Confession of a Book-Shopaholic

Forgive me, for I have sinned. I have always been a hoarder, and have often been called a great beginner and a lousy finisher. This, however, goes beyond the pale of even the depths that I could imagine sinking to. I have 40 books lying around the house that I paid for, but haven't read. My face - it is far too unworthy to be palmed.

Here's how it works: a book piques my interest, so I pick it up. Used to be, I bought compulsively in bookstores - these days, the Kindle and its squadron of cross-platform apps makes it easy to buy books impulsively and compulsively. Once picked up, if the book doesn't immediately grab me, or if my busy life intrudes, I tell myself I'll put them on a shelf just there. I promise to come back to them eventually. Turns out, I don't very often...

To find 40 abandoned or unread, definitely neglected books on my physical and virtual shelves was, as you can imagine, a deep shock. This then, is a public shaming (or as indirectly public as I dare make it). Let me regale you with the tale of how I got here, how I discovered my problem, and what I intend to do about it...

Sunrise, Sunset, Midnight

An American man called Jesse meets a French woman called Celine on a train in 1994, they spend a night walking around Vienna, fall in love a little 'Before Sunrise'. They part wistfully, agreeing to meet again a year from the day, and the last haunting glimpse we have of them is them smiling - perhaps at how silly that idea seems... Nine years later, Jesse has written a book about that day, and Celine walks into a book signing event in a quaint Parisian bookshop. They spend the time 'Before Sunset' walking around Paris, before Jesse has to catch a flight back to the States. They leave you, the viewer, wondering if at the end of that evening Jesse boards his flight back, or actually stays...

The latter apparently, because here they are, vacationing in Greece as a family another nine years later, and spending an all too rare date night away from real life and its cares and concerns. Or perhaps not, because although in keeping with the tradition of this brilliant now-trilogy of movies, 'nothing happens' - a lot does happen 'Before Midnight'...

Now let me say up-front that I'm an unabashed fan-boy of this phenomenon that Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, and Julie Delpy have so lovingly crafted. I've been dying to watch this movie for some time now - so I'm saying this is not a review. This is a rave, a reaction, a salute; one last, longing look at the swirls of chocolate mousse still in the bowl when you know you cannot possibly eat a lick more... this is the satisfied burp that tells you, oh no, you're too full!

Anyone that calls themselves a cinephile or a romantic must needs find a way to watch this movie; if you haven't yet watched the first two entries in the 'series', I'd suggest you watch those first. I suppose this movie stands well enough alone, but watching the first two movies will give it an extra dose of magic. I for one couldn't imagine watching this movie and not the others; or for that matter write about this latest movie without referencing the prior ones - yes, this will be a long post.

I shall do my utmost to avoid spoilers. That said, the fact that the movie exists is itself a spoiler for the end of the second movie, and some of the 'plot' has been revealed in the trailers, so those bits I will reference. And all of that is below the fold...

Game of the Year - Tomb Raider (2013)

I've played 7 out of the 10 Tomb Raider games that have come out since 1996, and across platforms (PC, Wii, and now, Xbox) - I only skipped 5, 6, and Anniversary. And before I played the new reboot of Tomb Raider that came out last month, I was one of those people that pined for the good old days of Tomb Raider 2's tigers and Venetian canals.

That has changed. Crystal Dynamics have made a reboot that rivals any reboot in any media (yes, including Batman Begins), and not only is it my favorite Tomb Raider ever, it is also my favorite game this year (so far), and it works as a remix of Indiana Jones, Lost, and your favorite FPS...

To me, this beats Assassin's Creed III at its own.... uh... game. It features better storytelling, equally good combat/ free-running, and amazing puzzles and exploration elements, all in a somewhat smaller world-size. AC better watch out, because Lara even has her own Eagle Vision now!

I started writing this post on Google+ and switched over to the blog as my raving grew in length. I now realize this is the first game I'm actually blogging about. How about that? Well it is a deserving one, that easily deserves a 9 on a scale of 10. Here's why...

Man of Tomorrow - Today

You will believe...

