(no subject)
Feb. 19th, 2007 12:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksHave been suffering agonies in my left shoulder for about 18 hours, only partially alleviated by Nurofen and Deep Heat. It's almost certainly due to the knotting of the muscles while practising on the piano, added to my normally dreadful posture when playing online.
The pain actually woke me up at 4.15, despite me having only gone to bed at midnight.
This gave me the opportunity to lose a few dollars on Ultimate. The month continues to be a struggle and I didn't see a "good" game all weekend. It was very much a matter of up a bit, down a bit, breaking even over the three days and thank god for rakeback/bonus dollars.
I'm in severe danger of running out of Ultimate Bet bonus dollars, something I never thought would happen. I don't have rakeback deal there, either. This could lead to some necessary reassessment of things in the near future. The Noble Deposit bonus runs out at the end of March and, given the paucity of games on the site, I have no hope of clearing even half of it.
So, unless some startling new offer crops up, I might be stuck with having to play properly. That would be a good excuse to move up in stakes and see what happened, anyway.
President's Day today, so there might be some action on Ultimate this afternoon. Although, if this morning's triple rock-fest was anything to go on, there won't be.
+++++
I've just finished John Boyne's The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas and I recommend it highly. Is it a children's book that went askew, because the subject matter pushed the author in another direction? I'm not sure, but I do know that Boyne writes remarkably well. Not only is it a story well-told, but it was only this morning that I realized how brilliant Boyne is in visual descriptions. Rarely has such a book left so many pictures in my head. Marvellous.
The pain actually woke me up at 4.15, despite me having only gone to bed at midnight.
This gave me the opportunity to lose a few dollars on Ultimate. The month continues to be a struggle and I didn't see a "good" game all weekend. It was very much a matter of up a bit, down a bit, breaking even over the three days and thank god for rakeback/bonus dollars.
I'm in severe danger of running out of Ultimate Bet bonus dollars, something I never thought would happen. I don't have rakeback deal there, either. This could lead to some necessary reassessment of things in the near future. The Noble Deposit bonus runs out at the end of March and, given the paucity of games on the site, I have no hope of clearing even half of it.
So, unless some startling new offer crops up, I might be stuck with having to play properly. That would be a good excuse to move up in stakes and see what happened, anyway.
President's Day today, so there might be some action on Ultimate this afternoon. Although, if this morning's triple rock-fest was anything to go on, there won't be.
+++++
I've just finished John Boyne's The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas and I recommend it highly. Is it a children's book that went askew, because the subject matter pushed the author in another direction? I'm not sure, but I do know that Boyne writes remarkably well. Not only is it a story well-told, but it was only this morning that I realized how brilliant Boyne is in visual descriptions. Rarely has such a book left so many pictures in my head. Marvellous.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-19 03:18 pm (UTC)I've long (well since I started reading it again) been of the opinion that there is a lot of excellent writing that gets hidden away as children's writing. The Noughts and Crosses trilogy by Malorie Blackman is very good, as is the Philip Pullman series, as are the Kevin Crossley Holland Arthurian stories.
Harry Potter however, is terrible, even though I know the damn thing almost by heart having read them all at least 3 times (to each of my kids). Just about it's worst failing as a children's book is that it is really hard to read aloud, so you have to read a paragraph ahead and then paraphrase Rowling's appallingly leaden dialogue.
PS. Sports massage is probably a better solution to your shoulder than ibuprofen.
Matt Harrison
no subject
Date: 2007-02-19 07:00 pm (UTC)It's interesting to hear how a young person interpreted this book.
I quite like "lightweight". Indeed, I think that is one of the novel's strengths. There's far too much length for length's sake.
Oh dear, I was looking forward to reading all of the Harry Potters in one go. You are the first person to say that the books are awful.
I've read the Pullman trilogy, and, although I thought that he lost his way a little bit, I was quite impressed by what was a neat reworking of Paradise Lost.
A problem with children's novels that run to sequences is that the writing often "grows up" with the children, because the core reasdership is getting older. Well, maybe that isn't necessarily a problem, but it's an aspect. So the third book of the Northern Light trilogy is distinctly more "adult" than the first book and you, as an adult, cannot help but notice this stylistic change.
