BookBin2015: Sally Ride: America’s First Woman in Space

~ LobaBlanca ~ Leave a comment

sr-fawis

I’m doing things a bit backward. I had hoped to finish posting the rest of my reads from the end of last year. That’s just not happening right now. Too much “other” going on at the moment. And, of course, I’ve got several books from this year that I should be posting first…but this seemed like the right place to start, on the right day.

See, yesterday would have been Dr. Sally Ride’s 64th birthday, had cancer not had different plans for her. It seemed only right, then, to make a special effort to finish Lynn Sherr’s recently released biography on Dr. Ride, very aptly and originally named Sally Ride: America’s First Woman in Space.

Of course, as I commented elsewhere, when you have the distinction of having been the first American woman in space, there really isn’t a more appropriate or better title than that for your biography.

As I already stated, I finished reading this book last night. I couldn’t stop thinking about it

Photo Fun Friday: Richard Simmons

~ LobaBlanca ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know what I want to do with Flashback Friday. In some ways, I feel as though that particular part of the lair has run its course. Not sure. Still hashing it out.

Photo Fun Friday, though, is something I still enjoy doing. And I’ve been having these weird ideas for photo mash-ups that combine celebrities with similar names. Kind of like what I did with Dylan McDermot Mulroney or Steven Tyler Moore. Oh, or Tawny Kattan. I still get a kick out of that one.

Then there’s Richard Simmons. This bolt of lightning hit me during my commute this morning.

richard-simmons

Fabulous Photo Friday: Zoonami!

~ LobaBlanca ~ Leave a comment

This is the post that started the downfall of the lair last September. I wanted to find a nice photo gallery plug-in, which I thought I had. Turns out, though, that because my CMS was already crashing, the plug-in just served to bring it down even more. Strangely, that same plug-in still won’t play nicely with my blog. Oh well, just had to find a new one.

These are photos from a trip I took to San Diego in January 2014. For a couple of exquisite reasons, my time at the San Diego Zoo quickly became the pinnacle of my time there. I spent practically from the moment the zoo opened until right when it closed, roaming the paths, snapping tons of photos, and just standing, mesmerized, while watching all the marvelous beasties at play.

Here, then, are my favorite photos from that day.

Cinco de Loba

~ LobaBlanca ~ 5 Comments

My world started falling apart a few months ago.

Not my actual world. That’s still quite spectacular, thank you. No, my virtual world. My online lair. Here. You may or may not have noticed it. Things started slowly shutting down. Things were never quite right with my WordPress CMS after some kind of glitch in a regular update many many moons ago, but it was never bad enough to cause me to have to fix it. I just had to work around the inconveniences. I couldn’t save drafts. I couldn’t schedule uploads. I wasn’t able to preview posts. Stupid things that started adding up to larger, more irritating things.

Then the degradation began to become worse, until finally one day my site simply stopped working. The posts on the front page would load, but links to other pages stopped working and links to the individual posts stopped working. And then.

Poof.

Nothing would load. Nothing would back up. Nothing would save.

Honestly? I was a little heartbroken. I thought that I was going to have to scrap the entirety of my blog and start fresh. Somehow, though, I was able to force the CMS to give one final push and dump out the text. I was then able to get Adobe Acrobat to give me a PDF of a significant portion of my site, and I was able to save the photo folder from my ISP.

It took a hot minute, but slowly, I got the blog back together, purged my old WordPress site and built it back up, new. I haven’t completely finished tweaking and adding everything back, but the foundation is there, and it’s finally and once more solid. It’s taken me another hot minute or two to finally eke out the time to make this first new post to my “new” blog. My actual world is, as I said, quite lovely holistically. Certain cogs in the wheel, however, are squeaky and require far more attention than I used to have to give them. Those cogs have been consuming not just a lot of my time but more of my energy than a salt vampire at a Morton’s Factory.

Yeah, I’m still a nerd. Nothing’s ever going to change that.

However, the longer the time that passed since everything went Louie Kablooie, the more I realized how much I missed coming here and writing, even if it was just a review of whatever book I’d just finished. Oh, and for the record, I’ve been keeping a running tally of all the books I’ve read since my last BookBin review and I plan on posting reviews of them. I just need to decide whether or not I want to do individual reviews for all the ones I finished in 2014 or just lump them together into one summary. Because, see, I don’t want this to just be a book review blog anymore. I kind of lost my way for a while and didn’t really have a whole lot to write about. I think that’s changed.

