Sunday, September 25, 2011

Forbidden Planet Review


With Walter Pidgeon and Leslie Nielsen

A spaceship is sent out to find out what happen to a colony that was sent out 20 years earlier.  What they find is a planet empty of everyone but two survivors and a the deadly answer to the question of what happen to the colony and the long dead civilization of the planet.



I thought this movie took a while to get started. It is just a little bit slow in the beginning but picks up later. Watching it now there is nothing mind blowingly new but it is still fun to watch. The special effects are good enough and they didn't try to go over the top with them so even now nothing looks incredibly cheesy and laughable like so many other classic sci-fi movies. The story is pretty good and it is interesting to recognize so much of the cast. Some of the dialogue and acting is a little stilted and honestly just bad but the movie as a whole is suspenseful and entertaining. Definitely worth a look.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Theme Thursday - Sound/Music

Theme Thursdays is a fun weekly event that will be open from one Thursday to the next. Hosted by Reading Between Pages.


Anyone can participate in it.

The rules are simple:

•A theme will be posted each week (on Thursday’s)
•Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading
•Mention the author and the title of the book along with your post
•It is important that the theme is conveyed in the sentence (you don’t necessarily need to have the word) Ex: If the theme is KISS; your sentence can have “They kissed so gently” or “Their lips touched each other” or “The smooch was so passionate”



This week’s theme is – SOUND / MUSIC


He pressed the button for a Haydn symphony that Farnsworth had told him he should hear. After a moment the sounds came on, militant and precise and, to him, of no logical or esthetic consequence. He was like an American listening to Chinese music.

--The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Blood Oath & Outlaw Vocab

Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth




Madrassa: a Muslim school, college, or university that is often part of a mosque

Abreaction: the expression and emotional discharge of unconscious material (as a repressed idea or emotion) by verbalization especially in the presence of a therapist

Creatine: a white crystalline nitrogenous substance C4H9N3O2 found especially in the muscles of vertebrates either free or as phosphocreatine; also : a synthetic usually hydrated form of creatine taken especially as a dietary supplement

Atavism: recurrence in an organism of a trait or character typical of an ancestral form and usually due to genetic recombination

Abattoir: slaughterhouse



Outlaw by Angus Donald



Justiciar: the chief political and judicial officer of the Norman and later kings of England until the 13th century

Weasand: throat; gullet

Reive: raid

Vinous: of, relating to, or made with wine

Conroi: A small group of knights who competed in tournaments together from the 12th and 13th centuries

Gralloch: the entrails of a deer

Shrieval: of or relating to a sheriff

Friday, September 16, 2011

The Friday 56 - The Disappearing Spoon

Rules:

*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56.
*Find any sentence that grabs you.
*Post it.
*Link it to Freda's Voice.
*Add your (url) post to Linky on Freda’s post

The book this week is The Disappearing Spoon: and other tales of madness, love and the history of the world from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean.


Mendeleev might as well have predicted cheese on Mars before Lecoq de Boisbaudran found evidence for his table in gallium.


Mendeleev did a lot of early work on putting the Periodic Table together and predicted what some the elements that hadn’t been discovered would look like. Which was just a nice story until someone actually found one.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Theme Thursday - Feeling

Theme Thursdays is a fun weekly event that will be open from one Thursday to the next. Hosted by Reading Between Pages.


Anyone can participate in it.
The rules are simple:

•A theme will be posted each week (on Thursday’s)
•Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading
•Mention the author and the title of the book along with your post
•It is important that the theme is conveyed in the sentence (you don’t necessarily need to have the word) Ex: If the theme is KISS; your sentence can have “They kissed so gently” or “Their lips touched each other” or “The smooch was so passionate”


This week’s theme is – FEELING (Happiness, sadness, surprise, etc. )

This is a book about teenage girls so I expected there to be big dramatic scenes that fit this theme but it didn’t really work out that way. I found one though.


“You can’t leave me!” Terror sounded in Amy’s shrill whisper and she slipped down to crash in a heap against the floor.

-- Child of Tomorrow by Barbara Bertholomew

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

WWW Wednesdays (September 14th)

To play along just answer the following three (3) questions...


*What are you currently reading?
*What did you recently finish reading?
*What do you think you’ll read next?


Leave a link to your post (or the answers themselves if you do not have a blog) in the comments of Should Be Reading.


What are you currently reading?

Child of Tomorrow by Barbara Bartholomew
Second of The Time Keeper trilogy. I read these when I was a kid. I’m sure they seemed more exciting to me then. They aren’t bad. They could be a good way to take a break from heavier reading. I just wouldn’t call them great.


The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean
Stories from the periodic table. I haven’t gotten very far yet but I like stories about science and these seem like I will even be able to understand them.



What did you recently finish reading?

Sex on the Moon by Ben Mezrich
Spurred on by his love of a beautiful girl Thad Roberts decides to steal moon rocks from NASA. It’s an interesting story but I have to say that if a guy wants to impress me an illegal act is not the way to do it.

The Time Keeper by Barbara Bartholomew


What do you think you’ll read next?

When Dreamers Cease to Dream by Barbara Bartholomew
The third in the trilogy so I might as well finish it up.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children Review

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

(from the book jacket)
A horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that Miss Peregrine’s children were more than just peculiar. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow – impossible though it seems – they may still be alive.



This book starts out like it is going to be a sort of coming of age tale. And in some ways it remains one. But it also spins off and becomes much more. It has little pieces of adventure, romance, mystery, fantasy, and even a little historical fiction. So I’m unsure how to characterize this book. Time travel would be science fiction, but it isn’t really, monsters would be fantasy, but I wouldn’t call it that either. There isn’t one genre I could put on it but the mix works well. The characters are fun and interesting. There is one that seems slightly out of place to me. It wasn’t anything glaring or obtrusive to the story but he was unnecessary in a way the others were not. I like how the photos are woven in and become an integral part of the story. The photos by themselves are interesting too and it’s cool that they were not made for the book but are actual antique photographs. They make for a visual appealing book as well as a good story. There is action and danger but there is also good character development and personal growth in the main character and it makes for a nice pace throughout the book. There are a lot of interesting ideas in what makes the kids ‘peculiar’ and where the bad guys have come from that make it differ even more from other books that I’ve read than the photos already had. So even though there are some elements that have been done in many stories before it isn’t old. It is an entertaining story but if you are like me and are tired of all the young adult books coming in trilogies or series and are dying for a book that actually ends on the last page you might want to give this one a pass. The end definitely bodes of more to come.