“Rent fans…are known colloquially as ‘Rentheads’ and even more colloquially as the most annoying of all musical fans” — Kelly Nestruck in The Guardian

I’m also happy that a new cast are getting to play these characters. They breathe new life into them and most importantly, bring new sides to the characters.

For instance, Matt Shingledecker shows a more obviously vulnerable side to Roger in Another Day, which is unexpected but simultaneously feels okay. Mark, who Anthony Rapp played so shy and dorky in the original, is played more confidently by Adam Chanler-Beret in 2011.

Overall, I’m delighted that this show is back, even if there were little things that annoy me. There are always going to be things that irk you about a new cast if you’ve been familiar with one for so long.

Overall, the show is back, delighting new audiences. Jonathan Larson’s touching musical can now be experienced in the flesh by new generations, and that’s wonderful.

That’s why I didn’t condemn Glee covering Take Me Or Leave Me a while back. I knew several people who heard the song on Glee (a show that enjoys a much more mainstream status than RENT) and then went and checked out the show behind it.

Anything that leads people to the musical is fine with me. You want them to experience it. Some won’t like it, but it’ll change other people’s lives for the better.

Photo: Matt Shingledecker (Roger) and I, outside the New World Stages, NYC.

I’ll start by discussing the trilogy as a whole, and say that I really enjoyed it. I started off by getting the audiobook version of each book, but eventually found that audiobooks were too slow a way of keeping up with the story and found Mum’s old paperback versions and continued the story on paper. That’s a testament to how much I wanted to follow the action. Interestingly, I never had problems with all the Swedish name pronunciations because of the audiobooks.

Having said all that, how much can I dislike a series about an investigative journalist and a maverick computer hacker, when I’m looking to go into the journalism field and have a big interest in computers?

In the first book (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), I’ll admit that the story-line took a while to get going. Once it did, though, we were presented with an interesting mystery that kept us reading until the end, where we were provided with a satisfying ending.

However, it soon became apparent that Larsson was just gunning the engine and stretching his fingers with Book 1, because The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest was when everything really took off. I’m going to talk about them together because in my mind, they really are two sides to the same book. The mystery and intrigue here are several levels above what we saw in the first book. Not only that, but Larsson finds his storytelling groove. The prose and dialogue become more fluid and natural-sounding, while the plot twists are enough to keep any adrenaline-junkie satisfied.

Yes, it’s true that the books are unusually graphic. A lot of the reviews on GoodReads and Amazon label it ‘gratuitous’ and ‘unnecessary’. There’s no doubt that it’s pretty graphic, but I don’t think it’s gratuitous or unnecessary. The series wouldn’t be what they are without those scenes, and I think it’s important to move past them and appreciate the rest of the novels.

Best of the series? The last one, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, is the perfect conclusion to a fantastic series. It ties everything together perfectly and you’re left feeling quite satisfied at the ending, which doesn’t always happen.

On GoodReads, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo gets 4 out of 5 stars, The Girl Who Played With Fire also gets 4, but The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest gets the full 5. Fully suggest you check ‘em out.

While I was in America though, I asked Mum if I could choose a book for the club at the next opportunity. I wanted to choose something for its members that I didn’t think they’d have seen before, and one from a genre that they wouldn’t usually read. Originally, I planned to go with Misery by Stephen King but eventually settled on Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman.

Northern Lights is easily my favourite book ever. I’m not a fan of fantasy novels so it’s probably odd that I love this book so much. Set in a parallel universe, it tells the story of Lyra’s journey to the Arctic to rescue her friend Roger and her imprisoned uncle, Lord Asriel. To me, this parallel universe reminded me in some ways of the start of the 1900s, zepplins are used and there is no technology. There are actually quite few fantasy elements, it’s just set in a universe that is unlike ours. The biggest stretch of the imagination comes in the people’s daemons — physical manifestations of someone’s soul that walk alongside them in the form of a talking, thinking animal.

