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All over this country and in several others, people are packing clothes, preparing families to make do without them for a week or so, and setting out for airports. The Romance Writers of America are converging on Orlando, Florida, for their annual conference. What with workshops and parties and sightseeing, attending the conference requires a variety of clothing. And accessories. I’m not one of those people who finds assembling all this easy. I don’t have the gene. But I do like the way everyone looks so polished and elegant, and I’m usually glad I went to the trouble of coordinating various outfits.
A very different crowd converges on Atlanta about a month later, for the four days of DragonCon. Many of these people will be wearing costumes related to their favorite science fiction, fantasy, comic book or movie worlds. Most of the others will opt for what the dh calls “appropriately decorated t-shirts.” The packing is much easier–spare jeans in case of spills, t-shirts, toiletries, etc. Not very glamorous, but there’s lots of fannish enthusiasm.
Which do you prefer–casual occasions or dressy ones? Do you have any packing secrets?
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One of my summer resolutions is to whittle down the TBR pile. I’ve actually made some headway. I enjoyed S.M. Stirling’s Dies the Fire and The Protector’s War Patricia Rice’s The Wicked Wycherley and Nora Roberts’ Northern Lights and Beth Andrews’ Do You Take This Cop. Once upon a time, I could read two or three books in a week. I don’t remember the last time I did that, but if I can get one or two done, and not buy them at that rate, then maybe I’ll actually see the bottom of the TBR stack.
The TBR pile is kind of like a hardware store, where I walk in and see possibility all around me, especially when the authors there are new to me. Maybe this will be someone else whose work I’ll love. Or not. But it’s fun finding out.
This summer I’ll be sharing the pleasures of the TBR pile, the books I dig out, read at last, and enjoy. I hope you’ll do the same. Just leave me a comment and let me know what you like about the books you’re reading. I’m especially interested in any new authors you discover and enjoy.
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Here we are in April already! The year has really flown by. As I noted in the home page message, my TBR pile just keeps growing and growing. I do read. I do take books out of the stack. But there seem to be more all the time.
When I look over the stack, I see history, multiple subgenres of romance, science fiction, fantasy and mystery. Which one I pick up next always depends on my mood at the moment. I have several new authors (either to the market or to me) in the stack. I love picking up a new or unfamiliar author and falling into the book, having a new name to add to my watch-for list.
I recently discovered Caitlin Kittridge’s Black London series–very dark urban fantasy. Of course, not all experiments end happily. Some books don’t engage me the way I thought they would when I bought them.
In honor of the website’s new look, I’m having a contest. The prize, to be awarded at the end of May, is a package of three novels (mass market paperback) I enjoyed that were by authors new to me, plus a $15 gift card for an independent bookstore or one of the chains I have easy access to.
To enter, send me an email via the site link telling me what author you recently read for the first time and why you liked that author’s book. I’ll put all the names of those who enter in a hat and draw one out on May 26, which will also be my May blog day on Romance Bandits.
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On the homepage, I’ve talked a little about all the quick-fix solutions advertisers offer us during January. It’s easy to hope whichever one we haven’t already tried will magically succeed. Really, none of them do without work and discipline. If you’re on a plan that supplies your food, you have to stick to that and not eat other things except as the plan allows–as with any food plan. If you’re on one where you prepare your own food, you have to avoid the temptation to just eat what everyone else is, or you have to talk your family into being supportive, which is something many women appear reluctant to do.
If it’s a financial plan, it won’t work if you deviate from it. If you’re supposed to put a certain amount of money into the plan every payday and you start finding excuses not to do it, or something keeps coming up, as things are wont to do, success moves farther and farther out of reach.
We all know that. Yet every year, lots and lots of people subscribe to quick fixes. Why do you think that happens?
