The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary - Andrew Westoll

I am loathe to say too much about this book as Leo hasn't read it yet.  I will say that this is a fantastic book that explores the nature of invasive chimp research and even more importantly, how they are treated in their "retirement" years.  While providing useful facts, the book also retains a strong narrative which I enjoyed.  Furthermore, the character development (chimp and human) was also robust.

It is a testament to the quality of this book that I raced through it over the Christmas holidays.  I am usually much more plodding with my non-fiction reads.  Even people who don't typically read non-fiction are likely to enjoy this book and I therefore recommend it without qualification.

Breaking the Time Barrier: The Race to Build the First Time Machine

I got this book with an Amazon gift certificate that I got as a Christmas present. It wasn't a book that I was looking for initially, but was a recommendation from Amazon based on previous book purchases.

As the title suggests, (I don't think this will be much of a spoiler) the book is about the idea of building a real life time machine. The author discusses the idea of breaking the time barrier as it had first appeared in literature, and brings forward various chapters as time goes on, that shows the scientific progress that would supposedly enable mankind to build a time machine.

Each chapter actually does have very good science written into it. The book discusses various aspects of physics that are both proven and theoretical.  But it is what the author does with this information that I find a bit hard to believe. She basically takes good science and then dives down a rabbit hole to show that building a time machine is possible.  Essentially, I think she takes good science, and turns it into science fiction. I think that it is fair to say that Ms. Randles is a true believer in the idea of time travel, as the last chapter will attest to.

If the idea of this book was to expose the reader to good science through wild speculation and hyperbole, then I think that it does the job well, but if the idea is to make the reader believe that time travel is just around the corner, then I think it may be quite a long time...

The Iron Lady

Let's forget for a second that I really don't like Margaret Thatcher's politics, and let's forget for a second that a movie that condenses the life of a historic figure into about two hours is going to leave a lot on the cutting room floor. What we can't forget about this movie is the performance that will pretty much guarantee Meryl Streep a Best Female Lead award at the Oscars. She was absolutely flawless in this movie.

As you might have guessed by the blog title and the poster accompanying it, this movie is about Margaret Thatcher; where she came from, and who she is now. It is a very interesting portrait into the life of The Iron Lady. The movie goes back and forward through time to try to give to context to each story, but it works really well in this movie.

Aside from the fact that in her political life, she became tough as nails, one of the things that I enjoyed about this movie is her relationship with her husband Denis Thatcher, played with characteristic excellence by Jim Broadbent. I came away from this movie believing two things:

1. Maggie was a hard ass that wanted nothing for the best for her nation.
2. Maggie love her husband more than she loved Britain.

As mentioned earlier, Meryl Streep was outstanding in this movie, and Jim Broadbent was excellent as well. While the movie may only gloss over her life, it was still very interesting to watch.

5/5

Beginners

The more I think about this movie, the more I dislike it.

Don't get me wrong, the movie was very well acted, great directing, and what should have been an interesting story. But there is where the rubber hits the road. The story, which could have been quite enjoyable, went down in flames.

This was a sad movie. Not a depressing movie, a sad movie. The main characters were sad people who seemed to want to find some other sad people to share their life with, and make each other sad.

A quick plot synopsis is that Oliver (Ewan McGregor) is a very successful, good looking and well off artist who is very unhappy. Anna (Melanie Laurent) is a very successful, good looking and well off actress who is very unhappy. Oliver's dad, Hal (Christopher Plummer), is a senior who has recently come out of the closet after losing his wife, has some issues with his boyfriend's fidelity, and is diagnosed with inoperable esophageal cancer...Hal is absolutely over the moon with happiness! This whole movie was a big mix up!

I think what probably happened is that en route to production, the script fell out of its binder and all the pages got mixed up. Hence the people with reasons to be happy are now unhappy, and the people who should be unhappy are all smiles and giggles.

Seriously! The movie itself even mentions in its dialogue that Oliver and Anna obviously are too narcissistic in their unhappiness...or something to that effect.

