Sarah'sGame&BookReviews

The Adam and Eve portion, as I seemed to have forgotten to include just the writing issues.

Also to note, many parts of the bible were reduced to summaries. I'll have to see how Babling Babel ends up turning out.

Babbling Babel babbled babblingly.

This is a review for the short story version of Noah.

I will separate the review three categories: first I will go over how the theme itself holds up from a literary point of view. Then I will go over how I feel about the characters (and for the movie, the actors), the plot, and then I will go over as many of the ethical issues that I have found in the story.

General Writing

Even aside from the obvious lack of character development, that smells of anti woman propaganda. I also felt like I could not really picture in my head very much of what was going on in Noah. I’m simply left to infer the pictures in my head, if the people that it was originally intended for were suppose to picture it.

Theme

The theme itself quite plainly ridiculous, as although I don’t disbelieve in morality, I personally did not believe in sin. So to go even further and lump mankind as a whole as greedy smacks of the obvious intent of the piece.

Characters

The characters themselves aside from Noah and his sons were not individualized beyond simply referring them as their wives. That’s absolutely none of the other characters, not the Nephilim (which the statues in the movie were based), and none of the countless woman whose children had not yet been born.

Plot

The plot flowed overly quickly, and this is from someone who struggles with an overly fast plot at times. In this instance I might give the benefit of the doubt, but it’s still a story that flows very fast compared to literary fiction of the 19th century.

Ethical Issues

While it may be true that man is self-centered, how is wanting to have a good time less justifiable than basically having a pre-holocaust? (Hitler himself killed millions of Jewish people. God himself pretty much almost destroyed the race down to a small handful -- If that’s not disturbing, I’m not sure what is.) But that’s pretty much never talked about. Do we even know whether God was actually Jewish?

And this is just if you go with the localized flood theory. The way it's written in the bible, it's supposedly a worldly flood.

It may true that the movie did not follow the short story on the dot, however given the circumstance I can infer that’s what any human would have done. It’s simply a matter of self-preservation.

There may be other issues, but it's already disturbing to me. I went ahead and did this one first, as I read it before Adam and Eve.

This is a review for Adam and Eve.

While God is not yet a genocidal maniac, there are some major problems I've noticed. Aside from the obvious misogynistic justification in this story (something I had not noticed when I first read it) God is basically punishing Adam and Eve for what's really kind of a minor issue.

God punishes the snake, because he simply told Eve the truth. That she would know she is naked. And what does he do to the snake? Crawl on his belly of course. Eve is punished by increased pain in child rearing. And then of course Adam basically by comparison gets away with barely a slap on his wrist.

Honestly if Cain and Able were around when this was going on, somehow it would not have surprised me if God would have punished the children for some arbitrary reason.

God:

And for you Cain,

I shall make your hair overly thick,

Just like a lions mane.

And for you Able,

You shall be tossed,

across the table.

This God does not sound loving at all, even in the beginning of this story. I'm really starting to wonder what the next part is going to be like.

And so the story continues on and on, the basic jist that whoever strikes Cain shall be hit seven fold, then seventy-seven fold. But wait, isn't this vow of revenge technically coming from men? Or did God make some sort of secret story pact beneath the text that promised revenge? Again the text is not clear.

On to the next chapter up to Noah.

I have a couple of reviews planned for this update: I will be reviewing The Bible (yes you read right), I will be reviewing Noah (the movie, I just need to transfer my review), and then finally I will be reviewing Ila's Story, a side story from the movie.

I'm coming at this from a largely new perspective, as I've very recently committed to examining the old, and have been an Atheist for a while now (though I don't necessarily rule out an afterlife), so it will be interesting to see what's up.

With that said, Ila's story in particular shows promise. I read the except and I'm already feeling for the character quite a bit. As a writer, I know just exactly how hard that is to do to write someone you like.

I've started to sort of rethink my definition of science fiction. I know there are books considered hard sf, though I haven't had the pleasure of reading them yet.  But I've wondered increasingly whether the definitions of fantasy and science fiction is fact completely arbitrary? When I think of science fiction, my first thought it phaser guns, blown up spaceships, and high tech; low life. And then when I think of fantasy, I generally think of magic, fairies, and elves.

Reading the Mary Poppins books in particular is causing me to rethink my definitions a little bit. Those books at an angle could be thought as a social science fiction. They are a study of the social dynamics of people -- how they work together, how they behave. While it may be true that the characters are symbolic in nature, it doesn't take away from the fact that they are people within the book.

It just a different sort of SF.

We normally think of P.L. Travers as having wrote Mary Poppins, but in this book we explore the analyses of myth and its structure through the ages. It's far more specific than simplified writing advice like "you gotta follow the hero's journey." But so far this is an excellent how to write book.

There just needs to be a kindle version.;C

It turns out, not only did Walt Disney loosely base Mary Poppins by using only one of the stories, it was one of the stories that turned out to that P.L. Travers felt was the weakest of her stories in the novels. So basically Walt the Man just Uwe Boled Mary Poppins.

Dancing cows? Well that was kind of random. I love it.

If your not paying attention, you'll miss that Andrew is the dog. Also like the movie, the table flying scene till happened, but the context was totally different. This is becoming a real page turner.

I'm really starting to enjoy this book. I'm majorly looking forward to chapter three.

I'm really starting to get to know P.L. Travers. She has very good reason to be bitter about Uncle Walt. So much of her work is based on her unhappy childhood. Sure sure, signs of the times. But it's not Walt's work that's being adapted here. I was able to learn about an alternative movie title based on her work, called the Nanny. I might be interested in seeing this. This book is not an easy read, not something finish in one sitting. However I'm enjoying every bit of it.

It does start out a little slow, nut Mary Poppins, She Wrote does get better. This isn't the kind of book one would want to read in a single sitting (compared to say Mind Hunter or Flying Saucers and Science), however the life of Helen Lyndon Goff is very similar to a novel in many respects.

The book relies heavily on internal conflict over external conflict, which means it may not appeal to those that like more action oriented biographies. It relies heavily on telling the straight facts, as suppose to "showing a good story". Though that suits me just fine when even the facts are as interesting as this.

Things to expect: Saving Mr. Banks hardly told anything about the life of Helen Lyndon Goff, but spent more time telling the story about Disney. Which is fine of course, but then why bother having the back story scenes in the movie at all. In this book, you will meet the Morehead family and their bank issues.

There is also something that was never really gone into in the movie. Helen Lyndon Goff spent many times with her great aunt, as much as with her mother. The more I read this book, the more I'm thinking the movie isn't up to par (when it comes to the facts, not the drama which was good.)

More on this review later.

This Mary Poppins, She Wrote is one of the best bios I've ever read.

A more detailed review later. But this is why you can't trust group averages. If I can find a bookseller with as reliable a mail service, I might transfer to a different one. Maybe the actual publisher.

If two people rate a book 4 stars and one rates it 3.5, thats two people rating 4 stars and one 3.5. Not an average of 3.75.

I don't yet have a copy of the movie, or the autobiographical copy of  Mary Poppins, She Wrote. However I am currently placing this on my review schedule. For good measure I may also do a cross review of Mary Poppins (Book) and Mary Poppins (Film.)

Of any decent book that is retro-futuristic from the 1980's, instead of say the late 1800's to around 1960?

I was first introduced to William Gibson, who wrote Neuromancer. This was written back in 1984. Though I'm not really sure if one could call it retro-futuristic, as its pretty established as Cyberpunk.

Of course now we have Post Cyberpunk. But is there is any book one might recommend that is actually retro-futuristic of the seventies to eighties? And what would it be called? Cassette-hippie? CD-Hippie? Walkman-Hippie? Just punk?

I don't like the eighties as much as some people, but I thought it would be interesting. Maybe if I find one, I'll review it.