Update

So it's been a while - I wrote a blog entry back in December in response to a question I'd received a long time ago but when I asked one of my friends over here to review it, he advised me that it might not be the best idea to publish it. Basically, I'm still as negative and cynical as ever, but I'm trying not to publicize it as much since I'd rather stay out of trouble.

I got through Christmas and New Year's without feeling too homesick. New Year's was very boring but I've also realized, I've never actually had an eventful New Year's - somehow despite all my plans, I always ended up watching movies or something like that.

They changed one of the policies in General Order #1 so now women are allowed to visit men in their rooms and vice versa from 9 in the morning until 9 in the evening - considering that most of my peers are of the opposite gender, it makes my life more convenient and slightly adds to the amount of things I can do with people. Of course, I still can't compete with video games and have no desire to invest in an X-Box 360 (everybody is playing Call of Duty 4, and about half the company seems to be hooked up to each other), but some of us usually end up playing a board game about once a week (Balderdash, Cranium, and Risk when there are fewer people).

Work is work. Not really much to talk about there.

Books: His Dark Materials Trilogy

Since the film The Golden Compass was recently released, I figured it was time to give the books a shot. I finished His Dark Materials Trilogy last night, and I enjoyed it a lot. I'm curious to see how the movie compares, though I had heard they cut out most of the religious references - I think this will be rather hard to do with the second and third parts of the trilogy considering the outcome of the novels. I didn't like the film version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe very much and have no desire to see the follow up, though I had loved the novels as a child. Reading it as an adult, I realized that the religious references had gone straight over my head, and since my parents aren't that religious, they hadn't intended for me to read them as parables to the Bible but rather as adventurous and fantastical stories. His Dark Materials Trilogy is for older children than The Chronicles of Narnia, and isn't quite as stark in defining good and evil. Like Harry Potter, there is some moral ambiguity within the characters, and there are people such as the Master that face complicated decisions with no clear answers. Another character may do something that in any other children's book would make him the villain, but despite this action, his overall intent is still seen as the proper course. Also, another thing that Harry Potter has in common with these books is that not only do they portray the evil that an individual can cause (which of course happens in The Chronicles of Narnia), but they also show how bureocracy and systems can lead to evil. Pullman discusses and refers to the idea of the Fall, and Eve's disobedience, and I agree with the view that it was a good thing (/would've been a good thing if it had really happened and wasn't just a story). After all, I'd much rather have knowledge and consciousness than innocence and paradise. Besides, could we even recognize paradise and happiness as such if we didn't have knowledge? If all we had was blissful ignorance, how exactly would that separate us from the animals of the world? I remember some more conservative groups of Christianity had a problem with Harry Potter because they believed it endorsed witchcraft and satanism (and now of course homosexuality what with Dumbledore and all) but I don't remember if I heard about any backlash to this series. There must have been some, though, since it directly challenges the church as an organization and also questions basic beliefs. Of course, they were also released in the mid-90s, and it seems like the very conservative voices of Christianity didn't start becoming quite as heard until a few years later so that the focus has been more on Harry Potter and The DaVinci Code. I'm sure now that the movies are being made they will have more to say.

Books: The Warlord Chronicles

A friend of mine sent me The Winterking, the first of The Warlord Chronicles a few weeks ago. After finishing it, I promptly ordered the rest of the series. Actually, this is the second series I've gotten into because of this particular friend, the other being A Song of Ice and Fire (which I've been waiting for the fifth part to come out for a while now). The Warlord Chronicles, a series of three books, is yet another rewriting of the Arthur legend. I read The Mists of Avalon when I was younger so I've always been rather partial to that version, but I enjoyed The Warlord Chronicles quite a bit. While The Mists of Avalon focuses more on the mystical side of things and courtlife (obvious an oversimplification but it's been a while since I last read it), The Warlord Chronicles has quite a few more battle scenes and though Merlin, of course, is a character, the "magic" is mostly explained through tricks so Cornwell goes more for the historical fiction rather than fantasy route. I really liked some of the decisions Cornwell made with his version of the story - Lancelot was basically just a pretty boy who paid the bards well, Guinevere was a very clever woman whose sex prevented her from reaching her full potential (in The Mists of Avalon, she was pious, shy, scared and weak) and Arthur was a pagan rather than a great Christian king. Also, the Grail Quest was actually a search for a druidic cauldron. I also thought the portrayal of the conflict between the old and new religion was rather well done, and even though the Christians tend to be portrayed in a more negative light, both sides had their fanaticals. Cornwell explains some of his choices in his afterwords, and his arguments are sound. For example, when discussing the grail/cauldron quest, he references old Celtic stories about cauldrons, and it wouldn't be the first time that Christianity had taken old traditions and revamped/incorporated them while converting others. I also took a Celtic Myth class a long time ago, and something similar occured in some of those stories - at points, the stories are rather pagan with a variety of gods and at other points, Christ suddenly shows up.

