nekare

I've been doing my annual re-read of Howl's Moving Castle (that and Good Omens are pretty much my comfort books, and my copies are pretty much falling apart), and oh, but I don't think I'll ever really stop wishing for another movie adaptation.

It's not that Miyazaki's movie was bad (I don't think the man is capable of making a bad movie), it's just that it wasn't HMC. Not only did they pair down everyone's characters, but they got rid of what's easily my favorite part of the book: Wales. I was just really yearning to see Howl in his stupid Welsh Rugby shirt and see him coming home drunk singing silly rugby songs and his house with a Rivendell sign and his crappy car with holes in the upholstery to which Sophie clings for her life! SIGH.

I hadn't read it since Diana Wynne Jones passed. It adds a certain layer of melancholy, certainly. At least we got House of Many Ways, I suppose.

I went book shopping yesterday! It was ace. It's always such a thrill to have new books to read :3 I got: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, Castillos de cartón and Alias de geografía humana by Almudena Grandes, El Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges and Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry. Has anyone read any of them? Were they good/bad/meh?

I really want to write, but every time I try I can't seem to do anything. So! Leave me a prompt and I'll write you a drabble! Preferable fandom/pairings are Erik/Charles and Arthur/Eames, but I wouldn't be opposed to writing for Doctor Who. Go, go, go!

The thing that bothers me about Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is that it's such obvious self-insert, and yet no one seems to notice it. I mean, Stieg Larsson was a liberal political writer working for a magazine that wrote exposes on people. So what is Blomkvist? A liberal political writer working for a magazine that wrote exposes on people, that just happens to be handsome, wealthy, irresistible for the ladies and fantastical in bed acording to his boss that just can't keep herself from sleeping with him even when she shouldn't.

And then he sort of created the mary-sue to go with his avatar, a girl that seems refreshingly different on the surface to the usual political thriller novel, but becomes more and more cliched as the books go by and you find out how she's so trendy she only shops in the mac store and ikea*, rides a motorbike because she's so tough, see? she has tattoos and stuff! And piercings! she likes to kiss random girls even though she doesn't think of herself as gay or even bisexual, she just likes kissing girls because I assume the author found that hot. And of course even she can't keep away from the sheer raw magnetism exuded by said dashing writer, and then goes and gets larger breasts because she didn't think she was hot enough for men. Well awesome! BAH.

The thing is, it is very obvious that he was just writing the novels for fun in his free times, and as that, they're pretty okay, and hey, all the power to Stieg Larsson as a journalist, for all accounts he was a good guy and got really important work done and he had a bit of a crazy life (included attempted assasinations through bomb-car), if my life was as interesting I'd probably try to sneak it into a book as well; but it bothers me when people claim it's such an amazing, well thought out series, or that Salander is such a fantastic femenist character, because, eh, no. I really do think that she reads like a very straight-male kind of fantasy woman that is so kick ass and yet can't escape his charms, you know?