Hawkeye this!

Bulimia.com has a Photoshop-spread of what "hot" video game women would look like if they weren't imaginary.  Two things immediately struck me about the comparisons.  One was that, for the most part, the characters were still extemely attractive without being immediately off-putting to me as a woman because they're blatant sexual objects.  (Lara Croft and the Moral Kombat chick might want to consider more flattering shorts.)

Two is that, with the exception of the Final Fantasy chick, their busts stayed basically the same size.  Programmer-nerds apparently want real-woman busts on starved-model frames.  Doesn't work that way in the real world, boys, unless they're implants.

I still think Real-Girl Barbie is cuter than the My-Cheekbones-Are-Wider-Than-My-Waist original, too.

The wonders of modern technology

So we sent to see Ant-Man on Friday, and the filmmakers amazed me in the very first scene, a flashback to 1989.  Michael Douglas bursts into a government office looking just like Michael Douglas circa Fatal Attraction!  I couldn't even tell you what the dialogue was in that scene; I was too distracted by the sound of my lower jaw hitting the floor.  Given all the CGI special effects in the movie, that was the one that impressed me most.  If they can de-age actors so perfectly, perhaps we'll never again have to see an actor playing Young Whoever that looks nothing like the star playing Modern-Day Whoever (looking at you, Nick Cage and Ghost Rider!).

Book review: Openness Unhindered by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

In 2012, an author with the improbable name of Rosaria Champagne Butterfield wrote a book relating an even more improbable tale: the story of a liberal lesbian professor being confronted with the gospel and following it out of her tenured position, romantic partnership, and activist community to a life as a homeschooling mother and wife of a pastor in a conservative church. Sounds like one of those sappy and unbelievable faith-based films, except that the author was writing her own memoir.  The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert was undoubtedly a Harry-Potter level blockbuster for a small church press which mostly sells psalters and devotionals.

The thirty-second book I read in 2015 was Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ, Butterfield's second volume on her experiences after conversion.  This installment has less to do with the events of her life and more to do with theology, philosophy, and Christian living.  Covering her thoughtful conclusions on the new birth, shame, the concept of sexual orientation (unknown before the nineteenth century when sex acts were actions a person took, not an identity which irrevocably defined him), and the ramifications of how one identifies oneself, she ends with a beautiful depiction of community and hospitality which challenges and convicts, even as it makes you long to be a part of the fellowship of the saints rightly practiced.

If you're looking for a Tweetable inspirational quote, try this one, after the Butterfield's home was robbed: "where God is in your loss matters more to a skeptical, unbelieving, and watching world than where God is in your plenty."  If you want to have your perspective stretched and your heart challenged, read the whole book.  May God continue to bless the Butterfields and use them to reach the skeptical world as they galvanize the believers.

Book review: The Starlight Barking by Dodie Smith

The Hundred and One Dalmatians is the source novel behind the classic Disney film One Hundred and One Dalmatians and is even more delightful. I read the book years ago, and so has Faith, more recently.  When we were at the used book store recently, we found this sequel of which I had been entirely unaware on the shelves.  It was clearly a reprint churned out in the wake of the live-action movie, but it was by Dodie Smith and written years before Glenn Close donned Cruella's furs so we bought it.  After Faith read it, it became the thirty-first book I read in 2015.

In general, a long gap between an original work and its sequel rarely bodes well for the later installments, and the eleven-year gap between The Hundred and One Dalmatians and The Starlight Barking is no exception.  The original book is a mundane tale; it has fantastical elements, yes, but the largest of these is the conceit that animals communicate with one another and take matters into their own paws when the humans are stymied.  The second one goes full-on sci-fi/fantasy.  If you ever thought the Dalmatians would be more endearing if they could control traffic lights and elevators by telepathy and propel themselves and vehicles through the air at high speeds through levitation, well, this is your book.  The long struggle to get the puppies from Suffolk to London on foot through the snow, with the assistance of dogs and other animals along the way, provided much of the charm of the first book; to have Pongo, Missis, and the rest of the family effortlessly pilot themselves over the same route in a few hours rather takes away from the achievement.

The culprit, as so often was the case in the 1960s, was the Cold War.  Smith clearly meant for this to be a Thought-Provoking book, condemning human society on account of the nuclear arms race. Imagine The Day the Earth Stood Still with an all-dog cast.  Oh, and there's an entirely pointless digression about Cruella designing a new fashion line of clothing made entirely of metal called Kloes that Klank.

My advice is, treasure the original and pretend the sequel never happened.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I must report that Faith liked the book.  She liked the "swooshing," the dogs' term for their method of kinetic self-propelling, and wished she could learn to do it herself.)

