3 Books

[asterroc]

The reason I'm not participating in the 50 books meme I keep seeing is that I just don't read as much anymore, but I figured I'd mention the few I have. Since around January I've read the first 6 books of the Wheel of Time (Robert Jordan) series (well, read books 3-6, listened to books 1-4 on audio CD). Not much to say there, typical epic fantasy fluff that somehow I never read when it was popular in high school. Probably b/c of my self-imposed rule that I don't read a series when there's more books in the series than letters in the author's name. (Did you know that Piers Anthony's full name is Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob? I still won't read any more Xanth books.)

I just read Children of Men (PD James), upon which the movie is loosely based. Trust me, the movie is MUCH better than the book. (Funny, I tend to like whichever I read first.) If you do decide to read the book, at least it's short. The writing style schitzophrenically switches between first person diary entries and third person following the same character. It's not coherent and there's unnecessary gaps in time. The character Theo is slightly better developed in the novel, showing a lot of growth to his emotions throughout the story. The other characters are not consistent with the movie (heck, Theo himself barely is), and the plot is significantly altered. I think the movie is more appropriate for current times, perhaps the novel was more appropriate when it was written in the early 1990's. The author includes some anachronistic references to pop culture of the time too. Very strange and disjointed. Not a Good Thing.

I guess I've read some comic books too, like Fables (Bill Willingham), reread the pretty and new leatherbound first Sandman collection (T$ liked the new coloring, I didn't notice it), and some others, but I forget what. Shows how much impression they made. Read some short older (read: public domain) SF on Wikisource like The Man Who Could Work Miracles (HG Wells), which inspired me to calculate how much force τorque would be required to stop the Earth spinning in a given time, but I didn't actually do it.

τ (tau, lowercase) in this font doesn't look how it should. I always write τorque with a τ for the first letter, and it just doesn't look right here.

Oh, and can't forget I'm working on Div, Grad, Curl, and All That with jethereal. We're halfway through Chapter 2. Anyone know of a good book on tensors? I see on Amazon that there exists a Schaum's outlines on tensor calc, but I don't know if it's any good - I know they're good w/ other things though, so I may go for that one if I can't scare up a recommendation.

Comments

[dirkcjelli.livejournal.com]

looks like you have some broken HTML early on...

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

It was actually near the end. LJ repated the whole post...

[kadath.livejournal.com]

Everything I know about tensors, I learned without a textbook. :\ If you find a good one, let me know.

[transversely.livejournal.com]

I have not seen the movie, but I COMPLETELY agree with your Children of Men review.
So the movie is better, eh?
Is it very scary?
T

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

It probably quadruples the violence of the book - I recall the scene where the Omegas attack the car as being the only violence in the book. That scene is kept in (and apparently there's some amazing movie technology to how they actually shot it), a few more similar scenes are added, and they visit the equivalent of the Isle of Man penal colony. I felt that the novel's main message was Theo finally learning what emotions are where he used to be numb, while the movie's main message is society learning what hope is where they used to be despairing.

Though I have to say, for some reason I'm now mixing it up w/ 28 Weeks Later...