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Consumer Psychology in a Social Media World
Claudiu V. Dimofte, Curtis P. Haugtvedt and Richard F. Yalch
Book
Consumer Psychology in a Social Media World seeks to illustrate the relevance of consumer psychology...
Questioning Play: What Play Can Tell Us About Social Life
Book
What is play? Why do we play? What can play teach us about our life as social beings? In this...
TR
The Reparative Effects of Human Rights Trials: Lessons from Argentina
Book
Justice in domestic courts is one of the most prominent aims of victims seeking to obtain...
BankofMarquis (1832 KP) rated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) in Movies
Dec 28, 2018
The first "true" comic book movie
The animated feature, SPIDERMAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE, is the first, true "comic-book" film I have ever seen.
"But wait", you say, "How about the Marvel films? Or the DC Universe films? Or the X-Men or DeadPool? Aren't they Comic-Book films?".
I would have to answer - "no". At least not in the same way. All of those properties are films that are BASED on comic-books. Spider-verse, brilliantly, is a comic-book brought to life. It includes scenes that look like pages of a comic book (or graphic novel). It uses thought bubbles,sound effect words and abstract images. The characters are distorted and when other versions of the Spider-Verse are scene (not a spoiler: it's in the title), they are designed in a different graphic style.
Credit for this unique vision/type of film must start with the writers, Phil Lord (The Lego Movie) and Rodney Rothman (22 Jump Street) as well as Directors Bob Persischetti (in his Directing debut) and Rothman (again). These 3 brought to the screen a dazzling visual storytelling vision that is engrossing and interesting and (I am sure) will become richer and richer the more that this film is viewed.
This vision must have been apparent from the "get-go" as these 3 were able to load some top-notch voice talent into this film - Mahershala Ali, Hailee Steinfeld, Jake Johnson, Lily Tomlin(!), Zoe Kravitz, John Mulaney, Kathryn Hahn, Liev Schrieber, Chris Pine and good ol' Nicholas Cage all bring their "A" game to the voices, presenting (instantly) interesting, distinct characters to this interesting, distinct world.
The action of this film moves at a fast-pace, but not so fast that you get lost and the emotions of the film are strong, so the "slow" scenes are just as well paced and don't seem too slow.
I see alot of films, and it is rare when I am struck with how "unusual" a film is. And this one IS unusual - in a very good way. I was thoroughly entertained throughout and I cannot wait to see this film again to catch some of the things I missed the first time through and have a deeper and richer experience for knowing what is to come.
Letter Grade: A
9 (out of 10) stars (yes, it's that good!) and you can take this to the Bank(ofMarquis)
"But wait", you say, "How about the Marvel films? Or the DC Universe films? Or the X-Men or DeadPool? Aren't they Comic-Book films?".
I would have to answer - "no". At least not in the same way. All of those properties are films that are BASED on comic-books. Spider-verse, brilliantly, is a comic-book brought to life. It includes scenes that look like pages of a comic book (or graphic novel). It uses thought bubbles,sound effect words and abstract images. The characters are distorted and when other versions of the Spider-Verse are scene (not a spoiler: it's in the title), they are designed in a different graphic style.
Credit for this unique vision/type of film must start with the writers, Phil Lord (The Lego Movie) and Rodney Rothman (22 Jump Street) as well as Directors Bob Persischetti (in his Directing debut) and Rothman (again). These 3 brought to the screen a dazzling visual storytelling vision that is engrossing and interesting and (I am sure) will become richer and richer the more that this film is viewed.
This vision must have been apparent from the "get-go" as these 3 were able to load some top-notch voice talent into this film - Mahershala Ali, Hailee Steinfeld, Jake Johnson, Lily Tomlin(!), Zoe Kravitz, John Mulaney, Kathryn Hahn, Liev Schrieber, Chris Pine and good ol' Nicholas Cage all bring their "A" game to the voices, presenting (instantly) interesting, distinct characters to this interesting, distinct world.
The action of this film moves at a fast-pace, but not so fast that you get lost and the emotions of the film are strong, so the "slow" scenes are just as well paced and don't seem too slow.
I see alot of films, and it is rare when I am struck with how "unusual" a film is. And this one IS unusual - in a very good way. I was thoroughly entertained throughout and I cannot wait to see this film again to catch some of the things I missed the first time through and have a deeper and richer experience for knowing what is to come.
Letter Grade: A
9 (out of 10) stars (yes, it's that good!) and you can take this to the Bank(ofMarquis)
Cult of Analytics: Data Analytics for Marketing
Book
Cult of Analytics enables professionals to build an analytics driven culture into their business or...
