After about 10 years of off-and-on reading, I finally finished Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. What a great relief to finally be done with it. I’ve started this book several times, and really enjoyed how it began, but always hit a wall at around the same point. I love working on my motorbike, and I love traveling, so I always thought this book would be perfect for me. But there’s the third part of the story, which is the philosophical sub-plot which had always derailed me. The seemingly endless “chautauquas” or lectures about Quality were so obscure to me, I always lost interest. When Pirsig applies his classic and romantic reasoning to matters of motorcycle maintenance, the book was thoroughly enjoyable. But the story of Phaedrus left me wishing he’d go back to something related to motorcycles. My most recent effort at reading the book had me not spending so much energy trying to understand Phaedrus’ quest for Quality, but rather skimming over these parts, trying to get back to the travel plot. In the end, I enjoyed the book but also can’t help feeling that Pirsig’s Zen was so obscure, it could have all been a bunch of nonsense.

With all this talk about e-Books on the web these days I figure I’ll talk about a few books that I am reading/have read recently. None are e-Books, by the way. Just good ol bound paper, two from the public library.

Blue Latitudes by Tony Horwitz

I really like reading travel narratives, especially humorous ones like Bill Bryson’s. I came across Blue Latitudes at the library and it looked great. It even has some praise from Bryson on the back cover. Plus, old sailing ships and adventure are always attractive! Tony Horwitz is fascinated by Captain James Cook, and follows the path Cook took in the late 1700’s when Cook explored the Pacific. The story goes back and forth between describing the adventures Cook and his crew had, and the hilarious adventures Horwitz and his friend Roger had following Cook’s trail. I learned so much in Blue Latitudes: about life aboard Cook’s ship, the contact and interaction of his crew with the natives of the lands he traveled to, and what these lands are like in the present day. Horwitz interviews many native people and gets their thoughts and varying opinions about Cook. What is neat is that the people Horwitz talks to are real. I’ve even done some googling to find out more about some of the scholars and artists Horwitz interviews. I guess that’s part of the appeal of non-fiction.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

This is the final book of the Harry Potter story, but it’s my first book to read. I’ve seen (and enjoyed) the movies, so I’m pretty excited to find out how it all ends. I’m about half way through, but I realize there are so many details, especially about the supporting characters, that I have missed since I haven’t read the previous books. My plan is to finish Deathly Hallows, then go back and read the series from the beginning. It’s pretty easy to get through a book since it was written for younger readers, so I’m not put off by the page count (each book is about 600-800 pages long). I’m enjoying this last book a lot, and will hopefully finish it in a couple days.

Long Way Round by Charley Boorman and Ewan McGregor

I love the Long Way Down and Long Way Round videos, and the books are the perfect complement to them. The writing isn’t too deep, but you do gain some insights as to what was going through Charley and Ewan’s minds during the scenes in the TV show. For instance, the one scene where the two are taken in by Igor, and spend the night at his house and party with his friends is much more interesting if you read the chapter to get the full story about their apprehension, fear, and eventual guilt at being so suspicious of their host. It’s sort of like the commentary extra feature of a DVD or Blu-ray disc. If you are a fan of the TV series, I’d recommend picking up the book to go along with it, but I don’t think the book would stand on its own very well.

I love reading. A good book is a friendly retreat or a safe, comfortable place you can go back to at a moment’s notice. I’ve got a lot of books on my reading list, several of them at my bedside. This is kind of the problem I’m having at the moment. The only time I have to read (and it’s the most enjoyable time for me) is when I crawl into bed. Unfortunately, I get so comfortable that I will quickly fall asleep, usually within only two or three pages. It doesn’t matter if the book is super-exciting or not, my eyelids will get heavy, I forget what I just read and have to reread paragraphs, and then the book will slip from my hands. I really want to get a nice chair and maybe a table to read at, but I’m not sure where the best place in the house to read would be. I’m pretty sure that this setup will buy me at least 20 pages of quality reading. I think it’s time for a trip to IKEA to see what I can get!

I enjoyed reading Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” a couple years ago and was pretty excited to hear about the movie. Well, I finally got around to watching it (it was in my Netflix queue forever) and thought it was really good. As opposed to Stardust, I thought the screen version of the story matched exactly what I imagined when I was reading the book. Sure, they are real world locations in DaVinci Code, but still, it was so weird that while watching the movie, it seemed like I had seen it before. The movie was just sort of an enhancement of the written story. I guess if you never read the book, the movie might be kind of weak, but I thought it was wonderful. Tom Hanks did a great job as Langdon, and Audrey Tautou was perfect. Now I am looking forward to the film version of “Angels and Demons”, which I thought was even better than Da Vinci Code.