Look, if you like a good story gone wrong, if you like the feeling of wanting to slap a character across the face to smarten them up, then please go and see this film. Otherwise, I'd recommend something a little happier...maybe the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The Art of Fielding - Chad Harbach

After a bad run a couple months back, I seem to be on a winning streak again (at least with books; oh, and the Muppet Movie).  I guess it helps when you read a book that has been on so many end-of-year top 10 lists.  At any rate, I really enjoyed the world that Chad Harbach created in the Art of Fielding.  It reminded me of Skippy Dies in that you became a part of the characters' world and it's one that I would never otherwise experience.  For a few days I was immersed in and inhabiting the world of baseball players at a college in the US.

To put it in broad terms, this book tracks the life of several baseball players (and other members of the college community) throughout the course of a single season.  It touches on a range of interesting issues: the pressure that athletes are put under by themselves and others, the toll that athletics can take on a body, the perils of alternative lifestyles in a conservative environment, depression, and a myriad of others.  Because many of these issues are quite universal, it doesn't matter if you're a baseball fan, the book still resonates.  I don't think it would make my list of top-10 books of the year, but I did really enjoy it.

Hen's Teeth - Manda Kelly

I loved this book for what it was!  Thrillers are my guilty pleasure and this one had it all, including a health angle.  In this book, the main character is a doctor who is unofficially tasked with solving the murders of her former lover and her former mentor.  Her trusty sidekick is a "gothy" pathologist and together they solve the very unusual puzzle. It was a quick read and one that would be perfect for someone with a holiday in front of them.  Indulge in this smart thriller--you won't regret it.

The Muppets

Last week Kristie won two tickets to an advanced screening of The Muppets.  As I was pretty much raised on Cartoons and The Muppets as a child, I was very anxious to go. Even before winning the tickets, I was hearing really good things about the movie, especially from The Morning Stream podcast, which discussed the movie over the course of three separate days in one form or another.

We got to watch it in a new cinema, within The Embassy theatre. The Embassy might be familiar to those who know of The Lord of the Rings, as it is where the world premiere took place as well as will be the premiere for The Hobbit as well.

Ok, this isn't a review of the cinema, but I'll just quickly say that it was absolutely amazing! Small theatre, huge leather chairs, intimate setting...amazing. And now, back to the movie review.

WE LOVED IT!

I'll be honest, the last Muppet movie that I watched was The Muppets Take Manhattan; I had seen bits and pieces of some of the later ones when they aired on television, but I thought that they had jumped the shark. It seemed to be all about Rizzo the Rat and Gonzo...Kind of like when Bloom County became all about Opus, Bill The Cat, and Milquetoast the cockroach.  Sure it had some funny bits, but it seemed to have lost its edge. This movie however, despite not having the Late Jim Henson or even Frank Oz as the puppeteers, seemed to dig way back into its roots and come up with a story that was both funny, heartwarming and filled with jokes that would appeal to both children and adults.

After the movie, Kristie and I were talking, and she mentioned that there are many films/television shows from our youths that we use to love, but wouldn't pass the test when it came to relevance now-a-days. The Muppets, thankfully are just as relevant now as they were when we were kids. So, go to the movie, take your kids, and enjoy a bit of nostalgia.

5/5

What is Left the Daughter - Howard Norman

I read this book very quickly, which for me, can be a sign of a good book.  This book is told in letter-form from the perspective of a father (Wyatt) who is essentially telling his daughter the story of his life and all that went wrong in it.  The story begins as the lead character copes with the suicides of both his parents and then his subsequent move to live with his aunt and uncle in rural Nova Scotia.  World War II provides the back drop for the story and although the story takes place in Canada, the reader is keenly aware of how the war has affected everyone.  In particular, the paranoia and prejudice against any and all Germans was vividly illustrated (and had a profound impact on the novel's outcome).  All in all, this book held my interest because of the strong narrative that guides readers through Wyatt's life.

The Time Machine

Title: The Time Machine
Author: H. G. Wells
Publisher: Yale University Press (October 26, 2010)

ISBN-10: 0812505042
ISBN-13: 978-0812505047


A while back, I read a supposed classic of science fiction: Fahrenheit451 which I didn't care for...at all. Recently however, I read another classic of science fiction: The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells.  What a great book!

