Book and Movie Reports by Ed

Book report: The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman This is a really good science fantasy adventure story, something like "Chronicles of Narnia" or "Lord of the Rings". A seemingly ordinary girl named Lyra turns out to have a central role in strange and complex plots that affect the entire world. Her world is a fantastic and imaginative alternate version of our own. In this steampunk world, there are zeppelin airships but no airplanes, trains but no cars, and electricity but no telecommunications. Science is a branch of theology, and the last Pope was named Kelvin. Part of the fascination of the book is to compare our world to this world, and wonder what made the difference. I love how what we call "electric", they call "amberic", for example. The fantasy comes in various forms, including and especially the personal "demons" that every person has in this world. A demon is like a physical manifestation of your mind and spir

Movie report: Lincoln Steven Spielberg deliberately delayed the release of this movie until after the 2012 presidential elections, which was a shrewd decision. If I had seen the movie before the election, I would have spent 90% of my time wondering who represented who in modern politics, rather than only 10%. The movie “Lincoln” is based on the book "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Lincoln was elected President out of 4 serious candidates, and had the savvy to enlist some of his adversaries to help with his administration. Seward, for example, became his Secretary of State. This kind of political shrewdness appears throughout this movie. Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln is fascinating. This man at times is as gentle as a woolly lamb, at other times a steely colossus of power. He cracks low wheezes one moment, and quotes Shakespeare and the Bible the next. He is tall and ungainly to the point of farce – you can unders

It’s strange how often I have the experience of reading an “old” novel like this one, expecting it to be dry and boring, and find that it’s anything but. You’d think I’d learn, but no. There’s a reason these are called classics: people have been thinking they’re really good for a long time, and they’re still really good. This is the kind of book I would have gone out of my way to not read in high school, which is probably just as well. I wouldn’t have appreciated it then. One thing I noticed right off the bat is that this isn’t Jane Austen, which just goes to show that female British novelists of the early 1800s can be very different. Jane Austen is very funny and satirical. Emily Bronte is very serious. There are flashes of humor now and then, but she’s mining the human soul, and it’s dark work. This book was written in 1845, but describes fictional events that took place from the 1770s until 1801. I don’t know why she placed the events in the novel so far in the past. Mayb

Movie report: Limitless Eddie (I love movies with characters named Eddie, although they are usually losers) is a loser. His wife divorced him. He lives in a sty of an apartment. He drinks too much. He somehow got someone to give him an advance to write a book, but he’s pissed that money away and hasn’t written a word. Then he runs into [SPOILER ALERT: many spoilers ahead] his ex-brother-in-law, who slips him a pill without much explanation. Eddie, being that kind of guy, takes the pill. The effect of the pill is amazing. Eddie becomes hyper-observant of his surroundings, able to access any information in his mind (not just the 10-20% we supposedly do), and sharp enough to put things together to solve any and all problems. He helps his landlord’s wife write a paper for law school, cleans his apartment, and writes half of the book he’s supposed to be working on. The movie looks different during these parts: enhanced colors, sharper, more focused, more energized. Eddie’s ey

Book report: Life Itself, by Roger Ebert Roger Ebert, the famous movie critic, can no longer eat, drink, or speak, because of successful surgery for cancer and unsuccessful surgery to reconstruct his face afterwards. His only voice now is his writing: reviews, essays, blogs, and, now, his autobiography. I’ve always enjoyed reading Ebert’s writing. He is often insightful and often funny. Some of his most entertaining reviews are of the most terrible movies. He has a colossal knowledge of science fiction, and is often impatient with the illogic of movie situations. His memoir starts with a description of his parents and his childhood that I found fascinating, even though his life was utterly ordinary. His unfortunate medical recoveries have given him plenty of time to recall the past, and the details he gives to his early days are impressive. Most of the book is like this: rich in detail and meaning. I did hit a few bumps. The chapters on some of his personal friends I

