Bob Studholme's Blog, page 4

Odd

But oddly fascinating. Look at this.

In which I get to interview Gerald Lynch and live.

Not my writing, but no reason not to blog about it. Alexander McNabb, Dubai-ite and author, asked me to run up some interview questions for his character Lynch, the Northern Irish spy who is the hero of his new book Beirut. Always willing to help another author, I set to with the sewing machine and knocked off a few. This will take you to what he did with 'em. I think it brings out Lynch's character very well. I'm disappointed to discover that he's a man who will ruin a whiskey just to bully a poor English lecturer, but otherwise happy to have got out without being punched out.
I haven't seen the final edited version of the book, but if it cleaned up the way I think it might have, then it's a hell of a good read and one I'd recommend.

Iron Sky Review

Forgive me Blog, for I have sinned. It's been bloody ages since I last posted. Just not feeling like it really. No good excuse or reason for that. I do have things to write about. Having seen Iron Sky being just one of them.
Anyway, how was it? Answer, good. Maybe not great, but very enjoyable. A few of the gags were excellent (I really liked the speechwriter's tirade al la Der Untergang) and most were passible. I did like the special effects and I thought it was up there with Avengers (possibly better as I didn't like the way Avengers tended to smash action together so fast that some scenes left me dizzy). I took my daughter - Aki, who is 12 and she liked it too. She'd previously checked with her mate Felix (she's 12, more than mature enough to have a male friend who is just that) who reckoned it was good, but a bit 'B' movie. I think I'd generally agree with that. More because I would hate to seem more of a fanboy than a 12-year-old boy than because of anything that I disliked in it, though.
Anyway, well done Finland. First for making it and second for not having weaponised your satellites like everyone else (film in-joke). For anyone who has not seen the film yet, I'd definitely say go and watch, it's worth it. I'm waiting for the DVD to become available here and then I'm going to enjoy watching it again.

I got a review!

Mary Catherine on Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/9295595-mary-catherine gave me 3/5 stars and wrote the following:
I was torn between giving this book a higher rating. The story utterly gripped me at times, but there are too many reasons to negate that.

To start, there are many different dialects and thus many grammatical errors. The errors are carefully researched to reflect the dialect of each character's native upbringing. It isn't clear the errors are purposeful representations of the dialect and, as such, feeds in to my bigger complaint: not enough development.

I read 2/3 of the book and it felt like 1/3. Only at the end of the book did substantial development happen. Many characters present their point of view, most of them artificial components of the game. Artificial intelligence was one of my favorite concepts, it fiddled with the perception of life. I was disappointed that concept wasn't expounded upon. This is also a key complaint: lack of better explanation for unnecessary explanation. There were many great concepts brushed over and most action and dialogue could be condensed.

Though the book is written as excerpts from multiple points of views, it becomes quickly obvious the reader is to focus on only two. We get to know them slowly and, again, their growth is packed in to the last third of the book. There were too many characters for growth and reflection. Some characters felt abandoned.

The premise itself is incredibly interesting, though. I can't think of any similar stories. It draws inspiration from all kinds of fairy tales, but also everything from science fiction, to wizardry, to Aikido as well. There were descriptions as unique as the story. A particular one that stuck with me was about comparing deaths of parents:
"It’s like a tooth coming out. There’s a hole that hurts when you put your tongue into it, but you keep putting your tongue into it. You don’t really want to, but you can’t stop it. You always want to compare."
I cant think of anything similar to that simile. Incredibly unique and profound.

I don't want to go in to much detail about the story, because there is a great ending that I didn't see coming. That is something to marvel, an author who can write a twist without the reader expecting the curve.

This book has a lot of those bursts of profundity, because the premise itself is profound. Of the premise is artificial intelligence and of that we come to know the AI, or the self-aware, godlike, omnipresent and omnipotent quantum computer. It comes to be another focal character discovering itself and others. It introduces prevalent motifs like benevolence, punishment, purpose, survival, and evolution. The reader gets to experience the simultaneous birth of a mind and the creation of a God.

