To catch up with today's vampire mythos, I finally got around to reading Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire. After seeing the movie numerous times over the years, you think it would have hit my reading pile sooner, but no.
As far as my pet peeve with movies "based on" books sometimes being really out there and just borrowing the characters' names and the settings, I was impressed to see that the movie didn't stray that far from it. Granted, reading about Louis' mental dilemmas instead of seeing Brad Pitt in anguish on the screen was a little dry until he and Claudia kill Lestat and go to Europe, it was intriguing to get more behind it. While the prose was a bit flowery and purple for me sometimes as opposed to my favourite authors styles, it is a well-written book and the scenes come alive in your head. After my slow start, I plowed through the remainder of the book.
The ending surprised me a little, since it was where the movie went slightly different. While Pitt's anguish in the early scenes was slightly believable, I get none of the deadness that Louis emits once he's lost Claudia and anything "human" he'd been trying to hold onto. Rice's description of Louis' existence after that episode was very vivid and the most frightening part of the book because to be that dark inside would be creepy.
While definitely better than the Twilight series vampires, I do see where some of the more modern vampire stereotypes arose from, but because of that impact on the world, it's worth the read just to see what the hype is and to broaden one's vampire repertoire.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Get Ready for Some "Freakonomics"
Why are real-estate agents and sumo wrestlers alike?
That's just one of the questions economist Steven D. Levitt answers in his book Freakonomics, co-authored with Stephen J. Dubner, a writer the New York Times Magazine sent to interview him one fateful day in 2003. Unlike your traditional stereotype of economists, Levitt likes to view the world in questions and keep asking why instead of accepting the conventional wisdom. Never mind stock markets and supply and demand when you can look at the hierarchy of a drug gang and why the gang members still live with their mothers. By stumbling across someone with the right data, he found that your average drug dealer in the late eighties in the USA is only making about $3.30 an hour, less than minimum wage! No wonder they have part-time jobs.
What I liked about the book were the followable mathematics and the way that the authors lead you not into new territory, just to the edge so they can open your eyes to what guarded skepticism lets you achieve in life instead of following with the herd blindly.
So why are real-estate agents and sumo wrestlers alike? Pick up a copy and find out!
That's just one of the questions economist Steven D. Levitt answers in his book Freakonomics, co-authored with Stephen J. Dubner, a writer the New York Times Magazine sent to interview him one fateful day in 2003. Unlike your traditional stereotype of economists, Levitt likes to view the world in questions and keep asking why instead of accepting the conventional wisdom. Never mind stock markets and supply and demand when you can look at the hierarchy of a drug gang and why the gang members still live with their mothers. By stumbling across someone with the right data, he found that your average drug dealer in the late eighties in the USA is only making about $3.30 an hour, less than minimum wage! No wonder they have part-time jobs.
What I liked about the book were the followable mathematics and the way that the authors lead you not into new territory, just to the edge so they can open your eyes to what guarded skepticism lets you achieve in life instead of following with the herd blindly.
So why are real-estate agents and sumo wrestlers alike? Pick up a copy and find out!
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Review of "1000 Places to See in the USA and Canada Before You Die"
For a bit of a laugh, since I was getting bored of not thinking about traveling, I picked up Patricia Schultz's "1000 Places to See in the USA and Canada Before You Die" to see what all the hype was about.
I read the whole of the introduction, and it was cute since it is true that you don't really notice the beauty of what's around you. The disclaimers about the content of the entries was helpful too, and easy to follow.
Then came the places to see....
Arranged by areas of the states, that was the only interesting thing about it. Sure, there were some places that I hadn't heard of before, but most of the cities and festivals are just your standard hyped-up places. While I don't mind that, because if something is popular, it's usually worth visiting, but the introduction led me to believe that it would be more about cute, out-of-the-way towns than the 10 areas of New York City, or calling a festival "a place". Some of the more major cities in the USA had 2-10 entries in the book...why not give me one entry about how much the city has to offer and then give me another unique city to visit?
And the inclusion of Canada was laughable. It makes up about, oh 1/16th of all the entries? And those entries are mostly about Vancouver, with a few entries for Quebec and Ontario and then one or two entries each for the rest of the provinces and territories. And the places listed, aside from the territories, are all reachable on just jumping across the border as you skirt along the upper USA, not much in the northern areas of the provinces except where you drive through BC to get to Alaska.
The entries were what the guidelines promised though, the hotel, restaurant or museum where the writer stopped, with a couple other pieces of information, but the "where" part was odd because it was like the author was measuring distances from the nearest airport and assuming you want to rent a car and drive from that airport. What if you're doing a road trip of the USA, or coming from a different direction? Not very helpful then.
All in all, cute for armchair travelers and people who don't know where they want to go, but it takes some of the fun out of just exploring the roads on your own and is misnamed "1000 places".
2 out of 4 stars.
I read the whole of the introduction, and it was cute since it is true that you don't really notice the beauty of what's around you. The disclaimers about the content of the entries was helpful too, and easy to follow.
Then came the places to see....
Arranged by areas of the states, that was the only interesting thing about it. Sure, there were some places that I hadn't heard of before, but most of the cities and festivals are just your standard hyped-up places. While I don't mind that, because if something is popular, it's usually worth visiting, but the introduction led me to believe that it would be more about cute, out-of-the-way towns than the 10 areas of New York City, or calling a festival "a place". Some of the more major cities in the USA had 2-10 entries in the book...why not give me one entry about how much the city has to offer and then give me another unique city to visit?
And the inclusion of Canada was laughable. It makes up about, oh 1/16th of all the entries? And those entries are mostly about Vancouver, with a few entries for Quebec and Ontario and then one or two entries each for the rest of the provinces and territories. And the places listed, aside from the territories, are all reachable on just jumping across the border as you skirt along the upper USA, not much in the northern areas of the provinces except where you drive through BC to get to Alaska.
The entries were what the guidelines promised though, the hotel, restaurant or museum where the writer stopped, with a couple other pieces of information, but the "where" part was odd because it was like the author was measuring distances from the nearest airport and assuming you want to rent a car and drive from that airport. What if you're doing a road trip of the USA, or coming from a different direction? Not very helpful then.
All in all, cute for armchair travelers and people who don't know where they want to go, but it takes some of the fun out of just exploring the roads on your own and is misnamed "1000 places".
2 out of 4 stars.
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