book report: Imperium, by Robert Harris “Imperium” is the Latin word for the highest official power in Rome: the power to command in the name of the republic. Those with Imperium were called Imperator, literally “commander”, from which we eventually get the word emperor. In the ancient Roman republic, the highest public office, the one with Imperium, was the one-year elected post of consul. As with the American presidency, this was the pinnacle of a political career. In this terrific historical novel, Harris traces the career of one real Roman who sought and achieved Imperium: Cicero. Many people have heard of the name Cicero, but don’t know who he was. He was a politician and attorney who lived in a time when the aristocrats – the nobility – of Rome dominated the Senate and the rest of the government. But Cicero wasn’t an aristocrat. He came from a fairly prosperous family, and got a good education, but was not wealthy or royal in any sense. Instead, he had to use his skill

Movie report: The Dark Knight Rises I saw this movie at a drive-in, and I highly recommend this type of venue for watching superhero movies. The big screen, exposed to the night sky, with cars and kids and bottles of YooHoo: it’s just the right setting for this kind of adventure. This is a solid, dark, and atmospheric movie, as if carved from one of the stones that make up Wayne Manor. Batman has been absent for about 8 years. There’s a good reason for this: Bruce Wayne, Batman’s alter ego, is so banged up, in pain and walking with a cane – not to mention the emotional scars we can’t see – that he can’t even leave the house, and lives as a recluse, the subject of Howard Hughes-type rumors. Most of Wayne Manor is draped with furniture sheets, lying unused except for occasional society galas for charitable causes. Selina Kyle shows up at one of these, not to socialize, but to burglarize. She’s an enterprising and spunky young woman who steals things for clients, and escape

Book report: Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett This is the 7 th of the “Diskworld” comedy fantasy stories by Terry Pratchett, but you needn’t have read any of the others to understand this one. It stands on its own, and then some. It starts with the main character, Teppic, going through his final trial to become a professional assassin, and a grueling trial it is. While he’s grappling up buildings, sneaking across rooftops, selecting knives, and avoiding the booby-traps set by his professor, we learn that he is the son of the king of Djelibeybi, which is Diskworld’s version of ancient Egypt, a land of pyramids and unchanging tradition. Teppic is trying to get away from all that and become a professional man. Unfortunately, his father dies and he returns to reluctantly take up his kingly duties, which include reluctantly sentencing the beautiful young hand-maiden Ptraci to death for not being willing to die in order to accompany the deceased king to the afterlife. Instead, Te

Book report: The Map of Time, by Felix J. Palma It’s all my own fault. I couldn’t resist a book with a title like “The Map of Time.” Plus, the idea of [SPOILER ALERT!] H. G. Wells using his secret time machine to hunt down and defeat Jack the Ripper in Victorian London is wonderful. But, boy, does this book need pruning! For example, even before reading this book, I was aware that Jack the Ripper was a bad guy. I don’t need 84 pages about how the main character, who was in love with one of the murder victims, was affected by the crimes for me to come to the conclusion that preventing said crimes would be good. I also don’t need a complete biography of H. G. Wells from the age of 8. Nor do I need a thorough plot summary of The Time Machine, which I’ve read several times, and seen both movies of, and whose events don’t really pertain to the present story. And I really don’t need an exposition on how the main character’s father made his fortune by selling toilet paper. What

Book report: American Gods, by Neil Gaiman Gail D. would love this book. It's full of gods, demons, and other entities from sacred writings, myths, and legends all over the world. Here's the basic idea: When people came to America , they brought with them the gods of their homelands. As time has gone by, these gods don't get the worship they used to, and a lot of them are down on their luck, scrounging their way the best they can in the world. In the meantime, people have found new modern gods to worship – TV, computers, the Internet, drugs, and so forth – and these new gods want the old gods out of the way. A massive battle is looming between the two groups, with weapons of supernatural power and technology. Caught in the middle is a man called Shadow (we never learn his actual name: Dave would love it). Practically everything appears from Shadow's point of view. He's not the brightest bulb on the chandelier, and the reader figures out a lot of thing

