The Cardturner, by Louis Sachar

Got some news for you folks: after a two-year run, I'm going to retire this blog and focus exclusively on my main blog, here. I just don't have time to post here regularly, and if you really want my opinion on books, you can just check out my Goodreads account. (And if we're friends on Facebook or Twitter, all my Goodreads stuff links to those anyway, so yeah.)

So this, my final Chop, is of Louis Sachar's (HOLES, SMALL STEPS) The Cardturner. It's about a kid named Alton who helps his blind uncle play bridge, and he learns some life lessons in the process.

I'm sure that sounds generic, like maybe it's been done before, but I can tell you I've never read another book like this one. Alton is a very well-written 17 year-old boy. His uncle is a very convincing grumpy old man. His parents are overbearing (realistically), his best friend is kind of a piece, and the main love interest is perfect for him.

The writing was wonderful. Alton frequently broke the fourth wall, most often to explain the rules of bridge (a difficult card game with billions of possibilities) to the reader. These sections can be skipped without detracting from the story (I think the way Sachar did this was very clever.)

This book reminds me of Holes, not by formula but by feel, because of how well it all comes together in the third act. You don't realize what the author's been setting you up for until it happens, and you're impressed by the creativity of it.

Overall, The Cardturner is the first "WOW" book I've read in 2011, the book I'll recommend to everyone no matter what genre they like to read. It's not a sci-fi or a fantasy, it's just good teen literature that is good for anyone.

And as far as the rating is concerned, it's a PG. Mild profanity here and there, one A-word, and one instance of blasphemy. (Personally I'll never justify blasphemy, but the frustration with which is was used is certainly understandable. You'll know when you read it.)

I read the hardcover version, and I think it would be wise to read it in print. Normally I do audiobooks but I doubt this one would translate very well into that, because of all the bridge lingo.

So pick it up and enjoy!

And thanks to all of you who have made this a fun blog. I'm sure I'll still review movies and books over at OGP from time to time. See you out there.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Maybe you've heard of this movie that came out, called Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Being the big TF fan that I am, I saw it on opening night and in 3D. I know a lot of TF purists and die-hards like to get together and hate on Michael Bay, and that's fine. Whatever. The guy doesn't exactly crank out Shakespeare, but spoiler alert: the original cartoons weren't that great either. (And if you want to argue otherwise, go back and watch them. I'll wait.)

(Oh, what's that? Not that good anymore, now that you're not a kid? Surprise.)

Anyway, I had a ton of fun watching it. Nobody does "demolition porn" like Michael Bay. Of course, nobody does plot holes like he does either, but one could argue that he's keeping Transformers true to its original form, because the 1986 movie had more holes than Swiss cheese.

(Seriously. Go watch it. I'll wait.)

Anyway, in thinking of a way to review the movie, I figured I'd just go through character-by-character and tell each of their stories briefly. Major spoilers ahead, so come back and read this after you've seen Dark of the Moon in theaters. Ready? Here we go.

Basic plot: back during the Cybertron war, some Autobots got on a ship called the Ark and tried to escape with some secret technology that could have changed the war. Their ship was shot down, and it drifted through space until it crashed on our moon in the 1960s. America and the USSR then engaged in a space race to get to the moon and examine the ship. We brought some parts back, and they've been in hiding. Present day, come to find that the ship was captained by Optimus Prime's predecessor, and the tech he carried was for a massive teleportation bridge. The Decepticons activate the bridge and teleport an army from the moon to Earth.*

**I don't remember the explanation of how the army got there. I think there actually was one, but I just don't remember. Also, a deep analysis will probably find some plot points that are temporally incongruent with the previous two films. I don't care.

ANYWAY. Characters.

OPTIMUS PRIME: We get to see more of his history, and his relationship with his mentor, Sentinel Prime. We see him get his hands dirty in battle the way kings of old would lead troops into war. And while he doesn't revel in destroying his Transformer brethren, he sure doesn't hesitate when the time calls for it. The final battle between him, Sentinel and Megatron shows that when some bad dude needs his head chopped off, Optimus will do it. He's a great character in this one.


