tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16952803106973784212024-03-10T20:23:13.933-07:00Nancy's Blogadminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11442349453021015062noreply@blogger.comBlogger702125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-58655089858923825152013-02-11T17:27:00.001-08:002013-02-11T17:27:21.071-08:00The Impossible<span style="font-size: large;">THE IMPOSSIBLE manages to do what I would have indeed thought impossible: Make a tsunami boring.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Actually, that's not accurate. The tsunami, which occupies the first twenty minutes or so of the movie, is breath-taking. The film makers used models, CGI, and live action, and when the wall of water sweeps over the edge of an Indonesian resort and carries everything along with it, I felt I was there. This sequence should win an Oscar for Best Weather in a Supporting Role.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The problem starts after the tsunami has retreated back to sea, leaving devastation in its wake. Five members of a vacationing British family, one of them badly injured, try to get to safety and find each other. Eventually they all do, along the way helping a few other victims, as others help them. We see a lot of pain and suffering and destruction. But it's all one note: <i>This is terrible</i>. Of course, it IS terrible. But disasters happen to real people, and these characters are not that. We never learn anything more about any of them other than the fact that they got caught in a tsunami and didn't like it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In addition, nearly all we see of this human tragedy are happy outcomes. The British family all survive and are reunited. A child is returned to his family. A father and son are reunited. At the end, there is one instance of a man who lost his family to the water, but he is not a developed character, either.<span style="font-size: large;"> </span>Other disaster movies have at least tried to give us a variety of characters, with a variety of human reactions, including selfishness. This one doesn't. The only selfish note anywhere is a man who refuses to lend his cell phone because he's low on minutes. "American audiences like happy endings," one person involved with the movie said in an interview. Well, I'm an American, and I would have liked more shading to the script, more dimensions to the characters, more point of view about what nature can do to us.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">But the re-creation of the tsunami is incredible. </span>Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-69998084860982074312013-01-20T06:47:00.003-08:002013-01-20T06:47:29.615-08:00Moving<span style="font-size: large;">I know I have posted no new reviews of anything for a while...despite having read and viewed <span style="font-size: large;">books and movies</span>. First Christmas, then a back injury, and now I am moving. But Real Soon Now! I will vanquish the moving cartons! I will!</span><br />
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<br />Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-82218512568898299102012-12-24T11:43:00.003-08:002012-12-24T11:43:50.930-08:00Christmas Images<span style="font-size: large;">Christmas Eve: Here is dawn coming up over Eliott Bay, outside my apartment window, with the Christmas tree reflected in the glass. If I didn't wake up so effing early, I wouldn't see dawn.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Cosette, hoping for sugar plums, or the doggie equivalent:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Ted Kosmatka at our Christmas party, playing charades while Vonda McIntyre wonders what on Earth he could be trying to act out. Although this was not as funny as the other Ted, Chiang, trying to anatomically convey "Philip K. Dick." Best guess: "Testicles?" </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Jack is pleased with his Christmas present, a fancy new phone, which he received early because we needed to spend time--a lot of time--trying to choose plans at the T-Mobile store: </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Jane Austen also gets to celebrate Christmas:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib1FoqYUVDIz8_jdAy4c72BFBYsEPnzSYwtM3OJO1GK7ZyogLZyJmiim8HlZLL6y5NNmayj8uuisIlojQSb0z77YJZZGchDyU6P8M4ErKxved3jkV6bMiqxXsWffs4dXCjo4wcHxzY_rMW/s1600/ane+Austen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib1FoqYUVDIz8_jdAy4c72BFBYsEPnzSYwtM3OJO1GK7ZyogLZyJmiim8HlZLL6y5NNmayj8uuisIlojQSb0z77YJZZGchDyU6P8M4ErKxved3jkV6bMiqxXsWffs4dXCjo4wcHxzY_rMW/s320/ane+Austen.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Happy Holidays to all of you out there. </span>Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-43149900840377070622012-12-19T18:40:00.000-08:002012-12-19T18:40:22.698-08:00Thrilled at the Movies<span style="font-size: large;">Some movies succeed, at least partially, because of their script; some because of their casting; some from their overall look; some for no reason that I can discern. But it's rare to find a movie that succeeds on all levels. LINCOLN is that.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Much has already been writing about Daniel-Day Lewis's preparation for the role of Lincoln. He had nothing to give him Lincoln's voice, but old letters and news articles mentioned its light timbre, as well as Lincoln's habitual gestures, gait, and mannerisms. Day-Lewis uses all <span style="font-size: large;">such</span> information to create a Lincoln less deep-voiced than the movies have given us in the past: more tentative, <span style="font-size: large;">sadness present even during his wry and funny stories</span>. The actor seems to disappear entirely--especially if you've seen him in much different roles in MY LEFT FOOT or THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS-- and to <u>become </u>the sixteenth president. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Nor is this Lincoln the always-virtuous "Honest Abe" of sentiment. Here he has a job to do, and it's not winning the war--by the time the movie opens, in January of 1865, the war is pretty much won. The movie focuses on four months, January to April, during which Lincoln schemes to get passed the thirteenth amendment, outlawing slavery. To this end, he schemes, delays, intimidates, bribes, and outright lies. Lincoln as wheeler-dealer could rival Lyndon Johnson. He is ably aided by Tommy Lee Jones as a wonderful Thaddeus Stevens, who is such a strong character that the movie could equally well be called STEVENS. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The two face a terrible choice: Ending the war as soon as possible will save lives but will also bring Southern states back as voting members of Congress, in which case the amendment will never be passed. Refusing the South's offer of peace buys time to garner Congressional votes but prolongs the bloodshed. That this horrific dilemma is made visceral and tense--even though of course the audience already knows the outcome-- is a tribute to Tony Kushner's script.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">If you see only one movie this holiday season, it should be this one. </span><br />
