Under the Skin

They always say that the book is better than the book.  But is that always the case? I don't think so.  Today, because I love lists, I will show you 10 times when this is not true. As always, they are in no particular order. Of course, this does not consider any books that are rated R. TV series are not eligible for this list. 1) Stardust   I really liked this movie.  I actually saw this movie before I read the book, because when I saw it I didn't know that there was a book. I thought it was made up for a movie.  There is a book, by Neil Gaiman.  He's a great author, but I don't think he was up to his game on this movie.  I think it was a very weak book.  The movie was well-acted, well-thought, a good story line, with good music and good special effects.  But the book was kind of scattered in where the plot was going, and I thought the pacing was very weird. For example, in the book, Yvaine and Tristran (yeah, in the book he...

Well, everyone, someday, I will be caught up on my book reviewing, and I will write posts about other things.  I actually am accumulating a fairly good list of opinion posts to write, so I have some substance brewing.  But today, I give another book review. Full disclaimer on this one:  the author is a friend of mine.  I like to say good friend, but since I haven't actually physically been in her presence since I graduated from high school, I don't know what the rules are on this. But I was the president of the Inglemoor High School Writing Club in my senior year when she was a sophomore. Actually, I was the prime minister, because we were writers and weird and so we insisted that we operated on a parliamentary system with the faculty adviser as our queen. I edited the literary magazine, Saga (we were the Vikings).  Two years later, she did those things, and I always knew that she was a far more talented writer and editor than I was, and I knew that she had pr...

  “Simply being alive was not enough to be called living." I want to like Kiera Cass. I really do. I don't know why I keep on giving her so many chances. The Selection series was garbage. The spin-off was more of the same. This one...well, let's just say that it started nauseatingly. I don't think I have ever before actually had the urge to puke from a book. So, I guess that's an achievement. Then, it got better. And then worse. And then better. There kept on being a plot point or an aspect or a turn that made me think, "Maybe she's worth her salt as a writer after all." (No pun intended...salt...yeah, it's bad). Then that little twist would twist again and make me go, "Nevermind." I did enjoy the inclusion of a line of Kafka in a buttercream frosting YA novel. (FYI teen girl books that I like but don't want to like are either cotton candy or gumdrops. Buttercream frosting...no one really likes it and it makes you ...

I have always been fascinated by pain.   I know, weird. Go ahead with the Count Rugen jokes. But I have.   My copy of C.S. Lewis’ Problem of Pain is well-loved.   I wrote an entire paper on pain in my New Testament class, and one that focused on the pain/empathy aspect of the Atonement in Book of Mormon class.   It’s a continuing fascination.   Basically, I have eventually come to realize that the ability to feel pain is actually one of God’s greatest gifts to us. In 2 Nephi, we learn that we can only experience the good of the world by also feeling its negatives.   And I’m not even convinced that pain is always a negative thing.   To feel no emotional pain is psychopathy.   To feel no physical pain is a medical disease too.   And there are too many times throughout the scriptures that good men and women cry in pain and sorrow to a good end.   I believe that Rispah wailing over her dead son was a good thing, not a bad thing, even...