Mark Salzman "The Laughing Sutra"

Mark Salzman has lived and taught English in China in 1980s. He is best known for the autobiographical book "Iron and Silk" describing this period of his life. "The Laughing Sutra" is a fiction novel following the adventures of Hsun-ching - a Chinese orphan turned monk turned Red-guard-against-his-will turned vagabond - who travels to United States to retrieve a mythical "Laughing Sutra" for his old teacher/adoptive-father. The book is easy and fun to read, but does not pack a lot of punch. The adventures are too lightweight to make it an action novel. The deliberations about China and USA and their culture are too well-known and stereotypical to make it a treatise about the two cultures and societies. The fun elements are too infrequent to make it a funny book. The references to Buddhist teachings are mixed bag: some deep insights in the beginning coupled with what-was-he-thinking Laughing Sutra ending. The only truly interesting character is Colonel Sun, but even he is not fully developed, since he plays a secondary role. Fun light read, but not more. 6/10.

Philip Pullman "His Dark Materials"

"His Dark Materials" trilogy received praise from a lot of places and garnered quite a few of book awards. Since the movie is coming out sometime this year, I decided to read the books before the movie comes out. My overall impression though was mixed. First part of the first book is just boring. Even though Lyra - the main heroine - manages to stop an assassination in the very first chapter, the book loses its intensity and pacing immediately afterwards. We get quite a few pages of random juvenalia, which is probably supposed to be character building, but is just random child games instead. Only when Lyra has to run from Mrs. Coulter, the pacing improves again. The pacing problems are also apparent in other two books, for example, the middle of "The Amber Spyglass".

Couple more things that annoyed me in the first book were the superbad parent characters, the anti-Church stance, and steampunk world. Parent characters do not improve throughout the trilogy staying lifeless although with a few character twists. Anti-Church rhetoric continues too.

The strong parts of the book are friendship, love and freedom lines. It is quite weird though that the author after proclaiming Love almost the ultimate power and achievement, lets the books end the way they do. Yes, sure he wants to make a point, but his other points suffer.

For an atheistic book there are way too many deus ex machina moments. Angels and demons - literally - appear to save hopeless situations and it seems that the whole plot is dictated by some higher power. I almost expected to meet an old man feeding Oxford pond ducks (cf "Good Omens") in the very end.

With all that said, the books are worth reading just for Iorek Byrnison and maybe for Lyra and Will. It will be interesting to see how the movie is presented and if it will maintain the harsh antireligious position. Apparently Pullman is unhappy about the movie already, so it may have serious differences from the books.

Books 6.5/10. Movie - ?

Nancy Drew - Treasure in the Royal Tower

I am a definite fan of Nancy Drew games. Although earlier games of the series were marked "For adventurous girls, 10 and up", Her Interactive apparently realized that the market is much wider and now marks the games "For mystery fans, 10 to Adult". The newer phrase hits the mark (pun intended): the series is great for anyone looking to play a classic Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple or Nancy Drew mystery. In the age when both movies and games have moved into the non-stop thriller and action plots, these harken to the earlier age when the crimes were committed with a twist of a key, a misleading word and a smile rather than with a shotgun and chainsaw. Sometimes it's really fun to get back into the middle of odd characters, each of which may have a motive for a crime. And to discover whodunit.

"Nancy Drew - Treasure in the Royal Tower" is your typical Nancy Drew game. The setting is a mansion turned hotel in Wisconsin. Apparently the owner was your typical early century American, who pillaged European castles not only for artwork but for the whole towers wholesale. Well, maybe the positive side is that they escaped the World War II bombing.

The story is tied to the fortunes and misfortunes of Marie Antoinette. Anyone who has seen the recent movie (6/10), may guess at least some of the mysteries surrounding Marie's history. And even if you don't, by the end of the game Nancy will discover everything. The setting is nice, characters are sufficiently weird and phone conversations with Nancy's friends are as always hilarious. Don't get frozen outside! 7/10.