When Richard Donner made "Superman" in 1978, the tag-line was "You will believe a man can fly". Although Star Wars had only just come out, and Krypton could be pronounced as "CRIP-tun" by half your characters (instead of CRIP-taun) without a Reddit-y uproar, it was necessary to reassure the audience this was just a man, not an alien from another world. That world therefore had to be a pristine, crystalline, neon-lit, but ultimately sterile place backed up by the gravitas that Don Corleone brought to it.

Superman could be - had to be - the blue eyed, red-brief-on-the-outside wearing Nietzschean hero who (Fascist undertones notwithstanding) would be a bewildered Kansan in a big city that fights for 'truth, justice, and the American way'. The meanest villain imaginable for Superman in this Cold War era was nuclear weapons gone rogue, and no one took a super-hero seriously, so it was OK to reverse the Earth's spin and turn back time and for Lex Luthor to be a bumbling criminal genius with a real estate fetish...

Actually corniness was not something to be frowned at - it was a prerequisite! One of the iconic funny exchanges I remember from the movie is this mid-air snippet from when Superman saved Lois Lane as she fell out of a helicopter and off a building:

SUPERMAN: Don't worry miss, I've got you!
LOIS (hysterical): You've got me..? Who's got YOU?!

A trustworthy alien?

Fast forward 35 years and audiences no longer have trouble believing a man can fly! We've seen Neo go off and "do the Superman thing" in the Matrix movies. The Avengers have fought as a team to ward off an invasion of Earth. Alternate worlds have come alive, fully fleshed out, in their grime and bile as much as their radiance, in everything from Avatar to Game of Thrones. Zod can no longer be a promise made for a sequel in the era of instant gratification.

We leave rogue nukes for mortals like Jack Bauer to handle these days, and even cartoon fiction like 'Ben 10' is deadly serious about the origin tale, and has little tolerance for corniness. Comic books, and movies based on them, are acceptable and mainstream enough that critics spend time debating what the Joker (from The Dark Knight) represents in a post-9/11 era...

This is the perilous airstrip on which lands Zack Snyder's "Man of Steel". I thought it does the job of bringing Superman to the post-modern era well, while faltering just a little... I am not much of a star-giving reviewer, especially when the movie is about source material that I am so invested in - but if I had to, I'd give this a 3 out of 5. Let me explain why...

The Game

To understand the game
Needs rising above it.
Until, beyond,
At the root of meaning
One finds the reason,
And in disdain,
Loses the appetite to play
Thus losing the game...

A Pirate's Life, Just Not For Me?

I came across this thoughtful post (titled: Piracy was my shot at equality) in my morning trawl through the internet, and it really resonated with me; if you replace "Bulgaria" with "India" throughout this piece, and made a few other contextual amendments, I could've written it!

Piracy has become a four-letter word. In the public square, everyone agrees it's bad. Then everyone not in the US goes home from the debate, starts up uTorrent, and downloads Season 1 of House of Cards...

A lot of these people are 'pirates' only because Netflix is stupid enough to (despite being, y'know, an online company) not optimize its access to the global market-place. Or because the big evil "Studios" demand distribution in this country and not any other (this doesn't really apply to House of Cards though, methinks?) Others (even so called rich young brats) pirate it because they simply don't have the money to buy it. Still others pirate it because their government has decided that the depiction of duplicitous politics and (gasp!) sex and swearing is a no no for its populace of tender asexual lambs.

But is it really all that bad a thing? This is a question I've struggled with pretty much ever since I got access to the Internet - what, a little less than 20 years ago? What follows then, is a rumination on this still unresolved conundrum...

The Worldstream (and yelling: STOP!)

I consciously stay about a month behind in reading long-form items in my Google Reader stream. This is one of the reasons why I am only now reading this article by David Gelernter; and despite the fact that all the comments it has received on Wired basically accuse him of smoking something while writing it, I find it to be... well, visionary. Among other things, this napkin sketch the author did for Wired (on the left) struck me as one of the best representations of the new paradigm.

The web is changing - or has partially changed, and irrevocably so. We have gone from the "Web" metaphor of the 90s (when Google could capitalize on the way pages linked to one another to come up with a Page Rank) to the "Stream" metaphor, where companies like Twitter lead from the front, and those like Facebook or Google or Pinterest get it with their Timeline and Google+ products. In the Stream, you're not looking for things of interest alone, you're looking for things you should be looking at right now.

