Archive | May 2019

The Terror: Book Review

May29

I can remember vividly the coldest I’ve ever been. No, it wasn’t a trip to either the north or south pole, nor a selfie at Mt. Everest. It was the end of winter in a drafty old house in Shorewood, WI, where I lived for a few months with a bunch of friends from college. To save money, the heat was kept on low, and each night I bundled up in many layers of clothes and blankets to try and stay warm. Never will I forget being so cold.

Dan Simmons is a gifted writer and researcher, especially when it comes to description. From the first chapter, The Terror grabs the reader with its snowballing descriptions of just…how…cold…these sailors are. Stuck in the arctic ice in a futile attempt to find the “Northwest Passage” north of Canada and through to China, the crews of two British navy ships, one call the Terror, battle the cold and the elements for survival. Oh. And an abominable snow monster.

Despite liking this novel, I have to say the true stories of these arctic explorations, doomed or not, are far more interesting. In the Kingdom of Ice, detailing the true story of the USS Jeannette stuck in the pack ice, I found riveting. Simmons’s rendition isn’t bad, though, but it is really long, probably a bit too long. And there wasn’t enough of the snow monster for my liking, and I’m not sure what I think of all the Eskimo stuff. It was just kind of strange, and I wasn’t sure how much if it was true to that culture.

The best thing about the novel is that it is a story about men. Women and women’s issues are not much to be seen here, which is a bit refreshing for a reader like me, who sometimes almost drowns in romance. The women in the story are viewed mostly from Frances Crozier, an officer who can’t seem to find a balance with them. He either sees them as whores or exotic beings on pedestals, and that he gets the girl at the end and keeps her seems a little unrealistic if you think of her as a real person. Nevertheless, there’s a sweet innocence about his perspective. Aside from all that, the story largely deals with men giving command and under command and how being stuck so far from civilization affects that dynamic. It is amazing that order does not come apart at the seams a lot earlier, considering what these sailors are up against. In fact, the mutiny seemed to come out of nowhere and Hickey, the villain, was too cartoonish for my taste.

Back to the snow monster. So I did try to read Simmons’ other cold tale, Abominable, but gave up as it took him what felt like hundreds of pages just to get them on the mountain. The description of climbing gear from the 1920s, although interesting in its own right, fast became a textbook on it, instead of details pushing the story along. Thankfully, in The Terror, Simmons gets to the action we want pretty quickly and is great at showing the men’s mounting fear of the creature attacking them. Then, towards the end, when they finally abandon their ships as they are all dying of scurvy, the snow monster is scarcely, inexplicably, to be seen until popping up to devour the villain (did I mention there are spoilers?) and spiritually circumcise Crozier (so weird).

A roaring good tale, despite its flaws, The Terror is good historical fiction. The perspectives of the men seemed to be from the characters’ time and modern views weren’t shoehorned in too much. The details of the ships and the environment really made me feel at times like I was there with them, and the descriptions of their various ailments as they succumbed to malnutrition and cold were heartbreaking. My next book to read from Simmons will probably be Drood. I saw the PBS movie of the Mystery of Edwin Drood and want to read the story that Charles Dickens never finished, and then see how Simmons ended it. Of course I also plan to give The Terror miniseries a try, but I have a much easier time reading about blood and gore than I do watching it. Some people are the reverse. Wonder why that is? Hmm. Must be a study on it somewhere…

Dilwale: Big Heart in Name, Small Heart in Storytelling

May29

Once upon a time my favorite actor was Shahrukh Khan, or SRK. I didn’t love Bollywood so much as I loved him, and I’ve seen many of his movies and once in awhile take the time to catch up on the ones I’ve missed. Happy New Year, for example, was quite entertaining. This time around I decided to give Dilwale a try, and I have to say it was disappointing. For all of its ambition, it wasn’t ambitious enough. “Dilwale” means big hearted, but despite all of the flashy cars and settings, there was little “heart” in the film.