SENTINEL PRIME: Recovered from the Ark and revived by Optimus Prime's Matrix of Leadership, Sentinel learns of the end of Cybertron, and realizes that he has a way to save his home planet. He just has to betray the Autobots and enslave the humans in order to do it. After five Autobots and a ton of humans risk their necks to protect him from a Decepticon ambush, he turns around and shoots Ironhide in the back, killing him. He doesn't go 100% evil, but he's definitely bent. He defects because he feels its the right thing to do, and ends up answering to Optimus for it. The fight between Optimus and Sentinel was just epic. Two sides of the same coin. Gandalf versus Saruman. Just amazing. PS, Optimus wins.


SOUNDWAVE: Hey hey, they got him out of orbit! He's not a satellite anymore! He's a sick Mercedes roadster, ostensibly given to the new female lead as a "work perk," then later revealed to be a trap. In the final fight, he dies by a headshot from Bumblebee.


SHOCKWAVE: Heavily marketed, and heavily underused. He had an awesome intro, totally ominous, like there was some sick backstory to why he was there on Earth, piloting some huge tentacle-driller-machine...but we never got it. In fact, he only had one word of dialog we could understand, and that was "Optimus." The rest of the time he was speaking the Decepticon language. Oh, and he never transformed either. He had his moments in the final fight in Chicago, right up until he died via a headshot, probably from Bumblebee, but I think it was Optimus who got him.


BUMBLEBEE: For the first time he's really away from Sam, at least in the beginning, when he's off working with the Autobots to protect Earth. But he and Sam team up for a couple of epic rides. And Bee is as heroic as ever.

SIDESWIPE: Somehow he's a convertible Corvette this time, and they don't bother with the holographic drivers. I question the wisdom of that decision. Sideswipe gets his moment in the highway battle protecting Sentinel, and later in Chicago fighting Decepticons.

MIRAGE: I don't understand why they called him "Dino" instead of "Mirage." This isn't the freaking Flintstones. He was a Ferrari, and had a cool Italian accent. His moment of awesomeness came in the fight to protect Sentinel from the Dreads.

WHEELJACK: Like Mirage, they didn't call him by his name, but referred to him as "Q", like a James Bond character. His head made him look like Einstein, and he was a scientist. He died in Chicago, executed by Soundwave shortly after being taken prisoner.


THE WRECKERS: Topspin (blue), Leadfoot (red), Roadbuster (green.) Nothing says AMERICA like freaking NASCAR vehicles loaded to the kills with machine guns. These dudes primarily stayed in NASA custody, working on the Autobots' spaceship, because--to quote one of the human characters, "We don't let 'em out much...they're @$$holes." And they were. But when it came time to throw down, these dudes were merciless.

MEGATRON: I liked the first Megatron scene in this movie, although it makes absolutely no sense. Why is he in Africa? I'll accept that he stayed there after the Egypt incident in Revenge of the Fallen, but then how did he get to America later? No ship, and he doesn't fly anymore. He turns into a beat up Mack Titan, and in his robot mode he looks like a ravaged desert traveler complete with cloak and shotgun. The look totally worked as far as awesomeness, but not for practicality. I guess it went to show that he lacked the resources to save himself after the second movie, and was surviving as a pile of scrap in the desert.

Still, when he met up with Sentinel in Washington DC and then made his way to Chicago, I felt like he was regaining some of his former glory. Then he picked a fight with Sentinel, and later Optimus, and he got his head handed to him.

The moment was perfect, too: he tried to play the classic villain card, saying to Optimus, "After all...what would you be without me?" (Because villains define their heroes, right?)

Optimus simply replies, "Time to find out." BOOM. Kills Megatron. Awesome.



WHEELIE and BRAINS: Wheelie was the RC truck from TF2, and he's joined by an equally small guy named Brains who turns into a laptop. They managed not to be crude, and to be more than just annoying little mechanical Jar-Jars. When it came time to shine in Chicago, they captured a Decepticon fighter, flew it up into one of the larger ships, and tore the ship's controls apart from the inside, crashing it into the river. Presumed dead, they have a hero moment.

