January 21, 2009

Bones and books

Posted by dogpossum on January 21, 2009 8:01 PM in the category bones and books and television | Comments (0)

I really like Bones, but it's a little lacking in scientific... hell, logical reality.

1. Would you use an elevator to reach the floor of a building where a bomb had blown up and caused a fire?

2. The computer machine thing that the girl lab person (what was happening in that sentence?) uses to recreate an image of the victim works a little too quickly. It's also a little dodgily convenient. I doubt its existence. I also doubt (in the nicest possible way) an artist's ability to write a program so sophisticated it could 'build' a picture (a 3D picture!) of a person from a bone fragment. Maybe she does have mad programing skills, but that sort of seriously specialised mad programing skills? Nope.

3. Whatsit Boreanz isn't the best actor. He's fully built, but has dodgy posture (though that's improved a bit). I think he's a cheery person in real life. This isn't a critique of the program, merely an observation.

4. I do like it that Bones' boss is also an alpha chick. And that Boreanz doesn't really mind being bossed about women. Ace.

I'll post more observations about Bones as I come to them.

Also, we are watching Mad Men. It tends to rely on the 'woah, things were weird in the 50s' effect a little too much. The story moves so slowly and there are so few parallel story lines, it makes for quite boring viewing. I like the 50s stuff but not enough to be distracted from the fairly boring story line. Quite frankly, I don't really care about the protagonist's 'secret past'. Not even for curiousity's sake.

And, on an even sider side point, today I spent about four hours in three different book shops. Firstly, I went to Kukinyani (doods, I just cannot spell that). I spent about two hours there, wandering around the young adult fiction section. Then I spent some time in the illustrated books section (can't remember the fancy word for comics I'm afraid). Mostly I was with the YA stuff. I put together a very expensive pile then left all but one book with a very nice campy boy who recommended Alison Bechdel's other book when he saw I had the most recent Dykes to Watch Out For book.
I ended up going home with an Ursula K. LeGuin short story collection (in the Earthsea universe) - one of the pretty re-releases. I left the Bechdel book and three Jane Yolan books (The Heart's Blood series) in the pile.

Then I went to Galaxy Books. I remember it being better than it is. It's also a bit expensive. And they don't have a separate YA section. Which is annoying.
Then I went to Abbey's and spent a loooong time in the YA section, and then an even longer time just kind of cruising the ground floor. Many more YA books added to my list. And then some other awesome things, including a book (in the serious style guides/editing/how to write a book section) telling you how to write a book using proper pirate talk. It's apparently an historically accurate guide to pirate vernacular. It also looks just like a 'real' pirate book. And rocks. I've just been reading Tanith Lee's Piratica books (all three, and all three are utterly awesome - totally rockingly awesome), and suddenly, I'm totally into pirates. Not sure I want to write a pirate book, though. At any rate, I then had to kill a bit of time, so I started looking through every shelf quite carefully. And instead of just looking, I had a proper girl look, and actually took things off the shelf, moved them around, looked properly and closely. It was ace. My interest was especially caught by books about:
- music and dance in Australia (not actually all that awesome, disappointingly)
- a French widow champagne maker who smuggled the stuff internationally during the French revolution
- R. Crumb's 1980s life and art (saucy but also interesting, especially his drawings of blues musicians)
- explorers who died on the job - for Australia Day: Captain Cook was speared and then eaten by Hawaiins. Awesome.
... there were a bunch of others, but I can't remember them. Basically, my eyeballs were kind of blowing up after all that really small font. Suddenly, I just want to read and read and read. Wish I was rich.

I don't mean this to sound as if I don't read and read and read usually. I'm always reading. It's just that, all of a sudden, I'm discovering new books that I haven't been leant or bought second hand. Suddenly, I'm looking at non-fiction (what is with that?). It's weird.
I'm still having trouble with the price difference between adult and YA books. Why are YA books between $10 and $17 (unless they're something bullshitty like the Twilight crap) and adult books over $20? They're often the same size. The font is frequently the same size (especially if we're talking about those terrible 'books for women' - not the romances, those terribly books with bright covers and stories about shoes and chocolate). So why the price difference? Not that i'm complaining, mind you, but I am confused. Also, I wish books were cheaper.

Posted by dogpossum on January 21, 2009 8:01 PM in the category bones and books and television