| Notification System |
[07 Dec 2009|01:15pm] |
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Hey Guys,
Unfortunately with our last release, and its instability, we were forced to roll back releases. Unfortunately in doing so, it would seem that our notification system has been broken somehow. Our engineers are working on this issue as quickly as possible. We hope to have a patch within the next day, so we can deploy our code and fix the notification system at the same time. Please *bear* with us ;)
Currently all notifications are being queued up so they can be processed as soon as the fix is pushed and verified to be working correctly.
Thank you,
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| ZOO by Otsuichi (ARC) |
[07 Dec 2009|12:11pm] |
 ZOO is a collection of short stories by acclaimed Japanese horror author, Otsuichi. It’s translated, which always begs for an original reading to see what, if anything, has been lost or gained in the switch to another language. The writing isn’t too descriptive. It borders on the extremely bare-bones, minimalism to the point where I began to imagine the narrative in comic book form with illustrations to fill in the emotion I felt was missing from the text (my rating reflects this--it would be a 4 star otherwise). To be fair, my only other experience with Japanese horror was The Ring and that as manga. I can never bring myself to watch the film (or any Japanese horror film), but I was so scared by the end of reading the comic I gave it away when I was finished. That being said, I steeled myself for jumping into ZOO. With time and distance, I was sure I’d appreciate the tingly terror Otsuishi’s writing would elicit.
While some of the stories read quickly, there’s always some lingering emotion left over that makes you want to stop and think about what was just read. Because this is an ARC, I won’t quote the book, but I desperately want to. There are some gruesome scenes that, when combined with some of the more incredulous and ridiculous dialogue and behavior clash against my sensibilities of propriety. I think there’s a certain appreciation that comes with Japanese horror that has to be taken into consideration before anyone attempts to read something like ZOO. It’s not Stephen King by any stretch of the imagination. There’s always something a little ridiculous and weird in the premise of a Japanese horror story--something that require a strong suspense of belief in what you’d expect to happen or what’s accepted behavior, or turn of events. There’s a lot of fantasy that has to be believed in order to appreciate the fiction created. Also, there’s a lot of corny dialogue that begs for re-writes, but don’t be put off. A lot of the stories have an underlying creepiness about them that stay with you long after the story’s been put to rest. And that, I think, is the benefit of reading Japanese horror.
( Read the rest! )
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[07 Dec 2009|01:51pm] |
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Anne Whitehouse is reading her poetry on every radio station NPR related with her latest release, Blessings and Curses. The spirit of her voice is embedded in the words of this collection of 40 blessings and 24 curses. Read our review of Blessings and Curses here and find out more about Anne and her life as a poet.
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| Book 48: My Sister's Keeper |
[07 Dec 2009|03:25am] |
Book Title: My Sister's Keeper
Author: Jodi Picoult
Category: Fiction
# of pages: 423
My rating of the book, F- [worst] to A [best].: A
Short description/summary of the book: From the front and back inside covers: Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age 13, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate - a life and a role that has never challenged... until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister - and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable, a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the sister she loves.
My Sister's Keeper examines what it means to be a good parent, a good sister, a good person. Is it morally correct to do whatever it takes to save a child's life, even if that means infringing upon the rights of another? Is it worth trying to discover who you really are, if that quest makes you like yourself less? Should you follow your own heart, or let others lead you?
My Thoughts: This is the first, but probably not the last, book I have read of Jodi Picoult's. This book has become one of my many favorites.
This is yet another book where each chapter is from a different character's point of view. I like that approach. With each chapter there was little to no repeating of events.
The characters were very well written; they had depth, flaws and hobbies. I felt like I could meet Kate and Anna on the street somewhere.
There was also controversy in the book about creating "designer babies." Anna, Kat's sister, was created in a lab in order to have a perfect genetic match for her older sister. Personally, I'm torn. I don't think it's right to have a kid around just for spare parts but at the same time if the child is able to function normally, what parent wouldn't want to try to save their kid with a genetically hand picked child.
This book will make you question of what's right and what's wrong when it comes to a minor having power of her own body for the first time since she was created.
I have yet to see the movie version but it's on my "to watch" list.
Books read this year: 48\50
Next read: One Child by Torey Hayden
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| Liar |
[06 Dec 2009|11:04am] |
 Liar by Justine Larbalestier
Bloomsbury 2009
371 pages
YA fiction
Micah is a liar. You can't trust anything she says. She will lie about telling the truth, and she will lie about lying. Attention-seeker, the shrinks say. Jealous of her little brother, they say. Does she even have a brother? Maybe she just made him up. Maybe she didn't. Maybe her dad is an arms dealer, maybe he isn't. But there's one thing Micah's lies have in common: they all hide the real truth.
