Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Review: Myer's Bridal/Gift Registry

So I totally got married in September and it was awesome. In the lead up to the wedding my Husband and I decided to set up a Gift Registry with Myer because it seemed like the easiest way to avoid having 100 people ask us what they should give us as a present.

Stuff I liked:

It was super fun to set up! They gave us these little scanner things and we ran around the store scanning things and whatever we scanned went on the list. It was ace! We could have gone back and added more stuff later but we didn't actually spend a lot of time together in the 12 months before the wedding so we never bothered.

Myer delivered all the presents to us at our new Sydney address after the wedding! Given that we moved interstate it was super handy to have all the gifts delivered to the new address rather than having to move them up with us after the honeymoon.

Stuff I didn't like:

They charged each of our guests (well apparently some but not others) $12 each for delivery. Which seemed a bit steep IMO and apparently I just didn't read that in the fine print when I set it up. Of course some people decided not to pay the delivery fee and they took the present and wrapped it and brought it to the reception: which meant that we had to pack a bunch of gifts up and get the removalist to bring them up to our new house which was kind of annoying.

They allowed multiple guests to purchase the same gift. So I kind of thought that was the WHOLE POINT of having a registry but yeah we ended up with duplicates. It wasn't the worst thing ever because we just exchanged them and bought 3 huge boxes of Lego. Yessssss
But it kind of left a bad taste in my mouth because HELLO THAT IS WHY WE HAD A REGISTRY. Ugh.

So when the guests bought the stuff they wrote down a message for us to go on the card... but we didn't get any of those messages: we just got a generic congratulations from X (and Y) on the card. ALSO they misspelled a bunch of people's names. It just made me feel like the registry was an excellent idea but that Myer was just really rubbish at it which surprised me because I would have thought they'd have got the hang of it by now?

Friday, October 26, 2012

Read Along: Pride & Prejudice - Chapter 2

Just a reminder that with the Read Along series you don't have to do any homework or reading the night before. The text is all right here! So if you've never read Pride and Prejudice and you read my blog then by the time we get to the end you will have read the book!

If you do want to have a clean copy of the book without my comments, you can of course find it here on Project Gutenberg
Chapter 2 

