This is what I said last Tuesday on my Facebook page: Today is Wednesday. I know that now. But what I didn't know? Yesterday was Tuesday. Yes, I should have known. I did technically know, it just wasn't at the forefront of my mind while trying to get through a surprisingly rainy day and work...while sick. I'd been sick--or was dealing with something I thought was allergies--for a few days preceding Tuesday, and writing up my thoughts for anything slipped my mind. But I'm determined to not outright neglect my promise to have something. So... Go watch the Kung Fu Panda duology! And yeah, I did just call it a duology. I don't have the time for this post to delve into my usual preference for specifics of storytelling mechanics and messaging, but Kung Fu Panda and Kung Fu Panda 2 are gorgeous to look at, hilarious, wholesome, and timeless. I have seen both of them many times, but I recently rewatched them, and every time I do I am freshly reminded of how much I love them. Maybe one of these days I'll suffer through the third movie just to write a post about Why Kung Fu Panda is A Duology, Not A Trilogy. But for now, just treat yourself, whether it's a family movie night or just for you. Go watch Kung Fu Panda.

Have you ever seen Robots? Not the generic mechanical creations; I mean the 2005 movie starring Ewan McGregor as the voice of the main character, accompanied by an absurdly star-studded supporting cast. It seems so obscure, to me, especially since I'm pretty sure my family got it, for the first time, from Blockbuster Video. It had a theatrical release, apparently! Yet I know for sure I did not see it in theaters (and I was definitely old enough for my parents to take me to see kid movies in theaters; I’d seen The Incredibles the year before). Theater or Blockbuster Video aside, it was a part of my childhood. I remember giving myself headaches at the most inconsequential part of the very first scene of the movie: the main character’s hometown is called “Rivet Town,” and I had no idea what a rivet was, so my brain was fiercely correcting it to “river” while being unable to rectify it with what my eyes clearly saw. I don’t jokingly say I got headaches. I still associate that movie with discomfort, even though I now know that rivet is a real word. But if you read the title of this post, then you know I’m not here to complain. I recently revisited this movie (thanks to my younger brother pushing for it), and I have things to say. Nice things *gasp*! As always, let’s start with a rundown of the plot. Full confession: for some reason, I really struggled to summarize this movie in the way I usually do, so I clipped this synopsis from Wikipedia and modified it for my purposes. I hate to have done it, but I was already late in getting this post out, and it spared me a lot of pain. The Summary Rodney Copperbottom is an aspiring young inventor. He idolizes Bigweld, a famous inventor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist whose company hires other inventors and provides robots with spare parts. Following Bigweld's inventing advice to "see a need, fill a need," Rodney develops a small, flying robot, named Wonderbot, to assist his dad, who works as a dishwasher at a restaurant. When his dad's supervisor confronts them, Wonderbot malfunctions and wreaks havoc in the kitchen. To help his dad pay for the damages, Rodney decides it’s time to move to Robot City, hoping to present Wonderbot to Bigweld Industries. Upon his arrival, Rodney is ejected from Bigweld Industries by the company's current head, Ratchet, who, in Bigweld's absence, has stopped producing spare parts and inventions in favor of expensive "upgrades," thereby "outmoding" robots who are unable or unwilling to pay for them. After failing to get into Bigweld Industries, Rodney befriends Fender, an outmode he met at the train station. Fender takes him into Aunt Fanny’s boarding house populated by other outmodes, including Fender’s sister, known collectively as the "Rusties." After repairing Fender, word of Rodney's mechanical prowess spreads, and he is hailed as a local hero after he and the Rusties fix outmodes throughout the neighborhood, although they are eventually unable to cope with the demand due to the spare part shortage. Hoping to enlist Bigweld's help, Rodney and Fender infiltrate the Bigweld Ball – where Bigweld usually makes an appearance – only for Ratchet to announce that Bigweld will not attend. Enraged, Rodney publicly berates Ratchet, who orders his security team to eliminate him. Cappy, a Bigweld Industries executive opposed to Ratchet's plans, rescues Rodney. Fender is captured by a Sweeper, a vehicle that collects scrap metal and outmodes, and taken to the Chop Shop where he discovers Ratchet's plan to destroy all outmodes and reduce them to ingots for his upgrades. Meanwhile, Rodney and Cappy fly [in a vehicle] to Bigweld's mansion, where they eventually find Bigweld and tell him what has been going on. Bigweld reveals Ratchet's greed and business sense dwarfed his idealism in the management of Bigweld Industries, and tells Rodney and Cappy to leave. Crushed, Rodney calls his parents and plans to return to Rivet Town. Rodney’s dad encourages him to fight for his dreams, or he will spend the rest of his life regretting it. Fender returns upon escaping from the Chop Shop and reveals Ratchet's plot. Rodney rallies Cappy and the Rusties to stop them. They are joined by Bigweld, who has regained his resolve after realizing how much he and his ideals meant to Rodney. After the final showdown, Bigweld retakes control of his company, promising to make spare parts available to everyone. Later, he holds a public ceremony in Rivet Town, where he nominates Rodney as his new second-in-command and eventual successor. Rodney provides his ailing dad with new replacement parts and an instrument to fulfill his dream of being a musician. My Thoughts The core message of the film is a good one for children and adults alike to learn and remember: old or young, rich or poor, whether you have a face that could win you everything in life, or a face that could cost you everything in life, you can succeed through hard work and kindness. And other positive messages are sprinkled everywhere. Rodney’s parents are supportive of their son’s talent and goal, but they offer wisdom alongside that support. They don’t promote reckless spontaneity; they keep Rodney grounded, while releasing him to grow up and be a man. Rodney associates with and repairs crummy robots and stands by them. Throughout