Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

This book is a legend, of course. It`s probably the first gothic/science fiction novel ever written and it isn`t the worst of the genre by any means. But I should have been living in a box in order to really enjoy it. The story isn`t flawless, the leading character is much too stupid for creating a monster and the monster itself is too fast evolving. A short summary: Victor Frankenstein is a man interested in natural biology and he just happens to create a living monster. Then the monster escapes from him and Victor almost forgets about its existence (the creature doesn`t have a name by the way). Then some two years later Victors little brother is murdered, and Victor has no doubt that it was the creature who did it. So he meets his creation and the monster tells him how he wanted to be good but how everyone was afraid and terrified by him so he became angry with his creator and started seeking revenge. After that the wretch (another word for the monster) tells him that he would be willing to leave for South America never to be seen again, if Victor would create a woman for him. So Frankenstein goes to England (he`s Italian/French/Swiss himself) and starts working on a new creature. But then he realises that monsters like that would spread all around the world in that case (it means that they were sexually reproductive) and that humanity would blame him for that. So he tells it to the monster, who gets angry and promises to be with Victor on his wedding night, after which he kills Victor`s best friend. So Victor returns home and starts preparing for the wedding - the monster`s words about being with him on the wedding night somehow have slipped from his mind. And you guess what? The monster kills Elizabeth, Victor`s wife, on their wedding night! Who would have thought of something like that! Anyhow the daemon tells Frankenstein that he`s very upset that the master was expecting to be happy himself when he knew that his creation was bound for long and painful suffering. And after that Victor starts following the creature all around the world and trying to kill him at which he doesn`t succeed. Silly, isn`t it?

I guess I don`t need to provide you too much information on Harry Potter. But just to follow the form of my reviews I will provide a bit of information. As a child of wizards Harry got a scar on his forehead when an evil wizard named

Who knows why I read something like this. This is supposed to help you learn to read better than you did before - to get more meaning from a text, but I say - it makes very little sense to me. Probably because I didn`t pay attention. All but a short part of the book telling about the life of imprisoned criminals participating i a writers club - it`s really professionally written and interesting to read. Otherwise there`s some analysis of quotes by some famous writers but since those quotes are neither witty nor smart, I don`t need to know much more about them. And detailed biographies of Prouste and Joyce don`t leave such a strong imperssion upon me neither.

I sometimes wonder how easy it is being me - I tend to have quite low expectations from most modern bands so their records aren`t likely to dissapoint me. Take "Placebo" for instance. I never cared much for them, so when "Meds" came out my reaction was quite calm. So, the possibly gay Molko character has a new record under his belt? The album starts with Molko`s cooperation with the singer of the band "The Kills" (I haven`t listened to that band much) - it`s catchy enough, alghough even I am able to recognise this as a very typical Placebo song. "Infra-Red" is another typical Placebo composition, although it`s good enough for me. One of my favourites is the third song on the album - "Drag" with its optimistic repetitive riff. "Space Monkey" on the contrary is some sort of crap, which once again reminds me of Roger Taylor`s solo work - and who would love to be compared to the drummer of Queen? "Follow the cops back home" is a REM-like composition, boring as hell but passable. "Post Blue" is much better (I don`t know why I like it but it seems to be a good song). "Because I want You" has something stolen from "Every me, every you" - funny how a band runs out of ideas and starts emulating its best. Like it`s usually the case with me I`ve once again given up going through the song list, especially considering that Placebo isn`t the most diverse band in the world. "Broken Promise" where Michael Stipe of REM assists Molko is even more boring than the rest of the record - which comes to me as absolutely no surprise, considering that I find Stipe to be one of the least interesting fellows in showbiz. To conclude: a very monotonous album, probably perfect for a "Placebo" fan, for me it seems to be just a Placebo record. I doubt that I would find any of their best works much better than this though - for it`s just not my cup of tea.

