January 2010
12 posts
1 tag
1 tag
Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the...
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
An interesting look at white-collar unemployment in the USA. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it much, but Ehrenreich brings a dark sense of humour to a bleak topic, and seems open to all the new experiences she encounters. I think anyone who’s been unable to find a white-collar job will be able to identify with the weird situation it puts you in, although the...
1 tag
When we were orphans: Kazuo Ishiguro
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a challenging novel. It’s not a standard detective story, and it’s not a standard unreliable narrator tale either. There are clues, but they contradict each other, and Ishiguro leaves it up to you to decide if that even matters.
Banks is one of the most frustrating narrators I’ve read lately. His tunnel-vision drives me as batty as the...
ABC The Drum - Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Yuck, Yuck,... →
This article sums up how I feel about the recent surge of Aussie ‘patriotism’.
1 tag
Sicko, Michael Moore
Last night I finally got to see Michael Moore’s documentary about the USA’s health care system, Sicko. There weren’t any real surprises, but I do think it’s Moore’s best documentary so far.
He sticks to what he does best: talking to everyday people who are struggling to get by in life and explaining how things got to the stage where middle-class people are going...
Vintage Lego ad for girls →
Feministing.com found a 70s-era Lego ad featuring a little red-haired girl. Very cute without the need to make everything pink and purple. What happened, Lego?
Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A guilty pleasure: this is a silly vampire romp with a ‘mystery’ to be solved in-between the main character getting it on with the vampire next-door. Even though the mystery really wasn’t, and the writing was frequently awful, it did have that page-turning quality that keeps me reading even when I know I’ve got other things to do.
The worst of the...
1 tag
Nation by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
One of Pratchett’s few non-Discworld books, and one I really loved. It’s about what you do when everything you thought you knew gets turned upside down. And also about grief, and growing up, and culture clashes, and history, and tree-climbing octopuses, and milking pigs.
It’s set on an alternate Earth, similar but different from ours, maybe during the...
1 tag
Unseen Academicals
Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’m not sure I’m actually able to review Discworld books properly (if I ever review anything properly at all), because I’ve been reading them for nearly 20 years now and they’re part of the furniture of my mind, integrated with the general mess.
And I put off reading this one, after hearing about...
1 tag
Avatar
So, along with everyone else, I went to see the mega-super-uber-blockbuster “Avatar”. I liked it more than I thought I would, since awesome SFX with lame plots aren’t usually my cup of tea. But it was very pretty and immersive, and the blue kitteh aliens were cool. Let me know when I can get one of those tails with a built-in psychic link.
Additional good points: Michelle...
“Every time you sniff and say somebody has “too much free time,” the part of you...”
– Twitter / Merlin Mann