TwiddleGeek

Along with playing games and watching movies, I simply love to read. I typically go through a fair amount of books on a large variety of topics including everything from time management to Japanese study, art to various fiction and humor. I’d say my favorite books are of the Sci-fi, fantasy, and study types. I love a good book that can make me laugh, think, or teach me something new. Of course this year I have several more that I’d like to read. I tend to enjoy long running series, last year finishing the complete Harry Potter set and this year His Dark Materials.

First and foremost, I’d like to read a new Bible I recently purchased cover to cover. SpaceKitty helped me pick out a new one over the New Years holiday and I’m quite fond of it. It’s based on the New Living Translation and although I wouldn’t use it for serious study, it makes for a nice and easy read. It neatly separates the books, further dividing them into sections with concise headings and useful information along the way. I’ve seen plans for ‘Reading the Bible in 1 year’ and a local church has plaques for reading plans… but if you do away with some of the hard to follow old English sentence structure, it’s really not that big of a task. This NLT Bible is 66 books with a total of just 759 pages. At a normal reading pace rather than a in-depth study, it shouldn’t take very long at all.

Other than that I’d like to get back into the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. I’ve read the first 5 books, and I plan on reading the entire series as soon as I can. It’s funny, and I hear it only gets better as the books go on. I’d also like to pick up some more Halo books. I’ve read the first one, The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund, and found it surprisingly good. I don’t have much desire to read the The Flood, but I want to pick up Nylund’s other two in the series, First Strike and Ghosts of Onyx. Another unlikely series is the Star Trek TNG books. I loved that series, and as much as I never thought I’d get into the fiction, they’re actually very enjoyable books. I’ve read about 13 of the 60+ official books, and I plan on reading many more. Sure, they’re the literary equivalent of junk food, but they’re entertaining if nothing else.

Other than that, I want to get back into some of my study books on Japanese and art. I’ve a lot of great Japanese study books by Taeko Kamiya and Naoko Chino published in the excellent Kodansha series, and I quite enjoy reading them. I also have art technique books ranging from more modern all the way to The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed, first published in 1917. Lots of good stuff to go through, but all of it taking a good deal of time to properly study.

At the suggestion of SpaceKitty I finally sat down at read the Harry Potter series, starting from the first and going through to the last. Obviously I didn’t read all seven books this week, but I did just finish the final book. SK might give an overview of the series sometime later, but suffice to say my opinion on the series boils down to “above average”. While it’s not the best writing ever seen, she does a good job of creating memorable characters, locations, and a fair bit of excitement in the pages.

My complaints with the series, which began with the first book and went right up to the last one, are basically three main points:

1) Dumbledore shows up to explain away everything at the end every time… I don’t think she can write a book without doing so. I fully expect Dumbledore to explain the nuances of the plot to me at the end of anything she writes, Harry Potter related or not.

2) The ‘magic’ does whatever the hell she wants it to do at the moment. “Room of Requirement”? Come on. House Elves ignore all magical rules, simply because?

3) The constant nagging of Hermione, the nonstop angst of Harry, and the overused victim complex of Ron. Fight the man, Ron. Fight the man.

But regardless it’s still one of the better fantasy series out there. Let’s face it, most of this stuff is crap. Harry Potter is at the very least entertaining at times, which is far more than I can say for a lot of modern fiction. Don’t get me wrong — I read Discworld, Halo novels, and Star Trek books and enjoy them all quite a bit — I’m not suggesting it’s classic lit or nothing. I just don’t expect much out of modern writers.

At any rate, starting His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass this week. Would like to finish it before the movie hits. Harry Potter really is better in book form than movie, and I quite enjoyed reading book 6 and 7 without having seen the movie first. I’d like that same enjoyment with Golden Compass, letting the movie expand on my idea of the characters, rather than define them.

Rating:

When the infamous murderer Sirius Black escapes from the fortress of Azkaban, rumor quickly spreads that Harry Potter is his next target. At Hogwarts stranger things than usual are afoot, including the dreaded Azkaban guards known as Dementors at every entrance. When the Dementors take a strange fascination with Harry, things get even more complicated.

After the absolute train wreck that was Chamber of Secrets, I had all but given up on the Harry Potter series as being worth my time. It was only on a whim I picked up Azkaban on DVD, and I’m sure glad that I did. The movie gets off to an unfortunately awful start with the prerequisite Muggles and humor that only a child would find funny. The entire Aunt and bus scenes were so stupid I almost turned off the movie, but once Harry gets to The Leaky Cauldron things do a complete 180. From the train to Hogwarts and on, this movie becomes everything I wanted to see.

From the train ride on this becomes a darker, grittier Harry Potter than we’ve been previously forced to endure. From the madman in the wanted posters, to the Death like Dementors, to the chilling chorus in the opening scenes of Hogwarts. Maybe kids today are harder to scare, but I would have been freaked by much of this movie back in the day. Not only is the tone darker, but the focus is thankfully finally set on magic, rather than mischief as it rightfully belongs. Spells and magic are finally the central theme of the movie they always should have been, not the silly sport.

I found this movie to be far more intelligent than the previous, and for once it had a pretty good plot that didn’t revolve around Harry and friends nearly getting expelled every 3rd scene. The ending kicks into high gear and upped my rather favorable view of the proceedings up another notch, you can really feel the movie hit it’s stride. Much better use was made of the cast this time around, and as said finally a decent amount of magic and learning was a central theme. Nearly every complaint I had has been addressed in this film.

If you liked the first movie and want to see something with the same level of fun, adventure, but older and a bit darker, then certainly give this a rent. You’ll have to sit through an almost unforgivably stupid first couple of minutes, but it’s well worth your trouble in the end. The direction, acting, cast, characters, sound, and atmosphere are all vastly improved from the second adventure. Let’s hope the series continues in this direction, and we may end up with some genuinely enjoyable films.

Rating:

This one was pretty much a flop for me. While it wasn’t all bad, and I’ve certainly seen worse movies… it just didn’t hold the same appeal as Sorcerer’s Stone. The magic was gone and in it’s place just a few whiny sidekick kids and Harry. And, slight spoiler… the “Chamber of Secrets” is very poorly named indeed.

Many things disappoint me about this film. The first of which is the utter lack of magic in a school of magic. Flying cars, check. Ghosts, check. Bunch of other ridiculous things having nearly nothing to do with magic, check. But actual spells and wizardry? Very little. The only one of this whole gang of wizards that seems to be able to cast a spell is Hermione, and she sits a lot of this movie out. Apparently Harry and Ron should both be held back a few grades.

Another HUGE disappointment for me, and it nearly ruins the movie, is the constant overuse of the school system. Oh, gee… our three heros are in trouble again because they happen to be in the wrong place. Oh no, better not tell them what’s really going on… better break another few dozen rules instead. What’s that? You think we did it? Oh no… we might be, gulp, expelled for the 25th time. Give me a break. It’s used and reused and used yet again to the point of utter insanity.

The acting is good, nothing mind blowing but good. Harry stands well in most scenes, but Ron is often overacted. Though, from the looks of things, I’m willing to bet he was told to overact. “Harry, you look brave. Ron, you look cowardly and whiny. - Action!” Worse is the character Dobby, who I couldn’t hate any more than I already do. The best new character is probably the girl ghost Moaning Myrtle. Both her CGI effects and acting were really good, sadly they look like they got stuck in the wrong movie and belonged in something much better.