Dilwale‘s adequate if one just wants something vaguely Bollywood to watch, but the story, a mild takeoff of Romeo and Juliet, leaves little room for either the audience or the actors to breathe. We jump from one thing to the next with little to no transition time and zero time to let the love stories sink in. Love at first sight can work, but it doesn’t here. And the use of tropes from Love Actually and Romeo + Juliet just feel hokey, stale, and not heartfelt at all. I don’t believe any of these gangsters are actually Catholic or religious at all. By far, the worst thing about the film is the editing, which appears to be done with no skill at all. The best parts come from Shahrukh Khan and Kajol, who are an onscreen dynamo and saved this film from being totally throwaway. Their chemistry and devastating stares kept me watching, but only just, as their romance wasn’t allowed to bloom. The other two leads, although attractive, had zero charisma or chemistry.

Some bits I really liked–the car chase scenes and some fights scenes were pretty good, as was the five-minute date. “Five minutes of heart” actually describes the film well. That seemed to be all the time the director could allow for between showing off the gorgeous locations, cars, and trying-so-hard-to-be-cool action scenes. It was nice to see SRK onscreen, though. With the actors one has really liked, seeing them again is like watching an old friend. He is an entertainer like no other, as is Kajol. She’s beautiful all while still rocking that unibrow. How fun would it have been if her character actually was the bad guy? How awesome would it have been if the film was set in India where the characters had real roots and real consequences to deal with from their actions? Dilwale seemed like a large-scale production, but it was all for visuals disconnected to both storytelling and meaning. If they had gone for pure fun, like the last song at the end, at least it would have been entertaining. Oh well. Sometimes you hit it out of the park, sometimes you don’t.

Book Candy: Flavia de Luce

May9

Perhaps it’s a lack of imagination or I need to learn more dictionary adjectives, but I find myself describing anything pleasant as “candy.” Bacon-wrapped water chestnuts are “meat candy,” Kerrygold butter is “butter candy,” kimchi fried rice is “spicy mac ‘n’ cheese candy,” which really doesn’t make any sense, but you get the idea. This can apply to reading, especially as we often talk about “devouring” books. I think that the Flavia de Luce series by Alan Bradley is “book candy!”

The Flavia de Luce series is my current mystery favorite, and since I bought the most recent, and possibly final, book, I just had to take a break from the lengthy horror show of The Terror by Dan Simmons and enjoy some, well, candy. The Golden Tresses of the Dead doesn’t disappoint. It’s classic Flavia, with her dear friend Dogger, and we get cameos from her sisters, Feely and Daphne, as well as their cook, Mrs. Mullet, the vicar’s wife, and even Flavia’s woman crush: Antigone, the wife of the long-suffering Inspector Hewitt. Reading this last installment, I realize what good, old friends all of these character have become, even Undine, Flavia’s younger, even more precocious and annoying cousin.

Oh. Did I mention that Flavia de Luce is a rather annoying, know-it-all twelve-year-old? She’s also awesome, but if I met her in real life, she would likely drive me crazy. In this book, however, Flavia is clearly growing up: She’s more affected emotionally, especially with her growing association with Dogger, who is the father figure in her life now that her real father has passed away. She also has begun to see that Undine is much like a younger Flavia, and that the child may one day be able to really help her solve mysteries. Flavia also meets a boy that she admires, and Bradley shows this in their friendly feelings towards each other and also that she seems calmer somehow in his presence. No big romance or anything, but it’s clear that Flavia, as smart as she is, is in as much danger as the rest of us of falling in love…someday.

Bradley’s books include so many interesting facts, tidbits, and chemistry knowledge, that it’s not quite right to call them candy, but despite them being murder mysteries, the books always leave me with this sugary, fizzy feeling that all is right in the world. Flavia has solved the mystery once again and each bit of evidence is sorted in its place, chemically or otherwise. And talk about author goals! I found out that Bradley is in his 80s! Wow, that’s so awesome to be writing a hit series at that age. A writer can only hope. It is my fervent hope that we will get more Flavia books, that we’ll see more of Feely, her hubby Dieter, and Daphne, Dogger, and all the rest, and that the series will continue on and on. Rumor has it that a TV show of the book series is in the works, and we the fans will wait and see if it remains true to the source.