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I have trouble believing Thanksgiving is this week, at least for those of us in the United States. After that, we have the Christmas holidays and then the end of 2009 and beginning of 2010. I’m not even sure where the year has gone. Last time I turned around, it was summer. With the new year on the horizon, lots of people begin thinking about resolutions. Some people keep those. Most people I know have ditched them by midsummer. (more…)
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That was Pinocchio’s ambition, right, to be a real boy instead of a puppet. I couldn’t help thinking of Pinocchio as our son and I watched Terminator 3: Salvation. This blog will contain spoilers, so if you haven’t seen the movie yet and care about having things ruined, stop reading now.
We thought Christian Bale was fine as John Connor. The character was mostly one note, but we didn’t see that as Bale’s fault. Far more complex, and thus more interesting to both of us, was the character of Marcus Wright, ably portrayed by Sam Worthington. Marcus awakens after an explosion not knowing where he is or what’s going on and sets out to see if he can find his family. Marcus soon encounters John Connor (a believable and sympathetic Anton Yelchin, fresh from his appearance as Chekov in Star Trek) and a little girl who seems to have a sixth sense about the Terminators.
As Marcus travels, we begin to realize he’s doing things no ordinary guy, such as he is when we meet him at the film’s beginning, could possibly do. He was on Death Row and signed his body over for research, so we suspected from the beginning that he was a Terminator. But he doesn’t. Even when confronted with the proof, he doesn’t want to believe it. All his thoughts, motivations, and feelings are human, but his body isn’t. And he comes to hate that fact.
The boy and I both felt the filmmakers missed a great opportunity. When Marcus awakens in SkyNet custody, he readily throws off the machine’s control. Seeing him struggle against it, with his humanity ultimately triumphing, would have made a wonderful, conflicted scene. Maybe it ended up in a cutting bin or something, but we felt its lack.
Especially at the end of the movie, when the filmmakers attempted to make a somewhat garbled point about the strength of the human heart over the logic and power of the machine, that conflict would’ve tied into the movie’s theme nicely. And one of our gripes was, if the measure of humanity is the strength of the human heart, what does it say if John Connor’s is failing? The ending voiceover sounded great, but the actions in the film undercut it, at least for us. We found Marcus’s struggle against the truth and his eventual acceptance of it the most powerful elements in the film. More than anything else, that part of the story engaged us.
We also noticed that SkyNet apparently has Joker syndrome. You know the one–it makes the Joker create elaborate death traps and rant and rave instead of just shooting Batman. If he ever just shot the hero, he’d win. The same with SkyNet. If you’re a logical, efficient machine, and you believe that killing Kyle Reese is game over, you win, and the future resets with you in charge, wouldn’t you kill him immediately upon capture? But SkyNet doesn’t.
All that aside, we did enjoy the movie. It has lots of great “boom,” as the Romance Bandits call explosive action. The “good” characters were sympathetic. The premise was interesting. But we agreed that both Star Trek and Wolverine drew us in faster and more deeply.
I’ve had a soft spot for Terminator films since seeing the first one on TV. I’m looking forward to seeing Michael Biehn, the original (and still best, imho) Kyle Reese at DragonCon over Labor Day weekend. The dh doesn’t share this enthusiasm for action movies and boom, and he was surprised that I liked a movie that opened as violently as the original Terminator did. He went with it, though. Sharing those interests with the boy reminds me of my dad. He and I were the ones in our family who liked action movies.
Have you seen T3? What did you think of it or earlier films in the series?
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The summer hasn’t actually started yet, but the blockbusters are already launching. Last weekend, we went to see Wolverine. It’s full of action and has a nice take on the character. As a former (but not current) X-Men geek, I thought it tied in nicely with what I remembered of the character’s backstory. My son, who’s more up on the latest developments, agreed. As a Gambit fan, however, he lamented the size of Gambit’s role. I do think the character was great and hope to see him again. It was a fun movie, but I could’ve done with a bit less impaling.
