Sarah · Smith

Lots of kids here currently, and lots of Personality therewith.  So I call up Kathy M.S. tonight and she's just come back from a wake for a niece who died at 15 of an inoperable brain tumor.

Count your blessings. 

I'm reading Mary Doria Russell's DREAMERS OF THE DAY for the second time (got an ARC from LibraryThing!  Yay!).  Slow, a bit inclined to As You Know Bob (but when it comes to the Middle East, Bob doesn't know).  Differently shaped in the way that only a book can be when it is the product of deep moral intelligence.  I love that woman more and more.  I only hope I can give it a review worthy of it.

Passing on this information from www.defectivebydesign.com and melopoiea.  I've been a bit disgusted by the Amazon/B&N attempt to put together a reader that ONLY handles their proprietary format.  Even though Alex C. swears by his Sony Reader, I'm not going to read anything that can't read Project Gutenberg (and does something clever with it, please, like bookmarks).

Anyway, here's the info:

Amazon Kindle (Swindle), Sony Reader (Sh-reader), and others are all competing to control how, what, and when we can read with their competing Digital Restrictions Management technologies. Let's let them know that we won't buy their ebook readers until they get rid of the DRM!

Join us in opposing all DRM ebook readers and DRM ebooks by taking part in this action.

We want to send a message about DRM on ebooks and ebook readers that everyone will understand with just four simple points:

• Amazon, Sony, and others want to change the way you read: They want to put locks on your books. Their "ebook readers" use Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology to control how, what, and when you can read.

• When you purchase a DRM ebook, it is locked to a single device. When the device breaks or becomes outdated, you can no longer read your ebook. You buy a lock, but you don't own the key! If you try to pick the DRM-lock on an ebook so you can read your book on another device, you break US Federal Law (The Digital Millenium Copyright Act).

• DRM ebooks are bad for authors and publishers. The owners of DRM technology get to decide which books, newspapers, and magazines can be put into their DRM formats. The DRM technology owners can deny whomever and whatever they wish from using their format. DRM allows for digital censorship.

• Every few years you will have to buy a new copy of your favorite books, and a new ebook reader to go along with it. Any ability to lend your ebook to family or friends is severely limited at the whim of the DRM owner. For the future of reading: Don't buy ebook readers that use DRM technology—our books will end up locked shut.

Join us in action in teaching the world about DRM on ebooks. Help us save the future of reading for everyone

• Take action: Print this double-sided flyer.
• Hand them out at your local bookstore.
• Ask your local bookseller to carry them to discourage customers from buying DRM ebooks.
• Post them at work or school.
• Help us inform Amazon.com customers about the Kindle Swindle.

I've been watching LA CELESTINA, yes, they made a movie out of Fernando de Rojas's 1499 book.  Very young Penelope Cruz as Melibea, and a guy who looks unfortunately just like her brother as Calisto.  Terele Pavez, who is great, as the witch Celestina.  An interesting romance trick: Calisto and Melibea are as chaste as can be for most of the movie, so the scriptwriter makes it up by having the minor characters go at it like rabbits.  If you're going to have a chaste love affair, make up for it in the secondary characters...

Wonderful book, brilliantly written, completely true to life in Brazil.  Which makes it darker'n shit.  Just have been emailing Leighton, who says the critics have mostly made him stand in a corner because it's too violent.  Except for the ones who have been there and understand.

Can't wait to write about Brazil.  Or to see the Gages again, one more of the sets of unexpected new friends that writing has been bringing me this year.  Jeremy and his wife; Jack and Francoise.  People to be grateful for.

Opens on Christmas.  Be still, my heart.  Can I wait until Dec 26? 

It could get all beweirded w/Burton's streak of Gothic sentimentality, but I'll take the chance.  Johnny Depp channeling the Bride of Frankenstein.  Alan Rickman as the evil force of justice.  Helena Bonham Carter in the perfect twitchy role for her (remember Nora S's impersonation of her as a velociraptor? She got that air HBC has, 'I am a very big bird and I do not like you"). 

Trailer:  http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809834155/video/

Thinking more about No Country for Old Men.  Even integrity gets to be a habit.  Splendid ending; I have to see it again, and talk about it with Jus.