Amazing books

Reading is one of my favorite things to do. And books are one of my favorite things in the world. I love bookstores, but love free public libraries even more because, well the books are free. Its not so much that I love the actual books themselves; I'm not infatuated with paper, ink, book bindings, and slip covers. I love stories. And I especially love good stories. I love to get lost in stories. For me if I start reading a book and I don't get lost in it pretty quickly I don't read anymore. My love is also at the root of my love for movies, but that's a different topic altogether.

Anyways, I have three books that I've recently that are all pretty spectacular. Two are probably some of the best I've ever read. The other is quite awesome as well:
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
American Gods by Neil Gaiman

The first two books are the two I mentioned as being two of the best I've ever read.

I also recently read one of the best short stories I've ever read, Tower of Babylon by Ted Chiang which is is his collection of short stories Stories of Your Life and Others.

If you're into reading at all I highly recommend all of the above. Happy reading!

recent views and reads

This post is lame, filler, not worth reading. But since I have nothing else to blog about, here are things I've read and watched that are much more than memorable (meaning I loved them):

Movies
The Baader-Meinhof Complex
District 9
Zombieland
How to Be
The Vanishing
Sin Nombre







TV
Neverwhere

Books
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
Y: The Last Man

the haps

So what's happening these days? Lots and lots and then some more. I've been at my new job for about 1 month (maybe its time to stop calling it "my new job" and just call it "my job") and it's going pretty well. Apart from work, a lot has been going on - a move into our own place in Chapel Hill (finally), settling in, life in general, etc. I haven't blogged in a few weeks because I've not had much free time, but since we're a bit more settled now so we can breathe for a bit and I can do things like blog.

Other than all that, life goes on. Its nice for things to be 'normal' again. For the first time in about 8 months, Jo and the girls and I are all in the same house without anyone one else. We get to all see each other every day and the girls are so happy. Life was always good even when we didn't know what was going to happen, but things are easier to deal with when life has a bit of predictability.

Random things:
What I'm listening to - Sufjan Stevens, Blonde Redhead, The Raconteurs, and a bunch of old CDs that had been packed away.

What I've been reading - ever since I finished VLI in June, I've been cranking through this fantasy series called The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. Its an 11 book series. I'm on book 8 now. This has to be the best book series I have ever read. It rivals The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter! I've also read a number of graphic novels/ comic book collections in the past couple of months. Worth mentioning are Nexus and Elfquest.

book & movie

I just finished a book and just watched a movie. By 'just' I actually mean yesterday. The book is called Stone of Tears and is the 2nd in a 12 book fantasy series by Terry Goodkind. All I've got to say is this: Awesome! This guy is such an amazing writer. I judge the worth of a book by how much I want to keep reading it. In other words, is the book a page turner that I would stay up to 2 AM reading? For Goodkind's books, the answer is yes. I can easily get engrossed in his books and read for hours. This one, as well as the first book in the series, Wizard's First Rule, are both page turners.


Them (Ils is the French title) is a French thriller/ horror film. Its not horror in the same vein as Saw or Hostel, but more in the vein of Blair Witch Project. Its very well shot and very well acted and is very tense and thrilling. I would give it 5 out of 5 stars.

reading and listening to...

Before I switched from Xanga to Blogspot about a year ago, I used the 'Currently reading' and 'Currently listening to' tools all the time. Does Blogspot have something like that? If so I'm ignorant of it. In lieu of that here are just a couple plain old lists. Who needs fancy blogging tools anyways?

Books I'm currently reading
Duma Key by Stephen King - King continues to show that he's a master storyteller. His recent books have all been good, especially Lisey's Story. I've also been trying to read some of his older books that I've never read like The Dead Zone and The Shining. Along with Salem's Lot, The Shining is one of the 2 King books that I couldn't read parts of at night because they were so creepy/ scary.

How to Read the Bible for All its Worth by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart - the subject is evidenced by the title, but the book goes deeper into Bible reading and talk about things that help the reader understand the Bible as it was understood by its original authors and audience.

Power Healing by John Wimber - for anyone who's interested in healing in any form. The first few chapters are autobiographical. The rest (that I've read so far) is about specific types of healing and how to address them. Has lots of stories, many of which are firsthand events from Wimber's life and ministry.

Airframe by Michael Crichton - This book is not all that great so I'm reading it really slowly and might not finish it. It certainly doesn't compare to Jurassic Park, Sphere, or my favorite Crichton book, Timeline. I only learned today (or may be it was yesterday) that he died. He was a great American author.

Books I'm recently read
Neuromancer by William Gibson - Gibson originated the idea of the matrix which the Wachowski brothers used in making The Matrix films. He also coined the term cyberspace. A must read for sci-fi fans.

Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind - this book was amazing. I may have blogged about it but if I did, I forget. If you like fantasy or sci-fi, I highly recommend this first book in the Sword of Truth series. There's actually a TV series called The Legend of the Seeker that will begin airing soon which is based on these books. It looks like a quality show.