All I know is that I have missed coming here. I’ve missed my lair. I’ve missed writing for fun, for myself. So, like Norma Desmond, I’ve come home at last.

And this time will be bigger and brighter than we knew it
So watch me fly, we all know I can do it

Okay, enough Broadway. You’ve survived to the end of this post. Have this photo of an adorable kitty as a reward. He’s my dad’s newest cat. He’s skittish as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs and when my dad found him outside, he had puncture wounds in his neck from being attacked by a dog. He’s so nervous that it took three days of patience before he was finally comfortable enough with my presence to allow me to pet him. But he’s adorable, isn’t he? Who doesn’t love adorable kitties?

little_kitty

BookBin2014: The Silkworm

~ lobablanca

silkworm

It looks like this is the year when I rediscover J.K. Rowling, eh? I’ve already reviewed The Casual Vacancy and The Cuckoo’s Calling this year, and obviously enjoyed them enough that I wanted to continue reading Rowling’s more adult fare. I have to admit that I wasn’t quite prepared to jump into her latest offering, The Silkworm, just yet. However, when the library emails to inform you that you’re next in line for a popular book you’ve placed on hold? You make yourself ready.

As with The Cuckoo’s Calling, this is another book Rowling wrote under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, and another book featuring the private detective Cormoran Strike. Again, I have to say that I love Rowling’s ability to create holistically stimulating worlds for her characters and, subsequently, her readers. I love falling into the pages of these books, walking alongside these characters. I think Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott are delightful and I enjoy every moment I’ve gotten to spend with them thus far. I admittedly find some of the secondary characters irritating, but that’s life, innit? The core is compelling, and that’s what matters most.

I also enjoyed the plot of this novel a bit more than the first Cormoran Strike story. Much darker than the first story. Much more gruesome and sinister. This story focuses on the fate of an out-of-favor author who goes missing, only to turn up murdered in a manner similar to the fate of the protagonist in his latest book. With only a select group of people having seen said manuscript, it’s up to Strike and Ellacott to shake away the chaff and find the culprit.

Let’s drag out the dead horse that I usually beat at this point regarding mystery novels. All together now: “Not my cuppa.” Fine. I think they might at least be growing on me…or at least, Rowling’s take on the genre is wearing me down. This story was a lot less anticlimactic in its reveal than I found the reveal to be for The Cuckoo’s Calling. I still felt slightly “meh” regarding this reveal (perhaps because I had started to pick up on where the story was heading and why), but more for my own personal mystery aversion. Objectively, Rowling pulled together a fantastic story. Also, she’s quite the twisted sister. Me gusta. There were a couple of particularly vicious reveals that either made me newly appreciative of her obvious internal darkness or laugh as a result of my own gallows humor. Rowling continues to impress me with her authorial acumen to a point where, even when I don’t necessarily enjoy the genre, I’m still going to willingly go along for the ride because I know the driver is so impressively skilled.

Final Verdict: Even though I wasn’t quite prepared to fall down the mystery novel rabbit hole once again, Rowling made it easy for me to follow her by providing me with another riveting visit to yet another one of her skillfully built worlds. Actually, I think I enjoyed this one enough that I could see it finding its way into my library. Definitely looking forward to the next Cormoran Strike tale!

BookBin2014: Batwoman Volume 4: This Blood Is Thick

~ lobablanca

tbit

I’m quite sad that I am here to give a rather lackluster review to my latest adventure with Kate Kane. Perhaps it’s because the last collection was, by far, the best of the best since Batwoman’s “New 52” relaunch. After all, it’s kind of hard to top Batwoman partnering with Wonder Woman. Also, Williams was back as the artist, which you all know delights me to no end. And both Williams and Blackman were fiercely on-point when it came to that collection’s story arc. Simply put, the third collection was perfection, IMHO.

The fourth volume, This Blood Is Thick, isn’t awful (that’s such backhanded praise, no?). Something about it, however, didn’t set well with me. Perhaps it had more to do with my knowledge of the behind-the-scenes issues. As fans know, this was Williams and Blackman’s last run as Batwoman’s authors. She’s now in another’s hands, with Williams and Blackman not even concluding the cliffhanger on which this collection ends. It’s a good cliffhanger, to be sure…but that just makes it all the worse. Dance with the one who brought you, DC. They brought the Lady Kane to this precipice. They should have been the ones allowed to lead her over the edge.

But I digress.