Now Micah's boyfriend Zach has been found, dead, in Central Park. The place where they spent so much time together. No one knew she was his after-hours girlfriend, or so she thought. Whispers are quick to sprout, but she's not the only one being accused of killing him. The truth is so much harder to tell, but Micah's determined to share it with us. It will take her a few tries to break the lying habit, with us at least, and since she's already an unreliable source, can we trust her truth?
What is Micah's big secret? How did Zach die? How are we supposed to believe her after all the lies she's told, even to us?
( My Thoughts )
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| Review: Fray, by Joss Whedon |
[05 Dec 2009|11:30pm] |
# 86: Joss Whedon's Fray. By Joss Whedon, Karl Moline, Andy Owens, Dave Steward and Michelle Madsen.
Okay. First of all...I'm in a mouth.
Teeth are sharp as lasers. Tongue tossing me around like an earthquake, can't fight it, can't cut into it...the smell...if I gag, I'll breathe, and my lungs'll catch fire.
Synopsis: A futuristic slayer in a post-apocalyptic world has been summoned to her calling. But there's just a couple problems with this.
( My favorite graphic novel ever. )
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| Review: Theodosia and the Staff of Osiris, by R L LaFevers |
[05 Dec 2009|12:55am] |
# 85: Theodosia and the Staff of Osiris by R L LaFevers:
Before I could do a thing about it, Isis [the cat] dropped a small, wet, bedraggled ball of fur onto the toe of Miss Chittle's lovely kidskin boots.
Eyes wild, Miss Chittle looked down at her shoe, shrieked, and, before I could explain it was a peace offering, kicked her foot and flung the poor mouse clear across the room. It struck one of the last remaining mummies smack in the middle of the forehead, then tumbled to the floor.
"I say, good shot, Miss Chittle!" Admiral Sopcoate called out, but she was already running toward the front door.
Synopsis: Precocious 11-year-old girl lives in a museum, thwarts governesses and saves the world. Again.
( Nope. It's still not boring to read about smart girls kicking ass. Go fig. )
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| LiveJournal Major Notes: LiveJournal: The First Decade, AIDS vgift fundraiser, LJ_Photophile poll! |
[03 Dec 2009|03:21pm] |
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LiveJournal: The First Decade
Just in time for holiday shopping, we're thrilled to announce the release of our ten-year anniversary anthology. Published by Blurb.com, the book showcases a decade of extraordinary talent drawn from LiveJournal users around the world. This must-read compilation features stories, memes, photos, comics, editorials, graphic content, and more, including: -
Excerpts from Oh No They Didn't (a/k/a
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) ohnotheydidnt), the largest community on LiveJournal, covering celebrity gossip, entertainment news, and pop culture
- A look at post-Katrina New Orleans from the journal of Poppy Z. Brite
- Gripping narratives, including a poignant reverie on a blind date
- Photography that spans the globe, ranging from old-fashioned Polaroids to underwater photography
- Mouthwatering dishes from food_porn
What began as a late-night inspiration back in Brad Fitzpatrick's college dorm in 1999 has grown to encompass nearly 25 million users worldwide, with journals and communities covering every conceivable hobby, passion, and topic. To get your copy, please visit the Blurb Bookstore. For updates and entries from book contributors, please join lj_turns10.
Tweaks and enhancements- You can now ban a user from all of your communities and journals at once. To access this feature, hover over the person's userpic and choose Ban user everywhere from the drop-down menu.
- Follow LiveJournal on Twitter!
Give a little to help a lot!
In honor of National AIDS Awareness month, we've added a new charitable vgift. For each red ribbon you purchase for $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to support the development and global distribution of an affordable HIV vaccine (we'll cover credit card fees). You can read more about IAVI at lj_cares. While we're on the subject, we raised $740 from our November fundraiser for Love Without Boundaries, which supports emergency healthcare and adoption of Chinese orphans. We thank you for helping us help others.
Photos of the weekWe're back with more incredible pictures from our super-talented LiveJournal photographers. Congratulations to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ilya_gorokhov, who is the winner of our very first lj_photophile poll.
We hope you'll continue to post, vote, and comment! A gentle request: Please post only one photo at a time and limit size to 350x350 (so images display properly on friends pages). And now, without further ado, get ready to cast your ballot and view more awesome user content after the jump!
( Read more... )
Curtains
Thanks, again, for joining us. Stay safe and snug out there!