the movie, Rodney tries to get a hold of Bigweld to show him his invention (Wonderbot) and be accepted as an apprentice. Once he finds out about Ratchet’s dastardly plan, his search for/desire to see Bigweld reemerge grows more desperate, not solely for his own benefit, but for the robots that are being reduced to scrap metal by Ratchet. He’s sure Bigweld is the only one who can help them, to the point that he party-crashes an event called the Bigweld Ball to try and see its namesake. When Bigweld doesn’t show up, and instead Ratchet is headlining the thing, as usual, Rodney confronts him, bitterly spitting out [after Ratchet accuses him of party-crashing], “Yeah, that's right, and I had to put all this junk [a disguise] on in order to get in here so that I could tell Bigweld that you are outmoding millions of bots. And I know, because I spend all day fixing them!” As a kid, I always thought he was burnt out and mad at life for all the robots he had to repair when what he was trying to be was an inventor. Watching it now, I realized that he’s not bitter about fixing robots. Not at all. He loves that he has a useful talent; he’s able to see a need in society/people’s lives and fill it—just like Bigweld said! What he is upset about is how he feels like the only line of defense, and he’s powerless to stop the enemy’s advance. He feels like the only one putting Bigweld’s “Whether you’re made of new parts, old parts, or spare parts: you can shine no matter what you’re made of” into practice, even though many like it in concept. It’s anti-corporate agenda! That’s something anyone can get behind, right? It’s so on the nose, but it cracks right open the entirety of corporate marketing, and I love it. In Aunt Fanny’s boarding house, Rodney, for the briefest of moments in the whole of the movie, lay in his tire hammock and broods. He’s avoided calling his dad because he feels like a failure in Robot City because he hadn’t met Bigweld and become an inventor instantly. Fender reminds him that there’s always a new day. Instead of brushing Fender off and/or wallowing, he comes out of his funk and joins Fender in arm farts. He may not have succeeded by his ridiculously high standard of success, but he has friends. On his very first day, no less. Rodney’s solid ethics inspire everyone he comes in contact with, whether it be the friend group he associates with regularly, or the bots he fixes one time. He even inspires a jaded Bigweld—his personal hero!—to do the right thing by simply sticking to Bigweld’s ideals better than Bigweld himself did. Everyone who crosses paths with Rodney ends up better for it. The ending, though partaking in the dance party trope (where kids movies that don’t know how to end just…have a dance party), shows Rodney’s dad getting to follow his dream of playing trumpet…and he kind of sucks at it, but the others around build on his “junk (jazz/funk),” as Fender calls it, and make something listenable out of it. I think, even though it is an excuse for a dance party, you can extract something a little deeper about it if you want to: you don’t need to succeed the first time, and beauty can be made out of imperfection when you have a community that wants to see you succeed. The animation is beautiful. It looks like you could reach out and touch it. Mind you, this is animation from 2005, and the intricacies and textures look like you could interact with these characters if you transported them to the real world. The character design is unique and charming. You could maybe nitpick the logic of the character design--Why is there no consistency? Why don’t siblings even bear a family resemblance? When you have full control over your appearance and that of your offspring, how do you choose [fill-in-the-blank]? But for how they function in the vacuum of a movie, everyone stands apart, as they should, and designs cleverly incorporate metal parts we interact with in our world often. The score is surprisingly good, it has solid motifs, is both cheery and dramatic when it needs to be, and feels wonderfully tinkery for all the inventing that is a focus of the movie. But it’s scored by John Powell, the same guy who did the music for How to Train Your Dragon, so maybe I shouldn’t be as surprised. I’ll close with some grounding thoughts: Robots is not a perfect movie. If you’ve seen it and you’re scratching your head reading this, wondering if we watched the same movie, know I’m not blind to this movie’s deficiencies. The editing is choppy, it leans a little too heavily on juvenile humor (though the Britney Spears sequence was criminally short, and I will die on that hill) and oddly placed pop culture references. These elements hold it down from being a truly great movie. But here’s the thing: if some of those kinks would have been worked out, I actually think it could have been a truly great movie. Those kinks were not worked out, but even so, it has so much heart. So much good will and creativity. It’s not insufferable and shortsighted the way so many movies made just for kids are. It’s on my list for future rewatches. I hope it’s on yours, too.

I know, I know: I said September was a break month. But I'm a bad author, because... ...I forgot that the one year book birthday of Stay Out of the Basement was September 17th! And yes, I'm totally five days late to celebrating my own first book release. I had it in mind for months prior that I would re-read my own books on their anniversaries and see what new lens I come at it with. Will I still come at it as the author? Will I be able to appreciate it as a reader? I have pretty decent recall, so I have to give myself time to forget things enough to see it with fresh eyes. But the 17th rolled around, and... Yeah, I fell behind. I got busy. I work, I write (and for the life of me, I cannot read while I'm writing; it messes up my groove!), I have a married brother who pops in for visits often. Things did not go according to my plans. So my celebration is late, but as they say, it's better late than never, right? Here's to [a little over] a year since beginning my publishing journey! Here's to the people who read my work-in-progress and said, "Go for it." Here's to the memories of that process and experience, and to the physical product that I now get to hold in my hands. And here's to you, my readers, who have blessed me beyond expectation by supporting my work. Thank you. And Happy Anniversary to Stay Out of the Basement! If you haven't already bought a copy, you can get yourself a paperback or eBook here.

