Legend of the Seeker No Sword of Truth

I've been a fan of Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series of novels for a decade or more. I've read them all, even the ones that weren't that interesting or seemed overly preachy with his Randian Objectivist views. Still, they were a great series of novels and I still highly recommend them to everyone. So, imagine my excitement when, a few years ago, it was announced that a syndicated television series based on those books was being produced. “Legend of the Seeker” premiered in November 2008 and ran for two seasons until May of 2010. I caught parts of episodes when it was first released and immediately hated it! I do realize that TV shows and movies never follow a novel precisely, but with “Legend of the Seeker” character's personalities, even main characters, seemed to be changed wholesale, the stories of all of the novels were mashed together, characters that never existed in the novels appeared, etc. etc. I really felt like the TV producers had totally fucked up a great book series and stuck a giant middle finger up at Goodkind's fans. I refused to watch it despite Terry's posting on his website (I think that's where I read it anyway) that fans should let the books be the books and the show be the show and not try to compare them. So, I tried to watch another episode; and failed. I just couldn't watch them destroy what had been my favorite series books for the last several years.

So, I recently discovered that the entire first season of “Legend of the Seeker” is available for viewing for free via Hulu (season two is available to Hulu Plus subscribers). So, I'm giving it another chance. I'm trying to watch it as just a television show based in a fantasy setting. It's difficult, because I loved the books so much and the TV show really fails at following anything resembling the story-lines of the novels. As a stand alone show goes, it's ok, assuming you liked Hercules and Xena (Sam Raimi produced both of those plus “Legend of the Seeker, by the way). I've actually watched the first five episodes of “Legend of the Seeker.” I think if I hadn't read the novels, I'd enjoy it more, but I still find myself picking apart all the things in the show that are blatantly wrong compared to the novels. Richard (the Seeker himself) for example, lacks the reasoning ability in the show that he has in the novels and way to impulsive most the time. Kahlan, the Mother Confessor in the novels, is just another Confessor in the books and not even the last of her kind. She's also more harsh and bit bossy in the TV show. First Wizard Zedd is just as powerful in the show, but lacks the whimsical, playfulness of the Zedd in the books. In the books, he's pretty much the last living wizard, while in the show he's just one of many powerful wizards of The First Order. Also, when the hell did Kahlan become über-awesome at fighting hand-to-hand with a pair of daggers? I don't remember that shit in the books. She was taught, much later in the novels, by Richard to use a sword, but in the TV series she's wicked awesome with knives from the very beginning. At least the fight scenes are well filmed and choreographed.

The casting for those three main characters is also a little bit off. Bridget Regan, asKahlan, is probably the best cast character; Regan is gorgeous, and actually plays the part of Kahlan quite well. I like Bruce Spence as Zedd decently enough, but Craig Horner just isn't a big enough guy to be Richard in my opinion. Richard was always described as rather tall and muscular (he's a woods-guide before being named Seeker, after all). Horner's got a pretty athletic build, but he's not that tall. In fact Spence is taller than Horner, and I always pictured Richard as being taller than Zedd, not the other way around.

Ok, ok. I realize that I'm picking nits here, and enough reviews exist online as it is now that I really don't feel the need to go into tons of details, especially since I'm only five episodes into giving it another chance to grab my attention. I’m' just saying, as a stand alone TV show “Legend of the Seeker” does ok, but as an adaptation of an epic series of fantasy novels, it sucks.

I'll likely finish watching the first season, and if I ever can afford to subscribe to Hulu Plus, I'll even watch the second season. But, The Sword of Truth this show is definitely not! I'm just getting tired of Hollywood's penchant for the last decade or more of not creating anything new or original. Seems like popular book series and classic 80's TV shows being re-imagined or turned into crappy syndicated series or movies is all that Hollywood's so-called writers can come up with anymore. It's why I really don't care that I don't have cable right now, and why I don't feel like spending the money to go to the movies anymore. As long as I have access to websites like Hulu (which has a lot of older, good TV shows) and good bookstore, I'm good.

~ JC

How To Care for Your Books: 5 Tips Home Hacks | Apartment Therapy Boston

Since I didn't write a blog this week, I thought I'd share this link I found this morning. It's definitely in keeping with my last post :-)

Enjoy! ~ JC

How To Care for Your Books: 5 Tips Home Hacks | Apartment Therapy Boston

Of course, if we all switched to e-books, then this becomes a moot point. Then again, I'll always own real books, so this is a great list of tips.

Paper vs Screen (or Real Books vs E-books)

One needs only look at my collection of books to know that I am a bit of a bibliophile. I'm not just someone who enjoys reading, but I really love the books themselves. I tend to collect anything that I read, and only begrudgingly part with a book, and then only if it was really one I didn't enjoy, I just really need the shelf space to accommodate, you guessed it, more books. So, it shouldn't be any real surprise that one of the first things I downloaded when I got my Motorola Droid over a year ago was an app called Aldiko Book Reader. I've also downloaded quite a few E-books as well, but up until now, haven't read a single one. Recently, while between books (meaning I had just finished one and was deciding what novel to read next), I starting browsing through the list of items I had downloaded to my Droid. I ended up reading the poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe. It was the first time I had actually used the e-book reader to read more than a page or two of anything.