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| Soulless (The Parasol Protectorate): An Alexia Tarabotti Novel, Book One by Gail Carriger |
[03 Dec 2009|02:49pm] |
 Alexia Tarabotti has a few things going wrong in her life: she’s a 26-year old spinster in Victorian England, is half Italian (with the skin, hair, and temperament to match), and she has no soul. Resigned to the first two, Alexia is resourceful: she helps BUR (Bureau of Unnatural Registry--a division of Her Majesty’s Civil Service) with supernatural phenomenon and they help her keep her preternatural (soulless) state a secret. Being a preternatural isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Carriger’s 19th century world is re-imagined with werewolves and vampires peppering society in the same way one might consider religion or politics: an emotional, opinionated topic of discussion and in some cases, an intrusion on morality. Alexia’s state is quite rare--preternaturals have the ability to revert vampires or werewolves to their human forms, temporarily rendering them “normal” and revoking their supernatural gifts with just a touch of the hand. And so, she’s valuable--very valuable.
She’s so valuable, she’s had not one, but two assassination and kidnapping attempts. It’s not easy hiding her soulless-ness from a nosy family with two very silly, highly ambitious sisters, but now Alexia’s in trouble. She turns to a cadre of friends and familiars (a Scottish Werewolf and a rather dandyish Vampire) to help discover who’s after her, what they want, and why suddenly lone vampires and werewolves are going missing.
( Read the rest! )
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| Review: The Corpse in the Waxworks, by John Dickson Carr |
[02 Dec 2009|11:25pm] |
#84: The Corpse in the Waxworks - John Dickson Carr:
A manservant led us into a dim hall, very spacious, panelled in black walnut. It was not shabby, but it needed an airing; it smelled of old wood, of dusty hangings, of brass-polish and waxed floors. Again I caught that scent of clothes and hair, as at the waxworks; but these, I could not help feeling, were the clothes and hair of dead people; and the walls, dark red satin above their panels, exhailed an indefinite reek of decay. We were ushered into a library at the back of the house.
At a mahogany table, on which burnt a shaded lamp, sat Colonel de Martel. At the rear of the room, above tall bookcases, there were diamond-paned windows of blue and white glass. You could see the silver rain thickening, and pale flickers of light were on the face of the woman who sat motionless, her hands clasped, in the shadow of the bookshelves. About them both was an atmosphere of stiff waiting, of tears that would never be shed, and of doom.
( Yes, doom. Squeaky, squeaky doom. )
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| MogileFS Maintenance |
[02 Dec 2009|12:18pm] |
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**EDIT Thu Dec 3 23:24:15 UTC 2009 **
Hey Everyone, we are about to run the last alter job that we need to on our database servers. This will effect userpics / scrapbook / vgift images for the next few hours. Have no fear, your images aren't lost, there is just a really intensive process running on the servers which store the information for mogilefs. Thank you for your understanding and all the LJ love...
Hey LJers,
I just wanted to let you all know that we are going to be performing some mogilefs maintenance over the next few days. We will be upgrading our current version to latest stable as well as changing some db config information to better handle the amount of files we are currently hosting. This shouldn't cause a big impact on site stability, but you may see some minor delays with userpic / scrapbook images appearing or other requests associated with our mogilefs. We would love to not have that happen, but unfortunately with some of the steps we need to take we have to cause a delay with images. I figured this was a better solution than taking down all of LiveJournal because well lets face it, we all need our daily LJ fix ;)
Thanks,
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[02 Dec 2009|02:08pm] |
Hello! I'm doing a Secret Santa type thing and I want to give my giftee a book, because I know he likes to read. Some info:
- he's 17
- I know he likes Naomi Novik's Temeraire series (we had a ~special bonding moment~ over it once a few weeks ago) and on his Facebook it says he also likes Eragon and the Dragonlance series.
So can any of you recommend a fantasy book/series for me to get for him? Obviously he likes dragons so that would totally be a plus. Thank you so much!
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| Review: Wodehouse's Bestiary, by PG Wodehouse |
[02 Dec 2009|12:43pm] |
# 83: Wodehouse's Bestiary by PG Wodehouse:
"Ladies, ladies!" I said. "Ladies, ladies, ladies!"
It was rash. Looking back, I can see that. One of the first lessons life teaches us is that on these occasions of back-chat between the delicately-nurtured a man should retire into the offing, curl up in a ball, and imitate the prudent tactics of the opossum, which, when danger is in the air, pretends to be dead, frequently going to the length of hanging out crepe and instructing its friends to stand round and say what a pity it all is. The only result of my dash at the soothing intervention was that the Pyke turned on me like a wounded leopardess.
Synopsis: A nice collection of animal-themed stories nearly guaranteed not to freak out those usually fruck out by animal-themed stories.