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<br />Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-70470986867311842442012-12-13T13:24:00.001-08:002012-12-13T13:24:22.760-08:00Summer of '26<span style="font-size: large;">In 1926 the future silent-screen actress Louise Brooks, then fifteen and living with her family in Wichita, won a summer scholarship to the prestigious Denishawn Dance Company in New York. A fifteen<span style="font-size: large;">-</span>year-old girl could not live in New York alone. Her mother had younger children and could not accompany her. A chaperone was arranged, a middle-aged woman of social standing and propriety named Cora Carlisle. Such is the premise of Laura Moriarty's new novel THE CHAPERONE. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The book unfolds two stories: Louise's and Cora's. Louise's sticks closely to fact, but is mainly used as background for Laura's. [SPOILER ALERT] The chaperone is a woman hiding many secrets: a sordid childhood, a gay husband, and eventually a working-class lover. This sounds like soap opera, but Moriarty is interested not in sensationalism <span style="font-size: large;">but</span> in the capacity of characters to change. Laura, who begins with hopeless resignation to her situation, grows into a woman not only able to bring about happiness for herself but also able to accept it in forms she once despised, including her husband's long-term relationship with his lover. To do this, everybody involved ends up living public lies but private truths, and this dichotomy gives the book its tension.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Some reviewers faulted the book for covering such a long span of time--Laura's whole life--that decades sometimes flash by. I can't agree. It takes an entire lifetime to come to the emotional place that Laura eventually reaches. I found it refreshing to read a modern novel with the social sweep of the Victorians'. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">As for Louise--well, her story is already known. Beautiful, intelligent, narcissistic, and self-destructive, she ended poor and alcoholic. And yet she, too, is a fascinating character. I recommend this novel.</span>Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-80064725725577775512012-12-10T07:24:00.003-08:002012-12-10T07:24:41.995-08:00Cranky At the Movies<span style="font-size: large;">ANNA KARENINA is one of my favorite novels. The first time I read it, decades ago, I was amazed at how completely Tolstoy captured a woman's feelings about passion, motherhood, the desire to both belong and rebel. I still marvel at the skill and authenticity and scope of the novel. Unfortunately, the new movie made from this masterpiece is an unholy mess.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The story is intact, more or less. But everything that makes the novel great is missing. Without Anna's interior complexity, without Levin's spiritual searching, without Tolstoy's ambivalent feelings for his own heroine (he wanted at first to make her completely unsympathetic and shallow, a Russian Emma Bovary, but was "led" as he wrote into greater understanding of his own creation), what's left is a pretentious soap opera.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I hated the staging, although I realize that not everyone agrees with me on this. The interior scenes are all shot on a stage, in the wings of a theater, on the catwalks, in the dressing rooms. The outdoor scenes are shot in a realistic way, outdoors on the steppes or in train stations (lots of train stations). This is supposed to convey the artificial posing of Czarist society versus the honest openness of the country life. Instead, it seems forced and tedious.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The second, and larger, problem is the casting. Keira Knightley was fine as Elizabeth Bennet in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, capturing Elizabeth's playfulness. She has the same mannerisms here, but Anna is not playful. Knightley swings from one mood to the next but cannot show us the connective tissue that make Anna complicated but believable. Even worse is Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Vronsky. He looks about fifteen, and comes across as a spoiled, whiny Mama's boy, not a man willing to throw away the world for love. There is no chemistry between them. In fact, Vronsky is so flat and unappealing that my movie companion whispered to me<span style="font-size: large;">,</span> "She should have the affair with her brother--he's about ten times as interesting!"</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Matthew Macfadyen is indeed good as Stepan Oblonsky, <span style="font-size: large;">b</span>ut the real star here is Jude Law as Karenin. Not a particularly sympathetic figure in the novel, here Anna's cuckolded husband projects real anguish and complex doubt. Two people I talked to later, who had never read the novel, thought that he was supposed to be the hero.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The other stand-out is the dresses. The costumer should win an Oscar for Anna's gorgeous outfits. If you go to the movies for dresses, then see this. Otherwise, just read (or re-read) the book.</span>Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-35203235079729782542012-12-09T14:18:00.000-08:002012-12-09T14:18:02.938-08:00Teaching on a Cruise Ship<span style="font-size: large;"> I enjoy teaching writing--well, most of the time, anyway. But no teaching gig has ever been as much fun as teaching aboard the <u>Norwegian Sky</u> as it cruised through the Caribbean. True, the cruise had its down moments: Here I am collapsed on a beach after an hour and a half of vomiting over the side of a small boat from which I was supposed to be snorkeling:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In general, however, this was a lovely time. Here we are getting underway from Miami:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Jack on a pristine white-sand beach, the water impossibly blue:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGRrIExAKk82dD_GmsJg31EcrYKAIFhjw_AWgBPquG37lTLZtmCNGQePOtjBlghsIEPOEqaCAyg6KthGEl45vmXZM_hyphenhypheniJLiYKStq38IkE3ReRVEdxHjF1tC_B4Yg-1grsCYN53G9HeP9O/s1600/bahamas+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_0C8X-wIsPqhglnw0Xut_tRF5sA3t7y13Onnwd-980-deWcGWk6bxkInAK7oVhbZyTHOmuqbkQ8WmZ-OVJ9yVYQZNVv8m4MUBTQ2Hbw0gEZeXh92FXDOPQU-X9tttO6EukpYFe0SIE36a/s1600/bahamas+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_0C8X-wIsPqhglnw0Xut_tRF5sA3t7y13Onnwd-980-deWcGWk6bxkInAK7oVhbZyTHOmuqbkQ8WmZ-OVJ9yVYQZNVv8m4MUBTQ2Hbw0gEZeXh92FXDOPQU-X9tttO6EukpYFe0SIE36a/s320/bahamas+5.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"> Jack again, at a Nassau cafe from which we watched the funeral procession of the first Bahamian runner to win Olympic gold. There were two bands, several dozen soldiers as an honor guard, and the prime minister walking behind the coffin.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDvc4sWcO_vGlKBxavqzkwa2fcv0DIEPPjYHRoGRXR1WknsH4WQKFMFpYKnhTXz3rtSe77v55gTH-3o_CR3brKtoqBj22gJ-o8AdeC2lUQogh2d8nt4V8IYm2D4uoNUTUaqcjEDUQM7ub9/s1600/bahamas+8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDvc4sWcO_vGlKBxavqzkwa2fcv0DIEPPjYHRoGRXR1WknsH4WQKFMFpYKnhTXz3rtSe77v55gTH-3o_CR3brKtoqBj22gJ-o8AdeC2lUQogh2d8nt4V8IYm2D4uoNUTUaqcjEDUQM7ub9/s320/bahamas+8.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"> Sailing along the shoreline of expensive homes in Freeport:</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGRrIExAKk82dD_GmsJg31EcrYKAIFhjw_AWgBPquG37lTLZtmCNGQePOtjBlghsIEPOEqaCAyg6KthGEl45vmXZM_hyphenhypheniJLiYKStq38IkE3ReRVEdxHjF1tC_B4Yg-1grsCYN53G9HeP9O/s1600/bahamas+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">l:<img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGRrIExAKk82dD_GmsJg31EcrYKAIFhjw_AWgBPquG37lTLZtmCNGQePOtjBlghsIEPOEqaCAyg6KthGEl45vmXZM_hyphenhypheniJLiYKStq38IkE3ReRVEdxHjF1tC_B4Yg-1grsCYN53G9HeP9O/s320/bahamas+3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">This o<span style="font-size: large;">dd</span>-looking creation, made of towels, is one of many that turned up in our cabin every time the maids made up the bed: </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Oh, and yes--we taught. The students were interesting people, and some of the best times were just talking to them over the ship's large and frequent meals. Now--until next year, when the entire teaching cruise happens again!</span>Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-23743452691638629692012-11-30T06:28:00.000-08:002012-11-30T06:28:24.893-08:00Cruising Along....<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFIMZwXvspVPuElKlhPSHCZw4o44vPAWI6mCvkvP_jUqWvImLD1tscaApMKY9FA4PFiOI0OiS7eLGKn73GRuZ204DnxWvpuhWtvqxdinkcO8uNf2L7OXXTIjx3vtRphU-rkWwGLGqnzSMM/s1600/Norwegian+Sky.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="121" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFIMZwXvspVPuElKlhPSHCZw4o44vPAWI6mCvkvP_jUqWvImLD1tscaApMKY9FA4PFiOI0OiS7eLGKn73GRuZ204DnxWvpuhWtvqxdinkcO8uNf2L7OXXTIjx3vtRphU-rkWwGLGqnzSMM/s320/Norwegian+Sky.