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Nevermind Neverwhere

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Submitted by: Geoffrey Dow
on Sun, 10/04/2020 - 14:09

image showing three covers of Neil Gaiman's novel Neverwhere

There are in this world good books, and there are bad books, but especially, there are mediocre books, novels that briefly entertain and which are then discarded by the reader and quickly forgotten. Nothing right or wrong with them, just disposable products — mind-candy, as some have put it.

And sometimes that is what a reader wants: a distraction, light entertainment to wyle away a couple of hours on a train or bus, when sleep is not to be had but one doesn't have the energy to imbibe something of substance.

If I were a more high-fallutin' reader, I suppose I would disdain mere "reads", but I admit it: I sometimes like to simply distract myself with words and story. What rankles, is when mediocrity is trumpeted as greatness, when light entertainment is likened to Art.

Which brings us to one of Neil Gaiman's first solo novel, one whose blurbs liken it variously to the works of George Lucas, Monty Python, John Milton(!), Douglas Adam, Doctor Who and, most eggregiously, Lewis Carrol's Alice In Wonderland. Does Neverwhere deserve such sometimes lofty comparisons? Read more ...

Neil Gaiman
Neverwhere
fantasy
novel
Roger Corman
The Sandman
Goodreads
Alice in Wonderland
Lewis Carrol
Douglas Adams
Dirk Gently
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
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'A little bit of childhood to hang onto forever' - The World of Pooh, Revisited

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Submitted by: Geoffrey Dow
on Sat, 05/30/2020 - 11:49

Photo of inscription from copy of The World of Pooh given to me by my parents for my 13th birthday

More than 40 years later, this gift is still with me, and still makes me weep.

May 30, 2020 — Some gifts just keep on giving, and this omnibus hard-cover edition of The World of Pooh, which includes A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, is one I have returned to again and again.

I reviewed the book(s) back in 2010 — I see now I posted it on my 45th birthday —, and have re-read the books more than once in the intervening decade, so I can confidently state that I love Milne's masterpiece in my fifties as much as I did in my forties (and thirties, and twenties).

A.A. Milne
E.H. Shepard
Winnie-the-Pooh
The House at Pooh Corner
The World of Pooh
Captain Marvel
C.C. Beck
The Secret Garden
Frances Hodgson Burnet
The Wind In the Willows
Kenneth Graham
eucatastrophe
childhood
book review
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The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn
Wednesday, May 27, 2020 — Though I didn't know it in 2012, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn probably marked the beginning of my dis-enchantment with the work of Steven Moffat, who would go on to do god-awful things to Doctor Who. I admit, I haven't re-watched his bizarrely over-complicated take on Hergé's classic comic series, Tintin, but I have little doubt I would react more or less the same was today as I did in 2012. (Click the headline above for the full review.)
Geoffrey Dow Wed, 05/27/2020 - 13:56
tintin
the adventures of tintin
the secret of the unicorn
steven moffat
hayao miyazaki
superman
film
graphic novels
bande dessine
steven spielberg
max fleisher
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Juno: Don't bother looking for Signs or Significance!
Screenshot of Ellen Page from Juno, pretending to hang herself from a tree
'Well, you know, I just — I was thinkin' that I'd just nip it in the bud. Before it gets worse. 'Cause they were talkin' in health class about how pregnancy can lead to ... an infant.'
It's not giving much away to say that Juno MacGuff does not nip her pregnancy, "in the bud" or otherwise. Instead, after a brief flirtation with abortion, the 16 year-old opts to carry the foetus to term and give the baby up for adoption. Significantly, Juno is not punished for her transgression (except insofar as the pregnancy itself meet be considered a punishment) persons seeking in the entrails of Juno any overt anti-abortion, pro-choice, pro- or anti-sex or other coded messages are in for a serious disappointment. The movie's eponymous title gives the game away. Juno is a story about (nearly) a year in the life of a teenage girl named "Juno". It is not an issue movie, or a cautionary tale, or a call to arms. The fact that Juno is about a pregnant 16 year-old girl does not mean it is "about" teenage pregnancy. At its heart and despite its subject-matter, Juno is a romantic comedy. Where we might once have had Katherine Hepburn as a wise-cracking career-woman in a man's world, we now have Ellen Page as a wise-cracking teenager, who is every bit as independent as Hepburn ever was, if in a very different world. (Spoilers ahead, but not many; this is a movie whose surprises are worth keeping.)
Geoffrey Dow Mon, 10/04/2010 - 16:20
Diablo Cody
Ellen Page
Jason Reitman
Juno
film
review
movies
abortion
teenage mother
romantic comedy
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Kick-Ass and Chloe, reviewed

