Buffy: Where are the burgers? Riley: Yeah man, I'm starving. Cow me. Xander: I'd love to make with the moo but the fire's not cooperating.

'Lessons'


Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.

There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."


Steph L. - Feb 27, 2006 6:24:15 am PST #25 of 27912
Apparently if you're enough of a power nerd, there is nothing that cannot be flowcharted.

I'm having a hard time getting through Melusine. I *want* to like it, and the basic premise is enough to make me want to know what happens to the characters, but....150 pages in, and NOTHING KEEPS HAPPENING. It's all

Mildmay: t gritty life of a thief....

Felix: t I am FUCKING NUTS.

Mildmay: t No, REALLY -- gritty life of a thief....

Felix: t Everyone looks like an animal to me. And I see dead people. Did I mention I'm FUCKING NUTS?!?

Plus, the whole system of marking time is so confusing to me that it pulls me right out of the story. I spend about 5 minutes trying to puzzle out what a Great Septad is (I still don't know, though from context I'm assuming it's somewhere between 25 and 50 years), and then I realize I forgot what I just read, and have to go back and re-read it.

I'm serious about wanting to like it -- I really, really do. I want to see what happens, but I'm beginning to suspect that nothing ever will, except the gritty life of a thief and a crazy-ass dude.


beth b - Feb 27, 2006 7:05:03 am PST #26 of 27912
oh joy! Oh Rapture ! I have a brain!

DH read it - but sadly , I'm not sure what he thought of it. When i get his opinion, I'll post it.


Betsy HP - Feb 27, 2006 7:07:38 am PST #27 of 27912
If I only had a brain...

Steph, stuff definitely happens. However, there's a needs-a-sequel ending, and the sequel will be out in a few months.


Steph L. - Feb 27, 2006 7:09:09 am PST #28 of 27912
Apparently if you're enough of a power nerd, there is nothing that cannot be flowcharted.

DH read it - but sadly , I'm not sure what he thought of it. When i get his opinion, I'll post it.

He actually posted a comment in my LJ about it.

Steph, stuff definitely happens. However, there's a needs-a-sequel ending

I can live with the need for a sequel (as long as one is forthcoming, which it is), but I'm just really impatient, I guess, for stuff other than gritty street life and crazycrazycrazy to happen.

t edit Plus, the book jacket blurb explicity says that Mildmay and Felix are brought together, which makes my imaptience worse. If I didn't know it was going to happen, I wouldn't be so impatient for the plot to just get to it already.


Katerina Bee - Feb 27, 2006 7:12:44 am PST #29 of 27912
Herding cats for fun

Oh dear. I spent the night hoping that the Buffistas were wrong about Octavia Butler's death. It was much too soon. She was on the short list of authors whose new books I would instantly buy in hardback, even when that meant eating Ramen for a week.

I just finished her latest (last) book, Fledgling, a vampire novel that isn't quite "Patternmaster Redux" although the main character in each case is a fantastically powerful young black woman with a flock of loyal symbionts.

I shall metaphorically remove my hat and observe a moment of silence while I give thanks for all the pleasure I've gotten from reading her work.


Jessica - Feb 27, 2006 11:52:30 am PST #30 of 27912
If I want to become a cloud of bats, does each bat need a separate vaccination?

This is interesting. I'm curious about how solid their claim is, though -- I don't know anything about UK copyright law, but my feeling is that if a novel uses information from a nonfiction book as its basis, isn't that considered research, not plaigiarism?


sumi - Feb 27, 2006 11:58:12 am PST #31 of 27912
Art Crawl!!!

I would have thought so!


Nutty - Feb 27, 2006 12:15:05 pm PST #32 of 27912
"Mister Spock is on his fanny, sir. Reports heavy damage."

If Brown provably lifted the detailed plot from somebody else's work, then it would be infringement (plagiarism isn't actually a legal thing). But if Brown is just a huge hack, who had the same fricken idea as everybody else on the planet, NSM.

Both books contain the idea Jesus had a child.

If that's the extent of the claim, then these authors need to sue Kevin Smith for Dogma as well.

I know there have been legit infringement cases won -- some screenplays in the 80s, e.g. -- but I imagine it's incredibly hard to prove that somebody actually did have and read your book, especially when the content is fairly common material.


Aims - Feb 27, 2006 12:18:45 pm PST #33 of 27912
Shit's all sorts of different now.

See, then they'd lose against Kevin Smith cause I don't see him reading anything that isn't his own work, anyway.

Unless it had pictures.


JZ - Feb 27, 2006 12:23:00 pm PST #34 of 27912
See? I gave everybody here an opportunity to tell me what a bad person I am and nobody did, because I fuckin' rule.

Wait, what did I miss in Dogma? I thought the Jesus lineage in that movie was through His sibs. Am I on teh crack?