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">On Sunday I leave for Miami to join Sail For Success. This is an "SF teaching cruise" sponsored by the coming-up-fast small press Arc Manor. The cruise ship is the <u>Norwegian Sky</u>, and the faculty also includes Mike Resnick, Kevin J. Anderson, Jack Skillingstead, Paul Cook, Rebecca Moesta, agent Eleanor Wood, and Baen publisher Toni Weisskopf. There will be classes, panels, shore excursions, and shipboard conferences. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I have never taken a cruise before. I'm not sure what to expect from this one, but I'm looking forward to it a lot. I've spent the last several days reading, line editing, and critiquing student manuscripts. I just hope everybody isn't too distracted by the tropical amenities and excursions to come to class. Things I intend to do: shop in Nassau, have drinks that come in coconut shells with little umbrellas in them, visit a white-sand beach. Things I do not intend to do: write, diet, use the ship's wi-fi, which costs seventy-five cents a minute. Well, maybe a little. But no blogging about the trip until I get home.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Also cruising along is the publicity for FLASH POINT, my YA novel that debuted November 8. Here is a piece about it on Mary Robinette Kowal's blog feature MY FAVORITE BIT, in which writers unbutton and talk about personal aspects of their writing. And yes--I DID clear this piece first with my sister! <span style="font-family: times new roman,serif;"></span><span style="font-family: 'times new roman',serif;"><a href="http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/nancy-kress-talks-about-flashpoint/" target="_blank">http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/nancy-kress-talks-about-flashpoint/</a></span></span>
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Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-8781398004542197832012-11-19T09:11:00.000-08:002012-11-19T09:11:12.598-08:009/10 Happy At the Movies<span style="font-size: large;">FLIGHT, the new movie from Robert Zemeckis and starring Denzel Washington, is a good movie that could have been a great one.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4txabwWdcE9Pf3PfyrdWSIr7vJGYISkRhbmTXAQeZBCz48kr0RHinsnxUra-oZrv8lwTxwS3QUZLtCysaHHjacQ63zbRn7E__E6YFEphRQW7KJowrUZkhzPXCVHk6Q9G6t5FoJhQvCmCD/s1600/flight.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4txabwWdcE9Pf3PfyrdWSIr7vJGYISkRhbmTXAQeZBCz48kr0RHinsnxUra-oZrv8lwTxwS3QUZLtCysaHHjacQ63zbRn7E__E6YFEphRQW7KJowrUZkhzPXCVHk6Q9G6t5FoJhQvCmCD/s1600/flight.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Within the first fifteen minutes comes the most terrifying plane crash I've ever seen on film. The pilot, "Whip" Whitaker (Washington), lands the plane, barely, through a combination of bravura flying and nerves of titanium. Of the 102 passengers aboard, only six die, and the general consensus is that no one else could have brought the plane, crippled by a malfunction in the tail, down at all without a fireball. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The titanium nerves are especially notable because Whitaker is flying after consuming both vodka and cocaine. This fact comes out in toxicology reports, and worshipful accolades turn into criminal charges. From this point on, the film is not really a movie about airplanes, it's a movie about alcoholism. As such, it covers the usual ground of denial, good resolutions, bad slips, and exasperated attempts by others to help a man who doesn't really want help, or anything else except the next drink. All this is familiar, but Zemeckis gives it to <span style="font-size: large;">mostly</span> seen from the outside, through the eyes of all the other characters, than from Whitaker's point of view. As such, his "flight" from the reality that everyone else recognizes has a stronger context than in other "alcoholic" movies like Jeff Bridges's "Crazy Heart." Whitaker, as an airline pilot, is not just destroying his own life: he is entrusted with the lives of hundreds of others and the fate of an airline.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">All this really interested me. Where, in my opinion, the movie failed is the last <span style="font-size: large;">one-tenth</span>. Instead of the unflinching ending that such a movie demands, we get a sentimental change of heart, a too-quick redemption, and reconciliations with estranged girlfriend and estranged son that apparently heal all scars. I just didn't believe it. I wish that Zemeckis had let Whitaker crash and burn, or at least end up having a harder time crawling out of the wreckage. Instead, the film takes a "flight" from its first 9/10, and all the clouds at the end are rosy pink.</span>Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-28407269748544933112012-11-13T18:29:00.001-08:002012-11-13T18:29:45.112-08:00A French Science Fiction Convention<span style="font-size: large;">I am just back (and still badly jet-lagged) from the Utopiales Science Fiction Convention in Nantes, France. It was a fascinating experience. American S<span style="font-size: large;">F</span> cons tend to be light-hearted, party-oriented, even irreverent, with panels on things like "The Furry Culture in Fandom" and "Ten Worst SF Movies of All Time" sprinkled in with more substantial topics. Utopiales, in contrast, was all serious, with most panels a mixture of writers and scientists. Participants and aud<span style="font-size: large;">ience<span style="font-size: large;"> wore headphones <span style="font-size: large;">giving sim<span style="font-size: large;">ul<span style="font-size: large;">taneous translation, as in the UN. Audiences were respectfully attentive<span style="font-size: large;">.</span> Other <span style="font-size: large;">English-speaking <span style="font-size: large;">writer guests included Robert Charles Wilson, Neil Gaiman, Norman Spinrad, and Michael Moorcoc<span style="font-size: large;">k.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMsJxF1cuc1dzOkuxusOD6bAnKq5uc0VOgU5JGU3XbZ01FYWIEr8h8k-ud9tXpjZuxz2LgTENR9GQDgBzsAoYFxc8bd-NZkM4_37J7tCC7uAusI9YL05OWSCuKDgkEkFmFfL0uodDnslly/s1600/NAO+robots.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMsJxF1cuc1dzOkuxusOD6bAnKq5uc0VOgU5JGU3XbZ01FYWIEr8h8k-ud9tXpjZuxz2LgTENR9GQDgBzsAoYFxc8bd-NZkM4_37J7tCC7uAusI9YL05OWSCuKDgkEkFmFfL0uodDnslly/s320/NAO+robots.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;">T</span>he convention <u>did </u>have a lighter side. Here are the NOA robots, amazingly flexible robots about three feet high with bright, humanoid faces. They can walk, talk, and -- as below -- dance. (Actually, they dance better than I do, although that's not hard.) Everyone I talked to wanted to take one home.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyxGNcoVcPsdXraJZp7iGdBOblWW2L2fD4Sbqnh7URj0ukaikIUr003m1Y_3H7W3XMqnxSEIWeRYv_h0JtyWRrKSB2s1wSonXonYqfGcAPFPvcy8rVN0yFtwHpZ075Ds8-_pPZsZ7s9CwF/s1600/elephant.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyxGNcoVcPsdXraJZp7iGdBOblWW2L2fD4Sbqnh7URj0ukaikIUr003m1Y_3H7W3XMqnxSEIWeRYv_h0JtyWRrKSB2s1wSonXonYqfGcAPFPvcy8rVN0yFtwHpZ075Ds8-_pPZsZ7s9CwF/s320/elephant.jpg" width="320" /></a> <span style="font-size: large;">Jack and I also made some side excursions to see Nantes. We toured the castle that was once the home of the Dukes of Brittany. We also visited Machines de l'Ile, a museum of mechanical creatures. The largest of them, which roams outside the museum, is this<span style="font-size: large;"> </span>incredible steampunk elephant, three stories high and actually powered by steam. It flaps its ears, blows steam out of its trunk, and (an odd cross-species trait) wags its tail. Fifty people can ride on it at once; we were among them, in the company of Ellen Herzfeld and her husband Dominique Martel.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">A wonderful trip. </span><br />