PU
Passive-Aggression: Understanding the Sufferer, Helping the Victim
Book
Passive Aggressive Personality Disorder (PAPD) is now recognized as a distinct personality disorder....
AGEphone Business
Business and Social Networking
App
"AGEphone Business" is a SIP-based VoIP client for iOS devices. It is designed for the business...
A Bibliophagist (113 KP) rated Space Opera in Books
Jan 25, 2020 (Updated Jan 25, 2020)
Fun writing (2 more)
Creative
Witty
Overwritten (3 more)
Lacking plot
Disjointed and distracted
Boring
Technicolor Encyclopedia entry
Space Opera seems to be a book, that based on other reviews, you either love or hate. The love reviewers can't seem to tell me why they love it, most attempting to replicate the style of the author and relying on a menagerie of adjectives to express themselves. "A glitter punk, Eurovision romp!" "Technicolor whirlwind!" but not actually saying WHY they liked it, or just saying "well you didn't get the humor". The ones who disliked it are pretty clear, and as I struggled with this book I found I agreed with their complaints. However, I have to thank the sheer number of DNFs from the disliked group for causing me to, ironically, finish it. I hate DNFing books, to begin with, but when I saw just how many bad reviews didn't make it through, it felt as bad as the good reviews not actually reviewing anything. So I powered through, and honestly, it was worth finishing. The author really got back on track and it was a great ending.
Valente has in fact given us a Eurovision, glitter punk, electric baby with Douglas Adams, her writing fantastical and humorous, her characters vapid but in a washed-out musician kind of way. She really thought about this book, creating droves of aliens and probably destroying a number of thesauri to bring them to life. We follow Decibel Jones of the "oh you haven't heard of it, well we used to be a thing" Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros. A washed-up, no longer active glitter punk band who is an amalgam of every band you probably are thinking of when trying to grasp what that description means.
The book opens with a wonderfully witty description of how there is in fact other life out there in the universe, life is easy to come by, they've just been off doing a galactic war and while they were gone we kind of popped up. Life is stupid. This part is the best part of the book. The humor is on point, the prose magnificant. She is spot on and very pointed in her argument for why war happens. It's people vs meat, and how does one determine something isn't meat, but in fact sentient? Well, no one really figured that out, hence the galactic war, but NOW post-war they think they've figured it out. Intergalactic Music competition. Makes sense, only something sentient could create music right?
Well, this year is a special year because Earth is invited, we've been deemed "may be sentient", but questionable enough that they'd rather not let us just hang out and become annoying someday. So we have to present a band and performance for consideration. We just have to not place last. If we don't place last, we're part of the club and we'll be a-ok. If we place last, we'll be destroyed, because they already think we're annoying and that will mean we're meat. People vs meat remember?
So, one day everyone on the planet earth, everyone, awake or sleeping is visited by the blue birdlike projection of our assigned guides, the Esca, and alien species that are new to the whole being accepted as a sentient thing, and will guide us through the competition. Which it is now telling us about, Suprise! They've chosen a list of musicians they think will do well, however it's outdated and only one band is really able to do it, the has-beens, who are they, Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros. Time was rough on our glam-punk friends as it tends to be on musicians, they lost the third member about a decade ago, the two remaining no longer talk. Decibel is a trainwreck, and Oort St Ultraviolet is now just a dad who very much wants to be a regular dude. But now they're being whisked off into space to sing for the world's salvation.
Sounds pretty fun right? This plus Douglas Adams type prose and humor? A real knock out. Unfortunately, that story I just described takes up... maybe a quarter of the book, MAYBE. You can pull the main story out and put it into a book that might be too small to be a novella. Because of this, the backstory, development, and exploration of these characters are slim to nothing. There is some mind you, but very little. It isn't until the 180pg mark or so that Valente actually decides to focus on the plot, giving very little time to do the entire Grand Prix, the actual competition takes up a page. A 288-page book about a singing competition and only 1-2 pages is actually the singing competition. Tack on another 10 maybe for the weird cocktail death party right before, that didn't have enough attempted death to make any real point of it, plus maybe another 5-10 scattered throughout the book on the back story and leading up to the story, and we've got MAYBE 25 pages of the actual plot. My math is wrong, I know, but it sure FEELS like this.