So overall, the writing could stand to be hit with a mallet by an editor, but the premise is so unique that it has the potential to be a very intriguing and resonating fantasy series.

It's coming! I'm going!

Iron Sky opens in the Uae this weekend. Being as this is a Muslim country, that means Thursday evening. I should be going on Saturday afternoon with a mate or two. Review to follow.

Iron Sky Reviews

This is a review of Iron Sky. It's done by Starburst, a website I hadn't heard of before. This is where imdb have their reviews (there are 56 of them, so I haven't read them all). This is what the Guardian said (didn't like it if you can't be bothered to read).This is where you can find Rotten Tomatoes views (I like the audience reviews best). If you've got any more good ones, please comment and give them to me. I'd still love to see this film.

Only in the UAE

A pizza whose crust is stuffed with cheeseburgers. Living in the UAE is an experience that is likely to make you feel that food should be regulated perhaps even more that banks. Bankers are much more despicable, but they tend to do a lot of things with more taste than this.
As the article points out, this is only to be had in the UAE. It's up to Americans to ask if anyone else would have got on a plane and flown so far as to actually try it, rather than have got on a plane and flown the same distance to get away from it.
It's perhaps time to give out a recommendation for Bricco Cafe. It's in the Al Ain Mall, is (Paola Conte swears) completely authentic and (I swear) really good. They don't serve this, of course.

The Hunger Games Christopher Brauchli getting it badly wrong.

Christopher Brauchli Christopher Brauchli is a columnist and lawyer known nationally for his work. He is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Colorado School of Law where he served on the Board of Editors of the Rocky Mountain Law Review. He can be emailed at brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu. For political commentary see his web page at http://humanraceandothersports.com






If you look here you can find an article by the above about The Hunger Games film. If you can't be bothered, he sums up his article with
There you have it and there’s no reason for you or your children to go see the movie. Just read them this column. It’s far less offensive than the movie.
To which I'd have to say bullshit.
I'd back this up by saying that the trilogy is a searing attack on a lot of elements of modern day life that get up my nose. One of them is the way that the poor are the main targets of the military for recruitment to go away and kill and be killed. Another is the obsession with 'Reality' TV and its suggestion that there is only winning and losing, only winners and losers.
I wrote an article recently on the change in the way universities are preparing students for by teaching them to co-operate in groups. This is because employers are finding that unis don't prepare kids for the real world where they have to work in teams to achieve objectives. Instead, they tend to prepare everyone to try to be an island. Everyone works by themselves, helping a friend is cheating, only one person gets to be the top student. Very much the Reality show approach.  Anyway, I don't agree with his points and this is what I wrote in reply.