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<br />Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-76482989666344937922012-11-08T01:00:00.000-08:002012-11-08T01:00:24.804-08:00Pub Date<span style="font-size: large;">T<span style="font-size: large;">oday</span> is the pub date (which always sounds to me like a romantic tryst in a British bar) for my new novel, FLASH POINT.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho6hM5RSDXtEdFymiDAcXg81W6GlM1rHWU6awFNE733xpTHIjPPWe1L9podYfNQvvR0DEVtYJSkI4OHIa2oFVrthTiqlSfEUNazfLW1vCKGwxi9qVocqXCHdgeracZ1CWwOriFvpu7D_oA/s1600/Flash_Point.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho6hM5RSDXtEdFymiDAcXg81W6GlM1rHWU6awFNE733xpTHIjPPWe1L9podYfNQvvR0DEVtYJSkI4OHIa2oFVrthTiqlSfEUNazfLW1vCKGwxi9qVocqXCHdgeracZ1CWwOriFvpu7D_oA/s320/Flash_Point.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">FLASH POINT is YA science fiction about a near-future TV reality show in a United States on the verge of revolution. Amy, at sixteen considered an adult, takes a job to support her sick grandmother and wild younger sister. She becomes a contestant on the reality show -- but has no idea what she's getting into, how desperate the producers are, or what the consequences will be. She acquires friends, allies, and enemies, all as the political situation becomes more volatile and her sister harder to control. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><u>Publisher's Weekly</u> said of the book: "It’s Fear Factor meets The Running Man by way of the 99% in this tense
drama...Sadly, the concept of this exploitative
reality show is entirely believable, as is the financially ruinous
setting. Strong characterization rounds out this unsettling thriller." </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">From the review in <u>Kirkus</u>: <span style="font-size: large;">"</span>Most striking, though, is the complex characterization, with its
emphatic insistence that no one—hero or villain—is anything less than a
complicated mixture of good and bad, strength and weakness, compassion
and selfishness.While the adrenaline rush will draw readers in, it’s the unsettling question posed by the program title that will linger." </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I am currently in France for <span style="font-size: large;">an international</span> <span style="font-size: large;">science fiction </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;">convention </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;">(and suffering strongly from jet lag), so I will miss my own pub date. On the other hand, there are great ba<span style="font-size: large;">rs here, too.</span> </span> </span><br />
<br />Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-68072294152710615662012-11-03T12:52:00.000-07:002012-11-03T12:53:36.033-07:00Reincarnated at the Movies<span style="font-size: large;">Last night I saw CLOUD ATLAS, the new SF movie from Lana and Andy Wachowski (THE MATRIX) and<span style="font-size: large;"> </span>Tom Tykwer, from the much acclaimed novel by David Mitchell. This one had a lot of advance attention, plus a budget of 102 million dollars. The results are absorbing but mixed.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqp-gFyLRQ03jkhxYp27CRSdUJhQ0mqM3t0Yx2-vQKF7sWDyMERb1Tx65g5oV9YSYpucwW-l0RlE7foqJerSCbvgYmaDmwdab354BxgmKDLlEL7pN41ACVI4UgbD_7YWF6YnX0QGF-XIhL/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqp-gFyLRQ03jkhxYp27CRSdUJhQ0mqM3t0Yx2-vQKF7sWDyMERb1Tx65g5oV9YSYpucwW-l0RlE7foqJerSCbvgYmaDmwdab354BxgmKDLlEL7pN41ACVI4UgbD_7YWF6YnX0QGF-XIhL/s320/images.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">The film interweaves six different narratives, set in the mid-1800's high seas, 1936 Cambridge, 1973 San Francisco, 2012 England, 22nd century Neo-Seoul, and an unidentified future location "106 years after the Fall," when Earth has reverted to barbarism. The same people, reincarnated (but unaware of this) turn up in different story lines, which are also connected by artifacts, minor characters, and theme. Jumps in space and time are frequent, unheralded, and occasionally disorienting.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The pluses: First, and probably most important, I was never bored. I wanted to find out what happened to everybody. This is a long movie, but unlike <span style="font-size: large;">du</span>ring some shorter ones, I was not fidgety, distracted, or aware of how long I had been sitting in an uncomfortable theater seat.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Second, it is great fun to identify the actors in their various incarnations, including those heavily disguised by the artistry of Hollywood make-up men. Who would have ever expected to see Hugh Grant, of all people, as a cannibalistic barbarian in war paint?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Third, the movie is visually gorgeous. Each setting is detailed and individually colored (the totalitarian Neo-Seoul is mostly deep blues, reds, and purples). The matching-action cuts -- a door closing in one narrative followed by a different door flung open in a different narrative -- form interesting connective devices.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Also connective is the overall theme: the fight for freedom against oppression. Each narrative does this, whether the oppressor is the state, an established artistic colleague with power, a warring tribe, a corrupt corporation, the institution of slavery, or (in the only humorous scenario) a despotic nursing home. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The negatives: Th<span style="font-size: large;">e</span> theme becomes preachy by the end. <u>Especially</u> at the end, where at least three characters give "freedom" speeches worthy of Willam Shatner as James T. Kirk. Enough, enough--we got it, already. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">There are also some annoying plot devices, such as the fact (so common in Hollywood) that the bad guys cannot shoot straight. Even when the odds are twenty to one, they miss hitting the hero. Any of the heroes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Third, and most damning for me, is that these six narratives are so packed in that they don't allow for anything like character development. I asked myself: If each of these six plots were to be used in separate movies, would they be original or interesting? Probably not. Certainly not original: much if not all of the Neo-Seoul narrative looks like a combination of BRAVE NEW WORLD and 1984. On the other hand, they're not in separate movies, and character development is not the point here, so you will have to decide for yourself if that matters.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Bottom line: a good movie, but not a great one. </span><br />
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<br />Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-56334321480078430822012-10-31T15:15:00.002-07:002012-10-31T15:15:34.988-07:00Not For The Squeamish<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0-y3ieH6S6isG-qwNTmqIeqdXdC8sNYhBx762A8pJwOPYISu_g2F1OMwmda5O9NaoWs2a1tESmpqR8aRmzFH1g7ymYCxzrH89P4yb30m6hz1ykbDYbnQVxsTrtOs0hJGeQvL3WRE2zGFY/s1600/spillover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0-y3ieH6S6isG-qwNTmqIeqdXdC8sNYhBx762A8pJwOPYISu_g2F1OMwmda5O9NaoWs2a1tESmpqR8aRmzFH1g7ymYCxzrH89P4yb30m6hz1ykbDYbnQVxsTrtOs0hJGeQvL3WRE2zGFY/s320/spillover.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: large;">Last month I heard David Quammen speak at the Seattle Town Hall, and I nearly resolved to never eat, drink, or breathe again. Quammen is an acclaimed science writer who does his research first-hand, in this case on zoonotic diseases that cross from other species to humans. His book, SPILLOVER: ANIMAL INFECTIONS AND THE NEXT HUMAN PANDEMIC, is not for the squeamish.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">It is, however, fascinating. Quammen has tramped through the jungle looking for gorillas infected with Ebola; bagged bats in search of the host reservoir for SARS; traced the path of Hendra in Australia as the disease made its way through horses, bats, and the occasional <span style="font-size: large;">person</span>; examined mice's ears for the ticks that cause Lyme disease. He does all this alongside working parasitologists, epidemiologists, and other scientists concerned about cross-over diseases.