LENINADE

Found this somewhere on the Internet:


Remember: In Soviet Russia, when life hands you lemons...lemonade makes YOU!

Life-altering books

From the blog Kung Fu Monkey:

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world.

The other, of course, involves orcs."

The Angel's Game

~One of the best books I've read in recent years was The Shadow of the Wind by Spanish author Carlos Ruiz Zafon (which I reviewed some time ago). I'm very excited about his upcoming next book, The Angel's Game, which will be published in the U.S. just a few months. The Spanish -> English translation will once again be done by Lucia Graves, which should bring a welcome sense of familiarity to the narrative flow.

The Angel's Game is a prequel to The Shadow of the Wind (it takes place in the 1920s, where Shadow was set after World War II). The mysterious Cemetery of Forgotten Books will return, as will the bookshop of "Sempere & Son". Here's a description:

In an abandoned mansion at the heart of Barcelona, a young man, David Martín, makes his living by writing sensationalist novels under a pseudonym. The survivor of a troubled childhood, he has taken refuge in the world of books, and spends his nights spinning baroque tales about the city's underworld. But perhaps his dark imaginings are not as strange as they seem, for in a locked room deep within the house lie photographs and letters hinting at the mysterious death of the previous owner.

Like a slow poison, the history of the place seeps into his bones as he struggles with an impossible love. Close to despair, David receives a letter from a reclusive French editor, Andreas Corelli, who makes him the offer of a lifetime. He is to write a book unlike anything that has existed - a book with the power to change hearts and minds. In return, he will receive a fortune, perhaps more. But as David begins the work, he realises that there is a connection between this haunting book and the shadows that surround his home.

Set in the turbulent 1920s, THE ANGEL'S GAME takes us back to the gothic universe of the Cemetery of the Forgotten Books, the Sempere & Son bookshop, and the winding streets of Barcelona's old quarter, in a masterful tale about the magic of books and the darkest corners of the human soul.

For fun, check out the a movie-style trailer for the book on the author's website!

I'm looking forward to this novel immensely. If you are too, stop by the author's website for a real-time clock counting down the seconds until the novel's U.S. publication. As I write this, the clock is ticking down from 74 days, 7 hours, 43 minutes, and 30 seconds. To save you some math, that translates to June 16th.

(By the way, there are some other cool things on Zafon's English website, like a free-to-download soundtrack for The Shadow of the Wind and an interactive "Shadow Walk" that uses tags in Google Maps to show where the action in the novel took place.)

Film Review: "10,000 BC"

~Directed by Roland Emmerich (best known for the alien-invasion blockbuster "Independence Day") and shown in 2008, "10,000 BC" is an epic in the original sense of the word. Set 12,009 years ago, the movie tells the story of a young dreadlocked hunter named D'Leh (rhymes with the surname of a former Texas Congressman), who must leave his mammoth-hunting mountain tribe after slavers kidnap his beloved, the mysterious Evolet. Hot on the slavers' trail, he encounters saber-tooth tigers, ferocious blizzards, and even carnivorous terror birds in the course of his quest. On the way, he builds up an army of other tribes whose people have also been preyed upon, and instigates a massive slave rebellion at the site of the Giza pyramids!

Some critics (any by "some" I mean "most") have derided this film for its historical inaccuracy, pointing out that the pyramids were build in the 3rd millennium BC, terror birds did not co-exist with homo sapiens, etc. But so what? It makes for a bloody good film (and I mean that literally). I'm reminded of those who complained that "The Da Vinci Code" wasn't accurate. Get a grip, people: it's entertainment. As far as this film goes, a deleted scene on the DVD I watched implies that the pyramids are covered by the desert sands, later to be unearthed by the Egyptians, implying that in the fictional world of this movie, the pyramids really ARE 12,000 years old.

My chief complaint about this film is not in its supposed inaccuracy, but rather that the story has potential that, in my mind, wasn't realized. D'Leh's journey, as I've said, is truly epic: a long quest through distant lands, torturous challenges, building an army and launching a massive slave rebellion, and so forth. But despite all that, I didn't think it was quite epic enough. For example, all we get to see of the slaver civilization is a construction camp and a large boat, rather than an entire pre-historic civilization. The film incorporates some quasi-fantasy (e.g., Atlantis, remote viewing), but I would have liked to see some science fiction elements, or at least hints of something greater. I would also have liked to see a massive battle between tens of thousands of primitive tribesmen and the small but technologically superior proto-Egpytian army at the gates of a massive city lost to the sands of time...but then, I'm not a director, and my imagination has no budgetary limits.

If you enjoy thrilling adventure stories that are epic in scope and show personal heroism and sacrifice, you'll love 10,000 BC. It makes me wonder what stories people will tell about us 12,000 years from now. Final grade: B+. Here's a trailer for the movie: