BOTS: Beastly

Beastly is, unsurprisingly, a modern retelling of that well-known fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast. It was written by Alex Flinn, who I assumed was a man due to certain aspects of her writing. Namely there being a lack of detail that I would typically attribute to the writing of a guy.

Carrying on, it was a fairly decent book overall. Although one problem I had was in hearing about a film based off of the novel currently being in production, and hearing about the casting that they did for it. To be more specific, the image of Vanessa Anne Hudgens as Lindy, who is a pale redhead in the book. It's excessively difficult to continue to imagine the characters in your head when images of celebrities keep creeping into your consciousness.

All that aside, I would say it was a decent read, at best. There were no surprising twists, really, and the climax seemed rushed and hastily thrown together. Contrary to what is written in the Author's Note, I did think that in many ways the story was sugar-coated, and in many ways reads exactly as a Hollywood-produced script would.

Would I recommend this book? I guess I would say to read it if you're into fairy tale adaptations and the like, though I can think of others that accomplish their goal in much more unique ways.

BOTS: The Ultimate Frankenstein

Apologies for anyone reading this who thought that this would be about a movie, or a video game, or robots, or any combination of the three. BOTS stands for "Books of the Summer," a little something I'm going to write whenever I finish a book, and to let the internet realize that some reading will go on while I am not in school.

The Ultimate Frankenstein is a compilation of short stories about that legendary movie monster, the creation of one Victor Frankenstein. I remember reading the original on a sunny July 1st, Canada Day, when I was seven or eight. There was a book tent and I ran inside and just got to it. I may or may not have read the entire thing, but I assure you that it was a lot. Anyway, carrying on-

Edited by Byron Preiss, this work is filled with a wide variety of tales, many of them picking up where Mary Shelley left off, and many others barely referencing the original novel. I am sorry to say that many of the authors thought it would be witty to "hide" names throughout their respective texts, a la "Francesca Stein."

My favourites include:

"Near Flesh" by Katherine Dunn, which centred largely around today's advances in technology, and where that will lead us.

"The Creature on the Couch" by Michael Bishop, a fascinating peek into the creature's psyche, and an abrupt conclusion you may or may not expect.

"Chui Chai" by S.P. Somtow- set in Thailand and written by a Thai author, this narrative will make you feel very, very uncomfortable.

Would I recommend this to another? Perhaps. If you are familiar with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, then yes, I think you should pick it up sometime. Reading it would also do you some good.

Hopefully the next BOTS post will be on Brighton Rock, by Graham Greene.

What I'm Watching

I started a post about hipsters, and then a post about The Bachelorette, but ultimately decided on just letting people know what it is exactly I watch on television, when I do watch it.

Formerly, as of prior summers and so on, I was flipping between four channels, those being:

YTV [www.ytv.com] - a channel that was once mostly cartoons
Teletoon [www.teletoon.com]- a channel for kids and also older kids
Family [www.family.ca] - basically the Disney channel in Canada
MuchMusic [www.muchmusic.ca] - Canadian MTV

These offered a pretty even mix of cartoons and music videos, and a mostly equal ratio that I could deal with. However, upon coming back to Toronto after a year away, I was shocked by a few drastic changes.

-YTV thought it would be really cool if they appealed to an older audience, so they now broadcast shows "for teens" which are not cartoons and not that great.
-Teletoon's cartoons aren't funny or exciting anymore. Those are really the only two categories for comics that there are.
-MuchMusic used to play music videos. What happened? Now most of the blocks are filled with crappy shows and dramas.

Oh Family, what would I do without you? The Summer of '09 has rolled about and I am mostly stuck with reruns of shows that continue to be good, a la The Weekenders, Filmore, and Recess. I have also recently started watching the cooking channel, because I like watching people cook food. The Deadliest Warrior [on Spike TV] was good while it was around, if not a little cheesy.

Oh well, that's what the internet is for- right?