NakedSushi

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I don’t know what took me so long to read an Ursula Le Guin sci-fi novel, but I’m glad I finally did. The Lathe of Heaven starts off with George Orr, a seemingly ordinary guy with a very extraordinary talent: his dreams can change the universe. This talent of his is as far-fetched as super-powers go, but Le Guin eases readers into the world in baby steps so that you’re not saying to your self, "Oh my god, he just made pink elephants fly! This is too much!" She makes Orr’s talents make sense in the world without being overly technical in explanations. It just works.

Once I quickly came to terms with the world-shifting thing, the next prominent thing on my mind was social responsibility and morality. Haber, the psychiatrist who’s assigned to Orr has a very macro view of morality, while Orr has a conflicting view of it. Naturally, the two are at odds, but throughout the whole novel, I kept rooting for Orr even if it meant being content with a crappy world.

One thing I kept going back and forth on was whether Le Guin’s vision of the future was dated or eerily accurate. Some things she writes reminded me of an old Twilight Zone episode of the future, with flying cars and everything, while other things like conflicts between countries and races seemed very on the ball. I guess fighting in the middle east is pretty timeless.

Reading the Lathe of Heaven felt like reading several scifi books at once despite its short length. There was a near-apocalyptic world, a post-apocalyptic world, a dystopian world, aliens, flying cars, you name it. It was like a buy-two-get-one-free deal on scifi settings.

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Last night, I wanted to make a “What White People Eat” dinner: mac and cheese, greens, and a cob of corn.  Unfortunately, it turned out that the almond milk I was going to use had been in the fridge too long and was getting moldy (grosssss!) and the greens I bought were actually mustard greens and not kale as I had thought.

Some quick thinking and a carton of veggie broth saved the meal.  I used broth instead of almond milk for the fake cheese sauce in the vegan mac and cheese (recipe here). I realized too late that we also had no more tahini, but leaving it out completely didn’t seem to alter the flavor too much.

I sauteed the greens with white onion, garlic, chile pepper flakes, salt, sugar, and about a tablespoon of lemon juice. The greens turned the onion a strange purple color but they tasted fine.

I also learned that you could microwave corn on the cob last night! It’s faster than boiling and doesn’t taste all watery afterward either. Brilliant!

The Passage by Justin Cronin

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Someone give this man an editor! The whole book could have been cut down to half its length. There are pages after pages of needless filler, only making me roll my eyes at all the trite, cliched paragraphs I was actually reading. I know it’s supposed to invoke some emotion for the characters, but I just kept thinking, "I’ve read this before."

Now don’t get me wrong, The Passage is a page-turner. But it doesn’t actually reveal itself as that until 200 pages into the book. If you ask me, that’s too long for a book to start getting interesting.

As for the story, it was the main thing that kept me going. I’m a big fan of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction and I had very high hopes for this one considering how everyone was raving about it. It even had some dystopia thrown in, but in the end, it left an ugly taste in my mouth.

Although there were full pages crammed with pseudo-science and explanations of the virus, nothing was that believable. The characters were either flat and one dimensional, or archetypes. There’s the pure, innocent girl whose destiny is to save mankind, the old cryptic, slightly crazy old mystic who has all the answers if only someone could take the time to sit down and really listen to her. There’s the tough-as-nails woman who has something to prove. Oh and the loyal, all-believing hero who comes to terms with something.

The Passage read like a long video-game. There are intense, suspenseful action scenes, but there are also a lot of clumsy, poorly-staged exposition chapters which just made me cringe.

The worst of all, the whole novel was some modern-day metaphor for Noah’s Ark. Viruses that turn people into vampires with super strength, I can stomach, but characters who act only because they think they hear the voice of god or think they’re on god’s mission? No thanks.

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Late to the party considering Amazon’s Kindle 3 got announced yesterday, but here’s my Kindle 2 review.

I was one of those who scoffed at the device when the Kindle first came out. It looked like some gadget out of the 80s, all angled and clumsy looking. When the Kindle 2 with its rounded corners and better display came out, I still didn’t hop on the ereader bandwagon.  But after moving and packing all my books into box after box and lugging the heavy things from one house to the next, I started to contemplate the perks of having a whole library digitalized.

A few months ago, I finally broke down and bought a Kindle 2. I was worried that it was just another case of gadget lust and I’d grow bored of it after a few weeks, but luckily that’s not the case.  I’ve read several full-length books on it now and I have to say, it’s very convenient.

Things I like about the Kindle 2:

• Lighter than most paperback books I read.
• Lays down flat on a table, which makes it super easy to read and eat at the same time.
• Easy to hold with one hand.
• I can listen to a book using text-to-voice in the car, making my commute more bearable.
• Screen works fine in the sun.
• Decent battery life. I read about an hour a day and one charge can last me two weeks. With wifi turned off of course.
• If I’m reading some embarrassing paranormal romance, I’m not carrying around some book cover with an oily-chested man on it.

Things that the Kindle 2 does poorly:

• PDF support is crappy at best. Most native PDF files are so small they’re hardly readable and Kindle’s ‘zooming’ feature makes it practically impossible to read things in a fluid manner.
• Text to voice is functional, but man does it butcher words.
• Book organization/navigation is clumsy.
• Non-changeable screensaver. The default screen-savers are decent, but I’m getting sick of some of them. I wish we could just drag & drop our own into the Kindle.

Overall, as a reading machine, Kindle 2 is probably the best out of all that I’ve tried.  Before getting used to it, I thought the 1/2 second refresh rate was going to be an issue but it’s hardly noticeable now.  The actual act of reading on the Kindle 2 is pleasant, but navigating through a list of books, especially if you tend to have tons of books on the device is clumsy even with the new update that includes the option to create folders.

