Roxana-Mălina Chirilă

Reviews

Charles Portis – “True Grit” [review]

A Western of which I knew absolutely nothing before I picked it up (via Humble Bundle). But I’m glad it was in my audiobook bundle, because it was a joy to listen to – even though I’m happy I didn’t need to do any audiobook narrating of my own, since I picked up a Southern accent because of it. Mattie Ross is a 14 year-old girl whose father was killed in another town by a drunkard who stole his horse, $150 and 2 gold coins.

Yahtzee Croshaw – Mogworld [review]

The necromancer stood in front of his newly risen army of undead zombies who wouldn’t get on with the program, his evil laughter trailing off into uncertainty. „I know this one,” I told myself. „Please tell me it doesn’t go where all noobs have not-so-boldly gone before. Including me, years ago.” As agreements were reached and the necromancer led his army away into his evil castle, providing them with a good life of decent employment and bad entertainment, I was starting to feel a bit uninterested, but then the unexpected happened: angels came out of the sky and deleted the castle of doom out of existence.

Warren Ellis – Gun Machine [book review]

The reason why I keep reading Warren Ellis’s books is that I loved Transmetropolitan (his graphic novel(s)). Unfortunately, I don’t feel that his work translates very well to the written word. Sometimes it results in fascinating little swirls of crazy style… and at other times it feels oddly lacking. Gun Machine is a good example of what I’m talking about: gory, very visual details like someone’s eye popping out of its socket as he gets killed; the murderer seeing the modern world as herds of deer, predatory animals, wolves with glowing eyes – and we’re talking about cars here.

Kristen Slater – Working it Out [review… + reminiscing]

Around 2008-2009 I discovered that Project Gutenberg, which is one of THE best sources for free, out-of-copyright books, was suggesting that people can volunteer for producing those books. I signed up. I became a proofreader for the aptly-named Distributed Proofreaders. The system is long and beautiful and it produces the excellent books on the Gutenberg website today (I can tell you all about it later). It was a lovely period of my life.

Ayn Rand – Atlas Shrugged [Book Review]

If I were to make a movie based on Atlas Shrugged, I’d ask for all the sets to be made of cardboard – all the buildings, all the walls, all the backgrounds. Paint and cardboard, and only a few solid objects, when they really need to be interacted with. Then I’d ask for actors who look like adventurers and throw them in suits and call them „businessmen”, and for actors who look like bureaucrats and call them „politicians”.

Doctor Who – Christmas special 2013 review [spoilers]

Warning: this review contains spoilers. And it also doesn’t make any sense if you haven’t seen the episode. Or the series. If you don’t watch Doctor Who, or if you haven’t seen „The Time of the Doctor” yet, go back. I mean it. To start this off: I am not mad at Steven Moffat. I remember all the cool episodes he wrote for Doctor Who, I remember Sherlock and Coupling and Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death and hell, even Press Gang.

Working with the Big World Network

Flight from Hell is well into its second season by now – the fourth episode is out today and episodes 5, 6 and 7 are ready for when their time will come. 8 has been written, 9 is being written. And the one thing I keep saying this morning is that I have awesome publishers. First of all, the reason why I decided to get a novel published with them is that I absolutely loved the concept.

Doctor Who – The Day of the Doctor [first impressions, no spoilers, no coherence]

…and it was everything that I remembered Doctor Who being, because it was awesome and plot-filled, humor-filled, and with loads of adventures and running about through time and some aliens and huge decisions to make. And several Doctors! Really, I missed David Tennant and it’s wonderful to see him interacting with Matt Smith. And Billie Piper! I mean, sure, at some point most of us thought that Rose Tyler was getting a bit too much of a ditzy blonde, although she was nice, but right now Billie is just perfect and I was, like, wow.

Reading the Romance [Book Review(s) + ruminations on women's literature]

A few years back I read this interesting academic book by Janice Radway, called Reading the Romance (published in 1984). The romance in question is the romance novel. The readers are a small community of women. Radway’s book has its issues, to be certain. Her sample of romance readers is small, and you can really feel that she looks down on the whole matter. This would be a deal breaker for me, but Radway went through with her study in a professional manner, asking questions rather than making assumptions, and drawing conclusions based on evidence rather than prejudice.

Plug for Eliza Enea's "Small Steps"

Fairytales coming to life during your University years are often more annoying than magical. Well, just so you know, the South Wing of the university vanished (so no classes, because that’s where they were held) and the roommate with the crossbow isn’t on goblin patrol duty because she went to a werehamster convention, or something like that. It’s the cheerful, absurd, fantastic, fluffy style of the story that brings on the fun.