So, in a 288-page book, with 25 pages being the actual story, what are the other 263 pages? It was the author being somewhat... I don't mean to sound mean, but full of herself? She tried WAY too hard on this style she was going for. It felt like an "oh, you liked that opening chapter, didn't you? You totally read it out loud to your boyfriend, well here let me give it to you again, and again, and ... again". This book suffers from a severe case of needing to be edited. Of someone saying "that's enough now dear, but what about the story". Every few pages of the backstory of the plot we got were met with full chapters, sometimes multiple of Valente describing yet another alien species she's created, in yet another chain of witty simile and metaphor. To the point where sometimes I no longer knew what was happening, they were all interchangeable, which alien are we talking about now? It went on and on and on, and I never knew how such humorous writing could be just so soul suckingly boring. When she ran out of aliens it was describing previous grand prix's and how the aliens sang. In the exact same, formulaic, witty simile, witty simile, witty simile. Don't get me wrong, there were some absolute gems in here. Some that made me laugh out loud. But it's all about the ratio. I would trade in a heartbeat the ratio in this book. 263 pages of plot, and 25 pages of aliens described in witty simile. It took everything in my power after the third alien chapter to not skim. But she fit so much into a sentence that I was scared somewhere hiding would be a plot point (spoiler alert, there wasn't, skim away).
Then around the 180 page mark, a flip was switched, it was almost as if she went "crap, a story!" the adjective use was slimmed down dramatically and we actually got more than one chapter in a row with a plot point. But at this point, it was too late, the end of the book was hurdling at us and very little had happened and the book pretty much fizzled out with an "oh yeah, the Grand Prix happened". Mind you, the finale was very heartwarming and I liked it a lot. I just wish I hadn't had to read a full chapter about hairbrush interspecies sex to get there, and instead had more of it. But ironically, the hairbrush sex had more plot advancement that the majority of the book.
The ending did, however, for one moment, make me forget that I had just read an encyclopedia of descriptors and was happy for a few minutes. So good on her for that. That proves to me that she can write more than glittery descriptions, which then made me sad I didn't have more of that writing. With just a spattering of the gold of her opening chapters. I am glad I finished the book, the story, what little there was, was worth the read. However, I have no desire to read any other of Valente's writing now, and if there was a sequel, I just don't think I have it in me to read another 263 pages of description. Cool idea, good ability, just terribly executed. She could easily have released a separate book, expanding on a handful of species she established in the book, like an alien compendium, and I would have read it, and laughed, and been okay because I went into it expecting it. But I went into this wanting a story, not a neon throwup encyclopedia of just how "oh so creative" Valente is. That came off harsh, I know, but they blew past the fine line of interesting and well into the self-serving, look what I can do, territory. What suffered for it wasn't just a large number of DNFs, and my sanity for a few days, but an actually interesting, fun, Eurovision, glitter punk, heartwarming story about loss, life, how stupid it is, how beautiful it is, and why we should fight for it. It's in there, hiding beneath the layers and layers of word vomit. I want that story. Please release a second edition that is just that, the opening, and say... 3-5 of your favorite aliens Valente, I promise I'll give it another try if you do.
Valente has in fact given us a Eurovision, glitter punk, electric baby with Douglas Adams, her writing fantastical and humorous, her characters vapid but in a washed-out musician kind of way. She really thought about this book, creating droves of aliens and probably destroying a number of thesauri to bring them to life. We follow Decibel Jones of the "oh you haven't heard of it, well we used to be a thing" Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros. A washed-up, no longer active glitter punk band who is an amalgam of every band you probably are thinking of when trying to grasp what that description means.
The book opens with a wonderfully witty description of how there is in fact other life out there in the universe, life is easy to come by, they've just been off doing a galactic war and while they were gone we kind of popped up. Life is stupid. This part is the best part of the book. The humor is on point, the prose magnificant. She is spot on and very pointed in her argument for why war happens. It's people vs meat, and how does one determine something isn't meat, but in fact sentient? Well, no one really figured that out, hence the galactic war, but NOW post-war they think they've figured it out. Intergalactic Music competition. Makes sense, only something sentient could create music right?
Well, this year is a special year because Earth is invited, we've been deemed "may be sentient", but questionable enough that they'd rather not let us just hang out and become annoying someday. So we have to present a band and performance for consideration. We just have to not place last. If we don't place last, we're part of the club and we'll be a-ok. If we place last, we'll be destroyed, because they already think we're annoying and that will mean we're meat. People vs meat remember?
So, one day everyone on the planet earth, everyone, awake or sleeping is visited by the blue birdlike projection of our assigned guides, the Esca, and alien species that are new to the whole being accepted as a sentient thing, and will guide us through the competition. Which it is now telling us about, Suprise! They've chosen a list of musicians they think will do well, however it's outdated and only one band is really able to do it, the has-beens, who are they, Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros. Time was rough on our glam-punk friends as it tends to be on musicians, they lost the third member about a decade ago, the two remaining no longer talk. Decibel is a trainwreck, and Oort St Ultraviolet is now just a dad who very much wants to be a regular dude. But now they're being whisked off into space to sing for the world's salvation.