( It is so a word. )
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| November Books |
[02 Dec 2009|10:32am] |
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1) The Lost Fleet: Fearless by Jack Campbell
2) The Lost Fleet: Courageous by Jack Campbell
3) Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan
4) The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500-2000 by Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton.
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| books read in November |
[02 Dec 2009|01:25am] |
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1. Odd and the Frost Giants - Neil Gaiman
2. Grave Secret - Charlaine Harris
3. Devilish - Maureen Johnson
4. Wishful Drinking - Carrie Fisher
5. Target - Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson
6. Ash - Malinda Lo
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| Bloodprint by Kitty Sewell |
[01 Dec 2009|10:38pm] |
The Blurb On The Back:
Fear has left its mark.
Madeleine Frank’s life is turned upside down when a natural disaster claims the life of her beloved husband. Fleeing from the Florida Keys to Bath to start afresh, Madeleine begins rebuilding her life and sets up a psychotherapy practice. But she’s unaware that another force of nature is about to sweep in ...
Rachel is one of Madeleine’s clients; a volatile, damaged woman whose dark past eerily mirrors Madeleine’s own. Their increasingly complex relationship will unleash a terrifying series of events neither woman is prepared for, which will eventually put an innocent child in great danger. Can the women survive the storm?
( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )
The Verdict:
Too clichéd to be enjoyable, I found this tedious and predictable and filled with unpleasant characters who I never cared about.
Cross-posted to bookworming and booky_talk.
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[01 Dec 2009|01:32pm] |
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Hi, everyone! I'm writing a paper about Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke and am having trouble finding information on Johnson's background outside of some very basic biographical facts. If anyone could point me to an interview (other than the extremely unhelpful one on the National Book Award website) or a more complete biography of Johnson, I would appreciate it! Also, I haven't run across any articles besides book reviews that discuss Tree of Smoke, so if you know of one and could tell me where to find it, I will literally bake and send you a package of cookies if you so desire. I would be that happy.
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| November reads: #108-114 |
[30 Nov 2009|10:05pm] |
108. Norman Mailer, The Executioner's Song: This true crime novel is about the crime and punishment of Gary Gilmore, who was the first man to be executed in the US since the Supreme Court had suspended the death penalty several years before. The novel is extremely long and detailed, giving a myriad of perspectives on Gilmore's life and death. It's worth a read - if you can get through it! My full review is here.
109. Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes: In this Pulitzer-winning memoir, McCourt tells the story of his impoverished childhood in Limerick, Ireland. The events of the book are (for the most part) terribly sad, yet McCourt's sense of humor is evident. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in memoirs, Ireland, or the American immigrant experience. My review is here.
110. Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea: This might be the shortest novel ever to win the Pulitzer. :) An old man goes fishing off the coast of Cuba, hoping for a big catch after a long run of bad luck. He encounters the largest fish of his career, but he must figure out how to catch it and get it back to shore. The book is rather dull, but it's also very short, so it's worth a read in my opinion. Full review is here.
111. R. D. Blackmore, Lorna Doone: This 19th-century novel explores the romance between John Ridd, a simple yeoman farmer, and Lorna Doone, the daughter of a famous outlaw. The lovers' personal journey takes place amidst the political turmoil of the late 17th century in England. This novel is typical of the 19th century in that it's quite long-winded and digressive; however, fans of the classics should enjoy it. My review is here.
112. Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye: This novel examines race and culture in mid-20th-century America. Pecola Breedlove is a young black girl who desperately wants to have blue eyes, so she can be "beautiful" like the white girls in her town. Yet the futility of her dream, as well as the harsh experiences she must endure, eventually ends in tragedy. I thought this book was extremely good and thought-provoking; I would definitely recommend it. Full review is here.
113. Alexandra Robbins and Abby Wilner, Quarterlife Crisis: The Unique Challenges of Life in Your Twenties: This book is a collection of anecdotes from twentysomethings in the late 1990s, as they discuss the various problems they're facing. Issues include career choices, relationship anxiety, and the transition from college life to the "real world." I could relate to a lot of the experiences in this book, but I wouldn't call it groundbreaking. It's also not a very good sociological work, in the sense that there's no statistical evidence to back up the authors' claims.
114. Nancy Werlin, Impossible: This romantic fantasy was inspired by the Simon and Garfunkel song "Scarborough Fair." Seventeen-year-old Lucy Scarborough finds out that the women in her family are cursed; in order to break the curse, she must complete the impossible tasks mentioned in the ballad. The standard fairy tale ingredients are present - a curse, an evil fairy, a heroic quest, and true love - but with a modern twist. I enjoyed this book a lot and found it a very absorbing read. Reviews of #113 and 114 are here.
(Cross-posted to50bookchallenge </span>and 100ormorebooks.)
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