Book Review: GAMES AND PLAYERS by Manna Francis

Proposed alternate title: Val Toreth and the Challenge of the Really Real




In this Administration novel, both Warrick and Toreth deal with how whacked their perception of reality is... then again, what perception of reality?

Throughout Games and Players, Toreth is criticized as being a psychotic because he doesn't consider people as "real." It all starts with Carnak, a socioanalyst sent to compile a report on I&I, who just happens to know Warrick from back in the day. He finds Toreth interesting because he knows Toreth does consider at least two people as "real"--Warrick and Sara--which to his mind makes Toreth an unusual parainvestigator. But after witnessing Toreth interrogate a prisoner, Carnak decides Toreth is a terrible person and that he's going to fuck with his mind.

There's a certain irony here of course, because Carnak doesn't consider anyone as real, and is therefore arguably more psychotic than Toreth is. But whatever the reality of the two men's psychology, the nature of Toreth's job allows Carnak to feel morally superior to him; and I think that's true of everyone in this novel, including Sara. Even Warrick feels that way to a certain extent, at least until he realizes he's behaving like a child.

Toreth may not view everyone as a Real Person, but then who the hell does? Do you think of people on the news as being "real," or homeless people, or the person who hands you your coffee at Starbucks? Looking beyond one's own reality is part of learning how to be human and growing up, and even then the whole world can't be "real." In actuality, many people have less of a grasp on reality than Toreth does, and simply use other people to play out what goes on in their own heads--like Toreth's old teacher, Gee, for example. At least Toreth's able to distinguish between reality and fantasy, which Warrick doesn't and doesn't want to.

Like Quid Pro Quo, this novel is organized into shorter stories and novellas that I read for free on Manna Francis' website, and all of them deal with reality and perception to some extent. I have to admit that while I've been enjoying these stories before now, I just considered them fun and gratuitous light reads. But at some point while reading this novel, I suddenly started thinking this was the greatest series ever! Why? I'm not sure. But Francis has a great grasp of her characters and the more I read about them, the more I want to read about them (except for Dilly, she's annoying). Plus, I don't think it's just fluff; I think Francis does have something to say beyond writing a m/m romance. Subtext, yo.

I definitely recommend these books! They're totally glom-worthy.

Movie Review: PERFUME, THE STORY OF A MURDERER

First released: 2006
Starring: Ben Whishaw, Sam Douglas, Dustin Hoffman, Alan Rickman
Directed by: Tom Tykwer
Based on: The novel of the same name by Patrick Süskind

The fleeting nature of beauty and perfection are the main themes in this is a visually memorable, well-written, and well-acted film. In the end I found it deeply disturbing--mainly because I ended up admiring the main character, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, even as I recognized what he was doing as not only wrong, but pointless.



The movie is about a man named Grenouille (which, as we all know from NCIS, means "frog"), an 18th-century Frenchman who has such a precise and amazing sense of smell that he experiences the world almost entirely by scent. Combine this with extreme social awkwardness and a propensity for anyone who knows him to die suddenly and violently, and let's just say the guy's kind of an odd duck.

Grenouille's ride to Crazytown begins when he catches the most beautiful scent he's ever smelled: a young woman. Thereafter, he becomes obsessed with capturing and preserving people's (young women's, technically) scents forever. To that end, he becomes a journeyman perfumer and seeks to create the perfect scent.

The performances in the film are really good--especially Ben Whishaw, who plays Grenouille. He brings just the right mix of attraction and repulsion to Grenouille's character; I imagine he would also play an excellent Ted Bundy. Alan Rickman is freaking awesome, as always, and even Dustin Hoffman is pretty good. The female actresses mainly stand around looking pretty and hunted.


"But I'm too pretty to live..."