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">This concern forms the theme of Quammen's book. As humans encroach more and more on the wilds where the host animals for these diseases live, there is greater and greater chance for the parasites (viruses, protists, bacteria, worms, and fungi) to move into us. Sometimes the original host animals are habituated to their parasites, and we are not. Sometimes there is more than one host involved. Sometimes we still haven't found the reservoir host (Ebola, for instance). Some time this could lead to the next world-wide pandemic. We've mostly dodged the bullet so far; Quammen argues that we can<span style="font-size: large;">not</span> do so indefinitely.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Perhaps you have to be an alarmist or a science groupie to love this book. I am the latter, and I did. Quammen writes with grace, force, and clarity. Highly recommended -- just not right before dinner.</span>Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-5021598733162301302012-10-21T11:28:00.000-07:002012-10-21T11:28:26.636-07:00Really Cranky at the Movies<span style="font-size: large;">The NEW YORKER rarely likes movies, and it didn't like the new remake of WUTHERING HEIGHTS. Even rarer is that I, usually easier to satisfy than Anthony Lane or David Denby, downright hated this film. Really. A lot.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Emily Bronte's classic novel is chatty. Nellie Dean, the moral center of the book, talks constantly, trying to get everyone else to behave. They don't, of course, but in her scolding and their replies lie the means of understanding the depths of Bronte's characters. Here, Nellie Dean has been reduced to a silent and much younger serving girl who has perhaps a half dozen, one<span style="font-size: large;">-</span>sentence speeches. In fact, nobody has much dialogue. England seems to consist of semi-mutes. As a result, characters that in the novel are multi-layered, here become merely <span style="font-size: large;">one-dimensional: Heathcliff is sullen, Hi<span style="font-size: large;">ndley is <span style="font-size: large;">bigoted, Cathy is shallow, Edgar is a wimp<span style="font-size: large;">, Isabella is a twit. Period.</span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In films without words, the images are important. Here they are (1) shot in such low light that sometimes it's difficult to see who is even present, (2) shot in such close-up that a character is reduced to an arm or one side of a face, and rooms to a flagstone floor or the corner of a rough table -- in fact, I never did get any coherent view of any room at all in the farmhouse, (3) shot with such jerky motions of a hand-held camera that it looked THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, (4) shot through incessant rain, fog, or mist that blurred everything.</span> <span style="font-size: large;">There can be more than one correct answer.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;">Even when the weather cleared, t</span>here are only so many
long, slow pans of the moors than a film can stand. By the time the
millionth one appeared, I was hoping for grass fires. Or anything with
some life. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;">Also, o</span>ne hanging of a small dog <span style="font-size: large;">may be</span> justified--it's in the
book, and we are getting a clear view of Heathcliff's rage. The second
hanging of a small dog is not in the book and represents gratuitous
nastiness</span>.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;">Finally</span>, the movie--and this is NEVER announced--consists of only the first half of the novel. It stops with Heathcliff's marriage to Isabella. This means that nothing is resolved, none of the relationships are finished, we never get to see the more-or-less happy ending that Bronte wrote. The film just stops.</span> <span style="font-size: large;">When it ended with such unfinished abruptness, a person behind me said unbelievingly, "It's over?"</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Her companion said, "Thank God!"</span>Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-43040068845751985432012-10-14T08:27:00.000-07:002012-10-14T08:27:16.052-07:00Nail-Biting at the Movies<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">You'd think it would be impossible to make a thriller where everyone knows the end well in advance and still have the audience sitting on the edge of their seats. ARGO, amazingly, accomplishes this.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The story is true: In 1979, when 50 people had been taken hostage after the storming of the American embassy in Tehran, six more embassy staffers escaped out the back door and hid in the house of the Canadian ambassador. It fell to the CIA to get them out of Iran. Terry Mendez, an "exfiltrator," came up with the insane idea to pose as a Canadian film company making an SF movie in Tehran, and smuggle out the six as members of the film crew. This means they needed a plausible movie company in Hollywood, a script, buzz in the press, posters, storyboards -- everything to convince the Iranians this was a legitimate enterprise. So with the help of Hollywood, they created them. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">All this was declassified in 1997. At the time, after the plan actually worked, the Canadians got the credit. Mendez has since said that the extraction went smoothly, which means that Ben Affleck, as director, took liberties with the escape sequence in the airport. It doesn't matter. The basic facts are there, and I was so tense with the escape that I could barely sit still. As the plane finally leaves Iranian airspace, the audience in the theater broke into applause.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The actors are all good: Affleck as an impossibly sexy Mendez, Alan Arkin as a cynical producer, John Goodman as the make-up man who has done work for the CIA before. I had a few quibbles with the six hostages, who are so terrified they don't play along with the ruse very well and so look suspicious already. But overall, this is the sort of taut, exciting, emotional movie that LOOPER should have been, with innocents in mortal danger and heroes out to rescue them. Maybe the next big SF movie should be a project for Ben Affleck.</span>Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-15380892835180262452012-10-07T07:30:00.000-07:002012-10-07T12:18:42.959-07:00Cranky at the Movies<span style="font-size: large;">Everybody likes LOOPER. Except me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">io9, which reviews all things SF-nal, called it "smart." I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around this. My problem is that the plot doesn't make sense, which would seem to be a basic requirement of smartness. To be specific: [Alert: Many spoilers ahead!]</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">In 2044, time travel has been invented. However, the only people who have a time machine are a very influential criminal organization headed by a mysterious man called the Rainmaker. The <u>only people</u>. No scientists, governments, etc. Just thugs.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Technology has advanced enough to create time travel, but not enough to dispose of bodies, so the criminal organization sends its enemies, bound and hooded and alive, back to our time to be shot by confederates called Loopers. They don't send the bodies back dead, even though the problem is body disposal. The Loopers have guns with ONE bullet, thereby enabling the odd sent-back thug to escape into our time.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The time machine looks like a rusty iron lung from the 1950's. In fact, nothing in the future looks very futuristic except Shanghai, which already looks futuristic.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Bruce Willis, a retired Looper, is transformed from a stupid Bad Guy by the power of love. Or so we're told. However, he still can, and does, shoot children (one of whom will grow up to be the Rainmaker) in order to change the future so he can get his wife back. Of course, if he succeeds in changing the future, what's to say that she will still be present in a drastically changed 2044? Nobody considers this.