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Saw Sky Captain today, and was immensely entertained by the sheer retroness of it all. Also, the opening scenes set in 1930s, sort of Art Deco-y New York were gorgeous. I ogled and ogled and spent half the movie trying to figure out what was CG and what wasn't, and then decided I didn't care because it was so spiffy. Must go see again. And it was unexpectedly funny! I actually liked Joe and Polly, which I was not expecting to -- I was more there for the aforementioned retroness and I had figured the characters would bee sort of place-holder characters who only exist so that someone can act out the plot. But they were funny, which was nice. And Polly was amazingly not the incredibly annoying intrepid reporter that I thought she would be, all spunky and the like. Well, she was, but everyone was aware she was, so it was all ok. And, and, flying airships! Backpack rocket propellers! Doomsday devices! Squee! Must watch again. And again. Because me, so prey to the prettiness.

I feel really strange being back -- completely out of the loop on LJ and feeling too lazy to catch up. It's strange wandering back into society here after having been in the company of my parents for so long. I don't miss Italy. It was absolutely wonderful being there, but by the end, I wanted to stop living in hotels and to be in a place where everyone spoke English again. But despite the occasional annoyingness, I miss my parents now =(. It probably helped that I got the job offer prior to the trip so there was no job stressing, which would have led to grumpy, snappy me and an unhappy trip.

It's also frightening because my parents are getting old. I don't like thinking about it, but we were eating at some restaurant one day, and I looked at them, and suddenly they were old. Their skin is sort of losing elasticity and assuming a different texture; I spotted grey hairs on my dad and age spots. And I've known this for a while -- hard to avoid when the big topic with them and their friends is health and medicine, but it just struck all over again. And it doesn't quite seem fair. I want to keep being a big baby forever who can just run home and be petted over by my parents (or yelled at, given the circumstances). And of course, there's the whole mortality thing, which I don't like thinking about at all because it scares me, because they're my parents and they really aren't supposed to grow old. Thinking that, I feel like I should somehow be there, except I'm in California with no family nearby at all. Still attempting to lure my sister over after she graduates.

Sigh. I miss my family and the utterly strange yet completely familiar dynamics, even when they drive me absolutely batty.

Marillier, Juliet - Foxmask

Unfortunately, my favorite book of hers remains Child of the Prophecy, largely because the heroine of that book is not the embodiment of light and goodness and has to struggle with herself. Not that Foxmask is a bad book, it is just sort of there in the mediocre category, which is disappointing when I know the author can do better.

Foxmask, like the Sevenwaters trilogy, follows the story of the family that started in Wolfskin, and I enjoy how there are generational differences and repurcussions of the choices of the first book. I'm not as impressed with the view of Eyvind and Nessa's family as I was with Sorcha's in Sevenwaters, because Eyvind and company are quite firmly positioned on the Good end of things, which is boring. Mostly it's about Creidhe, Nessa and Eyvind's daughter, and Thorvald, Somerled's son, and what happens when Thorvald is determined to set out to find his father and Creidhe follows him.

While I was interested in Thorvald's story, I got a little sick of his thinking all the time that the blood of this father he had never known would completely influence him, though I think the author was a little sick of it by the end as well, as she had a character point out that Thorvald actually much resembled his mother. Also, Thorvald's journey and transformation were in the end much more interesting than Creidhe. I spent a good half of the book getting thoroughly sick of everyone for some reason thinking that Creidhe was a goddess-like figure who was the embodiment of everything beautiful and good when mostly she just seemed like a normal girl.

I'm hoping that the next book Marillier writes manages to step out of the pattern she's established of having too-good-to-be-true heroines, because while I did like Sorcha in Daughter of the Forest and Fainne in Child of the Prophecy, Nessa and Liadan and Creidhe annoy me.

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Book loot!