Perhaps it also was because Batwoman actually doesn’t get all that much air time in this collection. Surprisingly, for being the titular character, she’s almost relegated to supporting cast a lot of the time. That’s not necessarily terrible, since many of the supporting characters in Batwoman’s world are pretty ace…but I still would like my fair share of time with the star of the show. Also, I didn’t really like the injection of Batman villains into Batwoman’s storyline. I get why they’re there, but I have always enjoyed that Batwoman kind of exists in her own…what? Parallel universe to Batman and the rest of the Bat family? They don’t really intersect all that often (although Batgirl got a full-on taste of Batwoman’s mad skills a while back). I like that. But this time, seeing Batwoman going up against Batman foes like Mr. Freeze and Bane? I don’t know anything about these characters…and I don’t care to. They aren’t Batwoman characters. So GTFO.

Says the one who went crazy over Wonder Woman’s appearance in the last collection.

Finally, though, it really is the ending that really pissed me off with this collection. Again, Williams and Blackman were cut off at the knees here. They’d already written Issue 25 (the continuation of where this collection ended) and were beginning to plan out Issue 26, which would have ended the arc of this particular Batwoman run. They knew where all the characters were going to end up, they knew how they were going to conclude the story…and now? Now we’re never going to get their ending. And that sucks. Seriously, I reached the last page and felt oh so frustrated and not the least bit furious. Really? That’s it? That’s how you wanna roll with this, DC Comics? Lame.

Final Verdict: All that being said, I’m keeping this in my collection. I don’t think that it was so terrible that I don’t want to own it anymore. I am, however, very disheartened by the truncated whimper on which Williams and Blackman have gone out with Batwoman. This is the last batch of their comics, and the next collection will mark the arrival of the new Weaver of Tales for the Lady Kane, Marc Andreyko. I’m not sure what to expect with the next collection, but I love the character enough that I’m willing to give it a proper chance to impress me. All I have to say is don’t blow this, Andreyko. I don’t take kindly to people fumbling my fandoms.

Photo Fun Friday: Dylan McDermot Mulroney

~ lobablanca

I’m struggling to find the time and the motivation for posting lately, but this was another one of those “inspired-by-true-events” misspoken names, a la the now infamous Tawny Kattan photo (which is still probably less traumatic than Steven Tyler Moore), that turned into an “I have to make that happen” PhotoShop moment.

Without any further explanation or any further ado, I give you…Dylan McDermot Mulroney. You are, of course, very welcome.

Dylan McDermott Mulroney

BookBin2014: Scream Deconstructed: An Unauthorized Analysis

~ LobaBlanca

screamdeconstructed

This is going to be a really short review because: A) this book isn’t going to be for everyone; and B) my feelings for the book are probably already very obvious to those who know me. Lucky you, denizens.

I bought the Kindle version of Scott Kessinger’s Scream Deconstructed: An Unauthorized Analysis completely on a whim (darn easy 1-click Amazon shopping option). Why? Because I love Scream.

You know, in case you haven’t noticed that before in all the myriad posts I’ve dedicated to banging on about this particular movie/franchise.

/ end sarcasm

In fact, I would even go so far as to say that, if I had to choose one horror movie I’ve seen…just one…that would be my default horror movie from now until forever? Scream would be in the elite list of five from which I would struggle to make my final selection. I’ll let you try to figure out what the other four are.

Do I love the rest of the franchise as much? Not by a long shot. That first film comprised some bit of magic that was so precious and rare that it simply could not be recaptured for the sequels. But I find things to appreciate about the other movies. Well, maybe not the fourth one. I do believe I have already made my feelings about Scream 4 very clear.

Although, to be honest, after reading Kessinger’s analyses of the fourth movie, I was intrigued and impressed enough by his thoughts that I rented the movie to give it a fair shake at perhaps showing me what it showed him. I admittedly still didn’t see what he saw (and still saw a depressingly disappointing addition to the trials and tribulations of Woodsboro’s sauciest survivors), but I still appreciate what he sees in this film and value his opinion.

All that being said, I can’t recommend this book to everyone…or to most people, for that matter. If you don’t like the movies, then this is not a book for you. It’s definitely only for the truly obsessed. Like yours truly. However, if you do love, or even just really really like, Scream and its sequels? Then I can’t recommend this book enough.

Final Verdict: Staying on my Kindle. It’s short, it’s sweet, it’s got some great analyses, even if I don’t always agree 100 percent, and I imagine I will be going back to peruse this one every now and again. Whether or not that means I’ll ever give Scream 4 another go is a completely different story…