RATCHET: He goes up to the moon with Optimus to recover Sentinel, and...doesn't really do much else, just helps with the fighting.

IRONHIDE: As stated above, Ironhide gets betrayed by Sentinel and is killed. He gets an insanely brave moment though, because as all the Autobot sportscars are making a mad dash to get Sentinel safe inside NEST headquarters, Ironhide floors it back out into the action and rushes head-on to take out two of the Dreads by himself. (Sideswipe gives him some backup.) They end up in a Mexican standoff, two Dreads, two Autobots, and when the fight gets real, Ironhide kills both of the Dreads. It makes his bold sacrifice all the more tragic when Sentinel turns around and caps him. He died well.

STARSCREAM: I must say, I am disappointed in Starscream. As much as I hate those who bellyache about the original cartoon, I'm on their side with this one. Starscream wasn't an unbending sycophant, he was a traitor! He tried to subjugate Megatron at every turn! If Megatron was so obviously weak, Starscream would've capped him and taken over as ruler. Instead he got taken out like a punk, killed by none other than...Sam Witwicky.

Yes. Sam Witwicky killed Starscream.

That's all for this post. In the next one I'll discuss the human characters--because they were all equally interesting as well, and even a little inspiring.

Book Chop: Hard Magic (Grimnoir Chronicles #1)

Title: Hard Magic
Author: Larry Correia
Genre: Noir/Historical Fiction/Speculative/Probably a few others
Verdict: A complete success.

When Larry Correia said that the first Grimnoir Chronicles title was the best book he'd ever written, he wasn't just being his usual animated self. The juice is worth the squeeze with this one.

History gets a nice shakedown with this series. People all around the world start developing magical abilities (mostly akin to superpowers, think X-Men) during the 1800s, and this changes the course of several worldwide wars. The most notable among these is World War One, in which America employs "actives" (people who use magic) along with high-tech weapons and equipment developed by the likes of Nikola Tesla. Because of these developments, World War Two never happened, Hitler was executed before rising to power, Japan becomes America's biggest threat, and a brewing social conflict between actives and normals looms on the horizon.

Enter Jake Sullivan, an active "heavy" (he prefers the term "spiker") with the ability to manipulate gravity. He's a veteran of the Great War, the youngest of three boys, and a convict who was sprung early from jail so he could help the FBI bring in criminal actives. Sully works with the likes of Melvin Purvis and J. Edgar Hoover (both portrayed well in the book), and he's one job away from full freedom. Things are looking fine until he has a run-in with the Grimnoir, a group of organized actives who are actually fighting to save the world from evil magicians.

From there, the story is a rip-roaring ride of fun and intrigue. Correia shows his very adept hands when it comes to manipulating history and science for interesting storylines. The writing is an improvement over what he's shown in the MONSTER HUNTER books, and I think the fact that this one is written in third person really lends itself well to revealing the deep characters. Everyone in here has a good backstory, and it's all relevant to telling the tale as a whole.

I listened to the audiobook version, narrated by Bronson Pinchot, who also did ON STRANGER TIDES. The guy is awesome. I think it was better than it would have been, had I read it in print. To put a rating on it, it's a solid R, for language and violence (lotta gore) but no sexual content.

A fun book, and I'm looking forward to the next book in this series even more than I'm looking forward to the next MONSTER HUNTER.

Enjoy.

Book Chop: The Forgotten Locket (Hourglass Door #3)

Title: The Forgotten Locket
Author: Lisa Mangum
Genre: YA Paranormal romance
Verdict: A solid finale.

Two years ago I got to read an advanced copy of The Hourglass Door at work. I occasionally spice up my reading list (robots/dragons/explosions) with some YA paranormal romance, because despite the large amount of crappy books in that genre, there are some that I enjoy--maybe even as a guilty pleasure.