Mr. Bennet was among the earliest of those who waited on Mr. Bingley. He had always intended to visit him, though to the last always assuring his wife that he should not go; and till the evening after the visit was paid she had no knowledge of it. It was then disclosed in the following manner. Observing his second daughter employed in trimming a hat, he suddenly addressed her with: 
"I hope Mr. Bingley will like it, Lizzy." 
Trimming a hat. I'll say no more for now. But apparently the Bennet Ladies like hats. That's not dirty or anything in case you were wondering (UNLESS IT IS???) but I noticed hats mentioned a few times when I was reading through the book and I'm going to point them out.
"We are not in a way to know what Mr. Bingley likes," said her mother resentfully, "since we are not to visit." 
"But you forget, mamma," said Elizabeth, "that we shall meet him at the assemblies, and that Mrs. Long promised to introduce him." 
"I do not believe Mrs. Long will do any such thing. She has two nieces of her own. She is a selfish, hypocritical woman, and I have no opinion of her." 
"No more have I," said Mr. Bennet; "and I am glad to find that you do not depend on her serving you." 
I find it interesting that Mrs Long is mentioned so much in these two chapters but as far as I can remember we never actually meet her in the text. If we do, you can point out how I was wrong if you like :)
Mrs. Bennet deigned not to make any reply, but, unable to contain herself, began scolding one of her daughters. 
I like the way it's now Mrs Bennet's turn to just ignore Mr Bennet because he's being too weird for her! Isn't their marriage awesome? Is it just because I got married a month and a half ago that I'm being grossed out by their marriage? Or because I'm re-reading the book so closely? WILL WE EVER KNOW?
"Don't keep coughing so, Kitty, for Heaven's sake! Have a little compassion on my nerves. You tear them to pieces." 
"Kitty has no discretion in her coughs," said her father; "she times them ill." 
"I do not cough for my own amusement," replied Kitty fretfully. 
"When is your next ball to be, Lizzy?" 
So in the Gutenberg e-Book for Pride and Prejudice there is no paragraph break before "When is your next ball to be, Lizzy?" which makes it seem like Kitty is the one asking Lizzy when the ball is. Which seems weird. In my physical copy (I should say, one of my physical copies for I have several) it's on the next line though so I think that was just a mistake. I think it's Mr Bennet asking when the ball is as I'm pretty sure everyone else already knows as they are probably all equally or more interested in the ball than Lizzy. I've therefore made that correction here.
"To-morrow fortnight." 
"Aye, so it is," cried her mother, "and Mrs. Long does not come back till the day before; so it will be impossible for her to introduce him, for she will not know him herself." 
"Then, my dear, you may have the advantage of your friend, and introduce Mr. Bingley to her." 
"Impossible, Mr. Bennet, impossible, when I am not acquainted with him myself; how can you be so teasing?" 
"I honour your circumspection. A fortnight's acquaintance is certainly very little. One cannot know what a man really is by the end of a fortnight. But if we do not venture somebody else will; and after all, Mrs. Long and her daughters must stand their chance; and, therefore, as she will think it an act of kindness, if you decline the office, I will take it on myself." 
The girls stared at their father. Mrs. Bennet said only, "Nonsense, nonsense!" 
"What can be the meaning of that emphatic exclamation?" cried he. "Do you consider the forms of introduction, and the stress that is laid on them, as nonsense? I cannot quite agree with you there. What say you, Mary? For you are a young lady of deep reflection, I know, and read great books and make extracts."  
Mary wished to say something sensible, but knew not how. 
"While Mary is adjusting her ideas," he continued, "let us return to Mr. Bingley." 
"I am sick of Mr. Bingley," cried his wife. 
"I am sorry to hear that; but why did not you tell me that before? If I had known as much this morning I certainly would not have called on him. It is very unlucky; but as I have actually paid the visit, we cannot escape the acquaintance now." 
The astonishment of the ladies was just what he wished; that of Mrs. Bennet perhaps surpassing the rest; though, when the first tumult of joy was over, she began to declare that it was what she had expected all the while. 
I do like the way that even if she's resentful earlier in the piece because her husband has, apparently, refused to visit Mr Bingley she isn't resentful when it turned out he was just being a lying liar who was winding her up on purpose. It makes me feel slightly less uncomfortable about their marriage anyway.
"How good it was in you, my dear Mr. Bennet! But I knew I should persuade you at last. I was sure you loved your girls too well to neglect such an acquaintance. Well, how pleased I am! and it is such a good joke, too, that you should have gone this morning and never said a word about it till now." 
"How good it was in you, my dear Mr Bennet!" is in my physical copy too. I don't... know what that means? I think I've always read this as "How good it was of you" but it looks like it really is "How good it was in you" but once again google just feeds me back this paragraph from this book if I search for it. I suppose it just means the same thing!
"Now, Kitty, you may cough as much as you choose," said Mr. Bennet; and, as he spoke, he left the room, fatigued with the raptures of his wife. 
"What an excellent father you have, girls!" said she, when the door was shut. "I do not know how you will ever make him amends for his kindness; or me, either, for that matter. At our time of life it is not so pleasant, I can tell you, to be making new acquaintances every day; but for your sakes, we would do anything. Lydia, my love, though you are the youngest, I dare say Mr. Bingley will dance with you at the next ball." 
Is Mrs Bennet saying here that she doesn't know how her daughters will make this up to her? Or that she doesn't know how she'll make it up to Mr Bennet? I always assumed the latter but reading it again here I think maybe it's the first one which is way more hilarious.
"Oh!" said Lydia stoutly, "I am not afraid; for though I am the youngest, I'm the tallest."The rest of the evening was spent in conjecturing how soon he would return Mr. Bennet's visit, and determining when they should ask him to dinner.
So that's chapter 2! We now know the names of all of the Bennet daughters.

Jane: (Chapter 1: "I am sure she is not half so handsome as Jane..." - Mrs Bennet)

Elizabeth/Lizzy/Eliza: (Chapter 1: "they are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters." - Mr Bennet)

Mary: (Chapter 2: "What say you, Mary? For you are a young lady of deep reflection, I know, and read great books and make extracts." - Mr Bennet)

Catherine/Kitty: No quote for Kitty. That's because basically nobody cares about Kitty. Poor Kitty :(

Lydia:  (Chapter 1: "... nor half so good-humoured as Lydia" - Mrs Bennet)

PS. I'm playing around with fonts, can you tell me if this Chapter is easier to read (distinguish between the text and my commentary) than Chapter 1? I don't want to spend the time manually changing the font back and forth if nobody cares but I'm happy to do it if it makes it better!

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Review: Ana Mardoll's Ramblings

I tried reading Twilight once but never got past the part where Bella lies to everyone she knows about where she is going and runs off deep into the woods with a guy that she suspect wants to kill her. Then he tells her that he wants to kill her and apparently this is supposed to be romantic? Ew. I stopped right there.