I’m a big fan of Leo Laporte’s podcasts and one of his sponsors that he mentions each week is Audible.com. After hearing the pitch for a while now, I decided to check it out. I figure I can spend $15 a month out of my monthly budget for some audio books. But when I was checking out the membership plans at Audible, I saw that for $14.95 per month, you get 1 credit. This credit is equal to one audio book. Am I crazy, or does $15 for a single audio book sound expensive? Is that the normal rate of a book in audio format? It would seem reasonable to pay about half that amount, or get two credits a month. On a happier note, I see my local library has a bunch of audio books in their catalog that I want to borrow. I’ll be getting some later next week!

For the past few months, I’ve been visiting the Cedar Park Public Library pretty regularly. It’s a relatively small library, but has some excellent materials. The dvd and cd sections are pretty good, and they even have quite a lot of anime, not that I’m really into it. They also have a teen manga section, and an anime/manga club. In fact, I saw a little flyer for a guest speaker, a computer game artist from Bioware Austin, who presented to the club. Check out their events calendar (which is a Google calendar that you can subscribe too) and you can see their upcoming schedule. The kid’s section is really nice as well, and they have lots of computers to work on. And of course, Wi-Fi Internet access is available.

The main stacks have a decent selection. I’ve found a bunch of Neil Gaiman books, and now I am working on Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, of which the library has about seven on the shelves. But what I found really cool about the library is their use of technology. They have a self-checkout station where you scan your library card, put your books on a magnetized scanner, and you see the titles appear on the monitor above. When you have scanned all your books/dvd’s/etc, you can either print out a receipt, or have it sent to your email address. This is so cool because I can then just add it to my Google calendar so that I won’t be late returning items. Also, from their website, you can see your library account and even renew books online. You can even browse their catalog online to search for a book. It’s so convenient!

Other cool things at the library that I see on their website are: teen gaming tournaments, Movie Mondays, chess club, Family Gaming Nights, adult knitting club, book clubs, and downloadable audio books. While I love bookstores, libraries are cool too, and free!! If you haven’t been to your library in a while, now’s a great time to visit.

My second favorite genre of books has to be travel essays. I even love to read tourist guidebooks from Frommers and Lonely Planet. I guess it’s the part of my personality that some people descibe as wanderlust. At this point in my life, my real-life traveling is mainly family vacations and doing stuff with the kids. But I always used to love traveling on my own, even if that meant going to a bookstore across town, or taking the train to somewhere I hadn’t been before. Usually I’d just have my camera and cd player with me.

Nowadays I have to travel vicariously through others, and their travel essays. One of my favorite books so far is Jupiter’s Travels, where Ted Simon rides his Triumph motorcycle around the world. It’s an interesting trip, and lots of fun. I’ve also read Vroom With a View by Peter Moore (thx for the recommendattion Nina) where he rides his Vespa around Italy. And continuing with moto-adventures, I read Long Way Round by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman. Good stuff!

I’ve read several books about traveling in Japan, like the The Roads to Sata by Alan Booth. It’s fun to relive my time in Japan by reading similar experiences that others have had. It really makes me look to the future when the kids are a little older and we can have more adventurous travels again.

I’ve recently joined the Travel Literature group over at Goodreads.com, and look forward to getting some recommendations as to some more good books. Of course, money is tight, so I’ll check the local library as well, and the used bookshops too. Maybe even try out a book-trading site like Bookmooch.com. Except I don’t like to let my books go. But I am learning to live “lighter” and not keep as much stuff as I used to, so I really should give Bookmooch a try.

Since I am in the midst of a Neil Gaiman kick, and just finished reading Stardust, I decided to rent the movie from Netflix and give it a watch. I guess my hopes were too high based on some reviews I have read and some personal recommendations, but I was really disappointed in the movie. Maybe it was because I thought the book was excellent, and I was hoping for an accurate movie depiction of the exact plot and characters, which wasn’t the case. First off, I have to say the settings that were created for the film were really cool, and visually matched what I had imagined from reading the book. For some reason, though, I imagined the wall separating the town of Wall from Faerie to be a lot higher… makes me want to reread the book.

One of the problems I had with the movie was that the plot really strayed from the book version. (Possible Definite spoiler alert!!) For instance, the whole idea of the market at Wall which happened only once every nine years was barely part of the story. One thing I liked about the book version of the market was the idea of all the exotic characters traveling from around the “world” to visit the market. Also, the magic of when Dunstan and Una met was kind of cool in the book, but in the movie, they just met, and went at it after a minute of dialogue. The book had some interesting dialog, magic spells, then a nighttime rendezvous under the stars. I know you have to hurry things up in a movie version, but I was hoping that Stardust would be more of a drawn-out, epic tale a la Lord of the Rings, rather than The Princess Bride (both of which I loved).

