Quotations Weblog

How could I resist it? It was a huge box of costume drama from the BBC and A&E. I HAD to buy it, but the name… The Romance Collection? Really? Couldn’t you find a better name than that?

Sure, Pride and Prejudice and Emma would be considered romance, but the rest, I’m not so sure about. Jane Eyre falls into the Gothic horror category. Victoria and Albert is more of a story about political intrigue. Ivanhoe? The Scarlet Pimpernel?

Seriously, if Tom Jones is considered a romance, then there is something drastically wrong with my brain. The story is more a morality play than a romance, isn’t it?

I haven’t watched Lorna Doone yet, but a young man whose family is murdered during a civil war isn’t really the kind of guy who can just brush that off and fall into a romance. Is he?

I’m not complaining. I’m happy with the thirty luscious hours of period piece drama, but I really wouldn’t have called it The Romance Collection.

I never got into Sex And The City when it was showing on HBO. With the movie release this month, I thought that I would give the television series a try. I downloaded the first season of Sex And The City on iTunes and thought that I would give a few episodes a watch.

Two weeks and hours of nearly obsessive watching later, I have decided that this series was one of the most intelligent shows on television. Sure, there are the gratuitous f-bombs and sex scenes that just scream, “We’re on HBO!” If you can wade through the sex talk, there is a gutsy story of four women in New York. Like the proverbial hooker with a heart of gold, Sex And The City has a lot to offer the thinking mind.

Here are my favorite quotes:

From the pre-9-11 shots of New York and the World Trade Center to the picturesque image of Paris, this series is so enjoyable that I think I will have to go back and watch it again at a much slower rate. If you thought that Sex And The City wasn’t for you because it was all about sex, then give this show a try. EVERY time you start feeling like the show is going over the edge, there is a character who complains about it going over the edge and voicing your outrage. It’s witty and it never takes itself too seriously. Enjoy!

I’ve talked before about how much I enjoyed Little Brother by Cory Doctorow:

• Quotations Weblog » Archive » Review: Little Brother by Cory Docotorow

It looks like Wil Wheaton had a similar experience when he read the book and shared it with his son.

• WWdN: In Exile: in which a book builds a bridge

If you haven’t read this book and shared it with your family, today is a good day to start.

Always willing to give us a good recommendation, Unshelved reviewed Supermarket by Brian Wood and Kristian Donaldson. You can see it here:

• Unshelved - Supermarket by Brian Wood and Kristian Donaldson

It sounds like and interesting read, but the review from Amazon, doesn’t really tell us much:

In the future world of Supermarket, it’s the literal truth. Legitimate and black-market economies rule the City, overseen by the vying factions of the Yakuza and Porno Swede crime families. convenience store clerkette and 16-year old suburban wise-ass Pella Suzuki suddenly finds herself in the middle of it all, heir to an empire she couldn’t possibly inherit, but hit men on both sides aren’t taking any chances.

Unshelved’s review is more informative:

Pella and her parents lived in a high-end suburb at the edge of the sprawl. She worked at a convenience store every other weekend to keep the moral high ground over the over-consumption of her wealthy parents. She had no idea what they did - she just knew they were loaded and connected.

Then one day, she returned home to find her parents murdered. A message from her mom sent her into the city to hide. Now her cash cards are no good. She’s tired. Hungry. And the Yakuza are after her.

They also recommend Demo by Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan. The same author with a different illustrator bring you twelve stories of conflicted teens.

With DEMO Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan present an amazing set of dark stories with brilliant black/white art. Each story is short but telling, as we see several teens coping with the rougher side of having superpowers. This is much better reading and art than can be found in the similar Marvel comic NYX. I highly recommend this collection over the mainstream’s version as it has more grit and more heart.

If you have been looking for a couple of good graphic novels to read, Unshelved brings you some solid recommendations.

I just finished reading Cory Doctorow’s new book, Little Brother. I thought I was paranoid before. I thought I had a healthy paranoia, but now I know I was sorely mistaken. NOW I’m REALLY paranoid.

I always knew that anyone could spy on me at any time. I never had an illusion of privacy. That’s probably why I’m so comfortable writing about every facet of my life on the Internet. I never had any privacy to begin with, so I don’t really have a problem telling my side of the story.

My sense of security used to lie with the idea that there is safety in numbers. There are SO many people out there in the world that it would take the CIA or the Department of Homeland Security or the Ministry of Trust or whatever, too much manpower to watch everyone. There is just too much data out there for the government to spy on me, so I felt safe.

Well, all that data is EXACTLY what could be used to spy on me. Using the same technology that filters out spam from my email, the government could look for anomalies. Anything that is out of the ordinary could be flagged by a computer and then the goons could swoop in and watch me in person.

THAT is exactly what happens in Little Brother. Our hero, Marcus Yallow, was in the wrong place at the wrong time and suddenly his innocence didn’t matter anymore.

The scariest part of this book for me was how Marcus’ father reacted to the whole incident. His father had been part of the fight for equality and to end the Vietnam war in the sixties, but after seeing the terrorism, he bends over backward to allow our liberties to be taken away. I have seen the same with my own mother, who was a staunch Democrat all during my childhood. To see her agree with the Republican party line right now is a mirror to this world of fiction that makes me sad and scared.

I found a few really good quotes in this book:

As with every good book, I started reading Little Brother and found myself, hours later, exhausted and wanting to read more. Give yourself a good weekend to burn through this book with no other obligations to get in the way because you won’t want to stop reading.