Book review: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

The thirtieth book I read in 2015 is The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. It's been a long time since I read a bestseller while it was still on the bestseller list; the last one was probably The Help (although Jennifer sent me that one, so it may have been after it was off the bestseller list; if so, you'd probably have to go back to Deathly Hallows).

It was pretty good; kept me guessing who the killer might be.  It was about page 240-something before it became clear who the bad guy was, and even then, I couldn't denigrate the protagonist for not clueing in, as the reader has more information than she does.

I believe I've read that the film rights have already been claimed.  Can't wait to see what starlet Hollywood casts as "sad, fat Rachel."  Scarlett Johanssen?  Jennifer Lawrence?   :P

Birthday flashbacks

Since I missed Eric's birthdays for the past three years, here's a montage:

2012:  6th birthday

2013: 7th birthday

2014: 8th birthday

Birthday boy

Eric and Faith on Eric's 9th birthday

Red pencil

Wow, there is so much wrong with this copy.  First, you don't have a sequel OF something; you have a sequel TO something.  Second, as it was "written before the best-selling novel," it can't be a sequel at all; if anything, To Kill a Mockingbird would be a prequel to Go Set a Watchman.  And finally, neither sequel nor prequel is appropriate terminology here, since Lee wrote Go Set a Watchman and her publisher suggested she rework the flashback scenes into their own separate novel of Scout's childhood, which would make this a first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird.

Book review: The Right Attitude to Rain by Alexander McCall Smith

Okay.  The gloves are coming off.

The twenty-ninth book I read in 2015 is the third book in the Isabel Dalhousie series, The Right Attitude to Rain by Alexander McCall Smith.  The first thing to note is that, with this book, the subtitle (supertitle?) switches from "An Isabel Dalhousie Mystery" to "An Isabel Dalhousie Novel."  (The newer reprints of the first two books, if you note on Amazon, have also changed, but I have older copies so I have proof.)  This is McCall Smith admitting that he really has no further interest in anything extrinsic to his protagonist's very limited life.  In one sense, it's a good thing: she was a lousy detective. On the other hand ... really?  He's just going to keep writing stream of consciousness novels in her interior voice?  *Sideshow Bob shudder*

In keeping with the altered supertitle, what probably began as his concept for the mystery in this book before he admitted his lack of interest is a wealthy Dallas oilman with a young trophy wife.  Well, a trophy fiancee.  Isabel suspects that said trophy fiancee is only interested in the older man for his money.  Wait, no, that's not the clever part, since Isabel's cousin Mimi reports that the fact is an open secret in the wealthy Dallas social circle they share.  The really clever part that Isabel suspects is that the woman is planning to kill her fiance for his money.  Before the wedding.  When she wouldn't actually inherit it yet.

At that point, McCall Smith must have realized that all of this made less than no sense and just chucked it all in favor of the story he really wanted to tell, which was How Isabel Got Her Groove Back.  Except that in the Angela Bassett movie, the older woman and younger man actually end up in a relationship, whereas in Isabel's case, the morning-after pillow talk she gets is, "I'm very fond of you."  For some reason, Isabel takes this as a Good Thing and not as the "Thanks for the sex, you will never see me again" it would be in the real world.

If our Disney ending were just that Isabel becomes temporary Friends-with-Benefits with a younger man, that would be bad enough.  But after that...

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...How Isabel Got Her Groove Back turns into Murphy Brown.  Look, I know Alexander McCall Smith isn't exactly a Millennial, but a surprise pregnancy within the first month or so of occasionally sleeping together doesn't say "accident" anymore.  It says either "sloppy and irresponsible" or "if I have his baby, he won't leave me," neither of which makes Isabel and her paramour look worthy of respect.  Birth control: use it.

Oh, and the "mystery" predictably goes nowhere.  Is the fiancee really planning to kill him?  Who knows?  Wealthy Dallas oilman decides to dump his trophy girlfriend because she's not half the woman Isabel is.  Isabel, of course, lets him down easy, but it's better for wealthy Dallas oilman to have loved and lost Isabel than never to have met Isabel at all.  She's just that amazing.

So we're left moving forward with a forty-something-year-old single woman having a baby, while her occasional-sex-partner-but-not-boyfriend is thrilled and will be just as involved as she wants him to be (as long as he doesn't have to marry her or make any similar commitment, apparently).  I've been getting this series from Half Price Books, and my sense of the macabre is enough that I'll pay $5 for the next installment just to see how bad it can get, but I'm certainly not paying full price.

Book review: The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde

The twenty-eighth book I read in 2015 is The Last Dragonslayer, the first book in the Chronicles of Kazam series by Jasper Fforde.  Fforde is best known for Thursday Next, the fictional heroine of an off-kilter, reality-bending series of books about ... well, books, and Book World, and what happens when characters travel back and forth from fiction to reality, or at least the version of reality that's real in his setting, where the Crimean War was still raging in the 1980s.