Books: The Inheritance of Loss

I finally finished The Inheritance of Loss a while back. I'm not really sure why it took me so long to finish - it wasn't a bad novel but it just didn't hold my interest. Mainly, it took me a very long time to feel any type of interest for most of the characters, and many of them seemed shallow and superficial. In fact, I kept confusing which one was which and who did what but that may have more to do with the fact that I kept putting the book down and reading other novels before getting back to it. Still, it wasn't until the end of the novel that some of the characters really started developing, becoming deeper and more interesting. The author may have intended to show that hard times can affect everyone and therefore didn't want to make the higher class figures very likeable or three dimensional beforehand, but if that was the case, she did too good a job of making me not care in the beginning. Particularly, I'm referring to a pair of sisters who were obsessed with the West and Britain, and seemed to look down on their own country while also having several prejudices against every ethnic group in the area. This has come up in other post-colonial novels such as The God of Small Things (I loved that book) but in The Inheritance of Loss, I felt as if the characters weren't very conflicted or complicated until the end, while in The God of Small Things, for example, the people knew about their conflicted feelings, and just seemed to have more humanity to them. I am not sure how else to explain it. As far as the main characters are concerned, the author explains the conflict they feel and the internalized hatred well but I never cared about most of them - I didn't feel sympathetic to the judge, Sai's story about her first crush could have been more engaging, especially given the betrayal and class differences, but the two love interests were just too mushy and boring when they were together for me to care about their relationship (petnames? really?). The only character I was interested in was the cook's son, and his situation was rather hopeless although probably very accurate.

Basically, I thought the book had a promising premise, and I had looked forward to reading it, so I am a bit disappointed with it, but they can't all be great.

Heroes

I finally ordered Heroes a few weeks ago. I’d wanted to get it because I’d heard good things on both Television Without Pity and Pajiba but then when it was actually released, I waited to get it because I didn’t want to jump on the bandwagon, and I’d heard the second season wasn’t quite as good. Once I heard that Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars!) was in the second season, though, I had to check the show out.

It was as good as everyone says; a bit corny at first, but that’s probably due to the fact that it’s very much like a comic book. In and of itself, it wasn’t exactly original and followed many of the formulas – the villain that had at one point been friendly with the good guys before turning to the dark side, a conspiracy theory with a sinister organization, etc. Like X-Men (I’m only familiar with the movies; actually I’m only familiar with the movie adaptations of any comic), the powers were a result of genetic mutations and the next step in evolution, and there’s a large slew of superheroes with different powers. When it comes down to it, it’s probably nearly impossible to be creative when it comes to superheroes and superpowers. After so many years and different creations, it’s not easy to come up with a new superpower, especially when series like X-Men or The 4400 have such a large variety of characters, and they all have to have slightly different abilities. The characters in Heroes had most of the usual powers: flight, telekinesis, ability to see the future, telepathy, super-strength, etc. Nothing too original, but it’s not like any of these ideas have been new recently. The Greeks had Icarus and Daedalus for flight (even if one of them failed), Hercules for extra human strength, and Teiresias, the seer, to tell the future as well as the Oracle. I can’t remember the Epic of Gilgamesh that well but I’m sure it, too, had some of those powers, and whatever stories and folklore preceded The Gilgamesh probably also contained those types of characters. I guess those ideas have always fascinated human kind, and the only new powers are a result and a reflection of changing cultures and new scientific discoveries (as an example, the kid in Heroes that can “talk” to machines and the man who was basically a walking nuclear bomb).