Grenouille's struggle to capture something as fleeting as scent finds many metaphors throughout the movie. The film plays like one of those historical monographs where the life an ordinary person is recreated through the interpretation of historical documents--an interesting point in itself as history can be seen as attempting to do the same thing Grenouille does, capture the essence of a person and preserve it forever. The entire point of Grenouille's life is that he disappears into the ether, leaving behind only fleeting and vague emotions in the people he encountered, if that. Yet his story is written down so it will never be forgotten? This was the most difficult part of the film to reconcile for me.

Visually, I love this movie. It doesn't saturate you with beauty all the time; instead, most of the movie is very dark and monochromatic, so that when the important scenes come up--full of gorgeous, bright, saturated color--you remember them like they've been burned into your retinas.

The movie also reminded me of an episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations I watched last week. Bourdain went to Tokyo, where he asked every chef he encountered, "Is perfection possible?" Like scent, food is a fleeting, temporary experience. All the chefs Bourdain talked to said, no, perfection isn't possible to achieve, although they all strive for it. Grenouille too strives for perfection in his art; but unlike the chefs on No Reservations, he doesn't think it's impossible. When Grenouille first apprentices himself to the parfumier Giuseppe Baldini, Baldini tells him a story about a perfume found in Egypt that was so amazing, for a minute after it was unearthed, everyone in the world thought they were in paradise. This legend (which Grenouille doesn't think is a legend) combines with his obsession to preserve a young woman's beauty and innocence forever, leading him to create a scent that can command the love and admiration of anyone with functioning olfactory glands. Yet this amazing formula comes with a steep price: the destruction of the very thing he's trying to capture, the lives of the young women. Ergo, the film seems to be arguing, perfection leads to death. Perhaps this why the chefs on No Reservations believe they will never, ever be able to achieve perfection, no matter how hard they strive for it; because they know perfection would destroy the reason why they strive for it in the first place: the fleeting moment of connection with another human being.

At least, that's the conclusion Grenouille comes to, too late to save the lives of the beautiful young women of Grasse. In despair, he destroys the perfume he created forever.  Despite the fact that Grenouille gets what's coming to him and then some, it does seem a shame that so much beauty would disappear so quickly and never be experienced again.

Book Review: THE HURRELL STYLE, 50 YEARS OF PHOTOGRAPHING HOLLYWOOD by Whitney Stine

When George Hurrell came to California in the 1920's as an aspiring artist, his dream was to paint. Little did he know that his hobby of photography would quickly propel him into a career of photographing the world' most famous movie stars for Hollywood studios. From 1928 to 1978, Hurrell photographed for MGM, Paramount, Samuel Goldwyn, Twentieth Century-Fox, Warner Bros., and many other studios, capturing the likenesses of every actor from Ramon Navarro to Keith Carradine.

Johnny Weissmuller, photograph by George Hurrell, 1932

This is an odd book; it wasn't quite what I was expecting. It's more of memoir than a history, but it's organized by actor, chronologically, so there isn't really a narrative. I wouldn't say there's much of a focus, either; Stine gives us some background on the stars--especially the less familiar ones--and Hurrell tells stories about how he took the photographs, which may involve his technique or personal anecdotes about the stars themselves. I wouldn't say it's boring, because Hurrell's stories are really interesting; and although he is clearly recounting these incidents to Stine through a long series of interviews, you can tell he's quite the character.

Tallulah Bankhead, photograph by George Hurrell, 1936

To evoke different types of reactions in the actors, Hurrell would play music, dance around the studio while clicking away on his camera, or shout random phrases for no reason. Some of the stars he got to know really well and others he only met once, but his perceptive descriptions of their personalities is definitely of interest to anyone intrigued by movie history; and his descriptions of technique, such as how he framed the shots and developed some of the prints, is most certainly relevant for anyone who's serious about practicing, or likes to read about, photography.

