Ravenweb Blog

Just wanted to take a little time out today to acknowledge how very thankful I am for everything that's happened this year. It's been a year of huge change, with a new house and baby, and I'm really thankful we've had the means to purchase and remodel a house and the good fortune of a healthy pregnancy and baby. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Ten Little Indians presents ten stories that explore a range of contemporary Indian characters. Though each story stands on its own, the collection as a whole is unified by common themes and tropes -- the romanticizing of Indians in American culture and deconstruction of these sentimentalized attributes, the importance of ceremony, and confessional narratives. Well-crafted and thought provoking, I recommend Ten Little Indians and am eager to read other texts by Sherman Alexie.

Hooray! We finally get Scrubs back. Sadly, tonight's episode also marks the countdown to the end of the show, as this is the seventh and final season. I guess we can enjoy it while it lasts. On the topic, I stumbled across a link to a Scrubs production blog . Lots of production videos here.

It's been a unique fall viewing season for me this year in that there's a lot of time now where I'm restricted in my movements because of the baby. However, this has unexpectedly given me much more time to watch TV and try out new shows. Below is a list of the new shows I've watched and my initial reactions. Mondays Chuck is an entertaining but flawed spy / nerdboy mashup about a computer tech who ends up with a database of government secrets downloaded into his brain. I like the casting and setup and am interested in watching at least through mid-season, but I have a problem with the show's uneven tone. At times, it tips toward campiness and humor (which is fine given the implausible storyline), but then at others it steers back toward dramatic realism, with faraway looks, contemplation, and musical scores. It's a tough line to walk, and I wonder if Chuck can pull it off for an extended run. Tuesdays I initially thought CW's Reaper was the most promising ...

In The Assault on Reason , Al Gore examines the recent trend in U.S. politics -- especially in the current Bush administration -- of ignoring facts and analysis when making policy decisions. Impassioned and fiercely critical of Bush and the state of public discourse in America, this is the Al Gore I wish we saw more of in 2000.

Me Talk Pretty One Day is a funny collection of essays in which Sedaris writes about a variety of true life experiences. He devotes space to his Greek-American family (especially his father), employers, tourists, nudists, speech therapists, and himself. The best essays in the book are the pieces that focus on France and the author's attempts to learn to speak French. Having also recently read Barrel Fever , I would say Me Talk Pretty One Day is definitely the better of the two books and that Sedaris is clearly at his best writing non-fiction, where his cranky humor really shines. From what I've heard, these essays are even funnier when heard aloud, with the delivery raising them up a notch.

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...