Ravenweb Blog

Please join us in welcoming .... Cecilia Eve Gullo Born: September 9, 2007 at 9:30 pm (est). Weight: 7 pounds, 1 ounce Length: 20 and a quarter inches We are overjoyed. Frank and Cecily

I didn't see that many movies over the summer, mostly due to the time sink of extensive home remodeling. But I did watch a few (mostly DVD rentals) and wanted to provide some capsule opinions. The titles are listed in the order in which I saw the films. Blood Diamond This was very good, much better than I thought it would be. A fast-paced thriller set amidst the gruesome Sierra Leone Civil War, Blood Diamond deftly managed to combine a traditional action plot within the moving context of a broader historical arc, in this case, unsavory diamond-mining in Sierra Leone. Djimon Hounsou was superb as a fisherman captured by Revolutionary United Front rebels who eventually finds a huge, rare pink diamond. Leonardo DiCaprio was effective (despite the accent) as a Rhodesian merecenary who trades arms for diamonds but eventually makes the moral choice. - - - - - - - - - - Spider-Man 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End I group Spider-Man 3 and Pirates 3 together because bo...

I finally got around to reading some (David) Sedaris. I had heard good things about his prose and essays, and had been meaning to pick up one of his books. Fortunately, a friendly neighbor recently loaned me two of his books as a housewarming present. I started with Barrel Fever , which was the author's first book, and consists of essays and short fiction. I enjoyed the book and the author's mordant humor, but thought the writing was definitely characteristic of a young writer trying to find his voice. For the most part, the essays were better than the fiction. Of all the pieces, I probably enjoyed "SantaLand Diaries" the most, which humorously recounts the author's experiences working as an elf at Macy's. Overall, I'm glad I read Barrel Fever and look forward to reading later, more polished writings by Sedaris.

The Optimistic Curmudgeon is an engaging personal blog by freelance writer Nick Zaino. The site includes numerous music and book reviews and some very funny slice-of-life pieces, including an article in which the author ruminates about his first job copy editing manuscripts . Nick also is distinguished for having once lived and worked in my home city of Buffalo, and then relocating to Boston, adopted home of my good friend, Ranting Nerd .

Cormac McCarthy's The Road is a grim, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son hazarding across the bleak, demolished ruins of the southwest in hopes of reaching the ocean. The novel is definitely effective and worth reading, but I wondered a bit at the hype and what distinguished the text from other recent books with similar themes. Was it just ( as Ursula Le Guin has implied ) that some critics honestly believe that The Road is not SF and therefore deserves additional praise?

This is long overdue, but I wanted to go on the record and acknowledge the excellent service we received from our realtor when we bought our home. In the spring, shortly after we learned that we would be expecting our first child in September, we decided that we would buy a home. Enter Debra Sheehan , from Hunt Real Estate, who we had heard about from a co-worker at my wife's company. From the start, Debra was great. She met with us for an initial consultation, answered all of our questions, and never made us sign a binding document. When we started looking at homes, Debra quickly acquired a sense of what we wanted and directed us toward properties that suited our preferences. Never once did she try and force us to look at a property or steer us away from a house we really wanted to see. As we expressed interest in specific properties, Debra's knowledge and experience were really apparent. She informed us about the many little things to watch for, talked to us about the offer p...

We have moved and are now living in our new house! Not all of the renovations are complete yet, but we're nearly done and think we just might have everything finished before the baby arrives.

It's been six weeks since we closed on our house and began renovations. While we've made strides, there's still a lot of work to be done, enough so that my blogging hiatus will continue, probably until the fall. To that end, I was wondering if anyone who checks Ravenweb regularly is interested in doing a guest post? You can write about anything you want, although keep in mind that historically I've mostly focused on books, movies, and video games.

The Sagan Diary is a novelette set in Scalzi's Old Man's War universe and is presented as a series of diary entries by Lieutenant Jane Sagan. I really loved Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades , but I thought Scalzi whiffed with this one. The novellete is neither interesting as a stand-alone piece nor does it add anything substantive to the character of Jane Sagan or the series storyline. What it most felt like was Scalzi trying to write like a woman and resorting to generalities and stream of consciousness prose. I suggest steering clear of The Sagan Diary unless you must read everything that Scalzi puts out.

We closed on our home last Friday (6/8) and are now property owners! Now the fun begins as we prepare to replace all the flooring, paint, clean, and cram in a kitchen remodel in three months before our baby arrives. Wish us luck!

Oryx and Crake is an elegantly crafted vision of a bleak, near future in which humanity has all but succumbed to an engineered mutagenic virus. Here humanity is survived by Snowman, who scavenges and sleeps in trees, and watches over a group of bioengineered humans (the Crakers), who were created to succeed humanity and thrive in the new world of modified species and radical climate change. Through flashbacks, we eventually learn that Snowman was once a man named Jimmy, and that the world before the cataclysmic event was characterized by social inequity, genetic technology, and climate change. We also learn about the two people who figured most prominently in Jimmy's life: Crake, Jimmy's oldest friend, who is brilliant and egotistic and has plans for a better world; and Oryx, who Snowman loves and who serves as agent and muse to Crake. I liked Oryx and Crake a lot and thought Atwood did a good job of melding a standard apocalyptic SF setup with a literary story about flaw...

