dangermousie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dangermousie) wrote2009-09-24 10:17 am
dangermousie) wrote2009-09-24 10:17 am
Kindle, Merlin, and Otomen
Kindlekindlekindlekindle!
In case you haven't figured it out, I am madly in love with my Kindle. It's small, it weighs less than my wallet and it can hold so many books - I can take it everywhere to read - trips, in bed, in the bath, everywhere.
So, here is what I have on my Kindle so far:
1. Complete works of Charles Dickens
2. Complete (I think, it's 50+) works of Wilkie Collins
3. Berta Platas' Cinderella Lopez (a chicklit book take on Cinderella. For some reason, even though I am not Latina, I love Latina chick lit. Maybe because I am ethnic too, even if not Hispanic, and can see more in common with those heroines than the neurotic, infantile heroines of 'mainstream' chicklit).
4. Mark Twain, The Gilded Age, vols 1-5
5. Mark Twain, The American Claimant (I read this book years ago and have been looking for it ever since)
6. Owen Wister, Seven Westerns (I am not a big Western fan - not my thing, but oddly, The Virginian, one of the classics of the genre, is one of my all-time favorite novels. So much so that I've disliked every adaptation of it I've seen, even if Gary Cooper from an early one would have made a perfect Virginian if it had a different script and cinemascope :P Part of the problem for adapting this is that TV doesn't really have a plot - it's a character study of time and place, and a particular person at the center of it - there are "episodes" (hunt for cattle rustlers, the Virginian's courtship of Molly *swoonshipswoon*) but they aren't necessarily connected and they certainly don't flow from one to another - that real-life structure of the book is one of the reasons I love it, but it makes it hard to adapt. The book is all about language and mood and characters and that's hard to put on screen. Take it out, and it becomes rather dull. Plus, they usually make Molly a PRISS. Wtf? Molly is one of my huge fictional favorites - she is a genteel New Englander, 'upper class' too, who is basically stuck in the wilderness with quasi-savages (by that I mean cowboys) who are different from anything she knows. She is not being a tease for not falling into the Virginian's arms - it's a huge thing as they are so fundamentally different as to be almost (but not quite) incompatible). OK, that was a huge digression.
7. HW Brands, Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times
8. Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought (American history 1815-1844)
9. Simon R Green, Swords of Haven
10. Simon R. Green, Daemons are Forever
11. Simon R. Green, The Man with the Golden Torc
12. Simon R. Green, The Spy who Haunted Me
13. Helen Hunt Jackson, Ramona (I loved that 19th century "issue" novel).
In other news, I get very tempted to check out Merlin - so many on my flist love it. But whenever I get close, I start thinking about big WTFs (why is Merlin Arthur's age and his servant) and small ones (Gwen as a Black servant as opposed to a queen. Also, while it's not impossible for there to be a Black person in the isles of that time, it's very unlikely, to say the least). Oh well - Arthurian mythos is an odd thing to be a purist about, but I remember griping my way through the entirety of Clive Owen's King Arthur movie and don't want a repetition of that.
I bet they eat potatoes, too! /bitter
And finally, Otomen continues to be ridiculously sweet - unlike MeiChan and jHanaKimi, it has heart and also a Universe I can conceivably identify as our own.
In case you haven't figured it out, I am madly in love with my Kindle. It's small, it weighs less than my wallet and it can hold so many books - I can take it everywhere to read - trips, in bed, in the bath, everywhere.
So, here is what I have on my Kindle so far:
1. Complete works of Charles Dickens
2. Complete (I think, it's 50+) works of Wilkie Collins
3. Berta Platas' Cinderella Lopez (a chicklit book take on Cinderella. For some reason, even though I am not Latina, I love Latina chick lit. Maybe because I am ethnic too, even if not Hispanic, and can see more in common with those heroines than the neurotic, infantile heroines of 'mainstream' chicklit).
4. Mark Twain, The Gilded Age, vols 1-5
5. Mark Twain, The American Claimant (I read this book years ago and have been looking for it ever since)
6. Owen Wister, Seven Westerns (I am not a big Western fan - not my thing, but oddly, The Virginian, one of the classics of the genre, is one of my all-time favorite novels. So much so that I've disliked every adaptation of it I've seen, even if Gary Cooper from an early one would have made a perfect Virginian if it had a different script and cinemascope :P Part of the problem for adapting this is that TV doesn't really have a plot - it's a character study of time and place, and a particular person at the center of it - there are "episodes" (hunt for cattle rustlers, the Virginian's courtship of Molly *swoonshipswoon*) but they aren't necessarily connected and they certainly don't flow from one to another - that real-life structure of the book is one of the reasons I love it, but it makes it hard to adapt. The book is all about language and mood and characters and that's hard to put on screen. Take it out, and it becomes rather dull. Plus, they usually make Molly a PRISS. Wtf? Molly is one of my huge fictional favorites - she is a genteel New Englander, 'upper class' too, who is basically stuck in the wilderness with quasi-savages (by that I mean cowboys) who are different from anything she knows. She is not being a tease for not falling into the Virginian's arms - it's a huge thing as they are so fundamentally different as to be almost (but not quite) incompatible). OK, that was a huge digression.
7. HW Brands, Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times
8. Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought (American history 1815-1844)
9. Simon R Green, Swords of Haven
10. Simon R. Green, Daemons are Forever
11. Simon R. Green, The Man with the Golden Torc
12. Simon R. Green, The Spy who Haunted Me
13. Helen Hunt Jackson, Ramona (I loved that 19th century "issue" novel).
In other news, I get very tempted to check out Merlin - so many on my flist love it. But whenever I get close, I start thinking about big WTFs (why is Merlin Arthur's age and his servant) and small ones (Gwen as a Black servant as opposed to a queen. Also, while it's not impossible for there to be a Black person in the isles of that time, it's very unlikely, to say the least). Oh well - Arthurian mythos is an odd thing to be a purist about, but I remember griping my way through the entirety of Clive Owen's King Arthur movie and don't want a repetition of that.
I bet they eat potatoes, too! /bitter
And finally, Otomen continues to be ridiculously sweet - unlike MeiChan and jHanaKimi, it has heart and also a Universe I can conceivably identify as our own.