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The child (played by a truly wonderful kid actor) has telekinesis, which he demonstrates when he kills a different assassin. But when confronted with the exact same situation later in the movie, he doesn't use TK even though he could. Why not? Because if he did, the movie would be over.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Again, nobody else seems to mind any of this. As long as enough bodies drop, enough things blow up, and Bruce glares enough, everybody thinks that's adequate to make an SF movie. And if Hollywood wants to make a movie about time travel, why not Greg Benford's TIMESCAPE or Michael Swanwick's BONES OF THE EARTH or Connie Willis's "Firewatch"? Those all make </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">self-consistent sense.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">So -- is it just me? </span>Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-12838875078607294022012-10-02T18:36:00.001-07:002012-10-02T18:36:20.636-07:00The Casual Vacancy<span style="font-size: large;">J.K. Rowling's awaited first novel for adults, THE CASUAL VACANCY, is a surprise. Several surprises, not all good. But not all bad, either.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The first surprise is how grim the book is. Pagford is a picturesque English country village, something Jane Austen might have used as a setting. Beside it, however, is an extension of the city of Yarvil, a depressed area called "the Fields" that mostly consists of slums, out-of-work inhabitants, and a methadone clinic. The Pagford Parish Council is divided on whether or not they should redraw boundaries to hand the Fields back to Yarvil and close the clinic (which is renting a building owned by Pagford), or instead try to help--with money and scholarships-- the disadvantaged inhabitants of the Fields.</span> <span style="font-size: large;"> In Chapter 1, a key member of the council dies, and the vacancy leads to an election that ends up exposing everyone's deepest secrets and personal bad behavior.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">And it IS bad. I didn't expect Harry Potter-type buoyancy and heroism, but nearly every character in THE CASUAL VACANCY is unpleasant, taking most of their pleasure from others' weaknesses, failures, frustrations, and pain. Nearly every one! These are not merely flawed characters; they are petty and actively vindictive. And some are worse than that, including a man who beats his wife and kids, a crack addict who neglects her children, cyberbullies, and three--not one but </span><span style="font-size: large;">three--teenagers who cruelly and publicly humiliate their parents. </span><span style="font-size: large;">And one character, Krystal, is so wrenching that the only possible response to her is a painful pity.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> By the end of the book, some of these characters have repented and reformed, but this is unfortunately the book's greatest weakness: I didn't believe some of these character changes. They did not seem to me adequately prepared for.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The second surprise, however, was that despite all of the above, I could not put the book down. The writing is good. More, the story kept me enthralled to see what would happen next and how the various plot lines would turn out. I neglected a lot of other things I was supposed to be doing in order to finish this novel. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Rowling has moved a long way from what Jane Austen would have done with an English village. Masterly Jane knew that every setting has at least a few moments of joy, at least a few relationships that are tender, at least some people who strive for higher standards of behavior. Rowling has said that some of her book came from her own life and the lives she observed before she became famous. If so, her upbringing must have been a doozie.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Still--I read, I read compulsively, and I believed her characters. I just wish they hadn't been the only inhabitants we meet in Pagford.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">.</span>Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-48979051882355810752012-09-27T11:53:00.000-07:002012-09-27T11:53:08.156-07:00Making Your Brain Happy<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge0Vvl9tol33OHhE5E5AZlnEqCYtWA9Ulndv03GJU9OUrzE-ZNnXYU3jt-uFgI7rpkEp86sGXzWSCnwZDqjL66VoLxb6t1B9IIgNNSHNeskCNhfz7DfJhcSRXgzMsarUKmyUNg7_t9Mnbo/s1600/BRAIN+HAPPY.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge0Vvl9tol33OHhE5E5AZlnEqCYtWA9Ulndv03GJU9OUrzE-ZNnXYU3jt-uFgI7rpkEp86sGXzWSCnwZDqjL66VoLxb6t1B9IIgNNSHNeskCNhfz7DfJhcSRXgzMsarUKmyUNg7_t9Mnbo/s1600/BRAIN+HAPPY.jpg" /></a><span style="font-size: large;">The 2011 book by David DiSalvo, WHAT MAKES YOUR BRAIN HAPPY AND WHY YOU SHOULD DO THE OPPOSITE, was recommended to me by a friend. I read it, and am glad I did. For me, this book explained a lot.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">DiSalvo's basic premise is this: The human brain evolved to conserve its resources in everyday life, so as to save them for the life-threatening situations where they are really needed. Thus, your brain will usually take the "easy way out" because any other way creates mental discomfort. This discomfort can be detected with functional MRI, where during some kinds of decision-making, the parts of the brain light up that cause anxiety (such as the amygdalae), and the parts that produce reward-feeling rev down (ventral striatum). </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">What kind of decisions? Those that go against the norms of one's peer group, or seem likely to cause friction with people one cares about, or will entail risk to something you value: security, belonging, comfort, reputation. The result is that we try to minimize this discomfort by looking only at evidence that confirms what we already believe and discounting evidence that doesn't. Your brain wants consistency and certainty. It even wants to "coast" if it can: Some studies show that for between 30 to 50 percent of our waking time, most of us are </span><span style="font-size: large;">mentally </span><span style="font-size: large;">"elsewhere," operating on automatic pilot. This is why, for instance, you find yourself driving to your job when it's Saturday and you meant to go to the dry cleaner's.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Alas, in order to be just, or creative, or even fully aware of the world, consistency and certainty often must be sacrificed. This may be why artists are so often prone to depression. The world looks more chaotic to their driven, not-at-ease brains.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">There is a lot more about neural activity in this fascinating book. Highly recommended. </span>Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-34031432964367880062012-09-16T10:23:00.000-07:002012-09-16T10:23:07.439-07:00Mirrored at the Movies<span style="font-size: large;">A few days ago I saw THE WORDS, the new movie that is the writing and directorial debut of Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal. I really enjoyed it -- but possibly for the wrong reasons. For authors, THE WORDS is part memory, part wish-fulfillment, part nightmare, all of which overwhelmed any sense of objective artistic judgment that I might have brought to it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The film is about a struggling fiction writer (played by Bradley Cooper). For the first third of the script, Rory Jansen wrestles with blank pages, blank computer screens, blank results. He cannot get the words to flow as he wishes, and this part of the movie feels so true that I was wincing in memory. Especially since "memory" included writing sessions as recent as, oh, yesterday.