This weekend, my guys are taking me to Star Trek. I can hardly wait. I’ve loved Trek since discovering it in the summer of 1972, and this film looks like a worthy successor. Anticipation, of course, opens the door for disappointment, so I’m being cautiously optimistic. Considering that the New York Times gave the film a rave review, though, I’m letting the optimisim creep upward.
On May 21, of course, comes Terminator: Salvation with Christian Bale stepping into John Connor’s shoes. The preview looks intriguing. I loved the original Terminator film. Linda Hamilton did a great job with Sarah’s transformation from frightened waitress of “mother of the future.” Michael Biehn, of course, was spot-on perfect as Kyle Reese, so much so that the guy Fox cast in the role on the TV series (which I hear they’re cancelling, alas), never had a prayer of measuring up. Biehn fans may be interested to know he’s on the guest list of DragonCon.
June 4 brings the return of one of my favorite TV series, Burn Notice. Jeffrey Donovan, Gabrielle Anwar, and Bruce Campbell make a terrific team, with wry humor and great chemistry, and Sharon Gless is wonderful is Mike Westin’s mother. Plus stuff blows up a lot. What’s not to like?
Our family’s eagerly awaiting July 15 and the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. We think Alan Rickman will deliver a masterful performance as Snape. Even if we didn’t, we’d be going. We love the books and have been, overall, delighted with the movies.
We’ll close out our summer at DragonCon. In addition to Michael Biehn, the guest list includes Leonard Nimoy (!) and a host of Stargate and Star Trek actors. There are also some terrific writers coming, including Lois McMaster Bujold, Sherrilynn Kenyon, and Charlaine Harris. There will also be tens of thousands of fans, so we’re steeling ourselves for long lines to get into panels.
What are your summer plans? Which movies or TV shows are you anticipating? Which ones have you seen (please avoid posting spoilers for now), and what did you think?
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How do you decide which movies you’re going to see? Do you like indie films, art films, epics, romances, or war movies? Or some combination thereof?
When our son was small, we had to want to see a movie a lot for it to be worth finding a sitter, paying the sitter, and feeding both boy and sitter. And that movie had better be good once we went through all that! We gravitated toward movies with engaging stories. If we were interested in the story but not sure, we might go anyway if the lead roles were played by actors we particularly liked.
Now we base our decisions more a what else we have to do and how soon it has to be done. The movie has to interest us, of course. Romantic comedy is always a possibility. We also like quirky character pieces, though they don’t tend to stay in the theater long. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is just such a film. We intended to see it in the theater but didn’t act quickly enough, so we recently rented it. I’ll review it in the next newsletter.
I’m always a sucker for super-heroes. Unless I think they’re going to be badly done. If you’ve seen the newsletter, you know I regarded Hancock with great anxiety, which the first third of the movie fully justified, but ended up loving it. Iron Man was just plain fabulous. James Bond is a draw for us, but Quantum of Solace went away before we got there.
So what kinds of movies do you like?
Post a comment enter the drawing for a copy of Homicide in Hardcover, my friend Kate Carlisle’s new mytery.
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Well, here we are in late January. This is about the time when New Year’s resolutions either begin to flag or are verging on becoming habits. I try to take stock about this time and see how I’m doing. Since I don’t generally handle resolutions too well if I’m not meeting them–way too much guilt involved–I didn’t make any resolutions this year. I have goals instead.
I want to do well with my teaching, lose a little weight, and start a new writing project as soon as I get out the submissions for which I already have requests. I also want to get back into the habit at the gym. I made it a full week before Christmas, and then the holidays exploded.
Speaking of which, I also want to be more regular here with updates and the newsletter.
So far, I’m not doing as well as I’d like to be on any of those goals, but I’ve made progress. So I’d have to say I’m off to a reasonably good start.
What about you? Do you do goals, resolutions, or something different? Care to share?
One commenter will receive The Nightkeepers by Jessica Anderson, whom I’m hosting on the Romance Bandits blog on January 26.
