Articles by Denise
Review: Hot Fuzz (2007)
There’s a small change of pace this week in the Librarian’s Tome section. Instead of a book review, I’ve wandered into the film section of the library (not completely of my own free will, as I still prefer books, but spouses can be persuasive) and present to you Librarian’s Tome: Film Edition.
Title: Hot Fuzz
Director: Edgar Wright
Writers: Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright
Release date: 20 April 2007 (Canada), 14 March 2007 (US)
Genre: Comedy/Action
Rating: 5/5, go watch it now if it’s playing at your local theatre
Simon Pegg is well-known for his part in for 2004′s zombie movie parody Shaun of the Dead (in which he both co-wrote and starred). In Hot Fuzz, he’s acting with Shaun of the Dead co-star and comedian Nick Frost, who plays a police officer, Danny Butterman, in the peaceful village of Sandford. Pegg’s character, Nicholas Angel, also a police officer and one of London’s finest, is basically shipped out of his home city due to his hard work and excellent record; he’s made the rest of the London team look bad. He’s in great contrast to Butterman, who is more like a child that wants to be the sort of risk-taking police officer that he sees in the movies, but isn’t quite up to par.
Review: Tricked
Title: Tricked
Author: Alex Robinson
Year of Publication: 2005
Genre: Drama (graphic novel)
Length: 349 pages, large book. It’s a fairly text-heavy graphic novel.
Rating: 3/5 buy second-hand
It sounds like a commercial for the latest Thursday night drama on Global; six adults, three men and three women, pushed together into an absurd and dangerous situation as a result of seemingly harmless decisions made by each of them. Love, sex, counterfeit baseball cards and diner food fill the pages. Don’t miss the season premiere tonight, at 8/7 central!
Kidding aside, I was drawn to this book mostly from the simple title and artwork. On the cover were all six characters*, and the blurb on the back promised quite a variety, from a rock star who hasn’t had a hit in years, to a waitress who can’t find a decent guy, to a young woman who is traveling to meet her father for the first time since early childhood.
Review: The Mists of Avalon
Title: The Mists of Avalon
Author: Marion Zimmer Bradley
Year of Publication: 1982
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 912 pages in the soft-cover edition
Rating: 4.5/5 – Worth paying full price
Review:
There are few classic tales that can be told over and over again without boring the reader. One trick that many authors use – and I seem to gravitate towards these – is to tell the story from a different angle or point of view. With that in mind, Bradley presents us with a stunning version of the tale of King Arthur and Avalon, from the point of view of someone who is often considered the villain, or at least, the protagonist; the misunderstood, the unloved, the mystical, Morgaine, aka Morgan la Fay.
True to the stories, she is the sister of King Arthur, though they are separated while still quite young. The book takes us from when Morgaine was merely a toddler – dark-haired, big-eyed, someone who is unsettling, fairy-like and far too mature for a young girl. She is much like her older relative, Viviane, who is a High Priestess of Avalon. Eventually, she is taken under Avalon’s wing and trained there to be a priestess herself. For many years she is separated from Arthur and the rest of Britain, and becomes a woman of great power.
Review: Thief of Time
Title: Thief of Time
Author: Terry Pratchett
Year of Publication: 2002
Genre: Fantasy/Fiction
Length: 384 pages in the hardcover version
Rating: 3.5/5 – Worth buying second-hand.
Review:
Thief of Time is one of the many Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. Although this one doesn’t spend all of it’s time in the “charming” city of Anhk-Morpork, part of it is there, and another with the History Monks. Thief of Time also features appearances from Death, of the Four Horseman of the Apocolypse fame, and Miss Susan, his granddaughter by adoption who still managed to pick up powers that aren’t quite those of a human. And teaches elementary school.
The main characters who we see the world through are Jeremy, a young and misanthropic clockmaking genius, and Lobsang, who is a genius apprentice to the History Monks. Jeremy and Lobsang, who don’t meet until near the end of the book, were both seen as children who could not be easily herded like the other sheep, and kept at a distance from the rest. Lobsang in particular is still being taught, and is handed over to legendary Lu-Tze, with the thought that it may keep both of them out of everyone else’s hair.
Review: Son of a Witch
Title: Son of a Witch (Sequel to previously reviewed Wicked)
Author: Gregory Maguire
Year of Publication: 2006
Genre: Fantasy/Fiction
Length: 329 pages; small font, large book, not a quick read.
Rating: 4/5 – Worth paying full price.
Review:
Warning: There are spoilers for Wicked in this review.
Son of a Witch is the sequel to the popular novel Wicked, and came out ten years after Wicked’s publication. This book stars an older Liir, though still a young adult, who is never quite sure if he is, in fact, the son of Elphaba. He knows that he’s been with her since he was a small child, and that she may be the closest thing to a mother that he’s ever had. Anyone who has read Wicked knows that Liir is Elphaba’s son, though she never recognized it or really thought about it.
His main goal for part of the book is to rescue a girl named Nor, who was his half sister (they had the same father), and was taken away with the rest of the family by soldiers. He believes her to be in Emerald city, and so starts out on his journey there.