Hunger Games for Dummies
Katniss is the STRONG Female lead. She looks after and
provides for her 12-year-old sister and is clearly established as a GOOD
PERSON. Her society takes 24 children every year and forces them to fight to
the death. The book and film take care to tell us that this is a BAD THING. (It’s
a bit like the Minotaur story, which was a cheap rip-off of a Central European
slasher story).
When Katniss’ younger sister is chosen to go to the games,
where she will clearly be killed by older teens - a BAD THING, Katniss
volunteers to go in her place. She is a VERY GOOD PERSON. Again, the book and
film make it clear – she isn’t going to kill, she’s trying to protect in the
only way open to her.
Her community of poor, oppressed coal-mining families is
encouraged to view this as a moment to CELEBRATE, but refuses to buy that line.
They bid her farewell in dignified silence. She reports herself as proud of
them for this, thus telling the reader that glorifying needless slaughter is
NOT A GOOD THING.
The other tribute is a boy who has a track record of taking
risks to help her when she has needed it in the past – he gave her bread when
she was starving. He is also a GOOD PERSON.  He tells her that he knows he is going to die,
but wants to find a way of showing that he doesn’t belong to the people who are
running this. He has to tell her this in private because it is a SUBVERSIVE
idea. The people who run this, do it to show that they have total control and
can make people jump through any hoop they want for their entertainment.
Before the games start, there is training. In this we find
that some of the other tributes are very keen to kill and win. To do that, they
would have to kill the GOOD PEOPLE, so we know they are BAD PEOPLE. One boy,
particularly, is very violent and stands out as NASTY.
Once the games start, Katniss just tries to stay alive. Since
people are trying to kill her she is placed on the HORNS OF A DILEMMA. She is
forced to take action that leads to the death of others.
She also teams up with a younger girl who is so CUTE that
you have to be a racist not to just love her on sight. It’s clear that Katniss
could kill this girl easily (she is a STRONG character), but doesn’t because
she is a GOOD PERSON and good people don’t take advantage like that.
When the young girl, Rue, is killed by others, Katniss
mourns her and bids her farewell in the same way her community did to her. This
is seen by people from the farming community Rue comes from and starts a riot. The
message is much clearer in the film – SOLIDARITY BETWEEN OPPRESSED PEOPLES IS A
POWERFUL ENGINE OF CHANGE.
The film goes further in making it clear that the powers
that be then try to spin things to make themselves look better and stop the
revolt spreading by declaring that there can be two winners. This is clearly a
CYNICAL thing because the boy from Katniss’ district has told everyone that he’s
in love with her. Love is a GOOD THING, but being cynical about it is not – ask
any teenage girl.
Near the end of the film, the very violent boy from the
training reappears. His girlfriend has been killed and he repents and disavows.
He recognizes that everything he was told about the GLORY and HONOUR due to
winners in this dog-eat-dog contest was a lie; a BIG LIE.
When only two are left, the powers change their minds and
declare that there can only be one winner, so that they will be forced to fight
and kill each other. Both refuse to do it and engage in the act of eating
poisonous berries as an ACT OF REBELLION, demonstrating to everyone that they
refuse to lay down their PRINCIPLES, even if it means death.
In summary, the way to TRUE GLORY is be GOOD PEOPLE. How? STICK
TO YOUR PRINCIPLES, CARE FOR OTHERS, SHOW RESPECT, HAVE SOLIDARITY, STICK IT TO
THE MAN.

Book Review - Stories We Keep by the Yoga As Muse Tribe

A very interesting little read this one.
I won this in a Goodreads giveaway and I'm glad I did.
The book is a collection of short stories (with two excerpts from books,)interviews with the writers of those stories and recipes for sweet potatoes.
The writing is captivating. Women's fiction is what I suppose it would be called. That's a genre I don't usually read, being a bloke and old, but the quality of the writing caught my interest.
I was also caught by the idea that links all of the stories. All of the writers are members of a group called Yoga as Muse. Being someone who has practised yoga (I still do, as my karate sensei approves of it) and writes, or tries to, I wanted to know more about how these two things go together.
In that, I found the writer interviews less illuminating than I'd have liked. I don't think that is a major fault - I don't believe you could get so much information into such a small book and fit the stories and the recipes as well.
I'll chase down the websites they give and read more on the yoga as muse concept there. The recipes? Okay. I'd simply search Google if I really wanted them, but I do quite like the idea of mixing them up with the stories. I enjoy cooking and talking about it, so it's a thing that chimes with me.
Overall, the stories are things I will come back to. Several of them are the type that rewartd a second read with more than you saw the first time. The recipes are things I might try in the kitchen and the interviews will get me to read more on websites. Yeah, three out of three ain't bad. flag

Iron Sky in the UK for one day?

As the site says, bollocks. It needs people to write and tell the distributors that they want a chance to see this and that one Wednesday in the year doesn't count. You can do that at this address
<info@revolvergroup.com>.
and you can use this page to ask for it to be seen in your area.
www.ironsky.net/demand
Why not?