I'm kind of a physics enthusiast, so whenever I happen upon a book/movie/story that incorporates time travel, I will generally have a bit of a problem with how it stacks up to the idea of time travel in physics. I'm not saying that this one doesn't have its issues, but one of the things that I thought made the story easier to imerse myself into was the fact that H.G. Wells didn't go into the details of how the protagonist built the time machine. Instead, he pretty much just said that he built a time machine; didn't explain how he did it, didn't explain the science behind it, nope! Basically said: Insert time machine here.

As mentioned, this made for a much richer story as you could simply enjoy the characters and not worry about the minutia of how things could have gone.

As you might have gathered, The Time Machine is about a time traveler and his adventures travelling through time.

I should point out that before reading the book, I watched the 2002 movie with Guy Pearce. While I enjoyed the movie, they took some serious artistic license with the book. What? Hollywood doesn't stick to the original story? I'm so surprised!  <--That was sarcasm!

As I mentioned, the book is really quite impressive, and while it doesn't leave a nit-picker like me without things to rail against, it does make a great page turner.

4/5

Arthur Christmas

Ever since I was a kid, I have always loved cartoons! Whether it be The Simpsons, Toy Story, or even old Bugs Bunny cartoons. Kristie would say that my tastes aren't discerning enough, but I would disagree. I think that while I would enjoy a bad cartoon, I can still appreciated that it should be scaled.  Which brings us to the newest cartoon we saw this weekend: Arthur Christmas.

Arthur Christmas is the new CG cartoon from Sony pictures. Nope, not Pixar, not DreamWorks, not even Disney, but Sony.

The movie is about the Clause family; the current Clause family.

• Malcolm: The current Santa
• Grand-Santa: The father of Malcolm who is often spouting off about the glory days
• Steve: Son of Malcolm and the Santa apparent
• and Arthur: The fish out of water, who loves Christmas with all hiis heart, but is a bit of a...well, a fish out of water, I guess.

The story is about the current Santa coming to the end of his days, as he has been Santa-ing for 70 years, and how Steve is getting ready to take over the family business.  Well, on what is suppose to be Santa's final ride, Steve, who basically is in charge behind the scene, managed to miss a single child's gift; which he thinks is an acceptable error rate.  Arthur disagrees, and it is up to Arthur, Grand-Santa, a plucky little wrapping elf, and a moth-eaten old reindeer to save Christmas for the little girl.

The story is suitable for both young and old, and there are some great jokes that will delight everyone peppered throughout the story. The only thing that I would criticize about the movie is that for a British film, it seemed pretty Americanized in its humour...a little less Wallace and Gromit, and a little too Shrek.

On the whole, even though it is a cartoon, and I'd rather watch a bad cartoon than a good movie, I'd give Arthur Christmas 4 out of 5 stars.

Don't you know what the night can do?

Oddly, I recently read two books back-to-back with the word night in the title...one was titled Night Wakings and the other was called The Night Book.  Each focused (somewhat) on the theme of disrupted sleep, though there was obviously more going on in each.

The first book was entitled Night Wakings and it is centered around Anna, a mother/academic who was spending the summer on an isolated island (near Scotland) with her husband and children.  The author, Sarah Moss, adeptly manages the tension between comedy and drama.  The comedic elements play out in Anna's relationship between her husband and children.  Anna is clearly sleep deprived, all the while trying to finish a book in order to honour her commitment as a research associate.  Her reaction to insomniac children and a somewhat ambivalent and/or ignorant husband are classic.  I love her dry wit.  The drama arrives with the discovery of an infant's skeleton and the subsequent attempts to discern how this skeleton came to be buried outside Anna's house on this remote island.  The story is layered with letters from the past that help to shed light on the mystery of the baby's remains.  All in all, a fantastic read that I appreciated for its keen intelligence.  Highly recommended!

A friend bought me this book to help kick start my immersion into New Zealand literature.  On the whole, a great introduction.  Charlotte Grimshaw is a very good author and the story arch is an interesting one.  In a nutshell, it looks at the wife of a man who is going to be the next Prime Minister of New Zealand.  However, as you'd expect, there is a fly in the ointment.  This woman has a secret that is eating her up inside and is causing her to make questionable decisions.  Added to this story is a Doctor with an unknown connection to this wife and his own ennui.  The one difficulty I had with this book is that all the characters were extremely wealthy and it was hard to relate to the life they led and to feel the full extent of their plights.  Still, a good back that kept me turning the pages.