There was a library sale ^_^. And since the bookstore is so close to this library, the library ends up getting tons of books that we don't end up buying as donations from other people. So the overall quality of the books there was pretty good. I also had some pretty funny moments in which I was looking through the books and thinking, yup, this one we rarely take, yup, M (in charge of the fiction section) has way too much of these, oh yeah, it's all the Oprah books.

I ended up getting:

Dan Brown, Angels and Demons (to give to my dad or sell to the bookstore)
Greg Critser, Fatland (to scare myself? Because Fast Food Nation has awakened an interest in this subject now)
Michael Cunningham, The Hours (I feel I should read this sometime)
Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde (I wrote a critical biography on James Joyce back in high school and idolized Ellmann and his biography of Joyce, so why not?)
Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate (Another one I feel I should read. Plus, food!)
Matthews Masayuki Hamabata, Crested Kimono (Japanese business families... not sure how good it will be, given that it was written in the eighties, but might as well)
Diana Wynne Jones, Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Vol. 1 (Charmed Life and The Lives of Christopher Chant) (I have, but the condition was too good to resist)
Louise J. Kaplan, Female Perversions (looks vaguely interesting)
Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country (feel I should read more Japanese literature)
Madeleine L'Engle, A Wind in the Door (like new copy! Luckily I have found that while I own it, this one matches the other copies of the Murray family books that I own)
Ruth L. Ozeki, My Year of Meats (looked interesting)
Sharon Kay Penman, The Sunne in Splendor (I keep hearing this title, or the movie, or something. And am on a bit of a historical fiction kick, thanks to Dunnett)
Saito Chiho, Revolutionary Girl Utena, vol. 3
Mark Salzman, Lost in Place (some customer at the store was looking for him, and it looked interesting)
Dorothy L. Sayers, Clouds of Witness
Dorothy L. Sayers, Lord Peter
Dorothy L. Sayers, Unnatural Death (haha, now that I have bought three Sayers books, I shall be forced to read the entire series!)
Dan Simmons, Hyperion (Person at work recced it)
Paula Volsky, Illusion
Paula Volsky, The Wolf of Winter (I have no idea how I heard of her... through Amazon lists, I suspect, so I shall see if they are any good)
Jane Yolen, Briar Rose (read before, am glad I found it, though I suspect it will not be a frequent reread due to depressing-ness)

Free books:

If anyone wants L'Engle's A Wind in the Door (slightly beat up, mass market with green cover portraying Proginoskes), Utena book 3 (English trans, very good condition), or DWJ's Chronicles of Chrestomanci vol. 1 (mass market, very good condition, the one with the cat on the cover), drop a comment!

Also, knullabulla, I think your email with your address got lost or something =(. Could you email me your address again at oyceter at gmail dot com, and I'll ship you Wise Child. Thanks!

MacLachlan, Patricia - The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt

Recced and lent to me by double_helix, whom I duly thank, because I very much fell in love with this book.

"Melinda Pratt rides city bus number twelve to her cello lesson, wearing her mother's jean jacket and only one sock. Hallo, world, says Minna. Minna often addresses the world, sometimes silently, sometimes out loud."

It's written in extremely clear and simple language, and yet, MacLachlan manages to describe quirks of character and fleshes out how Minna sees the world in a singularly wonderful manner. Minna Pratt is eleven and searching for her vibrato. Along the way, she would like to know why fact and fiction are both truths, how to have a normal family whose mother does not write all the time, and how to better get to know Lucas, the new boy in her chamber group who does have a vibrato.

In a way, this reminded me a little of Virginia Euler Wolff's The Mozart Season, with the obvious similarities of tying not just music, but Mozart into the lives of young girls trying to figure out themselves and their lives. And I love how music is interwoven into this book -- I can't tell if it's a little remainder of being forced to take piano lessons as a kid, but the familiarity of andantes and allegros and the like comfort me.

There's something about the way this book is written that completely charms me, especially Minna's offbeat views of the world.

"Maybe we'll be fine musicians one day. But there is more.

"I will be a ferret. Your son will be a frog.

"And that is so. Tra-la."

I think that I too would like to be a ferret or a frog some day.