Music
The newest songs by Norma Jean and mewithoutYou. 2 great bands who continue to put out great music. Not for everyone, but great just the same.

movie pet peeves

I'm currently re-reading Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams. Its the second book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. A movie was made of "Hitchhiker" so you might be familiar with that. Not much to say about that, except that they might be the funniest books I've ever read.

But it leads me to one of my pet peeves about movies - books that are made into movies. As a general rule, the book is better than the movie. Even with some of the better adaptations (like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter) I always love books better than the movies that are made from them. Don't get me wrong because I love the HP and LOTR movies, but in general, I don't like the whole turning-books-into-movies thing. I've never seen a film adaptation film of a John Grisham book that was as awesome as the book. The movies weren't terrible, its just that John Grisham is such a brilliant author and its hard to translate that brilliance to the screen. Seriously, The Firm is one of my favorite all time books, but I could not sit through more than half an hour of it because it paled in comparison to the book. And there are some movies I refuse to watch because the books are so amazing and to watch the movie would spoil the book. Interview with a Vampire is one example. For me to not watch that is saying a lot, because I love vampire movies. And even though Stephen King is one of my favorite authors, films made from his books and stories generally don't compare to how good the books are.

This leads me to even another movie pet peeve: Sequels. I hate them. I'm not talking about Star Wars, LOTR, or Harry Potter, because they are serials. Each was intended at their conception to be a series (thus the term serial). But what I hate are those terrible Hollywood part 2's and 3's and 10's that never live up to the original movie's glory. And since many of the movies being made into sequels aren't that great to begin with, that just means that the sequel is going to be painful. So in general, sequels are never a good idea.

Here are a few categories of sequels that I thought of:
Horror/ Thriller movie sequels: Jaws, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Saw, etc.
Comedy sequels: Weekend at Bernie's 2, Nutty Professor 2, Big Mama's House 2, Police Academy: Infinity
Action movie sequels: Speed 2, The Transporter 2. This category also includes the sub-category of The desperate aging Hollywood star sequels: Live Free or Die Harder-er with Bruce Willis, or Sylvester Stallone in Rocky/ Rambo 19: Cold Cocked

My last movie pet peeve deals with the worst kinds of movies made - movie adaptations of old TV shows. Seriously, the Brady Bunch movie (and don't forget the Very Brady Sequel)? The Brady Bunch was never that good anyway. And The Dukes of Hazard movie? Yawn... Although, I'd personally love for somebody to make a movie out of The A-Team. That's one that I would see.

the sadly neglected blog that no one reads

I'm a hopeless blogger. I just can't seem to do it consistently. I read blogs from other people that post every single day. Not every other day, but every day, sometimes multiple times a day. And the thing is, these people seem to ALWAYS have interesting things to say, interesting films they've seen, interesting music they've heard, etc.

Is my life just unexciting or am I just unmotivated? Good question, but one I'll leave for now.

I think if I were writing a book I'd be more intentional about writing. I loves books. Books last. They endures for centuries, even millennium if they are kept in a good condition. I can touch a book, smell it. Heck, I can even lick it. I can spill coffee on it, get chocolate on it, underline a passage that really thrills me, or even drop it in the bathtub accidentally (that is, if I read in the bathtub. I don't read in the bath since I always shower. Its kind of messy to read in the shower).
Blogs on the other hand just seem so temporal and ephemeral. They are on my screen for a few minutes, then they're gone. Then I click through again later in the day and they are still there! And the next day they're still there. They are just waiting for me to put them on my screen. But I can't buy into the idea that someone will want to or even be able to read my blog thoughts 50 years from now. Will my kids ever see any of the blogs I've had? Will any of the entries be read in the future?

This blog that I've begun here is my third one. I started with something called Diaryland (which I thought for the longest time was actually DAIRY-land). Its still there as of right now; I just checked. You can find it here. Then I had a Xanga site (jamie's xanga). Actually as I was writing this I started thinking about those two blogs and wondering how long they'll actually exist in that weird place called cyberspace. So just in case the internet explodes tomorrow, I went them onto my hard drive. Of course, my hard drive might explode tomorrow. And the world might explode tomorrow too. But I digress...

Okay, since I'm talking about blogs, what blogs do I read? Here are some that I look at almost everyday:
Family:
http://www.xanga.com/BabyGarrett
http://www.xanga.com/babygarrett2

Friends/ acquaintances:
http://www.xanga.com/minakim139
http://www.xanga.com/jongmini

Lost - the world's best TV show ever, period, end of discussion!! And this is THE BEST blog about Lost. I know because I've read a whole lot of them! Don't argue with me!!
http://lost-and-gone-forever.blogspot.com/

Random blogs
http://www.neatorama.com/
http://www.rnyk.com/

And here are my 2 latest blog finds:
http://peer-see.com/blog/ (this is a couple that lives in China; I taught in China for 3 years)
http://falsani.blogspot.com/

So get out there and read some blogs while you still can!! The internet might explode tomorrow!