 3D re-releases it seems that we are stuck with it for the foreseeable future and beyond. Add to that the Star Wars movies also being given the 3D treatment and its becoming an epidemic.

I think that many questions need to be asked. Have the movie makers gotten so desperately short of ideas that all they can do is take any number of past movies, give them the 3D treatment and pass them off as something new and exciting? Have they just run out of new ideas for new movies? Most of these movies really gain very little from being given the 3D makeover. I liken it to the colorization of some of the old black and white movies. It really adds very little to what either was a good or bad movie in the first place.

Perhaps 3D is here to stay because many of the new movies lack the story or substance that they claim to and the 3D distracts us from this. Movies should tell good stories and its unfortunate that many of the latest so-called blockbusters are distracted from this by on-screen effects and wizardry at the expense of the story. Samuel Goldwyn once said ‘A wide screen just makes a bad film twice as bad.’ With the current proliferation of 3D I’d update that quote to ’3D just makes a bad film three times as bad.’

Being a big fan of Star Wars, I’ll probably be tempted enough to make the 2 hour journey to Sudbury to see the 3D re-release. However, I still enjoy watching the movies in their original form, warts and all, because that’s where it all started. But how many more updates and re-releases do we have to go through? At some point it has to stop and we can enjoy what we already have. Or maybe we have to stand up and say enough is enough. Whatever way it goes, we know that George Lucas will never have to worry about his wallet being empty.

Anyway, I’ll keep on enjoying the movies in the way that I do and if 3D is your thing, then I hope you enjoy them too, but don’t blame me if the movie you just watched in 3D seemed to be lacking in something. Hopefully that something wasn’t the story, because if it was then you should ask for your money back, because what was the point of it?

Star Trek Vol. 1 – review

I would never describe myself as a ‘trekkie’, but I do enjoy Star Trek. I really enjoyed the original TV series, as well as the big screen spin-offs from this. I also enjoyed the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. I didn’t see much of Voyager, but found it enjoyable when I did.

I approached the latest Star Trek movie, in 2009, with a little trepidation. I wasn’t sure how the film-makers would pull it off without destroying the integrity of the original stuff and I was worried it wouldn’t live up to all the hype. However, my fears soon disappeared when I saw it. I love what they did with the characters and I can’t wait for the next installment to arrive on the big screen, which is slated for May 2013.

Which brings me to the subject of this review. I was browsing NetGalley.com yesterday to see if there was anything that jumped out at me when I discovered that IDW Publishing are releasing Star Trek Vol. 1 on March 27 of this year. It’s a comic book that picks up where the 2009 movie left off. Part one is available for download as a galley from NetGalley, so that’s what I did.

The Star Trek website describes it as follows:

Star Trek, Vol. 1 collects several installments of IDW’s Star Trek series that are set in the Star Trek (2009) universe and re-imagine TOS episodes through the filter of the alternate timeline. Star Trek (2009) writer-producer Roberto Orci has been involved with the project from the beginning, and it will kick off the countdown to the next big-screen adventure. Star Trek, Vol. 1 – written by Mike Johnson, with art by Stephen Molnar and a cover by Tim Bradstreet — will run 104 pages and cost $17.99. 

Unfortunately, I don’t live anywhere near a comic-book store, so I have no idea whether or not these stories have already been released in single issue form. But it is new to me.

The story  is well written and well drawn. I had no problem recognizing the characters or their location. The frames were uncluttered and it had a classic look to it. Although I am familiar with the movie, it seems to me that this could be picked up and read without reference to the movie and still be enjoyed.

Only part 1 was available as a download, which means I only had the first 36 pages to go on. But I enjoyed what I read. The story moved along well. There were appropriate moments of humour and the plot built up well to a difficult decision that Captain Kirk will have to make concerning one of his friends. That’s where part 1 ended and I’m left wanting more.

I think that fans of Star Trek will enjoy this comic book, especially whilst waiting for the next movie to be released. It’ll be interesting to see where the next movie picks up and whether or not this story will be a part of it. I also feel that people who are less familiar with Star Trek could also enjoy it, but whether they would be interested in picking it up or not is another matter.

I’ll be looking for this in March when it is released, not just because I really want to find out what happens next, but also because I think it will be a good one to get anyway. I’m reluctant to give it a rating just now, because what I read was only the first installment of the bigger story. If you liked the 2009 movie then I think it would be worth your while to check this one out. If I do get around to picking it up in March I may try to write a more in-depth review and rating then.

EDIT: Read about the release HERE.

Friday Finds (Jan 20)

FRIDAY FINDS… is where you share the book titles you discovered or heard about during the past week. These can be books you were told about, books you discovered while browsing blogs/bookstores online, or books that you actually purchased. This event is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

As usual MizB asks the question:

What great books did you hear about/discover this past week? Share with us your FRIDAY FINDS!

I probably need to stop ‘finding’ books and read a lot of the ones that are on my TBR list. However, I was surprised to see The Sentimentalists, by Johanna Skisrud, in the thrift store today for $0.25. It’s a recent Giller Prize winner, so it was too good for me to pass by. I will get around to reading it some time!