Anna May Wong, photograph by George Hurrell, 1938

That being said, the book as a whole just feels blah and is kind of tedious to read. For one, the organization of it into star-by-star essays makes reading it seem very repetitive. Here's this one actor Hurrell photographed, and here's this other actor, and here's this other famous actor. O-kaaay. For another, there is zero analysis in this entire book. I've read wikipedia entries with more insight than these essays. And it's a shame, because Hurrell's work wasn't just promotional pablum; some of the photographs in the book are freaking amazing. You can tell he's more interested in the abstract shapes of the shadows than making a portrait per se, and that's true to some extent of nearly all the really good photographs in this book. Unfortunately, the great stuff is watered down by a lot of Hurrell's more average work.

Veronica Lake, photograph by George Hurrell, 1941

There's a lot to say about these photographs: how they played with the stars' image, issues of sexuality and exoticism, vanity; and the influence of Pictorialism, Japonisme, and abstraction in Hurrell's work. But you won't find any of that discussion here. I understand Stine is a film historian and not an art historian (I'm sure there's a HUGE difference), but even a half-assed attempt at addressing these topics would be better than nothing.

This book is a great resource if you're looking for basic information about Hurrell or classic Hollywood movie stars, but for something more in-depth I personally would search elsewhere.

Graphic Novel Review: LOST AT SEA, by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Raleigh is on a road trip back to Canada from California with a car full of people she barely knows who attend the same high school. To them she's just "the quiet girl" or a weirdo--depending on your viewpoint. What they don't know is that Raleigh believes she's lost her soul.

It's in a cat. And the cats are following her.

This is the first graphic novel by Bryan Lee O'Malley, of Scott Pilgrim fame. It's not as hip as Scott Pilgrim and, being only one volume, the story has a much narrower scope. But here's what I love about this book: I know these people. Seriously, Raleigh? I honest-to-god know someone who is exactly like her, even down to the hair. O'Malley's characters are so familiar, but not in a oh-I-recognize-that-trope sort of way; in a oh!-these-are-totally-people-I-know-IRL way. Which is good, because the plots tend to be bizarro.



I also loved the story and the way it was told, which was very non-linear but perfect for the subject. It's a quieter story than Scott Pilgrim, with a gentler humor, but there are still some scenes that made me laugh, and I have to confess I got teary-eyed at the end. There were some loose ends left hanging, but overall the book was very touching without feeling manipulative or sappy in the slightest.*

As for the art, I love it. LOVE. Even more than Scott Pilgrim, the art in this book was totally delicious and contributed to the story so, so much. If my heart had a shelf I would this book on it.

If you like graphic novels or manga at all, you have to give Bryan Lee O'Malley a try. He is awesome and I'm officially fangrling him now.


*Note: I loaned this to my brother and he said he hated it because Raleigh was whiny. I guess you can't win them all!

BBAW: Blagging

Gratuitous LOLcat pic.

On this, the final--and therefore saddest--day of BBAW, we're asked to share three blogging tips and three cutting edge things we want to adapt to our blahgs. So here's we go:

TIPS

• One--Blog for Yourself First. Look, I love comments and free crap as much as the next person, but if I blogged for those things, this blog would have shut down a long time ago.
• Two--Bring Your A Game. Everyone loves seeing people doing something new and different and creative, so be that person! Let me know if you figure out a way to do this on a consistent basis.
• Three--Be Chill. Honestly, I'm drawing a blank on a third piece of advice, but chilling out sounds good to me.

IN THE FUTURE

• I'd like to do more videos and art original to this blog.
• I want my own URL shortener. I want one SO BAD!
• I'd like to have more author interviews.

There you have it! What are some of your tips?

BBAW: Community Part Deux

Today for Book Bloggers Appreciation Week, we are asked to write about how we find a place in the community. This can be tough, especially if your blog doesn't focus on one genre (like mine). There isn't really a group out there for self-professed eclectic book blogs, yanno? If there was, it would be called Cannot Make Up My Mind, or Rage of the Bibliophiles Who Are Very Easily Bored, and I definitely would have found that by now.