Mangum's trilogy doesn't have to be a guilty pleasure, though. Even dudes can enjoy this one, though it is a straightforward romance. In the first book, Abby meets a new boy at school, Dante. Dante is a time traveler from Italy...500 years ago, to be precise. They hook up. (That's the point.) In the second book, Dante is taken from her, and she actually has to work to get him back.

This is the third book, the end of the story.

I liked it, as I liked the previous two. One of the great strengths of the trilogy is that the main character girl is smart (without reminding you on every page,) attractive (without pretending she's not, or assuming she is,) and capable of taking initiative. A common staple of this genre is the helpless stupid whiny girl who sits around and spends 400 pages describing how hot the Main Guy is while he does all the heavy lifting for her.

Not so with Mangum's books.

The first big challenge of this book is when Abby goes backward in time, and has to leave behind the familiar setting of her hometown. Granted, a lot of that town changed in the second book when Dante's rival, Vicenzo, really started to bugger things up with the timeline. I guess the next biggest challenge was dropping her 500 years in the past, away from Dante, who was--when she last saw--blinded by Vicenzo's knife.

What happens in the next 400 pages...well, it's not relevant for me to tell you hear if you haven't read the previous two books. Suffice to say that it's an intriguing exploration of Mangum's previous time travel ideas--building on it, evolving it, keeping it exciting.

If I have one complaint, it's that it took a long time to get to the crowning moment of the trilogy; it was really near the end of the book, and I went from feeling suspenseful to getting impatient. Maybe I'm just a guy. If you've read these, let me know in the comments.

Overall, I'm glad to see the series ended well, and that while it's a romance, it played its sci-fi elements very well. Even a dude can enjoy this. So check it out.

Movie Chop: X-Men First Class

X-Men: First Class

I think I've managed to see every X-Men movie on opening day, with the exception of this one. It wasn't for any lack of excitement, but more of a case of practicality--I like taking the missus to the theater when it's not so crowded, so these days we wait a week.

But anyways...

This one's a prequel to all the other X-Men flicks. As I said on Facebook the other day, I like how it completely made X3 and that lousy Wolverine movie into something of the past. Granted, there were a few things that were inconsistent with all of the previous X-men films, but this one on its own was a really good story.

You've got Erik Lensherr in a Nazi concentration camp in WWII Poland. At the same time, Charles Xavier is in New York. They're children, they don't know each other, but we see how they meet each other and how they end up working together. Erik is on a revenge-bender for the murder of his family, while Charles is trying to figure out his role in the next phase of human evolution.

Ultimately, Erik's scenes were more fun to watch, but that's not to say Charles was a waste of screen time either. In a lot of ways they were the same character, just with a different set of circumstances behind their upbringing. They share equal levels of passion in the pursuit of their goals.

It's cool to see that Professor X wasn't always the moral bastion that we know from the previous films. There was a time when he wouldn't hesitate to mess with someone else's mind if he thought he needed to. And there were other times when he did it and really shouldn't have. His discipline had to come from somewhere, and it comes from the experiences he has in this flick.

We get a taste of how Magneto got his start, and what it was like when he worked with Xavier. However, the amount of time they worked together in this story is inconsistent with the other films. (In X3, they were still together well into their sixties, and Prof. X was still walking. The events of First Class make that impossible.) But if one movie has to lose in the annals of franchise history, I say screw X3. First Class was better.

Saw some cool mutants, too: Havok and Banshee being my favorites. Ultimately I can't pick just one, because McAvoy as Xavier and Fassbender as Magneto were flat-out brilliant picks.

Overall, if there is one thing about that flick I didn't like, it was the F-bomb that Hugh Jackman dropped during a really cool ten-second cameo scene mid-movie. And if there are two things I didn't like, the second one is January Jones as Emma Frost. She belongs on a soap opera, not my movie screen.

So go see it. It's a really fun one.

Book Chop: Good Omens

Title: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
Authors: Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Genre: Magical Realism/Fantasy/Satire
Verdict: A real gem

Note: I listened to the audiobook.