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Submitted by: Geoffrey Dow
on Mon, 05/24/2010 - 17:32
Image featuring screen-shots from the films, Kick-Ass, and Chloe Fʀɪᴅᴀʏ, Aᴘʀɪʟ 17, 2020 — If art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, so too is filth. Back in 2012, I saw Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan's then-current, and ever-so-serious psychological drama film, Chloe, around the same time that I saw Matthew Vaughn's controversial super-hero movie, Kick-Ass. I thought the world of one, and held the other in contempt. Read on to find out which was which.
Atom Egoyan
Matthew Vaughn
Brad Pitt
Jane Goldman
Nicolas Cage
Chloë Grace Moretz
Kick-Ass
Hit-Girl
Chloe
Julianne Moore
Liam Neeson
Amanda Seyfried
film
erotic thriller
superheroes
cannes
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Galileo's Dream, by Kim Stanley Robinson

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Submitted by: Geoffrey Dow
on Tue, 01/19/2010 - 14:45

Kim Stanley Robinson in 2017, left, image by Gage Skidmore, via Wikipedia; Cover of Galileo's Dream, right
Photo of Kim Stanley Robinson by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikipedia.

Sᴜɴᴅᴀʏ, Aᴜɢᴜsᴛ 9, 2020 — Kim Stanley Robinson became one of my favourite writers with his novel, Red Mars and its sequels. His work has been uneven since then, but not to the point where I have stopped paying attention when he releases a new novel.

Galileo's Dream was released in late 2009, and I read and reviewed it shortly after. This review was originally published on Rex on January 19, 2010.

I have recovered it thanks, once again, to The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Click here to read the full review.

kim stanley robinson
book review
science fiction
galileo
galileo's dream
red mars
science in the capital
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Smokers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your jones(ing)!

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Submitted by: Geoffrey Dow
on Sat, 10/17/2009 - 10:17

Allen Carr's Way was easy for me

Photo of Young Geoffrey smoking, 1992.
For about a quarter century, photos of me without a cigarette in my hand were few and far between. This, from 1992.

Tᴜᴇsᴅᴀʏ, Aᴘʀɪʟ 14, 2020 — I was a smoker for many years, starting in my teens. It seems almost impossible to believe, now, that I was utterly addicted to cigarettes for decades, going so far as to walk around collecting butts during bad times.

I stopped smoking in the fall of 2009, now more than a full decade in my past. And I don't think I would have done it without help from Alan Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking. Read more ...

review
books
alan carr
easy way to stop smoking
smoking
cigarettes
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Review: Chronicles Volume One, by Bob Dylan

Partial photo of both front and back cover of Bob Dylan's Chronicles Volume one

Dylan was already a long-standing legend when I reviewed this memoir back in 2004 (to which I made some minor corrections when I posted it here in 2009). Since then, he has won the Nobel Prize for literature and, very recently, seems to have taken up song-writing again. Which Pati Smith's memoir, Just Kids, Chronicles Volume One remains one of the most interesting musician's memoir I've ever read.
Geoffrey Dow Wed, 09/09/2009 - 10:38
review
book review
Bob Dylan
The Weavers
Ronnie Gilbert
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Review: Dark Reflections, by Samuel R. Delany

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Submitted by: Geoffrey Dow
on Tue, 06/16/2009 - 14:55

2012 Photo of Samuel R. Delany, taken from his Facebook page
Samuel R. Delany (2012?). Photo lifted from his Facebook page.

June 21, 2020 — Now 78 years old, Samuel R. Delany is a multiple award-winning writer and a retired professor of English literature. He is best known as a science fiction writer, but his work encompasses not only that genre, but fantasy, comics and pornography, as well as non-fiction.

His first novel was published in the early 1960s, when he was still a teenager, and his most recent (which I have on order) was published only last week. He is, to my mind, still the best living American writer, and his 2012 masterpiece, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders, was a radical (and very successful — I hope to have a review of it up here soon!) fusion of gay erotica with science fiction.

Despite the genres mentioned above, Delany's books are anything but alike; he is a writer forever exploring and both de- and re-constructing genre tropes and conventions.

So, when I bought Dark Reflections back in 2009, I was not really surprised to be surprised by just how very different that novel was from those that had come before.

Read more ...

samuel r. delany
dark reflections
science fiction
literature
books
book review
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Review: Admonishments and Aphorisms, by M.C.A. Hogarth

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Submitted by: Geoffrey Dow
on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 23:23

This review was originally published on June 6, 2009. Links and pricing information may be out of date.

 

Dawn - The Admonishments, by M.C.A. Hogarth
Dawn - The Admonishments, by M.C.A. Hogarth

 

MCA Hogarth
review
kedrishar
science fiction
furries
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