Will they be able to film The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas? My guess is that they will, and that it will be a smash (if done well). But could Hollywood cope with the book as it is written?
Harry - not all bad
Date: 2007-02-19 07:23 pm (UTC)They're quite similar to Frank Herbert's Dune books really - potboilers where the major appeal is in following and fathoming the plot in advance. No great revelations and a whole lot of mumbo-jumbo. But the difficulty of reading them all in one go is that the first 2 books (like the first 2 films) are strictly juvenilia. Plus of course you'll have heard what happens.
I heartily second Matt's (and your) support for Pullman's stuff. I fear very badly for the film(s) that start emerging later on this year. Some fantasy should remain just that because it doesn't stand up to literal interpretation and certainly the third book will be a problem area for people of faith (i.e. Americans). Mallorie Blackman's Noughts and Crosses is excellent (a former best-book-in-the-world according to Steph) although the two sequels, Knifedge and Checkmate aren't as good.
I managed to get Nicki onto Ian McEwan and Steph read Espedair Street but I need other adult stuff to suck Steph into more adult reading. She's working her way through Ben Elton's stuff. Trouble is, she's too much of a plot and events junkie so can't be doing with something as descriptive and characterful as most quality adult fiction. I need stuff that starts with a bang and then develops characters.
Re: Harry - not all bad
Date: 2007-02-19 08:11 pm (UTC)Plot and events junkie, eh? Didn't "The Crow Road" start with the sentence "It was the day that my grandmother exploded."? Can't get much more action than that.
But the obvious choice for that would be "What A Carve Up!".
Then, if we are steering clear of genre stuff, there's Robert Harris, Barbara Vine (although you have to be a bit careful to choose the right ones) and, for superb historical fiction, Pat Barker's Ghost Road trilogy. Then there's the Roddy Doyle "Commitments" trilogy, the hilarious A Confederacy Of Dunces, the woefully underrated Paul Watkins, Sarah Waters (although I am not a particularly big fan of hers), possibly Tom Wolfe's better stuff, Theodore Roszak's fantastic and horribly ignored Flicker, and Tibor What-his-name's Under The Frog.
And,, if you have the commitment, what about James Ellroy's stuff, in the right order, thus starting with The Black Dahlia?
PJ
Re: Harry - not all bad
Date: 2007-02-20 10:24 am (UTC)Knowing that opening line from the Crow Road won me £120 in a pub quiz last year.
The Harry Potter books are probably best covered by listening to Stephen Fry reading them on CD/MP3 whatever. I downloaded all of them, but at 10 CDs a book they take a lot of burning time. They are quite well plotted (although with gaping holes) and are page-turners, and all my kids loved them - both being read to, reading them, listening to them and watching the films. However after about book 3 they each get about 200 pages too long, and the dialogue gets worse and worse.
I did read James Ellroy in almost the right order. I started with LA Confidential I think, but then started to read them all in order - although the last mish-mash of short stuff I got given in hardback (Destination:Morgue) is almost unreadable.
Ian Rankin's Rebus books in order are also pretty good, although they have gone badly downhill in the last few years (and also suffered from the extra padding added to them as sales went up).
Matt Harrison
Dune - not all bad (oh alright, yes it is)
Date: 2007-02-20 02:02 pm (UTC)To make you feel even queasier, a look on Amazon shows that his son's sequelesque 7th, 8th and 9th books are already published or pencilled in with publication dates to Sept 08. (Hunters of, Sandworms of, Paul of). I think that might even be a bridge too far for me.
Re: Harry - not all bad
Date: 2007-02-20 08:52 pm (UTC)The only way I would recommend that anyone, from the age of 99 years going down to around about the zygote level, should read a Harry Potter book is if they are pleading with me to lend them a copy of the Da Vinci Code. (Creese, if you're looking in, just say no. It's like the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, only even more senseless and badly written.)