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">As the internal and external pressures mount (Rory is running out of money, and his family out of patience), he finds a manuscript: old, yellowed, anonymous, and brilliant. This may not be enormously plausible, but then again, Hadley Hemingway lost a satchel of her husband's manuscripts on a train. Rory first reads the novel and then retypes it just to get the feel of successful prose. This is not far-fetched; I know many writers who have done this with famous stories as they teach themselves to compose. But then, under still more pressure, Rory claims the novel is his own.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">The movie is actually more complicated than that, since it is three stories set inside each other, all connected to this particular set of words. THE WORDS is about the desire to write, the perks and costs of fame, and the choices we all make. Unfortunately, the last part of the film turns both preachy and muddy (I thought the last line really confused things), but overall I enjoyed this movie.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I'm just not sure why.</span>Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-359416680384265512012-09-11T10:39:00.000-07:002012-09-11T10:39:50.158-07:00Three Technologies<span style="font-size: large;">Three technologies have recently come to my attention: one small, one medium-sized, one large (I feel like Goldilocks). The first is my new foldable, portable treadmill. Since Seattle is known for rain, I bought this so that I can walk indoors. I also had thought it would be nice if the dog walked on it with me. I had visions of the two of us puffing companionably along as we watched the NBC Nightly News. However, this is not going to work. Here is the dog refusing to set foot on the thing, despite the presence of her favorite treat:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Moving up in sophistication, e-readers came up during a discussion I had yesterday with a class at the University of Washington. Their professor, Dr. Howard Chizeck, brought me in to give a talk on SF, science, and society. When I asked how many students used e-readers, I was surprised to find that there were only two. "I like the feel of real books," they all said. And then, devastatingly to someone who loves her Kindle, "My grandparents use e-readers. Not us." Is this true? Are e-readers already obsolete with the young generation of engineers?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Most sophisticated, here is a link to a video of DARPA's astonishing Legged Squad Support System (LS3), a robotic "mule." <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/darpa-unveils-robotic-mule.html" target="_blank">http://news.yahoo.com/darpa-unveils-robotic-mule.html</a> This thing can move easily over rugged terrain (the DARPA press release says "gracefully," but that's stretching it a bit) and can pick itself up if it falls down. We are one step closer to Imperial Walkers. And a long way from my manual treadmill.</span> Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-88283149087513183492012-09-06T15:03:00.002-07:002012-09-06T15:03:52.169-07:00Happy At The Movies<span style="font-size: large;">Editors, it is rumored, don't much like stories about writers. Writers do (mild narcissism, undoubtedly). Probably the same applies to movies. Still, I didn't expect much from the beginning of RUBY SPARKS, and I left loving it.</span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdkmqvzE4lpbeR5CI_lJaknphsLmSN8_AeRKwcFAQymnk1bu6GGcL44tR_SAqC6YJRj6waWwZN4YLghPBS9WQMxDSYw-HpD8bY9OVm5JViebPn4SnMmq0NEozfmSwL5-NTz3TnRCVtd7gt/s1600/Ruby+Sparks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdkmqvzE4lpbeR5CI_lJaknphsLmSN8_AeRKwcFAQymnk1bu6GGcL44tR_SAqC6YJRj6waWwZN4YLghPBS9WQMxDSYw-HpD8bY9OVm5JViebPn4SnMmq0NEozfmSwL5-NTz3TnRCVtd7gt/s1600/Ruby+Sparks.jpg" /></a><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">The premise is as old as Galatea (in another medium): a writer creates the perfect woman on paper, and she becomes real. Worse, his "perfect woman" is one of those kookie, free-spirit types that I usually find annoying. After Calvin, the writer, overcomes his shock and disbelief, there is an idealized series of loving-couple scenes, youthful division, that in their own way are also cliches: a video arcade, a beach walk, etc. I wasn't exactly bored because Paul Dano as the nerdy, relationship-challenged Calvin has one of the most mobile and expressive faces ever, but I wasn't enchanted, either.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Then, in the second part of the film, things changed. They begin to find fault with each other, at first the usual tiny rifts that successful couples negotiate. But Calvin does not know how to negotiate. All he knows how to do is write. So he hauls out the manuscript in which he created Ruby and tries to rewrite her. Again. And again. And he can't make her perfect. All this becomes a writing technique in itself, "literalizing the metaphor," in which Ruby stands for not only love but also for writing fiction. She is being twisted and forced in an attempt to make her a perfect echo of the writer. Calvin cannot go past who he is, and fiction demands that writers become other characters in order to solidly create them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">By the end of the movie, his pain and horror are frozen on that mobile face, and I had chills of recognition. For both meanings of the metaphor.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Zoe Kazan is good as Ruby, but this movie belongs to Paul Dano. Every writer should see it.</span>Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-11341110592090160482012-08-26T11:50:00.002-07:002012-08-26T11:50:49.249-07:00Your Own Personal Microbes<span style="font-size: large;">The new issue of THE ECONOMIST includes an article that just blew me away. It's about the latest research on all the microbes that live in your gut. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Your body harbors 100 trillion bacteria, ten times the number of cells you grew from your DNA, containing 3 million genes. And they are <u>yours</u>: Humans differ vastly, it turns out, in the composition of this microbiome. Some people have more of one kinds of microbes, other people have more of other kinds. This has vast implications for health, most of which are just beginning to be explored. Some findings so far:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Overweight people have more Firmicutes and fewer Bacteroidetes than thin people. The later suppress the making of a hormone that facilitates fat storage, which is part of why Sally can eat a pint of Haagen-Dasz and not gain an ounce and Molly puts on three pounds looking at a picture of one M&M. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Twin studies carried out by the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis show that even on the exact same diet, one twin can develop malnutrition and the other not, depending on their individual gut bacteria.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Formic acid produced by gut bacteria can contribute to heart disease, because formic acid signals to the kidneys how much salt to absorb back into the body or to excrete with urine. Too much salt can damage arteries.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Scientists are also investigating possible links between gut bacteria and diabetes type 2, MS, and even autism.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Most amazing to me is the case of C. difficile, a bug that causes severe diarrhea, killing about 14,000 Americans each year. Many strains have evolved resistance to even last-ditch antibiotics like vancomycin and metronidazole. Worse, when these are tried, they kill off most of the patient's gut microbiome. But at the Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City, doctors have come up with a successful--if gross--way to combat resistant C. difficile. They give patients enemas with feces from healthy adults. The new bacteria take over the gut and kill off the infection.