The Scab

In the face of mindless malice
This city shrugs, again.
Outrage, intrigue, blame, concern
Vivisected per usual, through a dull ache

Networks light up, with concern, with baying
Martyrdom is on the departed bestowed
The accused accursed, the vehemence ever growing
For pundits and experts with brows furrowed

Who was warned? Who is to blame?
Who was the sod who felt such hate?
Who got there first? Who got away?
Who wasn't lucky, and you, sir - what say?

Spare a moment here, I beg
Not in memoriam, nor lofty praise

One Last Turn of the Wheel

I've never been this excited for a book for so long a time. That was the first thought in my head when I finally got my hands on "A Memory of Light", by Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan - the final book of "The Wheel of Time". I had been wanting to read this book, this ending, ever since I first read "The Eye of the World" back in 2002. Funny, I thought it'd been longer!

Rand al'Thor (finally) comes to Shayol Ghul

For me, as for many other fans of fantasy literature born in the 80s, this series was our post-Tolkein bridge into contemporary fantasy literature. It has now come to occupy that special place, reserved for ticklers of the imagination like Star Wars, or the Matrix mythos, or Middle-Earth, which once reached makes the thing that got there immortal. Never mind the flaws, apparent and unnoticed! Here  is a dream, an escape, that will be dear to you forever after. An old friend that you have spent enough time getting to know that you do not notice the rough edges, or the parochial attitude. A house so well lived in, you don't mind the crumbling paint.

Did I love this book? Absolutely! Was there ever a realistic chance I wouldn't? Not really. What follows then is not so much a review, but a retrospective. Reflections on closure, a long time coming...

The Armchair Astronaut

This video comprises 6 must-see minutes of the Internet.

On one level, it quite compellingly points out how our obsession with building an engine to propel us to faster than light (FTL) speeds is silly. The bigger challenge by far, even if we built a USS Enterprise, would be finding our way home again :)

On another (less abstract) level, it tries to visualize the path traced through space by an object "at rest" at the equator. In this, the frame of reference it chooses is one that accounts for the Sun's and Earth's motion, but not the movement/ drift of the Solar System itself. I was disappointed when, on a further 'zoom out', they didn't show a projected 3D path for the Solar System relative to the Galaxy near the end... but I suppose that is hard to show?

Here's the thing that hits me: despite all this relative motion at ridiculous speeds, the constellations as we see them don't change for thousands of years... I know! As if we needed more proof for how far and unreachable they are!

Finally, on a poetic/ romantic level, it reminded of one of my favorite pair of poems: The Morning Song of Senlin and The Evening Song of Senlin by Conrad Aiken. Both of those are worth reading in full of course, but still... below the fold, I quote what I think is an appropriate excerpt from the latter

The Intimate Grandeur of Hugo Cabret

What a way to close out the year! This is a visual - nay sensual, in the most epistemological sense of the word - tour de force that one cannot help but bow to.

Bravo Martin Scorsese, for your evident love of cinema and for the patient crafting that has gone into this masterpiece. Bravo, Asa Butterfield for being innocence personified, for acting as few adults can ever hope to once or twice in their lives. Not that Sasha Baron Cohen and Ben Kingsley, and the other child actor, Chloë Moretz didn't put up a mighty fight as he stole the show... Bravo, Robert Richardson (cinematographer) and Dante Ferretti (art director) for rendering 1930s France and the timeless imagination of Georges Méliès so magnificently!

Way back in February of 2012 I had resolved to watch this movie (along with a list of about 10 other movies with Oscar buzz); until the 30th of December, I had managed to watch every one of them except Hugo. As fate would have it, I would watch it in the closing hours of the year, in an almost private screening, right before descending into four solid hours of bacchanalia and revelry. Now, twenty four hours later, my body feels the tiredness from those four hours, but my mind is still fixed on the movie...

This movie has been amply reviewed and raved about, and so this is not a review. This instead is an account of my experience of the movie, which was not optimal in a sense, but fitting. I'll explain, I promise...