Recent 10
Post: Quincy 2009 Election: The Levy Limit
Photo: February Snowstorm
Post: Quincy 2009 Election: Tale of Two Taxes
Photo: Sailors' Home Cemetery, Quincy
Photo: Yawkee Way Banners
Photo: Paris Las Vegas
Photo: John Adams Coin Celebration
Photo: Spearhead, American Museum of Natural History, NY
Photo: U.S. Mint Director Moy Unveils John Adams Coin
Random 5
Photo: Maya Lin's 2x4 Landscape
Photo: Butterfly in my Garden
Post: Myst and Science
Post: Why Life Bars?
Photo: Ette at T.T. the Bear's Place

Neil Gaiman Coraline

The best thing I can say about Coraline: It reminded me strongly of being a child. It is a classic fairy tale, the kind I loved as a kid. A clever child uses her wits to overcome extraordinary challenges.

In short: Coraline feels ignored by her busy parents and finds a fantastic alternate world. The other world appears at first to be a dream, filled with wonders and adults that attend to Coraline's every need. If you've ever read a fairy tale before, the fact that the dream world turns into a nightmare should spoil nothing for you. It's a stock fairy tale plot, what makes it unique is Gaiman.

Most childrens' works condescend and pander in the extreme; They feature dumb adults that need to change and come to respect their more clever offspring. Written by someone else, Coraline's adventure might have ended with her parents' snap realization that they need to shower more attention on their daughter. Gaiman's version has a much more muted and realistic end: Coraline opens up and shows some more affection to her parents, and they respond in kind.

I - an adult - enjoyed Coraline, but I think it has the right mix of adventure and honesty to make a child fall in love with it.

Thomas E. Ricks Fiasco

In the last decade, the pro-war camp has conflated "anti-war" with "anti-armed forces." The anti-war camp hasn't really helped itself in this regard (Remember "General Betray-us?").

Fiasco as a non-fiction book is great because it is exhaustively researched and well written. What drives me to recommend it, though, is that it combines anti-war evidence with respect for the military.

The thesis is that some politicians, empowered by public sentiment post 9/11, were able to overrule the judgment of experienced military men. Ricks doesn't beat the reader over the head with this point, he simply states the evidence and lets the reader decide.

Fiasco is both an excellent piece of non-fiction and something that was lacking in much of the decade: a reasonable anti-war voice.

Comments? E-mail me at: "me" at this domain (adammarquis.com). Home