Highlights of the Last Two Weeks

I ran in the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Day. It went alright, but I had really wanted to know how long it would take me to run 3.1 miles (or whatever 5 K is) and they didn’t have a official time at the finish run. Since I was expecting an official clock, I didn’t even look at my watch, not that it would have given me a very exact time. Well, either way, at least I can say I did it which is what I was really after. I definitely didn’t care about placing or anything like that since I’m not very fast. Still, I’ve been reading Runner’s World since getting to Iraq so I kind of want to start challenging myself more. I’ve been slacking on my cardio lately but I should be picking it up again now. I’m getting tired of running on the treadmill and would like to run outside, but I am not allowed to use headphones on the base so that makes it less enticing (I couldn’t even use them on the Turkey Trot – I couldn’t even imagine running in a marathon – not that I would - without music, and there’s going to be one in the spring – that’s four hours or five hours of just listening to your feet hit the ground). At least it’s cooled off now so if I wanted to I could run during the day on my own; I don’t like the idea of running alone in the dark out here and the guy I work out with is too fast to be a running partner.

We had a 9-Mil competition about a week ago. Five of us went but only two of us participated in the actual competition. We all shot horribly on the familiarization so when the commander chose our team, the best shooters had hit the paper all of 3 or 4 times out of 30 (that’s pretty much how it went for all the companies). The only other time I’ve shot a 9-Mil, the targets were closer and larger. Plus, I could see where I was hitting and adjust based on that, while with this, we just shot 30 rounds and then checked where they went. The commander, for example, had forgotten that his 9-Mil shoots high and since he had no way to check where he was hitting while firing, he didn't remember until he got his paper off the target. I hit the paper once.

I also got promoted last week. I invited the Battalion Commander at the commander’s recommendation, and the Brigade Commander came as well. I had the XO and another platoon leader/workout partner pin me, though apparently I messed up a bit with that one – I should have included the commander in there somewhere but I just wasn’t thinking. At least he prevented me from making another breach in etiquette with the BC. Also, during my speech, I think I forgot to thank the commander. I guess that’s why Oscar winners always get to talk again at the press conferences for when they forget their spouses/parents/bosses. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a second shot to make up for that oversight.

Other than that, I’m almost done with my Christmas shopping. I used Amazon for most things, and of the things I ordered to have shipped to Iraq, there was only one thing that couldn’t be sent to an APO so I got lucky.* Apparently, a friend of mine is having some problems because everything he tries to order for me won’t ship to an APO (I guess one of the items was too big, but other than that, I have no clue what he’s been trying to buy).

*Or at least I thought I did until about ten minutes ago when I got an email from my mom asking me why she had received a package with certain items in it. At least it's all little stuff so it shouldn't be too big of an issue to find room for it in a package.

Two Books, One Author - Maggie O'Farrell

I haven't read too much in the last few weeks. I started a novel, and for some reason I just can't get into it. I'd been really excited about starting it, too. I'm not sure what's going on. I wanted to finish this book before I started anything else but that plan has already backfired twice; still, it's slowing me down.

The first book that made me decide I could read two books at once was The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox. It had been recommended to me from Barnes and Noble, and the story description was enough to pique my interest. The novel was well-written, and O'Farrell played around with the chronology very well, giving hints to an old secret that more or less motivated all the events thereafter while waiting to completely reveal it. Of course, I've read enough where I kind of knew where it was going, though I was slightly wrong about the order of some things. The characters were still pretty interesting, she didn't tie everything up nicely in the end, especially concerning Iris, one of the three main characters. One of the other characters has Alzheimer's so when things are written from her point of view, they are more fragmented than with the other two women. That part was slightly reminiscent of the beginning of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury for me since it, too, jumps around quite a bit. Vanishing Act is much less difficult, however, because while fragmented, it is still seen through a grown woman's eyes rather than a man whose mental abilities are equivalent to those of a young child. The actual plot itself wasn't anything incredibly new but the presentation worked well.

Still, I wasn't sure if I'd actually go run out and read another novel by O'Farrell but as it turned out, I had ordered one - I think when I ordered the first one, Amazon did the whole "other people who ordered that ordered this" thing, and when I clicked on the link, the other novel sounded like it had possibilities as well as good reviews. I don't think I even noticed it was the same author. Anyway, I started that one yesterday and finished it today (I don't know why I can't finish the other book!) After You'd Gone also went back and forth in time a lot like her other novel (and the book I can't finish, for that matter). I actually liked it much more than The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox. It was very powerful. The novel begins with Alice's suicide attempt, and then retraces different parts of her life through her perspective, and her family's perspective. Some secrets are revealed in the process as it shows what could cause a strong, temperamental person to despair enough to step in front of traffic.

And now back to that other book. I will finish it eventually; even if A Moveable Feast is looking very tempting right now. Not to mention the 2nd and 3rd seasons of Six Feet Under. I guess that was another issue - I've also watched Heroes and the 1st season of Six Feet Under in the last few weeks instead of reading.