![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thistlechaserI'm now up to five cat/book icons! :D I love this one.
But before we get to books! My brain is an odd thing. All this week, five days in a row, I woke up exactly one minute before my alarm went off. 4:59 on the nose for five days straight. I could never do that while awake! It's pretty darned impressive how well our brains can keep time.
Ellie New Cat might need a new name. She escaped my apartment last night! My apartment has a small area around it that's mine (maybe four paces by two paces, a sort of porch or yard with no grass), fenced in. She got out my front door but luckily didn't know where to go from there and I was able to herd her back inside. Her escaping is my biggest worries -- she used to be feral, she lived half her life outside, I really worry I won't ever be able to catch her again if she gets out and beyond my fence.
Book #2! Call of the Wild by Jack London. Technically this was a reread, but I read it as a kid and remembered less than you would find on the back cover, so I'm counting it as new.
Book summary: Buck, a southlands dog, is stolen and taken north to Alaska. He has to quickly learn how to become a sled dog and survive among the wild men, wilder dogs, and the deadly Wild.
There's a lot I'd like to say about this book, and I've been trying to organize it in my head for a few days now.
First: It was a good story. I enjoyed it. I loved the setting. I learned a lot of interesting things. I'd recommend the book to anyone. Also, while it was written in 1903, it was not dated; other than a few random words here and there, if I hadn't known better, I would have believed it was written recently. That's pretty darned impressive.
Those are the biggest, most important points. That being said, I had a number of issues with the book:
1) If Mary Sue and Gary Sue wanted a pet, it would be Buck (the main character/dog from this book). Near the end of the book I skimmed four pages straight describing just how perfect of an animal Buck was. Four pages straight! And that was hardly the first time. Nearly from the beginning of the book, it was nonstop talk about how Buck was the perfect animal, how perfect his muscles were, how perfect his coat was, how perfectly intelligent he was, etc.
2) This was a harder point for me to pin down. Part of it has to do with the Sue point above, but more complicated. Since the main character was a dog, it would have been harder to tell the story without Buck seeming to understand spoken word. The problem is, it felt like he knew too much. He seemed to understand English perfectly. He did understand that when money changed hands, something (usually him) was being sold. He seemed to understand how betting works. I think it wasn't exactly that though. More like we came out of his point of view so the reader could see more (follow spoken conversations, etc).
3) Related to the first two points, perhaps belying my last couple sentences in point two. Buck knew too much. Too many IMPOSSIBLE to know things. He saw clearly cave men his ancestors used to belong to. That part bothered me a lot. He watched the daily activities of his ancestors, which is impossible, no matter how perfect of a dog he is.
While those points did bug me, they were mostly small (#3 bugged me more, but not to the extent that I didn't enjoy the book or wouldn't recommend it). Mostly this was an entertaining story about interesting characters in an exciting setting.
Next up: White Fang. (Both books were packaged together.)
But before we get to books! My brain is an odd thing. All this week, five days in a row, I woke up exactly one minute before my alarm went off. 4:59 on the nose for five days straight. I could never do that while awake! It's pretty darned impressive how well our brains can keep time.
Ellie New Cat might need a new name. She escaped my apartment last night! My apartment has a small area around it that's mine (maybe four paces by two paces, a sort of porch or yard with no grass), fenced in. She got out my front door but luckily didn't know where to go from there and I was able to herd her back inside. Her escaping is my biggest worries -- she used to be feral, she lived half her life outside, I really worry I won't ever be able to catch her again if she gets out and beyond my fence.
Book #2! Call of the Wild by Jack London. Technically this was a reread, but I read it as a kid and remembered less than you would find on the back cover, so I'm counting it as new.
Book summary: Buck, a southlands dog, is stolen and taken north to Alaska. He has to quickly learn how to become a sled dog and survive among the wild men, wilder dogs, and the deadly Wild.
There's a lot I'd like to say about this book, and I've been trying to organize it in my head for a few days now.
First: It was a good story. I enjoyed it. I loved the setting. I learned a lot of interesting things. I'd recommend the book to anyone. Also, while it was written in 1903, it was not dated; other than a few random words here and there, if I hadn't known better, I would have believed it was written recently. That's pretty darned impressive.