Review: To Say Nothing of the Dog
Title: To Say Nothing of the Dog
Year of Publication: 1998
Genre: Science-Fiction/Humour
Length: 493 pages
Rating: 4.5/5 – Worth paying full price
Review:
To Say Nothing of the Dog starts off in the 1940s, in a rather unsafe version of the 21st century’s Coventry Cathedral. There, a bunch of historians, one of which is named Ned Henry, are looking for a particular artifact by the name of the Bishop’s Bird Stump, thinking that they may find it amidst the chaos of the building. But there are fires, broken glass and debris everywhere, and it’s hard to find, let alone positively identify. For most of the book even, the reader isn’t really sure of what the Bishop’s Bird Stump is, or what it looks like.
The reason he’s there in the first place, however, is because his boss, Lady Schrapnell, is trying to renovate the Coventry Cathedral to it’s former, pre-bombed glory, and for her having the Bishop’s Bird Stump is critical. It’s a part of history, and a part of the cathedral, so she nearly forces Ned and the other workers to go back in time, looking for it. Unfortunately for Ned, going back and forth in time a lot causes problems both mentally and physically, and since Ned has been time traveling far too much, he ends up disoriented and in a state not unlike being drunk sometimes, just after a switch.
Review: Feet of Clay
Title: Feet of Clay
Author: Terry Pratchett
Year of Publication: 1996
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 288 pages (hardcover version)
Rating: 4/5 – Worth paying full price
Review:
Feet of Clay takes place on Discworld, a world in which Pratchett has written at least 35 novels. This particular book is part of the City Watch group (there are at least 8 books in this group, to date), which centers around Sam Vimes, a cop, and the policemen that work for him in the bustling city of Anhk-Morpork. The city is a melting pot of different sorts of people; humans, trolls, dwarves, witches, zombies, werewolves, vampires, and others.
Discworld is a flat world that is balanced on the backs of four elephants, which in turn are standing on the back of a giant turtle. Books in this series are usually parodies of various themes pulled from well-known works of fantasy, science fiction, crime novels, horror, and other genres. A lot of the characters and plots are recognizable as parodies of popular stories or characters. While there is an order to the City Watch series, the novels don’t necessarily need to be read in order to be understood. Each book has it’s own self-contained plot, though characters do go through development over the course of the books. Sometimes a book will feature a certain character, like Constable Carrot, and then he’ll barely be mentioned in the next book.
Review: The Time Traveler's Wife
Title: The Time Traveler’s Wife
Author: Audrey Niffenegger
Year of Publication: 2004
Genre: Science Fiction
Length: 536 pages
Rating: 4/5 – Worth paying full price
Review:
The Time Traveler’s Wife is hard to describe in so many words. When you break it down to it’s basic parts, it’s not much more than a tragic love story between a man and a woman who have a problem that gets in the way of their love. Nothing new or very exciting, as this also describes classics like Romeo and Juliet, and probably many trashy romance novels. What’s different about this book, however, is the way it’s told, and the particularly unique problem that the couple faces.
Review: Eragon
Title: Eragon (Inheritance, Book 1)
Author: Christopher Paolini
Year of Publication: 2004
Genre: Fantasy
Length: (I sold my copy, so I don’t have anything to check. Probably at least 300 pages)
Rating: 2/5 – Good practice for focusing the eyes on letters*
Review:
A generic tale of a boy and his dragon.
I could really end the review right there, as that’s all you need to know. There’s a sexy female elf, a weird old mentor, and innocent relatives who die, but all of that is part of the generic fantasy bundle. It’s like a kit; there are certain things that are just included in a generic fantasy.
But somehow, there’s still some media buzz about this book even now, two years after the first one came out. If you hear one thing about Eragon, it’s that Paolini started writing Eragon when he was just 15, and finished when he was 17. That in itself is a fairly remarkable feat, though unfortunately the book is merely great for a 17-year-old, and not great in general.
Review: His Dark Materials (a trilogy)
Title: His Dark Materials – Book One: The Golden Compass, Book Two: The Subtle Knife, Book Three: The Amber Spyglass
Author: Philip Pullman
Year of Publication: 1995
Genre: Fantasy
Length: Each paperback book has between 335 and 465 pages.
Rating: 4.5/5 – Worth paying full price.
Review:
His Dark Materials is a trilogy that should still be as popular today as it was when it first came out in the UK, in 1995. It wasn’t until 2003 that I finally heard about the books and read them, when they were recommended to me by not just one friend, but several.
The first book, The Golden Compass, starts off with Lyra, a young girl still a year or two away from adolescence who lives in – and terrorizes – Jordan Campus. At the start, she made me think of a wild pirate girl, barely allowing herself to be tamed by the adults who tried to keep her under control. While she does live in Oxford, it’s back in time, and in another dimension. In this dimension, all humans have familiars called daemons that are with them for life. This daemon, while able to walk around, talk, and in some cases fly short distances from their human, are attached emotionally to them for life. If they wander too far away from each other – and it mentions that children and their daemons usually test this at least once – then both of them will feel a great deal of emotional pain and sadness. Also, when the human is a child, the daemon has not taken on it’s full form yet and can change at will. When we first see Lyra’s daemon, Pantalaimon, he’s a moth. Later, we see him as a fly, a dolphin (Lyra spends a large amount of time in a boat during the journey), a sparrow, and others.