I've been trying to keep a consistent, attainable schedule of posting every first Tuesday, so I really hoped to keep it going--no excuses! Unfortunately, August was a busy month for me, so I do kind of have an excuse... So September is a break month! That, or I'll try and get something out later in the month if inspiration strikes. No promises, though. See you in October!

While many encountered The Great Gatsby for the first time in high school, I came to it as an adult: willingly, curiously, not under any obligation. I had little knowledge of what the book was actually about, but I nonetheless brought preconceived notions to it: it’s the Great American Novel! It’s something everybody has read, and must read! It’s profound and full of symbolism (it had a foreword by someone I’d never heard of that told me so)! I read the book from front cover to back cover—both introductions/forewords to ‘The End’—scouring it for every piece of meaning, re-reading sentences and paragraphs to make absolutely certain I had understood them (because, somehow, the language of The Great Gatsby (1925) was harder to understand than Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864)). Maybe a second read-through would finally bring that hidden layer to the surface, but I’ll never know, because I don’t plan to put myself through it again. It would be a waste of valuable time: The Great Gatsby was neither entertaining nor enlightening. Most people probably know the plot already, but I’ll recap: Nick Carraway moves from the Middle West to a little house on Long Island where he neighbors the mansion of Jay Gatsby, a mysterious and aloof man who throws opulent parties every Saturday throughout the summer. One of the first things he does when he reaches the east coast is visit his cousin, Daisy, and her husband, Tom. The relationship between Daisy and Tom seems strained, and their other guest, Jordan, tells Nick of rumors that Tom has a mistress in New York. Sometime later, Nick gets a personal invitation to one of Gatsby’s parties, so he goes and, eventually, runs into Gatsby himself—whom nobody at the party actually knows. Gatsby takes a liking to Nick and begins inviting him to do more things. Already, I don’t recall whether or not this happened before or after the first of Gatsby’s parties Nick attends, but Nick spends a day with Tom who spontaneously, purposely, to Nick’s displeasure introduces Nick to his mistress, Myrtle. The rest of their guys’ day is shared with both Tom and Myrtle and some of their neighbors in their New York City apartment. There, amidst an already uncomfortable party, Nick witnesses Tom strike Myrtle and break her nose. Stand up guy, Tom. Returning to Gatsby: Gatsby finds out about Nick’s connection to Daisy, who was his girlfriend, briefly, some five years ago, and asks Nick to arrange a lunch so he can see her. From there, Gatsby and Daisy strike up a covert affair until it comes to a head one night when Daisy, Tom, Gatsby, Nick, and Jordan all have dinner together. During that night of hanging out, the truth is exposed, they drive from Long Island to New York City, then Tom and Gatsby argue over Daisy’s affections. In the heat of their emotions, Tom commands Daisy to drive home to Long Island with Gatsby in his car while the rest go in Tom’s car. Rather than Gatsby driving, Daisy insists on driving while Gatsby rides passenger, and she happens to run over Myrtle and kill her. Myrtle’s husband, a previously passive and submissive man, snaps, in his grief, and blames Tom for his wife’s death (he’d previously seen Tom driving Gatsby’s car and claiming it as his own on the way to New York City) since he seems to finally understand there was an affair. So he goes to kill Tom, but Tom tells him it was Gatsby’s car, so the guy goes and kills Gatsby before taking his own life. Nick is the only one, besides Gatsby’s estranged father, to attend the funeral. After that, Nick is sick of New York and all the people and parties, so he goes home to the Middle West. Before doing so, he officially breaks up with Jordan, whom he’d had something of a summer fling with, marking clearly his leaving New York behind him. It’s an uplifting book, as you can tell from my synopsis. I won’t pretend that one couldn’t extrapolate any messages from this book. I don’t think it’s possible to never find any messages in a book, even if they’re subtle, unintentional, or downright terrible. But just because there are themes and messages does not automatically give a story depth. The Great Gatsby came off as a pretentious book more than a profound one—or perhaps it’s the clamor and prescribed import surrounding The Great Gatsby that comes off pretentious more so. As best as I could understand, the “depth” of this book is found precisely in its futility and nihilism. Nothing in the end matters. Nick ends up right back where he started. Tom and Daisy move on as if neither cheated on each other and no absurd drama filled their lives. Jordan shirks Nick off like an old coat before he officially bids her goodbye. Somehow, that is supposed to be a profound take on the human condition and the nature of life. Perhaps I have a different perspective than most, but that seemed like an obvious take on humanity, not secret knowledge we peasants were let in on by the great philosopher F. Scott Fitzgerald. You don’t have to look very far to find these characters in the real world, and that’s not deep, that’s just a fact. And the fact that it’s a fact isn’t deep, either. I don’t recommend The Great Gatsby. I don’t think the literature of the past, things that have endured the test of time, should be forgotten or snubbed because they’re old or out of step with modern sensibilities, but I don’t think Gatsby deserves its status as a must-read. If you want to read it, read it. If you like it, like it (though I cannot fathom why). But if literature is going to be required for any demographic, especially a developing one, there are better things to be showcased. One detail I didn’t get into: The Great Gatsby isn’t even well-written. And I’m not going to get into that even a little bit now because I don’t want to pick the book up again to scour it for excerpts to support that assertion. Let it wither from my brain and die. If you want a book recommendation that shows what the world looks like without morals, without love, without hope, without God, don’t read The Great Gatsby. Go read Ecclesiastes.