In other news: I am watching the Korean drama Her Private Life. The leads, Park Min Young (City Hunter), and Kim Jae Wook (Coffee Prince) have great chemistry, and the whole idea of her having this secret life of K-pop fandom is pretty cool. Review to be out in a few weeks once the show is over. Aside from that, May is the start of wedding season, which is why Golden Tresses that begins with Feely and Dieter’s wedding was too irresistible to put down. I’m feeling all girly buying bedazzled shoes and swingy dresses, and imagining what my bridesmaid bouquet is going to look like. And though it did threaten to snow today, spring, and romance are definitely in the air. Hmm. Air candy? Yes, I definitely need to learn more adjectives.

K-drama Review: Because This Is My First Life

May1

This will be more a review of the second half of this sweet contemplation on couples in their thirties trying to adjust to the work, social, and romance demands that come with being an adult. For my thoughts on the first part, please see Winter’s Last Hurrah. Because This Is My First Life stars Lee Min Ki (Shut Up Flower Boy Band) and the awesome Jung So Min (The Smile Has Left Your Eyes). The writing of this series is good, which is always a helpful thing when one of the characters is a writer, too. Somehow, the show managed to hit the right combination of sentimentality, comedy, and drama.

Would you enter a contract marriage? In America, living together while not being married is pretty commonplace, so it’s more difficult to imagine that people would find it necessary to do a contract marriage unless some huge amount of money was involved or some high stakes circumstances. South Korea’s a bit more conservative and traditional still, so the plot works in this show and they highlight especially the family pressure on the two: Living as landlord and tenant like they want to do would not be at all acceptable to their families.

Would I enter into a contract marriage? As a forty-something-year-old single lady, spinster if we were in Jane Austen’s world, the thought of it is sometimes tempting. Dating has never really been a fun thought for me, though romance and marriage always have been. And my family is conservative Christian, so living together wouldn’t be acceptable, for me or for them. I just couldn’t carry on the charade. And they’d be so disappointed with the lie and really disappointed that there was no love, not to mention being a huge diss on the institution of marriage itself. We often joke about marriage being just a contract, but it’s not, it’s absolutely not. It’s a commitment unlike any other, which is why so many cohabitate instead of taking the plunge. Jumping with both feet in takes real courage, and I don’t get writers like Agatha Christie, for example, in which her characters get married after a couple of weeks. It boggles the mind. Besides, what would I have to offer in a contract marriage: Money? Nope. Carnal favors? Yikes. No, marriage for me would have to be about love, but it is hard sometimes. I have four weddings to go to this spring and summer and they are all for beautiful young women in love and loved, and it seems something, well, only for the young. It seems something that’s passed me by, or I’ve passed it by. Did I mention it’s going to be a difficult season?

Back to the review: I last watched, I think, episode six, when writing the first half review, and the writers had just introduced a corny love triangle. I am happy to report that the love triangle really isn’t one, merely a vehicle to test the main characters’ contract–is it really that, or is their marriage more a real marriage than they want to acknowledge? Of course it’s the latter. Both have already given each other their hearts by this time, and there’s no going back. The biggest problem they have, is really the Korean traditions of one having to help one’s in-laws for certain events. We have a little bit of this in America, but it’s not this pressure of making one person do all the work for something just because they are the new daughter-in-law.

On the night they first met, Jung So Min’s character, Ji Ho, kissed Lee Min Ki’s Se Hee out of the blue because she’d never kissed anyone before and wanted to have a first kiss. Later on, when he’s acknowledging how into her he is, he scoffs, “That wasn’t a kiss, that was a peck, a touching of lips at most,” and shows her what real kiss is. It was very swoon worthy and had me thinking of Crocodile Dundee: “That’s not a knife, this is a knife.” 🙂 Se Hee is so hilariously robotic and analytic, yet he is sweet and alluring as a man in love, and probably more dangerous, too. His goal is simply to not be a hindrance to Ji Ho. If that’s not romantic, I don’t know what is. Like I said before, there was no way she would not fall for him. He’s offering her safety, stability, security, and love that allows her to be who she is instead of asking her to become a pretzel.