Navigating it isn’t much of an issue since that only accounts for less than 5% of the time I use the Kindle 2.  Is it going to make me stop buying dead tree books forever? Probably not. There’s still nothing that compares to flipping through the pages of a new book and of course, the new book smell, but for books that I’m only going to read through once, Kindle it is.

Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Could this be one of the first books in the paranormal romance genre? Maybe. It predates even Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Carmilla is a story about a girl who lives isolated in a large mansion with her father, some madames (house keepers? governesses? who knows) and other servants. One day, a strange set of events occur which results in a charming and beautiful girl staying with them for an indefinite amount of time.Well it turns out the girl is a vampire who falls in love with (or maybe just wants to drain the blood of) the our young narrator.While the story was somewhat engaging and the development of the relationship between Carmilla (the vampire girl) and our narrator is sweet in a very twisted way, none of the characters seemed very real. Maybe it’s because the novel was written so long ago, but I just couldn’t relate to anyone. It was like no one in the book had actual jobs. They just sat around their large houses with their handful of servants and lollygagged the day away.It’s interesting to read a vampire story written so long ago and still see the similarities in the mythos. The two girls’ interactions reminded me of Let the Right One In (another vampire book) but in the end, I was just bored and waiting for the book to end. I know this book is supposed to be horror and maybe it was terrifying to read back when it was originally published, but I barely batted an eye.

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Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

The good news is that I got the Kindle version for free on Amazon. The bad news is I got what I paid for. My new rule is to read at least 1/4 of a book before I can give up on it. Well, I got a quarter of the way in and I’m still not enjoying it, so I’m going to have to shelves this for now.

The biggest problem I have with this book is the main character, which is a Pretty Big Deal. She’s young, hot, ditzy, and just very Legally Blonde. Like another reviewer said, if I were in a foreign country investigating my sister’s murder, I would *not* be taking a piece by piece inventory of what I was wearing down to matching pink nail polish and Juicy purse. It’s hard to take the book seriously when you can’t even take the heroine seriously. Also, she’s very stupid and does very stupid things.

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Yu Shan Ge is a high-end vegetarian restaurant close to the Shandao Temple MRT stop.  Even though we took a taxi to it from our hotel, we realized it was actually a walkable distance and walked the way home. After the filling meal we had, walking was a smart choice.

The restaurant itself is nicely decorated and just stinks of money, but luckily not in a tacky way. There are glassed walls decorated by rocks strung on wire, beaded partitions, and dim lighting. While we were doing research on vegetarian restaurants in the area, we read that this place is frequented by celebrities but alas, we didn’t recognize any.

Yu Shan Ge serves food influenced by Japanese cuisine which is evident in the meticulous presentation of each dish and the little speech that our waitress gave before setting down the food. Everything we ate had some florid, touchy-feely, spiritual story behind it. While it’s typically a turn off for me, I was surprised that most of the food was tasty enough for me to overlook the over-the-top presentation.

The first thing the waitress brought us was this dish of water with rose petals and a lemon slice floating on top. I was immediately reminded of the story of the boorish American who thought the finger washing dish was some sort of cold soup.  It felt strange rinsing my hands in this bowl of cold water while the waitress smiled and looked on, but at least my hands were clean.

Because Will doesn’t eat dairy or eggs, we had to ask them if they could modify the already vegetarian menu to his restrictions. Luckily, the waitress seemed happy to accommodate.

The first dish we were presented was a cold appetizer plate of vegetarian sushi and salad.  The bite-sized piece of fake salmon was actually some sort of agar preparation. It didn’t have the same texture as real salmon, but tasted good nonetheless.  The custardy tofu on a cracker was also nice.

One of the soups we had that night really stood out because of its mouthfeel.  The broth was rich, thick, and coated my mouth the way a slow-simmered pork broth would.  I think it was a vegetarian rendition of shark fin soup and it was one of the best I’d ever had.

We also had a taro root porridge type dish which was presented in such a thoughtful way.  It was brought out to us on a straw mat with an orchid plant on the side and some rocks.  Even though we were sitting in a dark restaurant, it was cute that the chef wanted to bring a little nature to his dishes.

The only letdown of the dish came in the form of what I assumed was the main course. I think it was supposed to be a vegetarian play on steak and gravy and it certainly looked nice, but the taste just wasn’t good. The texture of the steak, which I think was made of chopped mushroom was actually decent, if not a little weird at how accurately they mimicked the fibrous texture of real steak. What broke the dish was the sauce. It was too peppery, sweet, and sour. It made me think of gravy made out of Chinese spices, which might have been what it actually was.

No Chinese meal would be complete without rice, and this meal was no exception. Unfortunately, by the time the savory, sticky rice came out, I was beyond stuffed. I could barely manage to finish half my bowl of rice.

Dessert was a good breather. I was dreading that it would be something really sweet and filling like a pastry, but then that would go against the restaurant’s whole message. Instead, we were brought out some cut up fruits and a bowl of sweet soup filled with white woodear mushrooms, dates, and papaya. It was sweet, but just the perfect amount of sweet.

Yu Shan Ge is certainly not priced as a casual place to stop by and eat, but it is worth going there at least once for the experience. Their mini-speeches before each dish is a little hokey for me, but it’s worth sitting through just for the food.

Yu Shan Ge
14, Bei Ping Dong Rd (at Shandao Temple MRT)
tel: 02-2394-5155