There`s one thing that has surprised me many times - how can it be that I tend to find interesting books in my book shelf? It`s quite typical to me to be sure that everything that I have in my shelves I`ve either read or it`s not worth being read (or - the most typical case: both). And now and then I find something useful. This play by Arthur Miller, for example. Although "The Death of a Salesman" is considered to be his finest work, I can`t totally agree with that - this play is by no means flawless. Some of it`s aspects seem fine enough for me, but not all. Willy is an old salesman who`s American dream plays the usual trick upon him - he`s sixty now, he gets sacked despite the good work he has been doing for many decades now, his children are useless junkies and his health isn`t good either. So he commits suicide. That`s it. I`d write more but I have to make a presentation about program testing for tomorrow, so I can`t do nothing about it. Alas.

Moby is not cool anymore, so they say - and this album is bad. But I say - it`s not bad at all. Probably it isn`t very fast and furious but I don`t think that Moby ever recorded much music that was. Ok, he`s gone a bit too poppy (for example, on "Raining again" he sounds like an even poppier Depeche Mode), "Beautiful" is ok, although very poppy as well. "Lift me up" is a good single. "Temptation" is also good. Basically there are no real stinkers on the album, although not many highlights either.

History hasn`t been kind to the Blackadder dynasty. Whilst the first of the Blackadder`s was a royal prince, the third Blackadder is nothing but a butler. Of course, he isn`t just a butler but a butler to the prince of Wales who amazingly turns out to be the same fellow who played the villain in the last episode of season two. In the first episode a very young William Pitt the younger wants to overthrow prince George whom he considers a no good money spender (who he surely is), and only Blackadder and his cunning plans can stop Pitt from achieving it. In the second episode prince George has agreed to be the patron of the first English dictionary, yet Baldrick accidentally makes a fire out of it and the whole episode consists of Blackadder trying to write a new dictionary to replace the original - and in the final we learn to know that Baldrick has burned an entirely different manuscript - written by Blackadder himself (by the way this was directly lifted from season two and the execution episode - only this time nobody wears a sack on the head). Episode three is about the French revolution and Scarlett Pimpernel - it`s not that great I gotta say. Episode 4 is actually a single very streched sketch - it`s about prince George who can`t tell the difference between play and real life. But I like the political content about the revolutionary stuff - it`s quite leftist after all. Episode 5 is absolutely worthless about Blackadder trying to find a wife for prince George so he would have more money but as you can probably guess it doesn`t go very well. And finally episode six is about prince George having made love to two nieces of duke Wellington and duke Wellington is ready to kill prince George. Blackadder duels Wellington instead of him, they change clothes and Wellington kills George for being a bad butler. Summary: not a particulary good season, there`s enough of good jokes but I`d love to have more from it.

Finally the Blackadder clan comes to its logical end. No, Edmund doesn`t take a sword and kill the last of the McLeods, instead he spends his days next to the front lines of WW1 in the company of his trusted friends George and Baldrick. Well, maybe those friends aren`t really trusted and maybe they aren`t exactly friends either, but that`s not the point. I will be short for I am not wearing shorts: this is the best Blackadder ever. So, there`s not too much plot in here and some of the episodes are recycled - like the Bob - sex god superhero sequence. But I like the anti-war content, general Melchett is such a darling, and so is captain Darling. Then there`s Blackadders jokes about the war, about patriotism etc. I like it and I don`t care what everybody thinks.

It sounds a little jazzy and a little like something from the area of relaxing music. As a background it seems to be working well but I can`t imagine listening to it because of liking the music. It`s not in the quality of elevator muzak, of course, but Les Hommes doesn`t stand well up to the highest standarts (are my standarts high? who knows).

The post war Germany is the location where this book leads us. And more exactly - its the post war Berlin (but before two German states where founded). We get to see the lives of quite many characters: Philipp, the unsuccessful writer, Emilia his money crazy wife, Carla - a young woman that has become pregnant from an afroamerican named Washington. And there`s Odysseus - another black soldier, then there`s Heinz - Carlas son. What is the book all about? It`s about ruined people that have no real reason to live. And its not only the Germans - there`s no big difference between them and the Americans. Oh, there are also some female teachers that have come on a visit to Germany; and a successful American poet. All of them interact in different ways, crossing their paths and going in the opposite directions further. What`s good about this book is its sincerity and beautiful language. What disturbs the reading is the length of the sentences which on one hand helps the language to be majestic but on the other hand makes the book very difficult to read.