That being said, I definitely do feel like I'm part of the community of book bloggers, and it's due mainly to one thing: Twitter. I remember telling someone once that everything happens on Twitter, and it's totally true, especially if you're a blogger. It's not just general news things like finding out Osama Bin Laden was dead, or that there was an earthquake on the East Coast; people organize challenges and events in real time on Twitter that you only eventually see manifested on da blags. Just hearing about some cool event everyone's already signed up for? You probably weren't on Twitter when it was being put together (this has happened to me). Not to mention things like Armchair BEA, Dewey's 24-Hour Readathon, and Bloggiesta, all of which have twitter hashtags.

Twitter is great because you can hop on when you're feeling sociable and ignore it when you're not. And it's much easier to have an open discussion with people on twitter than on something like FaceBook. You can chat using IMs or the like, but that will be only with a select group--there's no chance of someone dropping in on your conversation and you making a new buddy (twubby?) like there is on twitter.



Within the very open world of twitter there are of course smaller, more nuclear groups. Example: book bloggers. Then there are various "events" where you find like-minded people you want to follow. For example, Jane from Dear Author (@jane_l) used to do #romfail on twitter every Friday where she'd make fun of romance novels. That was highly entertaining. And for about the last six months, I've watched Hitchcock movies with other bloggers under the #hitchfest hashtag every week. There are some weeks when #hitchfest (and the corresponding #alcoholfest) is the only thing I look forward to all week. It's really fun and has introduced me to a bunch of bloggers I didn't know much about before now.*

It started out with me writing a paper on Hitchcock and tweeting that I had a stack o'his movies to watch. A first it included @lithousewife, @biblioeva, @picky_girl, @unfnshdprsn, and @justaddbooks; and over time has involved @ChrisBookarama, @JoLynnF, @braincandybr, @Col_Reads, @elabkwrm, @buckeyegirl31, @lifeand100books and her hubby @ttotheodd, @pussreboots, @webereading, and @evangelineh (I'm sure I missed someone in there, so just let me know if I did). It's nice to know I have my crew on twitter to discuss olde timey movies with, or books or the stupidity of reality TV shows.

So if there's one takaway from this it's: get onto twitter. And if there's another takeaway point, it's that community doesn't just happen; you get out what you put into it. Things like #hitchfest (or BBAW, or anything of the other book blogging events you run across), happen because people--more than one--are willing to put time and energy into it and make it a priority. So if you're struggling to feel like part of a community, get involved in something! Put the effort into it to make it important to you. And it will be.

*Actually, #hitchfest is on hiatus right now. Timeliness, I'm all over it!

BBAW: Interview with Ariel from The Librarian's Bookshelf!

heidenkind: You're in school to eventually become a librarian. Do you think blogging and social media will play an important role in libraries in the future?

Ariel: I think it really depends on the library. I think book bloggers play a huge role in supporting smaller libraries, but I don't think larger ones really notice us or care.

heidenkind: Which do you prefer, eBooks or paper books?

Ariel: While I do own a Nook and read eBooks, I prefer paperbacks.

heidenkind: What's your least-favorite read of the year so far?

Ariel: I would have to say Glimmerglass honestly. I liked most of the books I've read so far, but with all the hype Glimmerglass got, I was disappointed by it.

heidenkind: Tell us about a favorite piece of book paraphernalia that you own or dream of owning--can be a t-shirt, bookshelf, lock of your favorite author's hair, anything!

Ariel: This isn't really one item, but I want my own library! Someday in my house I will have one room completely full of books and bookshelves and reading nooks.

heidenkind: How far outside your comfort zone have you read based on the recommendation of a book blogger?

Ariel: I've read a lot more paranormal than I would have without the recommendations from book bloggers. Before I usually just stayed with very specific fantasy or Christian fiction.

Check out Ariel's blog and my interview with her over at The Librarian's Bookshelf!