But the amazingly amazing Ana Mardoll has been "deconstructing" twilight for, uh, a while which means I never actually have to read it myself and reading Mardoll's commentary is around a million percent more enjoyable than the book itself! Thanks Ana!

I mentioned Ana's deconstructions briefly when I introduced my Read Along series. The first Chapter of Pride and Prejudice I posted on Friday. It was her series along with other ongoing reviews/deconstructions like Fred Clark's Left Behind series and Something Short and Snappy's one on Fifty Shades of Grey which really gave me the idea. Of course I may be cheating by doing a book that not only doesn't suck but that I actually love quite a lot, but never mind.

Mardoll also posts lighter deconstructions of other interesting things like Narnia, and she also wrote a rad book which I read and was awesome!

I enjoy pretty much everything she posts and I recommend her blog to pretty much anyone. Seriously, her blog is amazing!

Monday, October 22, 2012

Update Update

So I really liked the template that I started the blog out on: It worked really nicely, at least for me but unfortunately I had a couple of complaints about the Blogger comments (and they didn't always play nicely for me either or give me a lot of options) but Disqus wasn't compatible with the Dynamic Views template.

I've switched to a different template and I'd appreciate any feedback. Text size, contrasts etc?

Also try the comments again and let me know if anything is weird :)

Friday, October 19, 2012

Read Along: Pride & Prejudice - Chapter 1

Okay so now I'm really doing this and I don't actually know where to start. Apart from at the beginning, obviously. So when I studied this book at school I ended up knowing the whole first chapter off by heart but I did copy and paste this because typing it out would be boring and I am not sure I'd get all the punctuation right.

So here we are with Chapter 1 of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. As I mentioned in the introduction the whole text of Chapter 1 is here (if you notice anything I've accidentally deleted let me know - it should just be all here) so if you've never read (or haven't recently read) the book you're not missing anything even if you have your own copy :)


Chapter 1

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. 
However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.
I guess the reason that it's funny is because obviously when they get married the daughters become the property hurdy hur.
"My dear Mr. Bennet," said his lady to him one day, "have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?" 
Mr. Bennet replied that he had not. 
"But it is," returned she; "for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it." 
Mr. Bennet made no answer.
So Mr and Mrs Bennet begin the novel by annoying each other (they'll do that a lot). My favourite part is where Mr Bennet just ignores her because she's talking about what Mrs Long said and Mr Bennet just doesn't care about what Mrs Long says.
"Do you not want to know who has taken it?" cried his wife impatiently.
"You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it." 
This was invitation enough. 
"Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it, that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week."
 Wikipedia tells me that Michaelmas is on 29 September so we're... sometime before that I guess? So when I look up 'chaise and four' on google there is a lot of people referencing this exact paragraph and asking what it means (it's a small carriage with four horses, in case you were wondering). I think we'll have that problem quite a bit.
"What is his name?""Bingley.""Is he married or single?""Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!"
Mrs Bennet is all WHY WOULD I TELL YOU ABOUT HIM IF HE WAS MARRIED, SILLY.
"How so? How can it affect them?" 
"My dear Mr. Bennet," replied his wife, "how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them." 
"Is that his design in settling here?" 
"Design! Nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes."  
Is it even possible to read this dialogue without imagining Alison Steadman and Benjamin Whitrow? Not for me. Actually I pretty much read all the dialogue in the voices of the actors from the 1995 BBC adaption. NEVER MIND.
"I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley may like you the best of the party."
"My dear, you flatter me. I certainly have had my share of beauty, but I do not pretend to be anything extraordinary now. When a woman has five grown-up daughters, she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty." 
"In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of."
 Aw Mr Bennet still thinks Mrs Bennet is pretty :) Or maybe he's just being ironic again/still. I like to think that he actually is genuinely saying that Mrs Bennet is as good looking as her daughters because it makes me feel less sad about them being married to each other.
"But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr. Bingley when he comes into the neighbourhood." 
"It is more than I engage for, I assure you." 
"But consider your daughters. Only think what an establishment it would be for one of them. Sir William and Lady Lucas are determined to go, merely on that account, for in general, you know, they visit no newcomers. Indeed you must go, for it will be impossible for us to visit him if you do not."
I actually find it a bit hard to believe that Sir William just ignores all his neighbours that aren't single dudes that might marry one of his daughters. I know Lady Lucas is not all that well so I can see maybe she doesn't bother but Sir William? Remind me about this when we get to a description of him later.
"You are over-scrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr. Bingley will be very glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my hearty consent to his marrying whichever he chooses of the girls; though I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy."
Mr Bennet is suggesting something pretty ridiculous here, clearly. He reminds me of the ridiculous conversations I have with my husband where we have totally deadpan conversations about super-weird things. Anyway what he's saying is SUPER WEIRD. Of course the "normal" behaviour here where the menfolk have to visit each other before the women can be introduced to them is also SUPER WEIRD to me because apparently things have changed a fair bit in the last 200 years?
"I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better than the others; and I am sure she is not half so handsome as Jane, nor half so good-humoured as Lydia. But you are always giving her the preference." 
"They have none of them much to recommend them," replied he; "they are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters." 
"Mr. Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion for my poor nerves." 
"You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these last twenty years at least." 
"Ah, you do not know what I suffer." 
"But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men of four thousand a year come into the neighbourhood." 
"It will be no use to us, if twenty such should come, since you will not visit them.""Depend upon it, my dear, that when there are twenty, I will visit them all." 
Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.
So basically "Mr Bennet was so WEIRD AND ANNOYING that even after 23 years he still repeatedly confused Mrs Bennet. Because she was cranky and stupid." I am torn between feeling sorry for Mr Bennet because his wife is silly and annoying and doesn't grok his sense of humour... and being cross at him for being a jerk. Well no that's not true - I'm not actually torn. Mostly I want to high five Mr Bennet all over the place for being hilarious and I feel bad about that because he's frequently being a bit of a jerk.