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I’m a sucker for Christmas decorations. Really. Unlike many other types of decorations, they have to go a long way before they hit my tackiness threshold.
There used to be a guy living in our neighborhood who decorated his house right after Thanksgiving–spent several days outlining the house and fence in lights, putting inflatable figures in the yard and on the roof, adding wreaths and lights of miscellaneous sorts in various spots. With the leaves off the trees, you could see his house at night from several blocks away, even though he lived in a little hollow. It was a hollow on a cul-de-sac, so we never were sure how his neighbors felt about all the traffic, but we loved his house. We called him Christmas Guy.
Alas, Christmas Guy moved away, so we have to get our fix in other places. A recent trip to New York gave me several opportunities to enjoy holiday decorations, even though I was a little early for most of them. The big tree at Rockefeller Center was still hidden because they were decorating it. And celebrating Swarovski, which had a booth nearby on the plaza.
 The plaza itself was already decorated. At one end, Saks Fifth Avenue had snowflakes outlined in lights on the building, but they weren’t illuminated yet. Below is a shot of the plaza with Saks visible in the background. I once got to spend time in New York in December, and I remember being entranced with the various decorations.
 There were also toy soldiers guarding the skating rink behind the usual flags. I noticed on TV last night that the various nations’ flags have given way to ones with a holiday motif, which I couldn’t quite make out. This guy is one of several surrounding the rink, each with a different instrument. The trees behind him appear to be wired for lights, but I didn’t get to see those illuminated.
No one I knew played with toy soldiers like these, though you could argue that the board game Risk comes from about the right period. I have seen marching bands wearing similar gear. Regardless, they look festive in the plaza.
 Some of the stores also were decorated. This one also is on Rockefeller Plaza. I didn’t go in since I was in a hurry, but it certainly struck me as cheerful and inviting, if a little chaotic. Like I said, I love holiday decorations. This window certainly put me in mind of the season.
 Many of the stores on 5th Avenue had their decorations up. My favorite was probably the wintry wonderland tree branches at Van Cleef & Arpels, though the lights don’t show up very well in these daytime shots. I liked the sort of fairyland aspect to the silvery branches and the lights, which weren’t bright white but also sort of silvery.
 I liked the winter wonderland aspect of this one, too. (Of course, it also includes cake, something I can enjoy vicariously even if I’m not having it at the time.) Other people were photographing this woman and her cake, too. She looks as though she could be the Queen of Winter in that gorgeous dress with all those cakes and decorationis surrounding her. The little creatures in the suits could be putting the finishing touches on a party for woodland creatures and people. I just wish I could remember which store this was–but I do remember it’s on 5th Ave. Of course, I should’ve had a note pad, but I didn’t think of that until I was almost finished.
 This is probably the most unusual window I saw, with boxing polar bears. Other people were photographing it, too, so I had to wait a few minutes for a clear shot. We have a weakness for polar bears at our house , so I was naturally drawn to these. At Bergdorf Goodman, a fact I remember mainly because part of the store’s name is in the photo.
Our son had a picture book about a polar bear’s Christmas when he was growing up, and we have a polar bear ornament, a white bear on a deep blue glass orb, for our tree. And we love Gus, the back-stroking polar bear at the Central Park Zoo. We go see him whenever we’re in city. I did that day and was delighted to find him in the tank, doing “his thing.”
 Of course, there were also more traditional decorations. I’ve included, left and below, two pictures of ones I liked a lot. Take a look and then tell me: What kinds of holiday decorations do you like? Understated and subtle? Or gaudy and bright? Or in between?
 So which kinds of decorations do you prefer? Do you have a favorite on this page? One commenter chosen at random wins, in honor of the holiday season, a $10.00 gift certificate. I’ll draw the winner on December 23.
Time to sign up for my newsletter and win a writer or reader book package ends December 17th, so if you want to enter, use the newsletter link. I’ll draw winners on the 18th.
Wishing you all the best this holiday season!
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