So a professor walks into the earth… It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but this is the basic premise of every iteration of Jules Verne’s famous book, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, I’m familiar with. And, personally, I think it’s a good premise, ripe for the imagination. I grew up watching the 1959 movie starring James Mason (who also starred in another movie based on the writings of Jules Verne: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)), and I remembered enjoying it. Oh, the wonders it displayed! The danger! The possibility! While flipping through my family’s movie catalog, I came across the DVD and was struck with an urge as magnetic as the center of the earth to revisit it. Since it’s one of my dad’s favorites, it wasn’t long before I convinced my family to revisit it with me. So we watched it one night after dinner, and it was as good as I remembered—no, better. Who knew how long it had been since I’d seen it last? I was likely a child, with a peewee child brain. Returning to it as an adult, I got much more out of it. And, now that I’m in a season of life where I’m attempting to read a lot of books (which, contrary to the fact that I’m a writer, I didn’t actually do much of when I was younger), I decided it was time to read the book for myself and compare. Oh, and the 2008 movie with Brendan Fraser exists. I’ll get to that, too. Fear not. Right now, let’s go in chronological order, and start with the source material that started it all: Journey to the Centre of the Earth (“Voyage au centre de la Terre,” in its native French). Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864) The book is largely concerned with the science and “How” of such an expedition, and that’s as much as I’ll introduce without getting into comparisons and contrasts just yet. It was easy to read, the chapters were short and bled into each other, which often kept me reading onto the next. It is sciencey, but I was able to follow it as someone who isn’t very brainy. It was pretty linear, and I never got bored, but(!) it was pretty dull. I differentiate between boring and dull. Summary The story is narrated in first-person by Axel, nephew to the renowned Professor Otto Lidenbrock: a German mineralogist, geologist, polyglot, bibliophile, and what they called “eccentric” and I call “sociopath.” After purchasing an old, old Icelandic book, the professor discovers a slip of paper inside with a puzzling cryptograph. He’s temperamental, devoted to science, and has minimal-to-no value for human life, so he decides no one in his household will eat until he’s cracked the code. This disregard for literally everything but himself and his goal is common throughout the book, but today’s thoughts are not concerned with granular analysis, so I’ll move on. It’s Axel who ends up cracking the code: a 300-year-old message from an Icelandic scientist, Arne Saknussemm, claiming there’s a way to enter below the earth’s crust in Iceland, and he himself has traveled to the center of the earth and survived to write this cryptic message about it. At once, after packing necessities, the professor sets off and drags his nephew along with him. In Iceland, they pick up Hans Bjelke, who serves as their guide and hired muscle, and then their descent begins. I’m actually skipping over quite a bit of content, for those curious, or perhaps outraged at my neglect. None of what I’m skipping is essential to the overarching plot. There is a lot of sitting, thinking, waiting, and scientific debating in this book. Once they’re below sea level, under the earth, their impractical journey goes relatively smoothly. The first path they take is a dead end, they run out of water because of that detour, Axel gets separated from the group, breaks his light source, and runs madly in the dark before reuniting with his uncle and Hans. They encounter some underground sea monsters who harm each other instead of the travelers who disturbed their waters, then run into a storm, and that’s about the bulk of their troubles. To be clear, they have very real, human troubles, but it’s not an overly stimulating journey, particularly for a non-scientific mind. The book’s wonder is derived from what scientists—who are, in fact, the ones taking this journey—would find fascinating, not the casual consumer. Which is why I give it due credit for being interesting in its own right. But that relatively smooth journey is full of dead silence and darkness, granite tunnels and caves. It isn’t until more than halfway through the book they discover an ocean under the earth’s surface, and the book ends with that discovery, as the small party are launched out of a volcano before they can continue any further into the earth. It would be one of the dullest things you could possibly adapt to screen. Beside the plot, the characters were little more than plot-vehicles. Professor Lidenbrock is absurdly over-intelligent, and he’s too self-absorbed and manipulative to feel happy for when all of his theories prove correct and Axel is proven wrong. He reads like a two-dimensional villain, except he’s the main character—the journey is his. Hans is a non-entity. He’s silent before they descend into the earth and has no way of communicating with Axel, the narrator, so he might as well not exist except for the story’s need for his muscle. But Axel is human enough to follow along with, otherwise it may have been a less tolerable read. Overall, I enjoyed it, and it may even be worth rereading in the future. Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) I’m a purist, and usually an advocate for hewing as close to an original vision as possible. There are practical concerns when transitioning from one medium to another, so not even the best book-to-screen adaptations will be identical, but there’s something to be said for an adaptation that really tries to remain faithful to the work that inspired it—to look into a fragment of someone’s mind and soul, be awed by what someone imagined, and set out to make what they saw in their heads real. However, in the case of Journey to the Center of the Earth, there is something to be said for the adaptation that, instead of asking Verne’s question, “How would you pull that off?” asked, “What would that look like?” Because you really do need a lot of change to make something like Journey to the Centre of the Earth look interesting. The screenwriter himself, Walter Reisch, had this to say: “The master's [Jules Verne’s] work, though a beautiful basic idea, went in a thousand directions and never achieved a real constructive "roundness". With the exception of the basic idea, there is very little of the novel left in the film.” Summary Renowned Scottish Professor Oliver Lindenbrook has just been knighted for his achievements, so the college he teaches at honors him, and one of his students, Alec McEwan, gifts him with a volcanic rock he found at a shop (it sounds lame, but this is actually a really good gift for geology nerds). This rock from Alec is heavier than it should be for its composition, so Professor Lindenbrook, the dutiful mineralogist, examines it at the cost of a planned dinner with guests (including Alec). When Alec comes to find out why the professor is a no-show, he is present when the rock goes ka-boom and reveals a plumb bob with an inscription which provides the message from Arne Saknussemm. The professor, who is not supernaturally intelligent or "eccentric" (he’s a bit rude, but he’s human), writes to some of his contemporaries who are authorities on certain matters relevant to his forthcoming expedition, and he gets stabbed in the back by the main one, Professor Göteborg, who intends to take the glory of discovery for himself. Having figured that out, Professor Lindenbrook leaves immediately for Iceland, and Alec volunteers to accompany him. In Iceland, they are abducted and displaced by an agent of Professor Göteborg who is determined to keep them out of his way, and it’s through this predicament they meet Hans Belker and his duck, Gertrude. With the help of both Hans and Gertrude, they escape and return to tell Professor Göteborg the whatfor, only he’s dead in his hotel room, murdered by his last guest: Count Saknussemm, a descendent of the legendary scientist. Professor Göteborg’s widow shows up to meet her husband, is informed of his death, is insulted by Professor Lindenbrook’s expedition “stealing” from her husband, and ends up realizing her husband was a villain. After that, she resolves to accompany Professor Lindenbrook, unwanted, but in the useful role of translator between the party and Hans, who only speaks Icelandic. Now our cast is all accounted for and they descend into the earth, stalked by Count Saknussemm, who believes this discovery is his birthright. From the very beginning of their journey, they face perils and have a lurking, unknown enemy. Alec, like his book counterpart, gets separated from the group and nearly dies before encountering Count Saknussemm and, shortly, his own party. When they reach the underground ocean (which, in this version, is the center of the earth), they have a frightening encounter with dimetrodons before making it to the water. Then they discover the ruins of the lost city of Atlantis, another lethal lizard, and then they’re blasted out of a volcano. Comparing and Contrasting Historical Context Allow me to pause a moment to draw attention to one, immediate shift: Germany versus Scotland. It seemed superficial to me, so I was curious, when my dad drew my attention to the date of the movie, where WWII would have been recent history. That explanation made a lot of sense to me. Shifting it to Scotland, who were certainly on better terms with England, anyhow, makes sense when you’re not on great terms with a certain country for reasons. I couldn’t find anything conclusive (or at all) on this point when I researched, aside from a mention from the screenwriter that he changed the location to Scotland, but no motivation for the change was given. I’m content to call what I’ve mentioned a convincing theory, if nothing else. Different, Not Bad My summaries of both properties were speedruns of the plot and didn’t do full justice to imagery, which is really, really important when you’re talking about a visual medium and what parts to adapt from a non-visual medium. There is imagery in the book. When I made the claim that it was dull and sciencey, not a feast for the mind’s eye, I didn’t mean there was no imagery at all. The underground ocean is lit with sun-like brilliance by a constant aurora. They encounter a storm with a mischievous ball of electricity that seems to play with the supplies on their raft. An ichthyosaur and plesiosaur have a smackdown. They fish for ugly, blind sturgeons. They find forests (though they’re not green, because there’s no sunlight) and a mushroom forest. They see a lot of bones but also spot a herd of living mastodons in one of the forests, quite possibly shepherded by a living, giant man. All of these things are there and perfectly fine, but this portion of their expedition doesn’t happen until the last third of the book, which means, if adapted literally, the first two-thirds of the movie would be utter blackness and silence, because the echoes make it impossible to hear each other. Then they’d finally reach a part you could see with some neat elements, and then it’s over. And that combines with the sciencey interest of the visuals, such as finding a preserved corpse with hollow eye sockets in a boneyard. And, as mentioned before, dead-looking forests. Do those visuals really, truly inspire awe and wonder? Do I want to pay to see characters not interact with each other? Do I want a survival documentary where the only dangers are running out of food and water or breaking a lantern? Do I want the corpse with hollow eyes? I’ll admit it is possible for my answer to be at least slightly colored by nostalgia, but my personal answer to those questions is ‘No.’ The movie has earthquakes, fragile rock formations, and a stalker-enemy who all provide tension and thrill to the journey. The characters sing to keep their spirits up and exchange snappy dialogue (there are some really strong exchanges between the professor and Madame Göteborg). They marvel at shining, crystal caverns, and they’ve got frightful, reptilian foes that are a wonder of green-screen technology (I say this only a little facetiously. It does have a slight cheese factor, but it’s creative, and I love it). Heck, you guys, they’ve got Gertrude. One point I will bring up is that Axel is intelligent and sciencey in his own right, compared to his Uncle Lidenbrock. He’s a thinker and anxious for it, which is what adds color to the colorless journey of the book. Alec—the Axel substitute of the movie—is not intelligent or sciencey. It’s painful at times. That is one change that could have been made stronger. Bonus Content: Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008) I did promise I’d give a mention to the 2008 Journey to the Center of the Earth starring Brendan Fraser, so here we are. Summary Seismology professor Trevor Anderson babysits his teenage nephew, Sean, and his sister-in-law gives him a box of things that used to belong to his deceased brother (Sean's dad) who disappeared ten years prior. In that box, he finds Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth with all kinds of notes scrawled in it, some of which prompt him to return to his lab and look at his seismic maps again and find there’s a new tracking blip on the computer screen, fully corresponding with whatever activity his brother was tracking a whole decade ago. Taking his impertinent nephew with him, he immediately embarks for Iceland in search of a scientist mentioned in his brother’s notes and instead finds the scientist’s young and attractive daughter, Hannah, who happens to be a mountain guide. The next day, they set off for the mountain marked by the tracking blip and get trapped in a cave after lightning strikes the mouth and causes a landslide. From that point on, a roller coaster-like mine cart ride takes them further away from the surface than they anticipated, then they walk on thin rock that breaks and sends them hurtling down a pit onto a waterslide. The combination leads them straight to the center of the earth in a matter of hours, at most. The center is an ocean, with lush, green foliage around the shore, and a ball of gas lighting it perpetually. There are bioluminescent birds, and they discover the corpse of Trevor’s brother, as well as his journal which informs them they only have 48 hours to escape or they’ll be cooked. So they set sail on the ocean, play baseball with sharp-toothed fish, narrowly escape giant dinosaur-like creatures that emerge from the water and eat the fish, and then Sean gets separated when he gets carried into the air on the sail. Trevor and Hannah encounter some sentient Venus fly traps, while Sean is guided by a glowing bird through a cavern of floating, magnetic rocks and then is chased by an unusually stealthy and perceptive giganotosaurus. (Seriously, the giganotosaurus hides on a rock above Sean and graciously waits for him to notice before striking more like a mountain lion than a predatory dinosaur.) In order to get out, they have to make it to a geyser that will shoot them back up to the surface, but they’re too late, and the water has dried up, so they have to ignite magnesium to explode the walls so the water will spill through. And that’s the end. Analysis Though my younger brother likes to refer to this movie as, and I quote, a “Masterpiece,” (and screaming while falling, then stopping to talk about it, then screaming again as, and I quote, “Character development.”) I have to relay the honest truth: this is an unintelligent movie. The CGI is bad, the dialogue is bad, the story is weak all the way through. There’s a sub-/bookend plot where Trevor’s lab—which is named after his brother—is being defunded and he’s able to stop that from happening thanks to pure, rare gems Sean pilfered from their time underground, but that subplot is not fleshed out. The movie isn’t concerned with any kind of development apart from, “Isn’t this thing cool?” and maybe that would be alright, in its own way, if “cool” weren’t relying heavily on special effects less convincing than the green-screened iguanas from 1959. Cool storytelling and intelligent storytelling are not mutually exclusive. That’s assuming anyone older than twelve finds this movie cool in the first place. In which case, it may be neither cool nor intelligent. So I’m sorry to anyone who grew up with this movie and has any nostalgia, but it’s not good. It was barely watchable. Final Thoughts Have you read Journey to the Centre of the Earth? Have you seen the 1959 or 2008 movies? Let me know your thoughts, favorite parts, etc. in the comments! If you haven’t read the book but you like reading, I’d encourage you to give it a shot! It’s very thinky. If you haven’t seen the 1959 movie, I’d encourage you to give that a watch, too. And if you haven’t seen the 2008 movie, don’t even worry about it, you’re not missing out.