The book is fast-paced and well-written throughout, Pullman weaves together a tapestry of plot-lines and events and we follow them throughout the novel, marveling at his wit and imagination. Religion plays a big part of the books, the Church being the antagonist of the novel. However, Pullman has said that neither he nor his books are against religion, what he calls the ‘religious impulse’, but says that the books are more a criticism of organized religion:

But organised religion is quite another thing. The trouble is that all too often in human history, churches and priesthoods have set themselves up to rule people’s lives in the name of some invisible god (and they’re all invisible, because they don’t exist) – and done terrible damage. In the name of their god, they have burned, hanged, tortured, maimed, robbed, violated, and enslaved millions of their fellow-creatures, and done so with the happy conviction that they were doing the will of God, and they would go to Heaven for it.

That is the religion I hate, and I’m happy to be known as its enemy.

When he was asked if his books were specifically anti-Catholic, he replied that:

If there is a God, and He is as the Christians describe Him, then He deserves to be put down and rebelled against

All in all, Northern Lights is a phenomenal book that I wholeheartedly recommend that you check out.

Adam Rapp is a fantastic author, one of my favourites. Specifically, he writes phenomenal prose. Describing intermittent showers as the work of ‘narcoleptic weather gods’ sums up his style, using metaphors and similes very well throughout the novel.

The novel is a first-person story of a Midwestern youth who moves to the East Village in New York City, squatting in an abandoned building. There he battles poverty and tries to finish his novel “about acute knee pain and the end of the world”.

The novel is somewhat autobiographical. Adam Rapp also grew up in the Midwest and moved to New York City to pursue a career as an author. For this reason, all the scenes describing their everyday life carry a lot of gritty realism.

One thing that jarred with me is the dark twist that the novel took in the last 50 or so pages. It was poignant, of course, but seemed so bizarrely different to the rest of the novel, like they were two pieces of two completely different jigsaw pieces. Written just as well, but different and somewhat out of place to me.

The book gets a 3.49/5 average on GoodReads and only 2.5/5 on Amazon, both of which I think are far too low. To me, this book is easily 4/5, even 4.5/5, even with the last segment. It was an incredibly addicting book and I finished in just 10 days, which is lightning-fast by my standards.

Some parts probably not suitable for all readers, which is why I chose Phillip Pullman’s Northern Lights for my Mum’s book club.

In no particular order:

Siamese Dreams — The Smashing Pumpkins

The Smashing Pumpkins are a relatively recent discovery for me, but I’ve fallen in love with them quickly. The intricate guitar, the simple drums, Billy Corgan’s reedy vocals — it’s a fantastic album.

Out of Time — R.E.M.

The now-famous mandolin opening to this song came from guitarist Peter Buck, who taped his attempts to learn the instrument he’d just bought.

“When I listened back to it the next day, there was a bunch of stuff that was really just me learning how to play mandolin, and then there’s what became ‘Losing My Religion’, and then a whole bunch more of me learning to play the mandolin.”

In the song, Michael Stipe sings the lines “That’s me in the corner/That’s me in the spotlight/Losing my religion”. Depending on who you listen to, the phrase “Losing My Religion” (an expression from the Southern region of the US, where R.E.M. are from) refers to when someone loses their temper or civility. There are others who will say that the phrase means to fall in love, or specifically when someone has unrequited love. At the end of the day, all the meanings aren’t a million miles off each other.

American Idiot — Green Day

Something a bit different and a bit more recent. American Idiot is a 2004 album from pop-punk band Green Day (wrote some more on it here). I love Tre’s drumming in this and I try to copy his originality when I drum. I feel that drums are a much bigger part of Green Day than R.E.M. or The Smashing Pumpkins, which is a big reason why I like Green Day.

What are your favourite albums at the moment?

I’ve had them for about two months now and they’re honestly amazing. The noise canceling on its own isn’t great for blocking out somebody talking (although when you’re playing music they’re as good as muted), they’re better for the low, constant droning noise of a treadmill’s whirr or an airplane’s engine.

Sound quality were excellent, so much better than the last headphones I had -Sony MDR XD 200s if you’re interested- and much more comfortable too.