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I have written stories about the evolution of disease microbes (including "Evolution," in my mini-collection THE BODY HUMAN, from Phoenix Pick). The bacteria have an advantage in the medical arms race: They can evolve a new generation every twenty minutes, swapping plasmids to beef up each other's resistance to our drugs. But we have brains on our side. Despite the recent terrible onslaught of hospital-bred infections at NIH, there is lots of room for hope. This excellent article illustrates why.</span>Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-70139350933569590072012-08-21T09:29:00.003-07:002012-08-21T09:29:53.231-07:00Cranky at the Theater<span style="font-size: large;">Last week I saw a production of the Tony-winning musical RENT, at Seattle's Fifth Avenue Theater. It was a good production, slightly made-over from the 1980's version, with terrific actors. Some of the music is appealing, especially "Seasons of Love." </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">However, the rock opera left me unsatisfied. My three companions didn't share my reasons, so maybe it's just me. I suspect, however, that since individual experience strongly affects one's reaction to art, and I am just too old for RENT.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRPsssiXVL90mnL2jLVREv0cdjv3qkixtNGosgYUP4E9FHe5N4oXQG3167723s39E5BpbwyUwQThiU70HR0yP-KT5LIDDa-yGfHwW0HKrs3kUakszpEXW3xhrCWDmH5hboTxRSYvWhCMpg/s1600/RENT.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRPsssiXVL90mnL2jLVREv0cdjv3qkixtNGosgYUP4E9FHe5N4oXQG3167723s39E5BpbwyUwQThiU70HR0yP-KT5LIDDa-yGfHwW0HKrs3kUakszpEXW3xhrCWDmH5hboTxRSYvWhCMpg/s1600/RENT.jpg" /></a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Based on the nineteenth-century opera LA BOHEME, RENT concerns a bunch of would-be artists living in the East Village. In LA BOHEME some of them were dying of consumption; in RENT, it's AIDS. There is an on-stage death scene which is moving, as one character loses his drag-queen lover. My problem was not with any of that, but with the underlying assumptions about the Bohemian life: it's much better than any stodgy bourgeois existence; it produces "real" artists because earning money corrupts people; the young artists are all superior to their frantic parents, who phone them from concern that the kids are all right; artists have the right to occupy their lofts without paying the landlords any rent because, well, they're artists.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">None of this seems true to me. Worse, it seems affected, exploitative, and even pathetic. Many artists have produced wonderful work while living bourgeois lives. Some even went on producing after they'd made money. Landlords have taxes to pay on their buildings and children to feed. Not everyone who works in, or even <u>is</u>, a corporation is despicable. And parents deserve a break in their anxiety for their kids, in the form of a few phone calls now and then.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">So I left the theater cranky. And definitely too old for this show. I wanted to say to everyone on stage: Just pay your damn rent!</span>Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-8146354970664628822012-08-15T13:14:00.003-07:002012-08-15T13:15:23.089-07:00Three Girls<span style="font-size: large;">In the last few weeks, due to much time on an airplane and even more time not feeling well (I always seem to get sick after flying), I read three novels. All three have spent time on the NEW YORK TIMES bestseller list, although not the same amount of time and not in the same year. All three center on a young woman in a problematic relationship.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">THE NEWLYWOODS chronicles the Internet courtship, marriage, and emigration to America of Amina, an educated but poor Bangladesh woman who wants a better life. She doesn't love George, her new American husband, but she likes him well enough, and she needs him to bring her parents out of danger in her native country. Amina's relationships--with George, with the old love she left behind, with her parents and extended family, with her new American relatives, and with the United States itself--grow increasingly complex as the novel progresses. Her choices grow harder. Whether or not you agree with Amina's final decision, she is believable, interesting, and very human.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">A little more formulaic but still very good is Philippa Gregory's historical novel, THE VIRGIN'S LOVER. Amy Dudley is the young wife of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who has the good fortune to be having a love affair with the young Queen Elizabeth I. Not such good fortune for Amy. History has offered several opinions on how Amy Dudley ended up dead at the bottom of a staircase four centuries ago, but Philippa Gregory offers a fresh, absorbing take on this, along with her usual vivid picture of Tudor England. Amy Dudley here is not as complex or solid as Amina Stillman, but the novel is still very good</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> The third book I read was E. L. James's FIFTY SHADES OF GREY, about Anastasia Steele and everybody-already-knows-what. The less said about this novel, the better -- except for one question. Why is the book about a believable young woman struggling with genuine, and genuinely complex, moral and family issues the least commercially successful of the three; the second-best book much more successful; and the trashy one dominating everything from bookstores to social commentary?</span> <span style="font-size: large;"> What does that say about us, the book-buying public?</span><br />
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<br />Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1695280310697378421.post-46295769136985503102012-08-10T13:12:00.000-07:002012-08-10T13:12:04.565-07:00Young Adult Fiction<span style="font-size: large;">Over a year ago I attended a panel on YA fiction, and something I heard has picked at my mind ever since. This particular panel consisted of librarians, both school and public, talking about what young people read. They had discussed the usual suspects and the panel was open to questions. I asked about a recent award-winning YA book, science fiction, that had garnered amazing reviews. The librarian smiled sadly. "We recommend it, but most kids start and then abandon it. They say it's too slow and not exciting enough."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I have heard this before about other award-winners, including recipients of the prestigious Newberry Medal. I have just finished reading THE MIDWIFE'S APPRENTICE, a book by Karen Cushman, who previously had won a Newberry for CATHERINE, CALLED BIRDY. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Both books are set in the Middle Ages, and although the world they depict has its share of brutality, the books' two heroines, one a young lady and one a homeless village girl, don't engage in much derring-do. There is no magic. No sword fights, no quests, no battles, no deaths except from natural causes. "We recommend Karen Cushman," the librarians said, "but mostly those books are read aloud to classes by teachers."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">All this has raised a question in my mind: Do kids consistently choose different books for themselves than adults would choose for them? Is that why Harry Potter and Katniss Everdene, but not Catherine called Birdy, became best-selling icons? And if what constitutes a really, really good book is not the same as judged by adults and by kids, then which should a writer be considering in shaping his or her story?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I have a YA novel coming out in November: FLASH POINT, from Viking. I wasn't much aware of this question while I was writing it. And now I don't know the answer--or how much appeal the novel might have to either audience--although it seems to me that I was trying for both. Now I'm wondering if that may have been a mistake, in that it may not be possible. The things they want in fiction seem very different.</span>Nancy Kresshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09834410304227906387noreply@blogger.com10