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various books

Howdy,

Let's see, where to start...

I like Harry Potter, I just don't understand why it's become the hottest
thing since sliced bread.  It's not *that* good.  Still, maybe it'll
turn kids on to the true classics.

Love the dark is rising series, although I wish I had never read the last two
pages.

I liked the neverending story, but found his style a little... cutesy, I guess.
All that "aber das ist eine andere Geschichte, und soll eine andere Zeit
erzaehlt werden" stuff got kinda grating after a while.  Still, it's been a
long time since I read it; I should give it another shot.  The local movie 
theater is showing the movie at midnight tomorrow night.  Maybe I'll go.

Love the George MacDonald stuff.  I confess I liked the Princess and Curdie
more than the Princess and the Goblin.  Not exactly sure why.  I liked
Curdie's quest, and all the delightful "uglies".  Also the idea of feeling
the animal beneath the person's hand was delightfully creepy.

Rhys wrote, wrt Eco:
> i thought the inclusion of kabbala was interesting.

Oh, yes, especially when he made the analogy between the letters of the 
Torah and the base pairs of DNA, connecting information chaos with
cancer.  That book is all about connections.  Amazing stuff.

Neverwhere: the first read left me unmoved, but then I got to see the original
BBC miniseries, and that, for all its flaws (Gaiman told this really funny
story about how he thought the Great Beast of London looked too much like a
cow, but his producers said that with special effects people would recognize
it.  Sure enough, when the Great Beast comes lumbering around a corner, all you
can think is "it's a cow".  :-)), made the characters and settings come alive
for me.  The guy playing de Carabis was brilliant, and Croup and Vandermar were
deliciously evil.  Hunter was bad, though.  Now I enjoy reading the book.  Go
figure.  Usually movies ruin books.  Maybe it's because the tv series came
first in this case.

The Stand is definitely King's best book, and I highly recommend it to anyone.
Some very interesting philosophy disguised as a pulp novel about a deadly
plague.  The characters are great, and the plot is gripping.  

Fiat lux,
-- 
Don Smith                    Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
dasmith at rotse2_physics.lsa.umich.edu        http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/

"Go to red alert!"  "Are you *absolutely* sure, sir?  
It does mean changing the bulb."			    - Red Dwarf

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