Book report: Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won, by Toby Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim Do you like sports? Do you like the analysis of sports, where you get an idea of what’s really going on with sports? Then you are going to love this book. It starts out with a great anecdote from the lives of the two authors, who met at a boys summer camp and had a classic sports problem to solve: what to do with the one totally inept kid on their softball team, where everyone had to bat and field? The traditional solution – stick him in right field – didn’t work. But they found a non-traditional and clever solution to the problem that did work. I won’t tell you what that was, so you’ll enjoy it if you read the book, but it beautifully sets up the tone for the rest of the book. They examine a number of sports situations where the conventional wisdom just doesn’t make sense. For example, everybody knows that there is such a thing as home-f

Book Report: Gladiator, by Philip Wylie In 1930, author Philip Wylie published the novel Gladiator (no connection to the Russell Crowe movie), about a man who is super-strong, invulnerable to bullets, jumps great distances, and runs as fast as a train. In 1932, the character Superman was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. As someone deeply interested in Supermanic Studies, I had to read Gladiator to see how much it might have influenced the creation of Superman. There are certainly many similarities between the characters of Hugo Danner, protagonist of Gladiator, and Superman. Chief among these are the powers listed above. Hugo Danner also has hair described as so black it is almost blue, which is exactly how I’ve always thought of Superman’s hair. Plus, as a child, Hugo Danner builds a “fortress” out of boulders and logs where he can be alone, something like Superman’s own Fortress of Solitude. Finally, both are the sons of scientists. The theme of Gladiator is ho

Movie report: Superman III Realizing that there was a gap in my education, I watched Superman III (1983!). Sigh. I wonder if they actually had a meeting to decide they wanted to take the most powerful being on the planet and reduce him to tepid leftovers, or if it just kind of happened spontaneously. Some random thoughts (because it doesn't deserve an essay): * Kryptonite: Sorry to be a kryptonite nerd, but green kryptonite doesn't work that way. Green kryptonite hurts or possibly kills Superman. It doesn't split him into nice Superman and ass-hat Superman. Red kryptonite *might* do that, but it might also turn him into a lizard. * Romance with Lana Lang: Okay, this was sweet, for Clark to rediscover a woman from before he was Superman. But, my gosh, he makes no progress whatsoever, even though she's giving him a green light the size of Kansas . If he has constraints on whether he can fall in love, you have to let us know, Mr. Director! Otherwise, wh

Book report: The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism, by Edward Feser When I read “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins, I had the definite overall feeling that he was wrong. Not just that I disagreed with his ideas, which I do, but that he was making actual mistakes in his reasoning and arguments. I pointed out some of these in my book report ( http://dejesus.blogspot.com/search?q=delusion ), but I knew there were more that I just couldn’t put my finger on. I’m just an old country theoretical physicist, not a trained philosopher, so I’m not up to the task of pointing out and refuting all his errors. Luckily, Edward Feser is. As a professional philosopher, with special interests in Aristotle and Aquinas, he has the philosophical chops to expose the fallacies in the arguments of Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and the others who make a pretty cushy living by mocking belief in God. Feser’s book “The Last Superstition” presents counterarguments that are essential if one

Book report: Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell My son James recommended this novel to me, and I’m glad he did. It’s certainly one of the strangest novels I’ve ever read. I’m going to do my best to describe it without giving away too many of the surprises. First off, it is actually six different stories, with different main characters, different times and places, and, most impressively, different styles. After reading this book, I have no idea what David Mitchell’s writing style is, and I mean that as a compliment. The book opens with a journal being kept by Adam Ewing, an American legal clerk in the 1830s returning from an assignment in the South Pacific to his home in San Francisco. This section reminded me of the “Master and Commander” books in their descriptions of shipboard life. This section was the toughest sledding for me, with descriptions of cannibalism and inter-tribe atrocities that made me queasy. But definitely press on, because the next section is an absolute de