Downsides are few and far between, but nonetheless present. Firstly, the design is flimsy. I’m afraid to sling them around my neck when not in use for fear of cracking them. Secondly, I strongly disagree with Bose’s claim that you get 40 hours listening per AAA battery. In practice, I’ve gotten about 15-20 hours.

Most people claim that the need for the battery is a con of these headphones. I think that with some forethought, it becomes a non-issue. I bought a pack of 20 AAA batteries and keep at least 3 in the case that came with the headphones. Problem solved.

If the pros outweigh the cons of these headphones, why is this post rather definitively titled ‘Annoyance’? Well, there’s another downside I haven’t mentioned. To most Bose QC 15 owners, this won’t matter a tick. To me, though, it’s a bit of a bummer.

The headphones don’t like the drums. They keep flickering on and off when I hit the snare drum or the toms. The sharp noise seems to upset it because the same thing doesn’t happen on any of the cymbals.

So I’m back to the rather lackluster Sony headphones for drumming now. It’s not a big problem, just annoying. Overall, Bose QC 15s get a solid 8 out of 10 from me.

Amazon Link

I started the book in America and finished it soon after I got home. It’s a good novel that with a couple of flaws that stop it being a great book.

The story is pretty well known, so I won’t spend too much time going through it — no spoilers ahead. The Torrence family take up a job as caretakers of a hotel, The Overlook. Because of the location, the hotel is unreachable in the wither months because of snow. The family must stay in the hotel over the winter and take care of it. Danny, the child, is a clairvoyant who sees ghosts of past guests and other horrors. The hotel also has a personality of its own that wrecks havoc with the family.

In my view, the book had some excellent sections that formed an archipelago in a sea of ‘ok’ parts. In fact, there needed to be something happening for the book to be good, almost. The ‘down-time’ in the novel, the lull before something new occurs, were the most trite. As such, these should have been kept to a minimum.

I gave the book 3 stars out of 5 on GoodReads, but I probably would have given it 3-and-a-half if GoodReads allowed. It had excellent parts, but in a ratio of maybe 60-40 bad/good parts. Conversely, Misery would have been about 15-85 bad/good parts and is one of my favourite novels, full stop.

In terms of scariness factor: I don’t think I get ‘into’ books like others do (I think this might just be horror books) and didn’t get scared while reading The Shining. Undeniably, it was a terrifying novel but I never found myself not wanting to read on or anything.

As I tweeted, while not a bad novel, I’d still recommend that people read Misery instead or at least before they read The Shining.

I won’t compare the two films too much because I want to talk mostly about the latter film. Based on Phillip Pullman’s fantasy novels, they involve witches, armored polar bears and contain ideas from theology, physics, spirituality and philosophy. It’s a hugely entertaining set of novels full of intricate details and powerful writing. The unfortunate part is that the series is known more for the criticism that it has received and the controversy that surrounds it, instead of the fact that they are fantastic novels.

Pullman has said that neither he nor his books are against religion, what he calls the ‘religious impulse’, but says that the books are more a criticism of organized religion:

But organised religion is quite another thing. The trouble is that all too often in human history, churches and priesthoods have set themselves up to rule people’s lives in the name of some invisible god (and they’re all invisible, because they don’t exist) – and done terrible damage. In the name of their god, they have burned, hanged, tortured, maimed, robbed, violated, and enslaved millions of their fellow-creatures, and done so with the happy conviction that they were doing the will of God, and they would go to Heaven for it.

That is the religion I hate, and I’m happy to be known as its enemy.

When he was asked if his books were specifically anti-Catholic, he replied that:

If there is a God, and He is as the Christians describe Him, then He deserves to be put down and rebelled against

When The Golden Compass was adapted into a movie in 2007, the production team faced great pressure from religious groups calling for people to boycott the movie because it was anti-religious. One can see where they’re coming from, with characters saying things like “That’s what the Church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling” and members of the Church in the novel are portrayed as zealots.

