Neuropath
by Scott Bakker
2008.
306 pages (with afterword).
Orion TPB.
“Only a small fraction of your brain is involved in conscious experience, which is why so much of what we do is unconscious. The bulk of your brain’s processing falls outside what you can experience; it simply doesn’t exist for your consciousness, not even as an absence. That’s why [...]
Posts filed in Wistfulness
“A sadly pensive longing” — maybe my favourite word in the entire English language.
Neuropath by Scott Bakker
WALL-E
As I went to see WALL-E (from now on Wall-E, as Nature abhors a shout, even though it’s supposed to be an acronym) last a couple of days ago, I was feeling highly ambiguous and thus also a bit scared. You see, my hopes for this movie were nothing short of astronomic, as just about [...]
Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie
2008.
536 pages (Gollancz Fantasy trade paperback).
“Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.”
— Paul Gaugin.
This being the opening quote of Last Argument of Kings, the concluding volume in Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law series, one can perhaps perceive that this is a bleak affair. As I remarked in my reviews of the first [...]
A Plague! A Plague on Our Houses!
In my Last.fm shoutbox, I was recently asked by one of my readers to post more frequently in my blog, and seeing as your whim is my law, I bring you this: an essay of sorts about the last topic you’d expected me to write about!
One of the things you might not know [...]
Lord of War
It’s been nearly two weeks since I watched Lord of War, so this’ll be a brief review, but better late than never, eh?
First off, what struck me during this second watching of Lord of War was how similar, in many ways, it was to Charlie Wilson’s War. They both dealt with serious subjects, and they [...]
Some things I suspect I believe to be true
About eighteen months ago now, I realised I’m a materialist; I believe that everything in this world is matter, that there is no such thing as spirit, that what others might perceive as “spirit” can be explained materially. And for some thirteen, fourteen months, my Christian flatmate Håvard has challenged me on this.
To him there [...]
A Message from the Lost Son: Why I Love Heraclius
“The Persians were applying inexorable pressure on what remained of the empire. Heraclius was faced with a stark choice: he could either wait for the Persian grip to tighten, fighting a series of rearguard actions which offered little chance for ultimate success, or he could throw caution to the wind and take battle to the [...]
A-braggin’ we shall go
I got the results of my last exam this weekend, and in connection to that I guess I ought to say a little more about why, exactly, it is that I’ve been absent for so long the last couple of weeks.
You see, the last month of the Fall term, I spent relatively much time on [...]
RIP Heath Ledger
For a pretty face, I always thought he was a good actor.
This does not bode well…
I was in Molde yesterday, to have dinner with a buddy of mine from high school, and somehow at least two thirds of the four hours we spent together were spent talking about World of Warcraft, which said buddy, like so many others, had been pretty much addicted by the last couple of years. Personally, [...]
Curses! Or constructing next term’s schedule
I checked my course registration page at NTNU (ooh!) about an hour ago, and much to my delight I discovered that I’ve been registered for not two but three courses this spring, and that these three combined fill my required term quota of 30 study points.
English Linguistics gives me 7,5 points if I pass it; [...]
Optimism
“All would be well; unthinkable otherwise! Problems ignored were problems defeated! Here was the sensible philosophy; a man would go mad trying to repair each deficiency of the Universe!”
— King Audry of Dahaut,
Jack Vance’s Madouc, page 398.
Concerning music and laziness…
I used to like Minor Majority. I considered them to be one of my favourite Norwegian bands of all time, and there were few things in the world that could soothe me and calm my nerves more effectively than the first couple of chords of “Think I’m Up For You And I”. And the album [...]
How to interpret a peculiar request
“‘Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed …’
(from Shakespeare’s will)
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover’s words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his [...]
Night of Knives, by Ian C. Esslemont
Night of Knives,
by Ian C. Esslemont.
2005.
Bantam Press.
282 pages, hardcover edition.
Even though I enjoyed the book, and ripped through it faster than I have ripped through anything since I had a severe cold about two months ago, I am not sure if I see Esslemont as an independent author. Sure, he is the co-creator of the [...]
2007-11-13 — Quote of the Day
“It was in midsummer, when the alchemy of nature transmutes the sylvan landscape to one vivid and almost homogenous mass of green; when the senses are well-nigh intoxicated with the surging seas of moist verdure and the subtly indefinable odors of the soil and the vegetation. In such surroundings the mind loses its perspective; time [...]
Done the Impossible
Stumbled across this on Vuze the other day, and thought I’d better take a look at it, seeing as I reckon myself to be a Joss Whedon fan of sorts.
And it was good. Sure, if you don’t fancy watching geeks rant on about some stupid TV show for one and an half hour, you probably [...]
Gudenes Fall
Gudenes Fall, by Cornelius Jakhelln.
2007, 428 pages.
Now, this might be a little weird. Gudenes Fall (The Fall of the Gods) is a book that most likely never will be translated into English, and yet, I choose to review it in English. But hey, my English is still worse than my Norwegian.
In the year 1000 AD, [...]
Movies Galore: A Summary
It’s nearly two months since my last movie review — a review, I might add, where I was unreasonably hard on the reviewed movie, as the fact that I’m in a foul mood shouldn’t really count against it. Anyway, since then I’ve watched a lot of movies: excellent movies, great movies, good movies, mediocre movies, [...]
Issue 5 — The Chain
My immediate reaction to this issue, is that it is the best one this far.
Because while it lacks those “OMIGAWD!1 IT’S HER/HIM/IT/THEM!!!1″ moments, it was a beautiful and sad story, with elegant pathos and an endearing main character whose name we never even learn.
Quite a treat; if all the “short ones” they intend to stick [...]
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