reading list cont'd

[rivendellrose]

Saw Pan's Labyrinth with narsilion last night - very good movie, despite the portions of it that I had to 'watch' from behind my coat. I don't handle torture scenes well. Very pretty effects, lots of good acting, and a really interesting story. The only problem other than the bits of gore was that watching movies in Spanish always messes me up, because it's just close enough to French that my brain thinks it should be able to understand everything, as opposed to just the bits and pieces that I can pull from my meager Spanish and rusty-but-recovering French. I'll try to do a more full review of the movie later, but for now I'm just a little too close to having to leave for work to really get into it.

For now, here's the current update on my reading list - just 25 more books to go before I hit 100, and I've still got more than a month until my deadline!




Finished since March 13, 2006
1 Equal Rites, Terry Pratchett
2 The Telling, Ursula K. Le Guin
3 Going Postal, Terry Pratchett
4 Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
5 Men at Arms, Terry Pratchett
6 Daily Life in Civil War America
7 Joys of Motherhood, Buchi Emecheta
8 Stiff, Mary Roach
9 Just Add Hormones
10 Second-Class Citizen, Buchi Emecheta
11 Culture as Given, Culture as Choice, Dirk Van Der Elst
12 The Swamp Thing: Saga of the Swamp Thing, Alan Moore etc.
13 The Igbo of Southeast Nigeria, Victor C. Uchendu
14 And a Time to Die, Kaufman
15 Carried to the Wall
16 Jingo, Terry Pratchett
17 The Middle Man (vol. 1)
18 Fast Food Nation
19 Fantasy Girls, Elyce Rae Helford
20 League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, vol 2, Alan Moore
21 Kitty and the Midnight Hour, Kelley Armstrong
22 Spook, Mary Roach
23 Autobiography of a Fat Bride, Laurie Nataro
24 The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
25 Rules for the Unruly
26 Guests of the Sheik, Elizabeth Warnock Fernea
27 Smoke and Ashes, Tanya Huff
28 Fast Girls, Emily White
29 Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
30 Pledged, Alexandra Robbins
31 Somewhere to be Flying, Charles de Lint
32 A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
33 Smoke and Mirrors, Tanya Huff
34 Consuming Kids, Linn
35 Dancing at Armageddon, Mitchell
36 Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris
37 The Birthday of the World, Ursula K. LeGuin
38 The Last Days of Dogtown, Anita Diamant
39 Club Dead, Charlaine Harris
40 Blood Price, Tanya Huff
41 Animals in Translation, Temple Grandin
42 Blood Trail, Tanya Huff
43 The Thief-Taker, ?
44 Expendable, James Alan Gardner
45 Trapped, James Alan Gardner
46 Hunted, James Alan Gardner
47 Ascending, James Alan Gardner
48 Radiant, James Alan Gardner
49 Vigilant, James Alan Gardner
50 The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K. LeGuin
51 The Bone Lady: Life as a Forensic Anthropologist, Mary H. Manheim
52 Gravity Wells, James Alan Gardner
53 Mirabile, Janet Kagan
54 Bitchfest (10 Years of Bitch Magazine)
55 Mort, Terry Pratchett
56 Maskerade, Terry Pratchett
57 Spiderman: Until the Stars Go Cold, J. M. Straczynski
58 Astonishing X-Men: Gifted, Joss Whedon
59 Astonishing X-Men: Dangerous, Joss Whedon
60 Gypsy Demons and Divinities, Elwood B. Trigg
61 Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
62 Familiar Strangers: Gypsy Life in America, Marlene Sway
63 A Book of Pagan Prayer, Ceisiwr Smith (nom de plume much?)
64 The Science of Aliens, Clifford Pickover
65 Thud, Terry Pratchett (yes, again)
66 The Mummy Congress
67 The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
68 Elf Defense, Esther Friesner
69 Wyrd Sisters, Terry Pratchett
70 Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett
71 Carpe Jugulum, Terry Pratchett
72 Fables: Legends in Exile, trade #1
73 Monstrous Regiment, Terry Pratchett
74 The Ape and the Sushi Master, Frans de Waal
75 Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, James Boswell

Comments

[zhapper.livejournal.com]

Dang, you're a reading machine. I've been trying to tackle William Styron's work and it's slow going. I need to get a copy of the His Dark Materials series too.

But what I really came here to ask was more about the movie. I desperately need to go see it before it leaves the theaters, but I've been lazy about movies lately because all I do is watch and talk about movies in class.

Tell me more about it. All the reviews I've seen are pretty cryptic. Is it difficult to explain or easily spoiled? I'm not even sure what the Spanish Revolution has to do with the little girl's hallucination/imagination/adventure. What's the deal with that?

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Eh, less so now than I used to be - it's harder to get to reading when it's not a required part of my schedule as well as my entertainment. ;)

Let's see... Okay, basic plot run-down with as few spoilers as possible. Just after the Spanish civil war, this girl and her mother move out to the mountains to live with the mother's new husband, who's a captain in the fascist army (can't remember proper name for that group in that time/place). He's a nasty piece of work, and is trying to stomp a bunch of rebels who are hiding out in the hills, while simultaneously running a veeeeery tight and obnoxiously regimented little center of power at this old mill where he's made a base of operations / home. Pretty much as soon as they get there, the girl wanders off and starts getting into trouble following this little fairy, finding a maze, etc. Ah, and it's significant to know that her mother is pregnant with the captain-guy's son. Meanwhile some of the people under the captain's employ at the mill-house are secretly helping the rebels... and you can guess how that complicates things.

Any other ties (obvious or theoretical) between the revolution and her imagination/adventure would be spoiling, I think... but does that give you enough to go on, approximately?

[zhapper.livejournal.com]

Yeah, completely. It sounds better than it did before. I'm pretty stingy with my $9.50 lately, but this sounds like it's worth it. Thanks!

[narsilion.livejournal.com]

Really enjoyed the movie, even with the torture scenes, thanks for seeing it with me. Hoping to get you new reading mareials soon, I think there are some you'll be really happy about.
See you soon!