When I read the first Harry Potter book, it struck me as reminiscent of the first Paddington Bear book, albeit without the whimsy, the characterisation, the jokes, the sense of place and time, an involvement in the back-story, the effortless use of the English language, the superb illustrations and the marmalade sandwiches. I'm sorry, but magic jelly beans just don't cut it for me. In addition, I found the silly puzzle-solving "denouement" at the end an utter disappointment. At least the Paddington stories had a decent framework and a satisfactory solution in each case. Paddington books are deficient in at least one sense, however: they weigh in at around 150 pages, rather than 500 and (grotesquely) upwards.
My friend (from Primary school: he's now a lecturer in Philosophy) David, who has read HP to his daughter, points out that the author is clearly desperate to avoid the classic "he said, she said" trap. Unfortunately, she does so by injecting so many synonyms, alternate phraseology and general gibberish that the end result has no flow whatsoever. Matt is quite right to point out that you have to read ahead for a few sentences in order to paraphrase. What sort of a children's book is that, pray?
Oh, and the second one is very, very much "Children of Dune." After that I retired, weeping pus.
For reading to kids, I would far prefer Lemony Snickett, which is actually enjoyable for the reader. This seems important to me. I quite like doing the voices in the Narnia books, and I'd love to convince modern children that Alan Garner books are worth reading ... but a lot of the stuff that I grew up with sounds terribly verbose these days. I'd recommend most classic SciFi for plot and general lack of pretentiousness.
On the other hand, the last book I read to a twelve year old was "Zombie Butts From Uranus," so I'm sure I can sink to even lower depths than Geoff...
Re: Harry - not all bad
Date: 2007-02-22 12:05 pm (UTC)I agree with Matt that the books became about 200 pages too long from about the third book onwards, but who is going to have the chutzpah to edit JK Rowling?
I really enjoyed Pullman's "His Dark Materials". I bought it for Mrs. Fiendish, who quickly discarded it as the central character was a pre-pubescent female and therefore not someone she could empathise with. Basically, if the book does not involve a quest, a mysterious good wizard, a supremely evil wizard, a rag-bag collection of different racial types (gnomes, centaurs, that kind of stuff) then Mrs. Fiendish won't enjoy it. As a fan of private eye fiction I am hardly in a position to criticise her for essentially reading the same book over and over again, but unlike her, I don't keep my books with a view to re-reading them in future years (well, except for my Hammett books, which I like to revist every 5 years or so).
Anyway, I enjoyed the series, even the slightly convoluted "death of God" ending. It seems that Pullman's attitude towards gods and religions are similar to mine own.
All my lads are now too old to be read to. Number 3 son did show encouraging signs of reading for pleasure but that was before the days of World of Warcraft. His favourite was the Edge Chronicles (Sky Pirates) series, and I enjoyed these too. Although they are light, they are not too "black & white", and they occasionally betray Gormenghast like influences; I think Peake would have approved of the floating city of Sanctaphrax, a city built on floating rock and which therefore has to be tethered by a giant chain to the ground to prevent it floating off into the stratosphere.
Hmmm, actually, I miss not reading to number 3 son as I no longer have an excuse for reading ripping yarns such as these. I can only hope that number 3 son, at least, will return to reading for pleasure when he starts commuting.
Of course, number one son reads for pleasure also but in his case the only book he has ever read that wasn't a set book in his English studies is the Argos catalogue, and that's a very different sort of "reading" for pleasure.
John H.
Re: Harry - not all bad
Date: 2007-02-22 01:18 pm (UTC)"I'm ten", Sam replied.
PJ
UB rakeback
Date: 2007-02-20 02:35 am (UTC)In case you aren't aware of it, I have read on 2+2 that UB allows you to have 2 accounts with them. Thus you can apparently make a new account through a RB affiliate and make a small initial deposit, and then do an account transfer from your old one to the new one to have all your funds there. I don't play much on UB anymore so I have never bothered myself.
BluffTHIS!
Re: UB rakeback
Date: 2007-02-22 01:15 pm (UTC)I suspect that the "second" account is for a spouse, whether said spouse exists or not.
I may get round to doing that at some time. For the moment, I'm looking at the Party points for cash bonus, although I know that I shouldn't be.
PJ