So that's Chapter One! 60 Chapters to go! Comment about anything else you found interesting! Let me know how frequently you'd like these to come out (I can't promise anything as obviously it depends how frequently I can do them). 

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Read-Along: Introduction

I'm not sure that I'm comfortable/awesome enough to compare myself to the amazing Ana Mardoll or Fred Clark and their deconstructions and commentary of Twilight and Left Behind. But I found myself ... inspired.

I recently re-read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and I have a friend who's been reading some classics recently so I thought maybe I could put together a blog series where I post some thoughts about classic novels that are out of copyright  and maybe if anyone ever reads my blog we can have Interesting Discussions in the comments. It can be like an online book club or something! I thought I would start (haha! I plan to go slowly so... if I do this right not too much danger of me ever finishing) with Pride and Prejudice since I have read it... um, a lot.

So! Review Tuesdays and Read-Along Fridays. Check back Friday for chapter 1, I guess?

[Edit] So having actually written a couple of chapters now I have a better feeling about how I'm doing this. Working with a text that is out of copyright means I am going to use the WHOLE text of the book in my Read-Along series. So reading my series you'll get to read the whole book which I think makes my series a little bit different than some of the deconstructions I've been inspired by. Anyway I am excited!

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Review: Looper

Looper? I hardly know 'er.

So my husband and I went to see Looper recently and I thought it was pretty great!

(mild) Spoilers for film follow.

Things I liked:

The synopsis wasn't really much of a spoiler. Too frequently the synopsis of a film takes you up to like 3/4 of the way through the movie... but the synopsis I kept hearing about Looper was basically that the guy has to kill the older version of himself. And that's "revealed" very early on in the movie indeed because all the loopers have to kill their older selves: it's part of their contract. I felt like Joe having to fight Old Joe was really the setting for the film, rather than the actual plot.

JGL as Young!Bruce Willis. So there was some very impressive makeup that contributed to this but a whole lot of it was Joseph Gordon-Levitt's acting. The way he stood, the way he held his mouth and the way he spoke made the scenes between Willis and Gordon-Levitt kind of freaky and super enjoyable.

Time-travel. What can I say? I basically love time travel movies so much I even voluntarily watched 'Hot-Tub Time Machine'. Looper is much better. I thought that the way it "worked" was very interesting and made much more sense than most time travel stories! I really enjoyed this rundown of the "rules" of timetravel in the Looper universe. I also liked the way they basically sidestepped explaining it all when Old Joe tells Young Joe they'll just get stuck playing with straws in the diner because, of course, it's not the point let's just get on with the movie!

Things I didn't like:

the film failed the Bechdel Test so hard that Old Joe's Wife didn't even have a name. I'm sure I saw her in the credits as "Old Joe's Wife". (There are three other female characters and they do actually have names. But none of the women ever meet each other).


Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Review: Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn Trilogy

So I kind of hated this series that I read recently and I was asked on twitter to explain why. It takes more than 140 characters, so here is a bit of a rant.

Note: You might have liked this trilogy. That's okay! Maybe you didn't notice the things I hated, or didn't hate them. Or liked some other things much more than I did that made the whole thing worthwhile for you. That's fine, we can still be friends. Just don't recommend me any other Brandon Sanderson novels, basically.