Thursday Next (and his less famous Nursery Crimes series, which I actually like even better) is a series for adults, however, while the Chronicles of Kazam are pitched as juvenile fiction.  I was leery of how well Fforde's irreverent sense of humor would translate.

Quite well, I'm pleased to report.  The plot centers on Jennifer Strange, a fifteen-year-old foundling left in charge of a down-at-the-heels troupe of magicians who are hired out for jobs like rewiring houses without making any holes in the walls and pizza delivery via flying carpet.  When diviners all over the kingdom start to report predictions that the last living dragon will be slain within a fortnight, she faces the choice either to profit from the inevitable or try to thwart the prophecy and save the dragon.

An ill-conceived prequel

You know the old joke about what you get if you play a country-and-western song backwards? (Answer: You get your truck back; you get your dog back; you get your girl back....)  The Boxcar Children Beginning is like the opposite of that.

The Boxcar Children is a children's classic about a set of four insanely resilient and omnicompetent siblings who make their own home in an abandoned boxcar until they are rewarded by being taken in by their wealthy grandfather who showers them with material possessions: your classic rags-to-riches story, kind of Little Orphan Annie times four.  I'm not sure whose bright idea it was to publish a prequel, which establishes the Alden children on their own happy farm, only to kill off their parents and end the book with them homeless and adrift.

"All happy families are alike"; thus spake Tolstoy in the first sentence of Anna Karenina, and it's the bane of the premise of this book.  The Boxcar Children is enjoyable because of the things the children accomplish and the obstacles they overcome; The Boxcar Children Beginning is about the same children being happy but boring until they are suddenly left bereft victims.

To write this ill-conceived volume, the publishers turned to the master of children's books in which nothing happens, Patricia MacLachlan.  I know Sarah, Plain and Tall won the Newbery, but, my gosh, it's boring.  Every now and then something almost threatens to happen (a dangerous storm, the possibility of Sarah going back to Maine), but it's always resolved in the least interesting way possible (no one is hurt and nothing is damaged; Sarah comes back from town bringing presents) .

MacLachlan deals with the necessary fact that the actual pitched plotline of this book is family is happy, parents die, the end by introducing a family fleeing the city during what is meant to be the Great Depression who stays with the Aldens until they can repair their car.  The irony, of course, is that, while the edition of The Boxcar Children with which everyone is familiar, with the classic silhouette illustrations, was published in 1942, the book was actually first printed in 1923.  Even in 1942, the story was clearly a nostalgic look back at an earlier time.  MacLachlan's efforts to set the story just before World War II are jarring when set against the text of the original, from the soon-to-be-late Mother Alden playing "Over the Rainbow" (written 1939), "Good Night Irene" (1933), and "Pennies from Heaven" (1936) on the piano, to families on the brink of poverty and homelessness driving around in their own automobiles.

Worse are the anachronisms introduced into the story, whether it's Ma and Pa Alden assuring Violet she can have any career she wants to when she grows up, or the Alden family's adult neighbor urging the children to call him by his first name.  If you're going to set a children's story in a historical period, then make it historically accurate!

Faith picked up this prequel at Half-Price Books, not as a used copy but from a stack of surplus that had been sent there to be sold at a loss.  I can only hope this means that this blatant attempt to wring more money from Gertrude Chandler Warner's literary corpse has not been a banner success.

Book review: Friends, Lovers, Chocolate by Alexander McCall Smith

The twenty-seventh book I read in 2015 is the second book in the Isabel Dalhousie series, Friends, Lovers, Chocolate, by Alexander McCall Smith. The mystery in this installment has to do with a man who, after having a heart transplant, is haunted by a recurring dream which he suspects might have to do with the death of the donor.

Once again, Isabel stumbles about, blundering into several false leads, one of which puts her in the situation of being remarkably intrusive to an unsuspecting family in a time of tragedy, but the reader seems to be expected to forgive and forget, because, after all, it's Isabel!  Her name is on the cover of the book, and these other people's aren't!  So their feelings don't really matter!

As you've probably gathered, Isabel has not risen in my estimation in the second book of her series. She continues to be tiresome and self-absorbed, all the while under the impression that she's clever and generous.  Things are made worse by her crush on a man just young enough to be her child, if she'd gotten a promiscuous start, who is, additionally, her niece's ex-boyfriend.  She is determined to love him quietly from afar, but enough hints are dropped that she'll eventually turn out to be astonished to learn that he feels the same way about her, despite the age difference, that I shudder in advance.

In regard to the main mystery, it's early enough in the series that one wonders: Is the supernatural going to be validated in this setting, or will there turn out to be a rational explanation?  Suffice it to say that the truth turns out to be the least interesting (and least likely) option, as the whole premise of the plot collapses into anticlimax.