More Adventures

Watched:

Johnny English: Reborn - I did really like the first Johnny English, I think Rowan Atkinson is great, partly because his goofy facial expressions remind me of someone I know and love. This movie was a little smarter, more clever than the first, a little less slapstick, and I definitely recommend it as well as the first Johnny English.

The Three Musketeers - Pretty fun, slightly over-the-top verging on cheesy, but overall a nice "popcorn movie." The colors seemed weird to me, probably because it's supposed to be 3-D. I did enjoy the movie, but I don't have a lot to say about it.

Read:

Three Men in a Boat (Jerome K. Jerome) - Chronicles the goofy adventures of 3 friends in Victorian Britain, who decide to take a vacation and go boating on the Thames. The characters are similar to those of P. G. Wodehouse (who wrote the Jeeves and Wooster books), and the style of storytelling reminded me a lot of those and of "Cordelia Underwood," by Van Reid, which I love (and if you want to borrow any of them, I will lend them to you). The narrator goes back and forth between telling what is actually happening to them on the river, and telling a story about someone else that he was reminded of, and then sometimes he becomes quite poetical about the river, the scenery and the history of the villages. It was a pretty satisfying read. My favorite quote:

"We are but the veriest, sorriest slaves of our stomach. Reach not after morality and righteousness, my friends; watch vigilantly your stomach and diet it with care and judgement. Then virtue and contentment will come and reign within your heart, unsought by any effort of your own, and you will be a good citizen, a loving husband and a tender father - a noble, pious man."

And this book is full of all sorts of great little tidbits like that. I was laughing out loud on the Metro when I read this.

Heir Apparent (Vivian Vande Veld) - A fantasy/sci-fi young adult novel that is a quick, easy, and thoroughly enjoyable read. I have read a few books by this author and I always liked them a lot. They aren't very deep or philosophical or complex, but I don't always need deep, complex philosophy in the books I read. This one is about video games, and when I try to summarize the plot, it sounds dumb, so I'll just copy what the back of the book says: "In the virtual reality game Heir Apparent, there are way to many ways to get killed-and Giannine seems to be finding them all. Unless she can get the magic ring, find the stolen treasure, answer the dwarf's dumb riddles, impress the head-chopping statue, charm the army of ghosts, fend off the barbarians, and defeat the man-eating dragon, she'll never win. And if she doesn't win, she'll die for real this time." It was nice and fluffy and funny in all the right ways.

WICKED is good

I just finished reading The Maze Runner by James Dashner. By the end of the book, I wasn't sure that WICKED was good at all, but fortunately, there are two more books in the trilogy and this year there will also be a prequel, so I'll have multiple opportunities to find out.

The book begins when a teenager named Thomas, that's all he knows about himself, wakes to find himself trapped in a maze with dozens of other boys. The boys have been trying to escape the maze for two years with no luck when Thomas and a comatose girl arrive and they all learn this is the beginning of the end. They need to escape the maze or die.

This is a young adult novel, and I found it very enjoyable. The pacing and tension were good and the characters well developed, especially for a bunch of characters who had no memories of their lives before the maze.

The author is a fan of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, and this book is similar in that a group of adults have decided to test a group of children to see if they are suitable for some unknown, but very dangerous, purpose. A theme I think will be explored in the remaining books is whether the end justifies the means. The Creators, who sent the boys to the maze and have done horrible things to them, seem to think (or at least say) that they are doing this for the good of the world. I don't generally think that the end justifies the means, so I'll be interested to see where this goes.

It's well worth the read. You can learn more about James Dashner and his books at: http://www.jamesdashner.com/.