It’s a pity that Chris Weitz, director and screenplay writer, bowed to pressure and removed any reference to the Church in the film, so that the ‘Magisterium’ takes its place. Weitz has explicitly said that removing the anti-religious parts of the book were to make the film financially viable in the US. He tried to justify his actions by claiming that religion would instead appear in euphemistic terms, which led to (entirely justified, I believe) criticism that “they are taking the heart out of it, losing the point of it, castrating it…”

Finally, the movie seems to end at a very odd point, different to the novel. The movie cuts out the final chapters because (ugh) the studio wanted an upbeat ending. The problem is that the ending doesn’t really make sense — several plot points are left unsolved. Weitz has said that this was done to facilitate “the best possible beginning to the second”. The problem is, the film was such a flop that no sequels were made. Inside sources agree that the Catholic Church put pressure on New Line Cinema (the studio)

The pity is that the Harry Potter series that got so much attention and money and the best in the business working on their film adaptions, while another, equally good fantasy series got left on the wayside.

I’ve had my Amazon Kindle a couple of days now and I can honestly say that the move from book to eBook is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

The Screen

The first that I noticed about the Kindle as I took it out of the box is just how much like a printed page it is. A lot of tech stuff comes out of the box with some cardboard on it, with a mockup of what the product looks like in use, and I honestly thought there was some paper like this on my Kindle. That just couldn’t be a screen?! As it turns out, Amazon didn’t give their baby a backlit screen that the iPad and such has. It has technology that’s known as Electronic Ink. Why? Well, one, it improves the battery life a lot. Apple’s website boasts that the iPad has up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music [1]. The Amazon Kindle has up to 30 days of battery life [2]. Electronic Ink also means that the screen looks like a printed page. I spend a lot of time each day behind a screen and I always like to give my eyes a break when I read a book. With the Kindle, that doesn’t change.

One downside, if you’d even call it that, is that when you turn the page, the Ink has to ‘refresh’ and this leads to a screen flash. It’s hard to describe if you’ve never seen it but basically, when you turn the page, the colours invert for about half a second. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest but some negative reviews of the device mention it as an annoyance.

I should mention navigating menus here too. It’s a pain. It’s slow and laggy. However, this is not your laptop and you spend most of your time reading, not going around the menus. Imagine a book being hard to open. In fact, because I don’t use the wireless (I buy the books on my laptop), my use of the menus is limited to flicking down to my current book and selecting it. Even with that, I don’t often do that, because if I’m in a book and shut the Kindle down, it starts up the next time on my page — bypassing the menu entirely.

You need light to read the Kindle screen, but since books need light too, I hardly see this as a downside.

The Physical Thing

The Kindle is wonderful to hold and use. Lighter than any paperback I’ve held recently, I can it hold above my head lying down (can you honestly say you can do that with your iPad?) or just in my hands. For long reading periods, I tend to rotate the screen and hold the device landscape, as it fits nicer. Furthermore, my Cerebral Palsy affects my left hand as well as my leg, and holding books open for long periods got sore on my hand. The Kindle is a lot smaller, so can be used with one hand or propped up by another book or whatever.

Yep, it reads to you too

A lot of the criticism of the device comes from what you can’t do on it — what? people say, no email? no photos?

I don’t say this much, but they’re actually doing it wrong — they misunderstand what they’re looking at. The Kindle is not “Amazon’s answer to the iPad” — the Kindle is the new book. Can you check your email on your first edition Romeo and Juliet? No, because when you’re reading a novel or the newspaper, you’re switched off. The downside of Apple’s iBooks is that you’re reading them on on an iPad or iPhone, and there’s a big distraction there to check Twitter or your email or play Angry Birds. The Kindle has no more functionality than your paperback and that’s how it should be.

The Store

I should say at the start that I’ve bought no books on the Kindle itself — both of the books that I’ve read (Mark Coggins’ The Immortal Games and Stephen King’s The Shining) have been bought on my laptop and then transferred via USB cable to the Kindle.

I could do it off Wifi but I like not having to navigate much on the Kindle itself. Buying on the go is the only reason you’d pay an extra $50 for the 3G Kindle (well, that and being able to wirelessly send yourself books you buy on your computer when not on Wifi) — I honestly think it’s not worth it though.