Prior to picking up this book, I'd only read three titles by Neil Gaiman: Stardust, Anansi Boys and The Graveyard Book. The first was a case of "the movie was better than the book " (IMO), the second was something a sleeper that I rather enjoyed, and the latter was quite a treat. I think Gaiman's a cool guy and a talented author, based on those three. I've never read any of Pratchett's work, though I understand he's something of a heavy-hitter.

Good Omens is the story of an angel and a demon who team up to bungle the Apocalypse by causing the delivery of the infant Anti-Christ to go awry. He's raised by an American living in England, and plays with other children like normal. These scenes where he's playing are some of the more philosophical parts of the book, without being preachy or featuring characters that speak much higher than their age level would permit. In the category of "kids say the darnedest things," you see real wisdom in the words of eleven year-olds. (One of my personal favorites was the scene where they decided to be the Spanish Inquisition.)

The exchanges between Aziraphale (the angel) and Crowley (the demon) are also entertaining. You have one character who can't see the faults of being so uptight and rigid and obedient, and another who can't be trusted or valued based on any system of morals because he has none.

There's actually a whole array of interesting characters--a witch-hunter and his apprentice; the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, in various forms; and an antique book dealer who holds the titular collection of prophecies. My personal favorite was the group of bikers who followed the Four Horsemen, adding themselves to the mix with such titles as "War, Famine, Grievous Bodily Harm, Really Cool People," etc. That scene alone makes me want to own the book in print so I can go back and re-read it often.

I appreciate how each scene, each chapter, stood out as its own short story in a way. You could read one portion independent of the rest of the book (at least until you get to the climax) and have plenty to discuss and ponder, theologically speaking.

And above all, the humor is top-notch. I laughed aloud at plenty of it, and stopped to recount certain portions to my wife as I read it. I've been told that Pratchett is a remarkable satirist, and if that's the case I'll be looking into his work (especially since this one was written all the way back in the early 1990s.)

Be warned that there is some profanity speckled here and there. A few S-bombs, one F-bomb, and some Adult Topics that pop up without much warning. Still a PG-13, but not a light one.

Movie Chop: Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides

Breaking from my regular format, I have some things to say about the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise in general, but I will get into specifics about On Stranger Tides.

In 2003 when I first heard of The Curse of the Black Pearl, I thought meh, they're making a movie about a Disney ride. I saw the trailers, it seemed decently interesting, so I made plans to see it. After all, it had been a hard summer: my grandmother passed away, and I was about to leave the country for my mission, and my little brother Ian had already seen the movie and wouldn't stop talking about it.

(Ian never gets like that about stuff, so that's how I knew it was cool.)

So like everyone else on Earth with a pulse, I saw it and fell in love with it. Brilliant story, great acting, visually delicious, wonderful soundtrack...just enjoyable on all levels. Bruckheimer and his gang knocked it out of the park.

Then 2006 rolled around, and with it Dead Man's Chest, the eagerly anticipated sequel. It was to Black Pearl what Empire Strikes Back was to A New Hope: a pretty good story, but totally incomplete, and would remain so until the cliffhanger was resolved.

And let's be honest with ourselves: it was a pretty big damn cliffhanger. Darth Vader was Luke's father, and Han Solo was frozen in carbonite to be delivered to Jabba the Hutt? That's not nearly as big as Captain Jack Sparrow looking a kraken right in the mouth and running straight at it, going down with his beloved ship...only to learn moments later that Captain Barbossa is still alive.

A lot of people disliked Dead Man's Chest. I understand why--it was a different treatment from the first one, but I still thought it was great. Jack Sparrow was still wildly entertaining, had plenty of good quips, and generally kept things moving in a curious direction.

A year later, At Worlds End hit theaters...and you'd better believe I had midnight tickets. It had everything that I expected from a third film: we found out how Barbossa survived (sea goddess), where Jack went (Davy Jones' locker), and how the crew of the Black Pearl could retrieve him (sailing to the end of the world.)