The Last Colony is the concluding novel in Scalzi's loosely-connected SF trilogy that began with Old Man's War and continued with The Ghost Brigades . From the start, the novel is fast-paced and fun, and fans of the series will be pleased that the new book focuses on two of the main characters from the previous books -- John Perry and Jane Sagan. The premise of The Last Colony revolves around Perry and Sagan agreeing to run a new colony for the Colonial Union, in defiance of an alien confederation called the Conclave that has forbidden the creation of any new unauthorized colonies. Political subtext and many twists follow as Perry and Sagan discover that the Colonial Union has not told them the truth about their colony, the alien Conclave, or their chances for survival. As a big Scalzi fan, I was happy for another book in this series. I'm not sure how this book ranks with the first two or even how well it stands on its own. I know I didn't like it as much as the othe...

You are my root movie and have been a seminal influence. Thank you. See also: Young Jedi .

I met up with a friend of mine last night. We've known each for a long time, and we try and get together two or three times year. We have a few beers, provide updates on our jobs and lives, and talk about any number of topics, including books and authors, current events, politics, and local sports teams. Last night we spent some time considering the upcoming 2008 presidential election and the prospect of the Democrats winning. It turned into a hard realization for both of us that the Democrats face an uphill battle and may likely lose the election, even with the support of crossover voters abandoning the Republicans because of the many blunders and disasters of the current administration. The reason, we purported, is that the top democratic candidates, for one reason or another, are all unelectable and would not beat Rudy Giuliani or John MCain. This notion was hard to swallow but, as we discussed each of the likely candidates, also hard to deny. Barack Obama, with the best message...

So, I'm rereading Old Man's War now (I also plan to reread The Ghost Brigades after I finish it) in preparation for Scalzi's concluding novel in the series, The Last Colony , which I recently ordered and should arrive for my consumption soon. I've already praised Old Man's War and The Ghost Brigades in previous posts, but as I was reading Old Man's War a second time, I started thinking more of the military SF sub-genre and wondered what other readers consider to be the best books in this category. For my part, though my reading of SF is by no means exhaustive, along with Old Man's War , I would list Heinlein's Starship Troopers , Haldeman's The Forever War , and Card's Ender's Game . What do the rest of you think?

Those familiar with the HBO show Real Time already know about Bill Maher's funny and biting collection of "New Rules".||For those who don't of for those who want a written sampling of the material, the text New Rules collects some of Maher's best "New Rules" rants and also includes new material, including a few some longer form editorials. Like most texts collecting funny short-bit stand up material, New Rules is a very fast (too fast) and fun read.

The Greatest Story Ever Sold is a damning, step-by-step chronicle of the Bush administration's many propaganda campaigns to manipulate and distort truth. Laboriously researched, the text covers the administration's Iraqi WMD claims, Bush's "Mission Accomplished" triumph, the intimidation of the press, the Swift-boating of John Kerry, and much more.

The Audacity of Hope is an accessible and expressive exploration of some of the major problems facing America today and Senator Obama's thoughts about possible solutions. While this is clearly a positioning piece in which Obama works hard to speak to a large cross section of Americans (including Republicans and others who may have never heard of him), the book doesn't descend into safe answers and campaign stumping. On the contrary, throughout Obama maintains a sincere voice, speaking as a father and husband as often as a politician, and providing honest answers about his beliefs to a wide range of political questions.

I saw Al Gore on Friday (4/29). Gore was in Buffalo as part of SUNY Buffalo's Distinguished Speaker series and he delivered, with some modifications and updates, his global warming lecture that was featured in An Inconvenient Truth . Seeing Gore live was interesting. He projects so much more humor, earnestness, and passion in person than I ever picked up before from his televised speeches or interviews. I guess this shouldn't be too surprising given how much spin and character assassination, there is in politics today. Still, you could literally feel Gore's outrage from the 40th row when he referenced the current administration's poor tract record on the environment or when he cycled through some slides he and Tipper took during a recent visit to New Orleans -- pictured that showed a New Orleans still sagging and anything but recovered from Katrina. I'm glad UB invited Gore to speak and very pleased I was able to attend the event.

Excession is set in author Iain Banks' multi-volume Culture series and tells of a mysterious black-body alien artifact. The novel turns out to be less about the titular alien excession than the responses the artifact provokes, especially from the Culture's Minds and a sadistic species, the Affront. Stylistically, the novel is dense at times, with alternating narratives and facsimile electronic correspondence from many different Minds and the principal human characters. Still, Excession comes together and, in a sense, the novel's elusiveness fits well with Banks' signature theme of ambiguity (moral and otherwise).