Robert A. Heinlein - "Time enough for love"

After 153 pages, out of a 600+, I decided to stop reading this.

True enough, reading this has have been far from continuous. The Harry Potter series intervened, and there were some other books that begged for attention.

But it is not merely being "out" of the story and its characters that made me take this, quite uncommon, step. It simply doesn't really appeal to me.

It's a kind of Sheherezade story, in which The Senior, a very very old man, is just in time prevented from performing suicide after living for more than a 1000 years. He agrees to telling his story without murdering himself, for as long as he'll stay interested in the descendants that have revivded him.

The story becomes a framework for story-chapters in which he relates his travels and experiences. That's it, and it didn't keep me glued to the pages, it didn't even keep me mildly interested.

The writing style does not really appeal either. The characters tend to have very sharp tongues, but it becomes tiresome after a while. There is only so much smart remarks on one page one can take.

And the funny trap that almost every writer seems to fall for: particularly in a story like this which spans multiple centuries, the number of allusions and references to our time and place is much much higher than any other reference-count. It becomes too obvious it is written for our time, in our time by someone from our time.

Strange moral codes...

in an article about one of the biggest pirates:

"You know you're in a universe with a strange moral code when people start complaining that the stolen goods they're in turn stealing weren't stolen properly."

http://www.slate.com/id/2204367/pagenum/2/

Sandman Comics - 01 "Sleep of the just"

took some time to get into reading comics again. the BOLD letters, the short phrases. drawings are wonderful. story typically Gaimanesque. Wonder how it develops.

Interview Guardian with Leonard Cohen

From "The Guardian"

"These times are very difficult to write in because the slogans are really jamming the airwaves - it's something that goes beyond what has been called political correctness. It's a kind of tyranny of posture. Those ideas are swarming through the air like locusts. And it's difficult for the writer to determine what he really thinks about things. So in my own case I have to write the verse, and then see if it's a slogan or not and then toss it. But I can't toss it until I've worked on it and seen what it really is."

and he quotes Tennessee Williams: "Life is a fairly well-written play except for the third act."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jul/10/ghomeshi-interviews-leonard-cohen

Leonard Cohen on Q TV [youtube]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugh8Xe6hX7U

American Psycho

The controversial film... it wasn't bad, it wasn't good.

Didn't like the voiceover. Patrick Bateman is this cold human being with hardly any emotion, "except greed and jealousy". Why tell us, the reader, who he is, what he is? We are not to associate with him. We are supposed not to understand him. Show, don't tell. It will be different to show that he has almost no emotion, but coldly telling us... no.

And why the love for music? Didn't he say he had no emotions whatsoever? How to appreciate music without positive emotions? Then again, this could be explained as his way of "being part of humankind, being indistinguisable".

In stories like these, you have to accept certain facts, or stop reading / watching. In this case, the main character has no (positive) emotions. The origins are not explained, but sure, I can go along with that. What makes it unbelievable, is the clear fact that he becomes crazy; mixing up names, reading "feed me a stray cat" on an ATM. So it turns out he is not a very strange human being, he is simply mad as a hatter.

The point is that there is no point. Die yuppy scum. I don't buy it.

But the scene with the calling cards is still pretty good.