Contains Spoilers for all 3 novels:

First I will start with some of the things I did like:

The magic system was certainly interesting. Basically people get their magical powers by eating bits of metal and "burning" them in their stomachs. They can telekenetially affect metal or affect people's emotions or whatever. It was certainly unlike most magic systems I have read about and I thought that was kind of neat!


So I actually liked the first novel in the series quite a lot. I was fairly annoyed by some of the following things but it was only when they kept happening and kept getting worse that the scales were tipped. Like, I actually recommended the first book to a few people but then had to go and take it back after I read the other two. And, to be fair, I did read the second two books in less than a day. So they were fairly readable and all that.

So anyway, I didn't think it was super well written and I didn't really care about any of the characters. Sanderson seemed to attempt to do this thing where every half-book or so there would be a big "EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW IS WRONG" moment which I didn't hate in theory but it felt really really clumsy. Also I got the impression he was going for lots of BIG REVEAL moments but reallyreally messing them up. Basically by making things really obvious (and in at least one case unambiguously spelling it out in text) and then making the characters take hundreds of pages to work it out. And that just kept happening. And I read the second two books in less than 24 hours total so I didn't have a lot of time to ponder things, I'm not super smart to work it out before the big reveal moment it's just that when I read in text that someone is writing something in metal because words that aren't etched into metal can't be trusted and then it takes hundreds of pages for the characters to finally work out that... words that aren't etched into metal are being mysteriously changed by the big baddie!! It's hard to really be impressed. 

Also did we need that many monster races? Really?

So anyway, all of that would have just made it a series of books I didn't really enjoy. here are the things that made me want to throw the books at the wall:

Magical boob powers.
So this didn't actually affect the plot at all. It was just a throwaway line that was thrown away several times and ugh.
So some of the magic people can manipulate people's emotions by either suppressing some or all emotions, or intensifying them. Some people are, understandably, uncomfortable with the idea that someone can come and tinker with what they are feeling but because the people doing the tinkering are supposed to be the heroes, the author explains why this doesn't make them evil terrible people with an example.

Sanderson claims that tinkering with people's emotions is no more evil or underhand than what ladies do with their boobs (ie MANIPULATE THE FEELINGS OF MENS). Gross. 

Well done, foreigner, you've learnt to talk like a normal person!
So there is a character, Lestbournes aka "Spook" who comes from a different area of the world and speaks in an "Eastern Dialect" which nobody else can understand. This is treated by the text like some kind of speech impediment and a lot of Spook's character development consists of him, basically, learning to talk "properly".
He's congratulated several times, in text, for learning to speak normally. Not congratulated for learning the dominant dialect in the area he now lives in because hifive bro now you can communicate your wants and needs to the people you're surrounded by. He can now talk "normally" and not in his nonsense street-speak.
Also people mock his dialect by speaking actual nonsense to each other. Gross.

Democracy is a nice idea in theory, but ACTUALLY what people REALLY NEED is a dictator.
One of the characters, Elend, is one of the nobles and at first he's really passionate about democracy and giving everyone a fair go and maybe the Skaa (peasants basically) aren't that different from real people! What a nice guy! Then he ends up in charge and gets a chance to put it all into practice...

And it all falls apart and they kick him out and nothing gets done right because really, deep down, those peasants just need someone to tell them what to do.

Because it turns out the Skaa REALLY ARE DIFFERENT to the nobles. The nobles are physiologically taller, better looking and smarter than the Skaa. They can interbreed but the Skaa were designed to be the workers and the Nobles are designed to rule over them because they are just, you know, more betterer or something.

Girl needs a real MAN who is MANLY enough for her
Female lead falls in love with sweet bookish noble dude. She beats people up and he reads books and it is AWESOME AND I LOVE IT apart from the bit where of course then he needs to get magical powers too and his have to be STRONGER than hers. Ugh!

A Real Man has a PENIS
So there's a dude in the books who is a eunuch so like every eunuch in a novel I have read he has to have a sad about not being a "real" man. Which is fine, obviously. Dudes (or ladies) with missing and/or excess parts is, I understand, often suicidally painful. But the text supports his assertion that he lacks the proper equipment to be called a man, or even use male pronouns. Okay so the book uses he/him/his for him. But it's basically the big reveal of the series that an in-text prophecy doesn't use the expected male pronouns for the "hero of the ages" so there's a red herring about it being the female lead. But then it turns out it's the eunuch and that's why they used those weird non-male pronouns. Because he's not really male! AAUUGHH