Tag Archive for ‘twilight’ at AudioShocker

So, what’s a blogger to do when his partner in crime goes home for the weekend? Does he go on an all-out bender? Get all emo? Repress the emotional turmoil? Or, does he call up two fine young ladies and start an AIMcast? Yeah, that’s it. Join us as we discuss: 90210, How I Met Your Mother, Shia LeBeouf, Miley Cyrus, Twilight, American Apparel ads, Sia, Spring Standards, pop rocks, and waaaaaay more. Extra special thanks to my guests Rohini and Kirsten.

AIM: boomcity 8/3/08 8:14 PM
Neal has joined this chat.
Kirsten has joined this chat.
Kirsten: I meant to have the season premiere of Mad Men watched by now
Kirsten: but I don’t
Kirsten: I don’t want any spoilers
Neal: OK.
Neal: Well, let’s get started and hopefully Ro will pop in.
Kirsten: So what’s up?
Neal: Well, let’s see - NASA discovered - or claims to have discovered - water on Mars.
Kirsten: Liquid water?
Neal: Ice. But maybe a little liquid too?
Neal: I mean, even ice is a big deal
Kirsten: I thought we knew about ice?
Kirsten: I’m not super up on my Mars discoveries though
Kirsten: I thought there were traces of polar ice caps
Neal: I think no matter what, if we ever get people there it’ll just be like that movie Event Horizon
Neal: i.e. blood. dead bodies. and zero G fire
Kirsten: I never saw Event Horizon
Kirsten: so I don’t know
Neal: It was unnecessarily scary.

Continue reading ‘AIMcast 03 - 90210, Skinny Jeans, Twilight, Harry Potter, and Sasha Grey’

Lately it’s been hard for me to find books that I love. I’ve read plenty that are pretty good, that I might recommend if someone asked me for a reading suggestion, but there hasn’t been anything recently that has made me want to go around telling people, “You HAVE to read this.” This past weekend, I think I found the book that has broken that dry spell: The Host by Stephanie Meyer.

Meyer found fame five years ago, with the first installment of her vampire saga, Twilight. I remember hearing about her books, which were becoming immensely popular, several years ago, but I never picked one up, since they were targeted to a teen audience. Then last summer she published Eclipse, the third book in the Twilight series, and it knocked Harry Potter out of the number one best-seller spot.

This week, Entertainment Weekly’s cover featured the actors who will star in the movie adaptation of the Twilight series, and I decided to read the article. There were a few sentences about The Host, saying it was her first adult novel and is a blend of science fiction and romance. Oh, yeah, it also sold for $600,000 at auction and debuted at No. 1. Which means that Meyer is a rockstar in the literary world.

I haven’t read science fiction in a very long time, not since I fell in love with The Giver and A Wrinkle in Time when I was young, and I am happy that Meyer renewed my interest. The Host is interesting, thoughtful, and wildly imaginative. Unlike a lot of what I read, where my facination with the characters generates my interest in the novel’s plot, the plot of this novel is making me interested in the characters. Which is so refreshing. Reading something where the plot is so crazily inventive is a great change of pace from character study (though that is defintely not to say that Meyer doesn’t have an equally insightful take on what, literally, makes up the human soul. In this book, alien “souls” take possession of human, plant, and animal “host” bodies. The “soul” that is the focus of the book can’t subdue the mind of the human body it has possessed).

I’m only about 100 pages in, and I’m happy there are 500 more to go. If Meyer can create a dynamic, crisp, intricate world in the first sliver of her book, I can’t wait to see where she goes from here.