It was the beginning of 2022, and my younger sister was making efforts to be a better reader of books. She’d been a late bloomer with reading comprehension from the beginning, and English still hasn’t become one of her favorite or stronger subjects. But she was making strides—strides that I, as a writer and word nerd, respected and cared to cultivate. She’s also into good spooks and refused to compromise on happy, whimsical things like, well, most of the things that I tend to read. It hurt, but I figured I could work her over, eventually. I just had to get her to enjoy reading, first. So I used my connections with writers on Facebook to get book recommendations to fit her palette. I got many recommendations in response to that post and compiled them into a list for her. All set. Except, after research, she wasn’t interested in any of them—any of them but one: Nightbooks, by J. A. White. Different as we are, she’s a critical beast after my own heart. She read the first page and gave it up for garbage. Instead of pressing on, she asked me to check it out and give her a report on whether it improved. That is how I came to read Nightbooks. Forewarning: the answer to that immediate question I sought to answer—“Was it worth her time?”—is no. No, it never got better. But I pushed through the whole thing. And I have thoughts, because simple answers never satisfy me. So let’s jump in. The premise is simple: main character Alex Mosher is lured into a witch’s apartment and must read her the scary stories that he writes every night in order to save his life. Pretty straightforward. Doesn’t seem overly ripe for picking, if I’m being honest. Somehow, this book is still 302 pages long. It’s kind of impressively bloated. The book opens with Alex sneaking out of his family’s New York apartment to the basement to burn…something…in the boiler down there. On his way down, the elevator stops at the wrong floor, so he gets off there to use the stairs. As he searches for the stairs, he hears the sound of his favorite movie—the original zombie horror movie, Night of the Living Dead—playing on someone’s TV. What are his thoughts as he heads to the stairs? “Huh, neat, someone else in this God-forsaken apartment complex shares my interests.”? No, his thought is, “I love that movie so much I should go inside of that stranger’s apartment and watch it.” After the fact, the explanation is that the apartment magicked him out of his free will, but I call bull. It was totally a cop-out for the complete and utter foolishness it took just to make the plot happen. Everything happens so fast that Alex isn’t given time or space on the page to ruminate about an invisible force drawing him, at least nothing that doesn’t just sound like an ordinary impulse control issue. In fact, we, as the reader, are not given time to register anything about the character or world we’re diving into before it goes from “Kid sneaking out of his apartment” to “Oh, yeah, omnipotent magic exists just like the fairy tales, lol.” We’re off to a great start. We find out a short time after Alex is trapped in the apartment with its witchy resident, Natacha, that what he was planning on dumping into the apartment complex boiler were his composition notebooks that he uses to write scary stories in—his “nightbooks,” as he calls them, because he writes at night. He was called weird at school, or something like that, so he planned to burn them as a symbol of starting a new life as a normal kid. Now they’re the only thing that may save him from being turned into a ceramic figurine on Natacha’s shelf. A voice—which we soon find out is his fellow prisoner, Yasmin—outside his new bedroom’s door advises him that Natacha likes stories, so Alex makes sure Natacha knows that before she kills him. In response, she pulls up a chair and makes him read her a story to prove he can write scary stories. So we get the first of a handful of short horror stories from Alex, a tale about a boy who encounters a dog that only shows up before people die. It’s pretty lackluster. All of his stories are. With the strange exception of certain word choices seeming beyond the vocabulary of our protagonist, nothing is really a standout for a kid his age. Still, Natacha is impressed, for some reason, and eager to turn him into her own personal story machine. By the end, we find out this is because the witch from Hansel and Gretel, called Aunt Gris, is real and is the real power behind the apartment, but she’s in a magic-induced slumber because of Natacha and only nightmares/scary stories keep her asleep. And I guess Alex’s stories serve that purpose well enough. Lord knows how any mortal idea can be considered a sufficient nightmare to a cannibal witch, but okay. The only other real complaint I’ll address about how thin and unintelligent this plot is is just the ending. Alex and Yasmin, a calloused, smart alec girl his age (because heaven forbid that cliche finally die) manage to escape into what they think is a wood. Turns out, it’s just an extension of the apartment where the candy house from the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale is, and also Aunt Gris herself. The beating heart of the magic. After the kids can’t resist eating candy (seriously, what is this book’s fairy tale logic? I thought the whole thing with fairy tales was that, when presented with temptation, people cave to their impulses, not that these temptations strip people of their free will…) and end up under a sleeping spell themselves for two days, Aunt Gris is starting to stir and wake up if Alex doesn’t read her another story. In that moment, he decides, Hey, this child-eating witch hates Natacha as much as we do, so instead I should let her wake up so she’ll fight Natacha for us. I don’t know in what universe that’s a good plan by anyone’s standards, even children’s, but that’s what he goes with. So Aunt Gris wakes up and eats Natacha. Hooray for cannibalism. It’s a dissatisfying end to Natacha after we find out that she was a former child-prisoner of Aunt Gris, just as Alex and Yasmin are prisoners to her. Natacha is the one that figured out how to put Aunt Gris to sleep and was going to kill her, only she also figured out how to leech off of her magic and decided that was more fun than escaping. I was upset by her ending partially because of a preconceived notion about fiction intended for children: aren’t the villains of children’s literature usually given a second chance, especially if they’re given a tragic backstory? The moment she was revealed to be horribly twisted by her experiences—experiences even worse than what she’s put Yasmin and Alex through—as a freaking nine-year-old who got kidnapped, I was sure the protagonists would resolve to try and free her with them. But instead they go with “Hope the witch you betrayed to save your skin just like we’re doing for ourselves now eats you.” And eat her she does. Yeesh. After that, Aunt Gris is after the children. Naturally, they escape the apartment and lock the witch in the boiler to burn alive just, as we’re constantly reminded, like the fairy tales! The question that’s plagued me ever since: if the fairy tale is real, then why isn’t that witch already dead? Hansel and Gretel should have already locked her in her own oven. How is she alive to torment kids into the 21st century? The story is constantly winking about its explicit retelling aspects; Alex is trapped in a house with a witch just like Hansel and Gretel *wink* *wink*. Alex