Reading that classic poem got me to wondering about if I'd actually enjoy reading a full length book on such a small screen.^* So, to accommodate an experiment I decided to download an e-book for which I also own an actual copy of the book. So, when I'm at home, I read from the hard copy, but having the same book in electronic format on my Droid allows me to be able to pick up reading a few pages when I'm out and about even if I've forgotten to take my book with me. So far, I have to admit, reading a book on my phone isn't as bad I thought it would be. The tricky part, so far, with reading a book via two media formats is keeping the bookmarks synchronized. Whenever I read the book, I have make sure I move my bookmark in the e-book and vice versa or I end up reading the same pages/chapters twice.

Now that I've established that I'm perfectly content with reading a book on my smallish phone screen, I now have to decide if that will become the future of how I read books. As I mentioned before, I love books – the way they feel, the way they smell. I can easily spend quite a bit of time (not to mention money) at a bookstore. However, Aldiko has access to quite a large library of free, public domain books as well as more current books, usually for a bit cheaper than buying the hard copy. Then there's also the ability to get e-books via bit torrents.

There are also other concerns to take into account when collecting books. They take up a lot of space, and they can also be quite heavy when packed in boxes (something I have to consider since I'm still have most of my collection in storage in North Carolina and am currently establishing residency in Atlanta, GA). My old college buddy Sam had some interesting insights on this very subject some time ago. Rather than re-listing them all here, I'll suggest you read his blog entries “Digital Dilemma” and “Kobo Impressions”. The only other comment I'll make is that, while Sam bought a dedicated e-book reader, I rather like the fact that my smartphone has the ability to function as an e-book reader using the Aldiko app (or others) as well as access the internet. In other words, I only have to carry one mobile device, where someone with just an e-book reader would need to carry at least two (the reader plus their cellphone).

~ JC

PS. I should be noted that I have only cataloged physical books using LibraryThing. I've yet to catalog my e-books/PDFs save for a few.

* The Motorola Droid has a 3.7” screen

Of Friends Old, New and Forgotten

I mentioned in last week's blog about my new tribe for friends here in the ATL. Apparently some of my comments were misconstrued by one of my oldest and closest friends back home in North Carolina. So, I want to clarify things about friendships both current and past. Being 39 years old and having lived in NC and GA (twice now), I've had opportunity to meet and make friends with lots of folks. Some are forgotten (like old friends from high school whom I haven't heard from in two decades) or even some from college. Life moves on, and when someone is no longer directly inside one's sphere of influence, it makes it difficult to remain friends unfortunately. One of the hard things about uprooting myself and moving to Atlanta was leaving not only family and my fiancee, but my friends as well. I tend to choose friends carefully (just look up Scorpio in any online zodiac guide and you'll see that we tend to be like that), but once I've befriended someone, I tend to be very loyal to them. Life in Fayetteville was such that even my closest friends and I were rarely able to get together. There's just something about that town that does that; that sucks life right out of people, not to mention it's over-priced cost of living versus the job market there making it hard for anyone to afford to do much more than work-eat-sleep. The friends I've made here in Atlanta have become like soul-mates. In only five months time we've become close; we hang out together usually once a week, or at least call/text just to say hello. That fact doesn't mean that I'm closer, per se, to my Atlanta friends than my North Carolina friends. It's just something about the Metro-Atlanta area that seems to facilitate being able to spend more time with friends than I was able to in Fayetteville, NC. If I could somehow move everyone important to me from back home to Atlanta, I most assuredly would, for then I'd be able to spend time with all of them (not to mention rescue my NC friends from the life-sucking cesspool that is Fayetteville, NC).

Now, no doubt someone from Fayetteville, NC will become offended that I've called that town (yes town, not city no matter what it's “City” Council thinks) a “life-sucking cesspool.” Well, it is. I've left there twice, and returned once. I do not wish to return a second time. Other than the fact that I never would have met the love of my life, and the aforementioned friends I have there (including the one who is now currently my roommate in Atlanta), the biggest mistake I ever made was moving back there in 2000 from when I lived in Athens, GA. Fayetteville offers nothing in terms of career choices, unless one wishes to slough away in minimum wage retail and restaurant jobs the rest of their lives. My beloved has an MBA and has still had no luck finding anything in Fayetteville outside of the crappy non-profit organizations that don't even come close to paying someone with a Masters Degree what they should be making. Even my buddy Andrew, who is a school teacher, is trying to get out of that burg because NC has the worst teacher salary in the entire nation! So before you go getting upset that I ragging on Fayetteville, consider this – the apartment I'm going to be moving into here in Atlanta in a few weeks goes for $650 per month for two bedrooms and two bathrooms; that same apartment in Fayetteville, NC would either be a really bad neighborhood, or cost $100-200 more per month. With the exception of the place I work now (which hopefully won't be much longer), the average employer in Atlanta (including retail) probably pays $8-9 per hour starting out instead of maybe $7.50-8 per hour like in Fayetteville. So, here the income to cost of living ratio is much more favorable than back home. All that being said, where would you rather live? Somewhere where you not only had a decent income and reasonably priced housing plus lots of places to go do things in your free time? Or, somewhere where the apartments are horribly over-priced for the average income level of the populace and where you can't really tell where the ghetto ends and the “nice” neighborhoods begin? I'll take “Places I Can Live Instead of Withering Away and Dieing” for $1000, Alex!

I miss my friends. I miss my family. I most assuredly miss my fiancee. But I absolutely don't miss Fayetteville, NC... not even a little bit.

~ JC