Those are the biggest, most important points. That being said, I had a number of issues with the book:
1) If Mary Sue and Gary Sue wanted a pet, it would be Buck (the main character/dog from this book). Near the end of the book I skimmed four pages straight describing just how perfect of an animal Buck was. Four pages straight! And that was hardly the first time. Nearly from the beginning of the book, it was nonstop talk about how Buck was the perfect animal, how perfect his muscles were, how perfect his coat was, how perfectly intelligent he was, etc.
2) This was a harder point for me to pin down. Part of it has to do with the Sue point above, but more complicated. Since the main character was a dog, it would have been harder to tell the story without Buck seeming to understand spoken word. The problem is, it felt like he knew too much. He seemed to understand English perfectly. He did understand that when money changed hands, something (usually him) was being sold. He seemed to understand how betting works. I think it wasn't exactly that though. More like we came out of his point of view so the reader could see more (follow spoken conversations, etc).
3) Related to the first two points, perhaps belying my last couple sentences in point two. Buck knew too much. Too many IMPOSSIBLE to know things. He saw clearly cave men his ancestors used to belong to. That part bothered me a lot. He watched the daily activities of his ancestors, which is impossible, no matter how perfect of a dog he is.
While those points did bug me, they were mostly small (#3 bugged me more, but not to the extent that I didn't enjoy the book or wouldn't recommend it). Mostly this was an entertaining story about interesting characters in an exciting setting.
Next up: White Fang. (Both books were packaged together.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-01-12 10:25 am (UTC)It's amusing because my very first RP experience that wasn't via email on AOL was a MUCK called Yukon Trails and the setting was taken from Call of the Wild and White Fang. This was during a time when Jack London and Balto-themed RPGs were a big deal, so they shared themes TO A POINT. The Jack London game was a lot darker than the Balto game I played.
A. Lot. Darker. Okay. XD
Thinking back on it I can't believe what everyone was RPing and I was like.. 12.
It was set in one of those remote Yukon towns so that there could be a "domesticated" area of relative safety and then the rest of the game was wilderness and forest and wolf pack territory. And that whole "smart dog" thing was pretty much how everyone RPed their characters. It wasn't like in TLK or Balto where they were heavily personified. It was actually that same dog-that-is-eerily-too-intelligent feel that was in the book. It works really well in RP though, oddly enough. I miss those days. XD I had an adolescent female wolf who had a twin brother. They lived primarily in a room (a MUCK room, not a room-room) called 'Wall of Spruce' up until she joined a pack finally. But her brother was strange and had a few screws loose and stayed on his own hanging about in the Wall of Spruce.
And then I had a dog character. I played an Irish Wolfhound/Malamute mix whose purpose in life was to be a fighting dog. Yes, did I mention this game was dark? There were entire tinyplots dedicated to the dog fighting rings. Which, yes, are a pretty big theme in the Jack London books so it's not like we were a bunch of horrible people but it's amazing how many people will come out of the woodwork and create alts for the express purpose of participating in a dog fighting tinyplot. People would even roll human characters and people would sign up for when and where these sinister humans would come and abduct their alts off the street. When he wasn't fighting to the death my wolfhound/malamute giant of death was a dangerous stray dog who had one friend in all the world and she was some sort of bulldog mix and her name was Ivy IIRC.
My tendency to play dangerous and unpleasant characters started young.
Oh! And I think my favourite part of those old Jack London MUCK games was that they had Feature Characters. So you could actually interact with a well-played Buck or White Fang or Lip-Lip because people had to interview and audition for the FCs. On YT you DID NOT mess with Lip-Lip. XDD Good times, man. Good times.
no subject
Date: 2013-01-12 10:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-12 10:58 pm (UTC)Although CrossRoads's theme ended up being Balto/Alaska and not Jack London.
And it's funny because my Wizard toon there was Nightsnare, which obviously carried over to be Tarin's twitter name. XDDD
no subject
Date: 2013-01-12 11:03 pm (UTC)where my own character is permanently immortalized in Furry Wiki internet history.
That's darned cool! You know, I bet I might be in a furry Wiki too... *googles* Hm yes, sort of. The page on the game I used to run (http://en.wikifur.com/wiki/PokeMUSH:_Pokemon_Evolutions) has me listed as head wiz, though it doesn't have a page on me.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-09 01:24 am (UTC)Funny thing about the dog having visions of prehistoric men/dogs. Another dog book I read had the dog seeing into the past, visions of his ancestors- Nop's Trials. It was the only thing I really didn't like about that book, really didn't fit with the rest of the story and bugged me. But I digress.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-09 02:39 am (UTC)