More on the pretzel thing: A few posts ago, I talked about Alison Armstrong, her Keys to the Kingdom and The Queen’s Code. Because she’s truly curious, Armstrong has a learned a lot about men, women, and their differences. She often gives the advice: Don’t go for the people you’re super physically attracted to. It will never work. Why? You can’t be yourself. You won’t be yourself, you will constantly be trying to be someone else that you think will impress them. And you won’t be able to turn that off. It’s true, when you think about it. Mostly, I hate all exercise except walking and dancing, and I have professed a profound interest and love in running all to impress a guy that would have never have been the right one for, and who would have never been right for me. I know now, I would have exhausted myself, turning myself into a pretzel for him and still wouldn’t have felt good enough. Armstrong says it best: The people you’re most attracted to, don’t really like you, mostly because they’ve never met you and never will. The people who are attracted to you, but you’re not so physically into them, they’ve actually met you and know you quite well, which is why they like you so much. She says if you’re not having any luck in romance, to give those people a chance. Se Hee’s kind of that man that’s not super attractive, mostly due to his manner, but for the woman he loves–and the love probably came a lot sooner that he thinks it did–he is gold. He is the perfect one for her. With him, she is loved for who she is and she doesn’t have to be somebody else to please him.

The two of them do end up happy, though it takes a mild separation for them to get there. They first have to acknowledge just how much they’ve been dissing marriage and each other, as a whole, but they do end up getting married for real, but keep their “contract” part for fun. And that is great, because, that kind of communication about the relationship is vital to keep it going. They assess where they are, what their expectations are of each other, etc. It’s actually very romantic. As for the other couples, they, too, end up happy, but the women especially have to put aside timelines and expectations. There’s no year in life in which you absolutely have to be married by or have a baby by. Some people have families under the most dire of circumstances and thrive; for others, not even a six-figure salary and a mansion is enough. The question is, what do you want? Do you want marriage? Is it something you can plan for or do you just want to jump in with both feet?

Babies are trickier. In our whole march on the feminism road, we often forget that women’s bodies are built to have babies when their young. Instead it’s encourage in their 30s or even 40s and more as an afterthought after they’ve accomplished career goals or other kinds of goals. As a woman whose time is running out, whose biological clock is ticking: Don’t wait. Your body will drive you crazy wanting to make a baby, and failing the ability to do that, you will want to mother and take care of everyone–the whole world!–with comedic, yet, decidedly disastrous results. All I’m saying is if you’re in your twenties now, I can say as a forty-one year old, you might someday regret that you didn’t have children sooner, and this is a choice that cannot be corrected. There’s no cure. You could have a baby in your forties, but you would every day realize how much easier it would be if your body was younger. Am I being too depressing? I don’t mean to be, it’s just as a person ages, you start to look back on your life and see all the missed chances. The times where if you’d just taken the time to stop, or given that person a chance, that maybe now, you might be so happy in love and family. And I expect it only the gets worse the older one gets. I don’t see it as anything to be depressed over, just contemplating the new perspectives, the new information. Because this is my first life. As Se Hee says, this is all our first lives. We’ve never done this before, and of course we will make mistakes.

Honestly, I am glad to be a Christian where we only have one life to live. If I could go back and relive my life, not only would I likely make the exact same mistakes, but I’d probably make even worse mistakes and would always have the memory of how the first life went a lot better when I couldn’t anticipate what was coming. Like a time traveler who keeps going back to save the life of the woman he loves, but he can never do it. She was always supposed to die. You were always supposed to be as you are now and with who you are with now. Reliving life won’t make you a cooler more sexy person. You might win at sports gambling, but if you didn’t have money in your first life, in your second you probably wouldn’t be able to hang on to it. This first and only life is precious, every second. And a commitment like marriage should be honored, not brushed off as merely a business contract. If it’s a contract, it’s one of the heart, and hearts shouldn’t be navigated idly. Who can win another’s heart? It’s just given, isn’t it? In this, our first lives, we should appreciate that.