has to tell the witch stories every night to stay alive just like Scheherazade *wink* *wink*. It disrespects itself and never has the conviction of its own ideas. It’s like the author is insecure that people will draw parallels between his story and better stories, so he went ahead and made it extra obvious to prove, “I’m in on the joke, guys! Please don’t laugh at me!” Aside from Nightbooks generally being unintelligent fiction that treats children like a foreign species, inspired more by other stereotyped versions of children in fiction rather than real children, it also has a disturbing undercurrent, directly related to the message of the book, that I’m certain the target audience, lacking in discernment, won’t catch. Oh, but they’d easily emulate it, and I find that very concerning. Alex’s character arc is, of course, that being weird is cool and he just needs to accept himself. Why is that a problem, apart from being uninspired? Here’s why: Alex’s age is never explicitly stated, but given genre conventions, he can’t be older than twelve, and he’s obsessed with horror. Not spooky vibes, like my sister, but horror. He’s the insecure “freak” at school who concerns people so much that he actually gets a counselor called on him. His favorite movies are things that should decidedly not be watched—on purpose, enough to memorize them—by a twelve-or-less-year-old. He has all the paraphernalia pertaining to these movies and even decorated his school notebook with serial killers, murder dolls, vampires, witches, and the like. He says his inspiration for his nightbooks is that he has nightmares, so he writes to get them out of his head. This kid is not okay. He needs therapy. This book treats the school counselor and, furthermore, the teachers who reported his disturbing school papers, like they’re wrong to be concerned for Alex. He’s just quirky, that’s all. Throughout, Alex references these gory movies that he adores—not necessarily by name, but there is enough of his fascination laced throughout to give you the idea of which movies he watches. If he’d gone to the movie theater for these, he most certainly would have been denied. But his parents are letting him watch and rewatch these. In real life, it would make me wonder what other negligent or outright abusive behaviors Alex’s parents are displaying. And Nightbooks is promoting this content to an eight- to twelve-year-old audience. Without digging into the deep psychology behind fetishizing evil, even on a surface level, Alex’s plight is hard to get behind. He’s the ultimate “not like other boys” character, which is eye roll-worthy in its own right. This book treats the other boys that Alex talks about like stereotypical girls who don’t have any interest in creepy crawlies and grossing people out. As if creepy things are exclusive to “freaks” like Alex. I’m sorry, but my adult brothers still like showing me GIFs of giant spiders just to freak me out. Boys will be boys. Liking creepy things is the status quo. That’s a tragic backstory thin as air. Though Nightbooks is intended as horror for children, it’s a real horror for the discerning adult. If you have an ounce of care in your heart for the innocence and wellbeing of children, it turns this book from an otherwise mediocre read into a truly disturbing one, for all the wrong reasons. Ultimately, I can’t recommend this as worthwhile fiction for either demographic.

Free is a steal—until it costs your life. All her life, Imogen has dreamed of becoming a jockey. Fresh out of luck in the sanctioned circuits, she's persuaded to turn to racing that's a little less legal. Unfortunately, the rules of illegal horse racing require that she provide her own horse—in two weeks. When fate leads her to a free horse, she thinks she may finally have a chance. But the horse is wild, with a ghostly reputation, and it might bring an end to her racing dreams before she even makes it to the track. - - - I did a thing! Er, I did a thing...again! While my first release, Stay Out of the Basement, was a short story, To Obtain A Horse is a novelette—more than twice as long as Stay Out of the Basement! Like the last one, the paperback is 4x6. It's small enough to fit in the back pocket of my jeans. It's so cute! I enjoy having a small, chunky book rather than a standard-sized and thin one; it's PORTABLE!! You're welcome. I hope you guys enjoy To Obtain A Horse! Available now in paperback form on Amazon. Ebook should follow very soon.

For some time now, I’ve grappled with starting a blog. I wanted to, for some inexplicable reason, but what would I write about? What do I have to add to the world/internet that hasn’t already been added (and probably better) by someone else? I believe I’ve finally found my answer to that question: reviews. Why write yet more reviews when there are already so many available? So here’s the thing, I’m opinionated. Everything that passes by me, whether books, movies, TV, any genre, intended for any demographic, faces my judgment. I can’t help but dissect the things that enter my brain, including my own thoughts. Now, because I cast judgment on the sea of media before me, do I think my written opinions are very important? … Yes. They’re important to my sanity. I find value in writing out my thoughts because It encourages me to think, in the first place. And It helps me to know what I think, to move beyond vague feelings and impressions and assemble the pieces into a personal revelation. Through this endeavor, I find out what makes a story work or not work (and I do try to be as objective as possible, though subjectivity is inescapable). But I’m writing things that many people have written and continue to write. I cannot guarantee that my thoughts will be new, especially to you. So do I think my thoughts are very important to you? I don’t expect you to think so. But even in my most serious moments of written opinion, I have fun thinking (no, seriously) and fun writing (or sometimes just ranting…), so my hope is that you’ll have fun reading along. Now onto the next important question: what range of topics will my blog cover? *drumroll* Fiction. And whatever I feel like. But mostly fiction. I’m too unfocused to tackle topics that require serious research, and I care about getting things right, so I’m going to talk about things that I know, and not things that I don’t feel settled in my knowledge of. Lastly, by claiming that I know about storytelling, do I think I’m a superior storyteller, or that my writing features none of the flaws that I’ll point out just because I think about things that are already written and done? I want to reassure you that I do not think I’m the best thing since the invention of the wheel. I’m an imperfect person, and the best I can produce is imperfect writing. That’s true of everyone (even Diana Wynne Jones, who you’ll hear no bad things about from me). But we all have to start somewhere. If I didn’t take the plunge and publish my imperfect writing—if instead I waited until it was the best it could ever possibly be—I would never publish at all. My main concern is that I continue to grow, and that by dissecting what other people chose to publish (especially if there are accolades involved!) that I will learn more about how to write my own stories…or how to not write my stories. This is a journey. It may be a sporadic one involving procrastination and dry spells of low media consumption, but it’s going to be a heck of a time. So come on in, the water is fine.