"Hairspray"

Great musical. The plot follows the aspirations of a short plus-size girl to get on a dance reality show and win the guy of her dreams in 1960's Baltimore. Not much of a plot, but the execution is practically flawless. It touches a lot of subjects: being different in body size, in skin color, in attitudes and occupations as well as parent-children relationships, and even parent-parent ones. And does it in a lightweight manner with almost non-stop singing and dancing, so the viewer is never bored, never being uncomfortable or embarrassed about what's happening in the movie. The hairdos, the behaviors are ridiculous and over top. It's still great. And even though Christopher Walken and John Travolta are cast in weird roles, it almost works.

I'm still humming one of the songs a day after I saw the movie. The only question is whether the songs will survive for another ten or twenty years, like "Grease" (10/10) or "Saturday Night Fever" (8/10). For now though we have 9/10.

"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"

Minor spoilers ahead.

It is said that all good things must come to the end. I guess this is also one of the themes of the last 7th Harry Potter book. This time I decided to follow the masses and pre-order the book for release-day delivery. Now, after 10 hour marathon reading - and a good night's sleep ;) - here is the review. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is probably one of the best Harry Potter books. From beginning to the end it is almost non-stop action and suspense that is captures the reader and do not let them go. Gone are the sidetracks of Quidditch (book 4), lots of memories (book 6), and yearly Hogwarts routines. In fact very little time is spent in Hogwarts. There is nice exposition of the guerilla warfare, where the real deal is survival for months on enemy terrain and not spectacular army-vs.-army battles, even though there is some of the latter too. As in some previous books, there is quite a bit of focus on psychological interactions of characters both with their inner selves and with their friends.

Although much have been said about the expected deaths of major characters and possible plot twists, I found the plot close to what I expected. If you spend some time thinking about the events and predictions in previous books, you might be able to guess almost everything, except for the Deathly Hallows that appear only in book 7. Deaths will occur - as they do in every war - but not of the earth-shattering variety.

Although most of the book shows the sisyphean struggle and desperation of our heroes, some of the victories could be called too simple or easy. Getting into Gringotts seems especially unlikely, since wizard's bank should be protected from such magical break-ins. Some characters such as the new Minister of Magic Scrimgeour and Peter Pettigrew is given way too short shrift. The changes in some others - such as Malfoys - comes a bit too fast. On the other hand, the book already clocks 750 pages, so further exposition or adventures might not be for the best. Most of the loose ends are neatly tied in ways that don't seem artificial.

Epilogue seems to guarantee that this is indeed the last book of this series. I would predict that Rowling will return to Potter/Hogwarts/wizards universe in some way. Most like with a "20 years after" or similar milieus, especially since there are things to follow up. Until then we will have to reread the books, watch the movies, and wait.

9/10 for this book. 8/10 for series - some of the middle books could be tightened without loss of quality.

Virtual worlds or Lithuania?

Terra Nova resident economists just announced that worldwide virtual world GDP is getting close to Lithuania's. So which economy is going to grow faster from here? The real country or the imaginary ones? Elves have not lost any contest until now. ;)

"The Rat Pack"

The movie title refers to the group of entertainers, headed by Frank Sinatra, who were famous in 1950's and 60's. The movie recounts most of this period with quite a few jumps. It also focuses on the Rat Pack influence on John F. Kennedy election and the subsequent fallout of Sinatra and Kennedys due to the former's Mafia ties. The movie is rather weak. While I liked Don Cheadle as Sammy Davis Jr., I thought that both Mantegna and especially Liotta were not suited to play Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra. Both are tough roles, considering Sinatra and Dean are iconic entertainment figures. The same criticism can be applied to the actors playing Kennedys as well as Marilyn Monroe. Of course, the movie is made for TV, so some amount of lackluster quality is predictable. What I liked is a bit of USA entertainment and political history that we as foreigners don't really know. That alone kept we watching the movie to the end. But it can be done much better. 5/10.