First we have Wake, a book I recently finished by one of my favourite authors. Since everyone loves pretty pictures, I shall supply one of the cover.
Delightful. This book is the first in his new trilogy in which the internet gives rise to a sentient being. The things strike me as fascinating in this book are the same things that I have enjoyed in his past books. Every book that Sawyer writes is written in a way that integrates the speculative elements of science fiction with theories from various disciplines. Wake has two and a half pages of acknowledgements listing the sources that he draws from. Being from Mississauga, he also likes to set his stories nearby. The setting of this story in particular amuses me as it is right here in Waterloo. He meshes everything quite beautifully and even seems to write the part of a teenage blind girl quite well (which is good since she's the main character). Wake is a fantastic read and I'd highly recommend it to fans of sci-fi literature.
Keeping with the sci-fi theme, I caught Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance at the Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema.
We got the North American premiere because we're cool like that.
I'm not usually a fan of mech anime but Nick is rather good at introducing me to good ones. Of course, I was already aware that Evangelion was highly thought of and was already curious about it myself. I haven't seen the older ones but this rebuild is rather well done. While the first movie was only alright for me, the second blew me away. The story really takes off from there and draws you in. I blame metaphysics for that. The visuals are astounding as well and I enjoy the feel to the mechs (if that makes any sense at all). It's certainly worth a watch.
In the vein of anime, I have also managed to watch my way through Kujibiki Unbalance.
I bought the boxed set for the Genshiken OVAs which came along with them. If I have not made it clear in previous posts, I shall state it here: I absolutely love Genshiken. Kujibiki Unbalance is the show that the Genshiken members are always watching/manga they are always reading. I want to stress that Genshiken came first. Kujibiki Unbalance is spawned from a show about otaku.
Oh dear.
The show itself is... unique. The plot line and character designs differ from the original conceptualization seen in Genshiken but the prevailing themes are the same. As such, it is filled with blatant fanservice and crazy antics that boggle the mind. While incredibly enjoyable, it was horribly stressful and left me with the feeling that my brain was melting. I have decided that it is now my mission to expose as many people as possible to this show in the interest of shared perplexity. I'm kind of a jerk like that.
Finally, I have something entirely unconnected to my previous entries. Recently, Priestess came to Starlight and Joe and I saw fit to go see them. The band was late getting there so the door didn't open until 9, a minor inconvenience really. The opener was called Early Man and they gave off a vibe of Radiohead crossed with Audioslave. It was pretty cool.
Priestess themselves surprised me. Being only familiar with Talk to Her and Lay Down, I expected a sound akin to Wolfmother. Most of their songs were actually much harder. It was an interesting change of aesthetic but not unwelcome. They put on a killer set and I ended up leaving with a Priestess t-shirt and Early Man's CD. I certainly feel I got my money's worth, particularly since buying the tickets helped me discover a really cool record store.
That's about it. Currently the house is watching Pani Poni Dash!, so I may talk of it in the future. Otherwise, school's winding down an exams are coming up. I'm hoping to survive until Christmas. Mmm, delicious Christmas...
night - sleeping = new blog post,
Travis T