The whole thing ended with an epic sea battle between the Caribbean's two most awesome pirate ships: the Black Pearl and the Flying Dutchmen. Some argue that it was pointless to unite a pirate navy against the British fleet only to not have them fight, and I agree...but I also get why they didn't do it (time! budget! whatever!) so I'm not bothered. (Although I did start to yawn and roll my eyes when Calypso grew to 50 feet tall, spat some jibber-jabber, turned into a pile of crabs, and fell off the side of the Pearl.)

And now, in 2011, we have On Stranger Tides. In a lot of ways...I'm unhappy.

Don't get me wrong: it wasn't a bad film. I for one got my expectations up way too high. Last year I read the Tim Powers novel twice, because it was so amazing. It had very little in common with the movie's story (which I anticipated, and that's fine) but I did hope that the movie would still enthrall me. Maybe not in the way that the book had, but in the way that the previous three had.

I could bore you with a long and detailed list of why I think this is, but...wait, yes, I'll bore you with that list.

1) CHARACTERS
In this one, we only saw three characters who had been in the three previous films: Sparrow, Barbossa, and Gibbs. Keith Richards reprised his role as Captain Teague for a whole three minutes, and my wife insists that one of the British sailors was in the previous films, but I dunno.

Blackbeard was historically and folklorically accurate, so that's cool. They even threw in the "Hell, if I didn't [insert dastardly act] every now and then, you'd forget who I was" line.

This story did lack Will and Elizabeth. I didn't think I'd miss them. But I did.

In fact, I missed all of Jack's crew. That was a problem: what's a Captain without his crew? Can you really have a whole Star Trek story with just Kirk and Spock? I don't think so. This film didn't get me the way the others did, because it was basically Star Trek with no Scotty, Uhura, Bones, Sulu or Chekov (or even the Enterprise for that matter.) I guess that while you couldn't have an awesome POTC movie without Jack, you can't have one with just Jack either.

And the crappy thing about that is, they could've included the old crew. But instead they injected a bunch of new (and really, really meaningless characters for whom I cared nothing.) There was, I dunno, some nameless missionary who hooked up with a near-pointless mermaid, then some zombies (that talk?) and a Spaniard who's like, ooh-aah, dangerous, and he appears all of four times.

I will say this: Barbossa was really something in this flick. Not enough to be a scene-stealer, but pivotal and meaningful. A man of passion. Watching the whole movie really pays off to see how it ends for him.


2) SETTING

They filmed this one in Hawaii--and it feels nothing at all like the last three.

I think it's cool that they used mermaids in this one. They've done everything else--skeletons, sea monsters, fish-people, massive storms...it fit well.

Wonder where they'll go from here.

3) ORIGINS

It's lost the original feel of being based on the Disney ride. (Even the third one had the sounds that came directly from the ride, including the parrot saying "Dead men tell no tales."

Jack did say "It's a pirate's life for me," which was close, but still. Maybe I'm being too nitpicky...

However, the redeeming moment in this category was when Jack and Barbossa went aboard Ponce de Leon's ship. I won't spoil it, suffice to say that it was very entertaining.

4) COMIC RELIEF

It also lacked Pintel and Raghetti (the two dunce pirates, one of whom had a wooden eye.) I missed them too.

Jack was still funny, but not as funny. No really quotable quips or memorable one-liners from this one. Well, maybe one or two, but not like the last ones. :(

5) CONTINUITY

I will say this much: each of the three previous films gave me an ending that wrapped up the whole thing in spectacular form, and when I walked out of the theater I was wholly satisfied. This fourth film had a wonderful ending, even if it took a really weird road to get there. In a lot of ways it solved its own problems and set up the any future films to be as good as the last ones...if they handle it right.

I even really liked the way the third movie ended. It was really heart-wrenching, a great conclusion, a victory for all the good guys. Again, so was this one. I just hope that if they do a fifth one, they look back to what made the first one great.

I dunno, I think I'm done complaining now. Go see the movie and decide for yourself. And if you don't see the movie, at least buy the soundtrack. Hans Zimmer will never disappoint you.

I'm kind of burned out on pirate stuff for a while, so I'll let it be and go read something else. Have a great night.