Kindle pricing varies a lot — usually from about $.99 to $12.99. I’ve never seen a Kindle book more expensive than its paperback version so I think that you can safely say that you’ll always save money buying on your Kindle, even if it’s only a dollar or two. I myself have made back about $13 of my $139 Kindle purchase thanks to the better Kindle pricing.

Overall

Your original investment of $139 is/will be made up in the savings you make buying the Kindle edition of books, but where the Kindle really shines is in the simple fact that I will read more because I have one. I spend about half my life on trains (about 80 hours in the month of August) but I never read that much on them because they’d have weighed my bag down. I can now have up to 3,500 books in something smaller than 1 paperback, which means that I will take it with me everywhere, and will read exponentially more books. That’s something that, to me, you can’t put a price on, and that even if I didn’t make back the money –that Kindle books were always $5 more than paperbacks– I’d still do it.

It makes you wonder — if you could pay for more stuff like this, eating better, going to the gym more, sleeping better, reading more books or spending more time with their family and so on, would people do it?

The Amazon Kindle is $139 dollars from Amazon. You can purchase the device and the books for it with an Irish credit card. I don’t know if their 3G version (which costs $189) works in Ireland, anyone know?

Any questions about the Kindle? Ask in the comments or email tommyATcollisonDOTie (replacing AT with @ and DOT with a period/full stop).

[1] Source: iPad tech specs page on Apple.com.

[2] Assuming you have the Wifi-only Kindle with Wifi turned off (3 weeks with it on). Wifi + 3G one: 1 months with connectivity off (10 days with it on). Source: Amazon’s Kindle Page

[1] Read more

[2] Learn Dvorak

[3] Get back in contact with the people that I used to talk to more

[4] Get back playing Chess

All of these are long-term goals as opposed to something that has a definite endpoint but that’s ok because I’m happy to report that I’m working well at all of these goals. I thought that as such, I’d do a review of the books that I read. There won’t be a definite schedule to these review posts and I hope that I can keep up my good reading mojo when I’m back in the hustle and bustle of the real world. Without further ado…

The Queen’s Gambit — Walter Tevis

Ken Armstrong recommended this book to me after I tweeted about getting back into Chess while I was in America. I’d recently discovered the wonder that was the Hennepin County Library, so that’s where I picked it up.

The term ‘chess book’ probably conjures up thoughts of studied openings or analyzing Capablanca’s greatest games, but that’s not what The Queen’s Gambit is — it’s more a book with chess as a feature throughout.

The Queen’s Gambit is a bildungsroman[1] about chess follows Beth Harmon from childhood (where she battles an addiction to tranquilizers) to adulthood (where she battles an addiction to alcohol). She overcomes all these hardships to become a chess Grandmaster and winner of the U.S. Open Championship.

Called “Rocky for smart people”, it’s not surprising that some could non-Chess players could be turned off reading this book because of the central role that Chess plays. What they don’t realize is that this book would work just as well if Beth was working to become a checkers or dominoes Grandmaster. Tevis achieves this by never delving too deeply into the chess games, past a couple of moves.

What singularly makes this book worth the reading is the originality of the protagonist and the unique way that the author writes her. While stereotypes are used in the cast of supporting characters, Beth is unlike anything I’ve come across.

Tevis struggled with social isolationism and alcoholism prior to writing The Queen’s Gambit and one could almost guess it in the way he writes, in the same way it’s obvious that the man was a chess player. There’s a fluidity that comes with naturally knowing something that it always present in the novel.

There was nothing that I actively disliked in this book, but if I was pushed, there was a slight slump in the middle when Beth’s alcoholism really takes hold. It’s as if Tevis, devoid of chess to write about, is at a loss for words. This section doesn’t last but it is long enough for the reader to consciously slog through it.

Available from Amazon

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[1] bildungsroman — a lovely German word I learnt recently describing a novel that follows the protagonist’s moral or psychological growth from childhood to adulthood.