Books I’ve Read – July 2009

I read 16 books this month.

Nonfiction:

Women of the World was the most inspiring, and it included women travelers I hadn’t heard of before.  Clute’s Science Fiction was the most fun.  I particularly enjoyed the sections on international sci-fi.  Style was the most disappointing of the lot. Her Style seemed stuck in the 1960s.

Women of the World: Women Travelers and Explorers by Rebecca Stefoff
Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease
Style by Kate Spade
Science Fiction: the Illustrated Encyclopedia by John Clute

Juvenile and Picture Books:

Warriors disappointed me a little – it’s a graphic novel but it was visually boring.

Warriors: #1 Into the Wild by Erin Hunter
Crown of Horns: Bone #9 by Jeff Smith
Purplicious by Elizabeth & Victoria Kann
Judy Moody Gets Famous by Megan McDonald
Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar

Fiction Books:
Color Purple was by far and away the most delightful. I had thought it was akin to a dirge and avoided it. In fact, it is most celebratory. Enjoyed Huntress the best of the Smith YA paranormals.  Started reading Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse books which I am thoroughly enjoying.  Now I want to see the TV show.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Huntress by L. Jane Smith
Witchlight by L. Jane Smith
Maggie by Marion Chesney
Black Dawn by L. Jane Smith
Dead until Dawn by Charlaine Harris
Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris

Did Not Finish:

Mrs. Mike was distasteful in its depiction of indigenous Canadians.  Banks’ book was not nearly as funny as I had thought it would be.

Mrs. Mike by Nancy and Benedict Freedman
Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Banks

Invisible Man (1933)

Cover of The Invisible Man

Part of my science fiction movie watching project.

Tagline: Catch me if you can!

One winter’s day, a strange man, heavily bandaged, arrives at an isolated inn.  There he asks for a room and complete privacy.  He gets the room but the innkeeper (Una O’Connor) can’t bear to leave him alone.  She soon wishes she had stayed away from the bad-tempered Invisible Man (Claude Rains)

James Whale directed Frankenstein (1931) which I didn’t care much for and Bride of Frankenstein (1935) which I adore.

In the main, this movie was more of a Universal Studios monster movie than science fiction.  There were a few instances in which they touched on a rational explanation behind the invisibility.  The movie did include the bit about digesting food being visible until digested I believe was in the original novel by H. G. Wells.  It has been a long time since I read the book.

Note: I’m going to refer to the Invisible Man AKA Jack Griffin as Invisi because I can.

The Special Effects

Really the effects are the best part of the movie.  There are funny scenes such as the shirt chasing the cops around the room. There are many sinister scenes, for instance, the one in which Invisi reveals himself to his former colleague, Dr. Kemp (William Harrigan).  Of course, there is the usual fun stuff such as things moving on their own and doors closing.

My favorite scene had Invisi undressing in front of a mirror.  The extras show how complicated this was to achieve.

My co-viewer noted that the screen blurred when Invisi was walking in front of someone.  We weren’t sure if this was intentional but, if so, it’s good touch.

The Humor

There was a lot of humor interspersed with the thriller stuff.  The humor, particularly just before the invisible man’s entrance, was too goofy for me.  For example, the piano player is exposed as a fraud: he’s using a player piano.

The innkeeper, in particular, whose officiousness gets her targeted by the irritable Invisi was even less amusing.  I thought the film got mean-spirited when we were expected to laugh at her for crying over her badly injured husband.

It was much more entertaining seeing a pair of dancing pants and a ghostly rendition of  “gathering nuts in May.”

The Horror

It was tightly paced: just enough conversation to build the tension and the action flowed from the plot.  Wish more movies were like this.

It also had the Universal horror theme of “there were some things men were not meant to know.”  It turns out that Invisi has taken a chemical compound that makes him invisible.  He had not discovered a German account of an experiment that left its subject aggressive and crazy.  (My co-viewer commented that the real moral of the movie is to learn German before making wacky experiments.)

All in all not sci-fi but a lot of fun.

Reviews

Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings – review

SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review

DVD Verdict review

Classic-Horror.com review – information on special effects

Film Fanatic review

SPOILER

report from under a rock

I feel like that’s where I’ve been.

I simply haven’t had the heart to post anything.

The science fiction movie project has started well. I enjoyed Aelita and the Invisible Man, and I have a post planned for the latter. I’ve even been watching some anime which I’ve neglected of late.

I’ve been reading not much but very enjoyably.

I’ve been cataloging my disks and books with access and datacrow which has been very soothing. It’s nice to see one’s history in books and movies.

And there is always next month to take over the world.

Svetlania Wheneverly

I enjoyed Svetlana Chmakova’s short comics. There’s not much to them but they are funny and cute.

Issues with Vampire Diaries

I am dense.

After my post on the news that L. J. Smith’s Vampire Diaries is coming to television, I got a lot of comments on the casting.  One of the issues brought up is why the main character Elena was not cast as a blonde for the TV show.  I was puzzled because I thought blondes were the it girls in Hollywood too.

But then I realized this:

Elena, Vampire Diaries

Bella, Twilight

Mystery solved.

Another thing that irritates me is much of the material on Vampire Diaries outright saying that it is another version of Twilight. (TVsquad, beyond hollywood).   The producers are on riding Twilight‘s cape but I am still irritated.

L. J. Smith published the books in 1991.  It seems that Meyer only had the dream in 2003 and the first book was published in 2005.  Moreover, most pretty-pretty vampire stories are just watered-down versions of Anne Rice’s vampire tales.  Twilight is more of a blanched vegetable version.

I remember a young person writing on a forum that she’d read Meyer’s series and asking, in sum, if there were any other stories with a  vampire mythos.

Part of me thinks this is (very) funny but it’s a little sad too.  She’s missing out a lot. Fans could go a long time and not run out of vamp books to read.

I may break down and find a time line of pretty-pretty vampires in books.

Romance Novel Covers, I See Now

I was reading The Dames, Dolls and Delinquents: A Collector’s Guide to Sexy Pulp Fiction Paperbacks by Gary Lovisi. Well, I couldn’t manage the whole thing. But I read the introduction and the chapter on “romance” and learned a few things.

I didn’t jot down the names but this is what I understood:

In the 1940s and 1950s, the art department for publishers of inexpensive fiction sent detailed instructions to artists who drew sleazy covers. The books were aimed at heterosexual men and were pretty smutty if the titles and blurbs were to be believed.

Many of them featured a disrobing or disrobed girl, sometimes at the mercy of a fully clothed man.  One cover amused me with its cover: a topless girl whose chest is delicately hidden by a tree branch.

Here’s where it gets interesting.  According to Lovisi’s research, many of the these same artists started working on the clinch covers for romance novels.  To my mind, it’s no wonder a lot of romance novels in the 1970s and later had partially undressed women and men in sleazy poses.  There’s no point in an old dog learning a new trick.

This may be old hat to romance fans but I feel that I’ve discovered why some romance novels used to have those appalling covers.

On the positive side, I did like many of these romance covers.  Link.  “Silent in the Sanctuary” and “Firefly Lane” were my favorites.