The movie also did not explore the whole “real world vs. faerie world” aspect, which was important in the book. In the movie, when Dunstan, and later on Tristran (Tristan in the movie, btw) crossed the wall, it was nothing significant. We just know that there is a guard who says you can’t cross. But what we don’t know is that Tristran is half Faerie, and that he hasn’t really fit in with the normal population of Wall. During his adventure in Faerie, he sort of rediscovers himself as belonging to that world.

Some parts of the book’s plot were altogether missing from the movie. For instance, when Tristran sets off to find the star, he meets an old man who journeys with him and they have a mini-adventure in which some of Tristran’s faerie “skills” are revealed. After an overland journey, in which you get a sense of the magical world, he finally finds the fallen star.  In the movie version, Tristran is in his house in Wall and receives a magic candle from his unknown mother, and left with his father to give to him. They light the candle, and whoosh! Tristran shoots through the air and literally falls on the fallen star, who he thinks is his mother. The book version was much more interesting, because Tristran set out to just find the fallen star, and had no idea about his mother until it is revealed much later. Also, the part about the sky pirates was strange. In the book, Tristran and Yvain are stranded on a cloud and picked up by an airship crewed by a friendly group of “lightning hunters”. They mend Yvain’s broken leg and the couple become part of the crew. In the movie, the airship is crewed by a bunch of pirates, and the captain is a man living upon his reputation as a scoundrel but who is in fact a man who like to dress up in women’s clothing. Yes, bizarre!

In the book version, near the end, when the plot returns to the market at Wall, the complications and conflicts work themselves out in really clever and charming ways. The epilogue is pretty cool in that Tristran grows old in time and dies, and Yvain, being a star, keeps on living and rules the kingdom, but always looks up to the moon and stars with longing. In the movie version, in true Hollywood style, there’s a chase scene and a large fight scene at the witch’s palace. The epilogue has Tristran and Yvain using the candle to take their final resting places as stars in the sky.

Also, the movie didn’t represent Tristran’s object of desire, Victoria, in the same way as the book. The movie portrayed her as shallow, vain and somewhat mean. The book had her as beautiful, but conflicted, yet with a good heart filled with regret for sending Tristran out on his fool’s errand.

Lastly, I thought that there were some problems with the casting. Charlie Cox’s portrayal of Tristran was excellent, and Claire Danes was great as Yvain. I was bothered by Michelle Pfeiffer’s character, though, because she can’t do a British accent. It just sounded weird. On the other hand, Claire Danes’ accent was entirely convincing. Robert DeNiro was ok, but really, you can’t get into the character because you are thinking, “That’s Robert DeNiro”. And kind of the same thing with Michelle Pfeiffer. The actors who played the princes of Stormhold were excellent, and Ricky Gervais was hilarious.

I mentioned that the movie was more like Princess Bride than Lord of the Rings, which disappointed me a bit. But some of the Princess Bride-y scenes were really good. The way they did the ghost princes was clever and super funny, and Ricky Gervais was reminiscent of Billy Crystal’s character in Princess Bride. I was really laughing during Gervais’ scene.

Like I said, I was disappointed in the movie version as compared to the book, but I feel that this is a case of, “I shoulda seen the movie first”. If I had, I think I would have liked it more. I do think that Bay and Koa will like it although some scenes might be a little scary for them. So my recommendation is to see the movie first, then read the book!

I just recently began reading Neil Gaiman and I am loving his work. I’ve heard his name here and there, I guess because of The Sandman, but because I’m not really into comics, I didn’t give it much thought. But then I started seeing posts on blogs or maybe a meme about reading, and people kept mentioning his name. I did a little search on Amazon and it seemed like I’d be into his books, so I went to the local bookstore and picked up Neverwhere. I was immediately hooked! I can’t really explain so well why I like his writing, but I’ll just say that it’s because it’s funny, has magic mixed in with a bit of reality, and the main character is easily identified with (at least by me).

I finished reading Neverwhere over Winter vacation and then found Anansi Boys at the library and read that in a few days. That book is lots of fun! Another loveable loser protagonist who encounters a strange new reality. Next up was a used copy of Stardust, which I enjoyed more than Anansi Boys, and maybe as much as Neverwhere. It’s a real fairytale, which blends the real world with the fantasy world. I now have the Stardust movie on its way from Netflix, followed by the TV version of Neverwhere. Next up on the reading list is American Gods (currently shipping) and Coraline, which I ordered for Bay. Now I’m thinking of heading to the store to have a look at The Sandman.

It took me a while to jump on the Neil Gaiman bandwagon, but I’m glad I did. I am enjoying it so much. BTW, if you are on Goodreads and want to be friends, let’s hook up!