Sounds pretty fun right? This plus Douglas Adams type prose and humor? A real knock out. Unfortunately, that story I just described takes up... maybe a quarter of the book, MAYBE. You can pull the main story out and put it into a book that might be too small to be a novella. Because of this, the backstory, development, and exploration of these characters are slim to nothing. There is some mind you, but very little. It isn't until the 180pg mark or so that Valente actually decides to focus on the plot, giving very little time to do the entire Grand Prix, the actual competition takes up a page. A 288-page book about a singing competition and only 1-2 pages is actually the singing competition. Tack on another 10 maybe for the weird cocktail death party right before, that didn't have enough attempted death to make any real point of it, plus maybe another 5-10 scattered throughout the book on the back story and leading up to the story, and we've got MAYBE 25 pages of the actual plot. My math is wrong, I know, but it sure FEELS like this.
So, in a 288-page book, with 25 pages being the actual story, what are the other 263 pages? It was the author being somewhat... I don't mean to sound mean, but full of herself? She tried WAY too hard on this style she was going for. It felt like an "oh, you liked that opening chapter, didn't you? You totally read it out loud to your boyfriend, well here let me give it to you again, and again, and ... again". This book suffers from a severe case of needing to be edited. Of someone saying "that's enough now dear, but what about the story". Every few pages of the backstory of the plot we got were met with full chapters, sometimes multiple of Valente describing yet another alien species she's created, in yet another chain of witty simile and metaphor. To the point where sometimes I no longer knew what was happening, they were all interchangeable, which alien are we talking about now? It went on and on and on, and I never knew how such humorous writing could be just so soul suckingly boring. When she ran out of aliens it was describing previous grand prix's and how the aliens sang. In the exact same, formulaic, witty simile, witty simile, witty simile. Don't get me wrong, there were some absolute gems in here. Some that made me laugh out loud. But it's all about the ratio. I would trade in a heartbeat the ratio in this book. 263 pages of plot, and 25 pages of aliens described in witty simile. It took everything in my power after the third alien chapter to not skim. But she fit so much into a sentence that I was scared somewhere hiding would be a plot point (spoiler alert, there wasn't, skim away).
Then around the 180 page mark, a flip was switched, it was almost as if she went "crap, a story!" the adjective use was slimmed down dramatically and we actually got more than one chapter in a row with a plot point. But at this point, it was too late, the end of the book was hurdling at us and very little had happened and the book pretty much fizzled out with an "oh yeah, the Grand Prix happened". Mind you, the finale was very heartwarming and I liked it a lot. I just wish I hadn't had to read a full chapter about hairbrush interspecies sex to get there, and instead had more of it. But ironically, the hairbrush sex had more plot advancement that the majority of the book.
The ending did, however, for one moment, make me forget that I had just read an encyclopedia of descriptors and was happy for a few minutes. So good on her for that. That proves to me that she can write more than glittery descriptions, which then made me sad I didn't have more of that writing. With just a spattering of the gold of her opening chapters. I am glad I finished the book, the story, what little there was, was worth the read. However, I have no desire to read any other of Valente's writing now, and if there was a sequel, I just don't think I have it in me to read another 263 pages of description. Cool idea, good ability, just terribly executed. She could easily have released a separate book, expanding on a handful of species she established in the book, like an alien compendium, and I would have read it, and laughed, and been okay because I went into it expecting it. But I went into this wanting a story, not a neon throwup encyclopedia of just how "oh so creative" Valente is. That came off harsh, I know, but they blew past the fine line of interesting and well into the self-serving, look what I can do, territory. What suffered for it wasn't just a large number of DNFs, and my sanity for a few days, but an actually interesting, fun, Eurovision, glitter punk, heartwarming story about loss, life, how stupid it is, how beautiful it is, and why we should fight for it. It's in there, hiding beneath the layers and layers of word vomit. I want that story. Please release a second edition that is just that, the opening, and say... 3-5 of your favorite aliens Valente, I promise I'll give it another try if you do.
Space Planning Basics
Book
Conquer the complexity of interior design with a logical, methodical approach Space Planning Basics...
Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2357 KP) rated Diet of Death in Books
Aug 20, 2021 (Updated Aug 20, 2021)
What Killed the Diet Guru?
Quincy Lazzaro has found success writing a monthly food column for a magazine. Unfortunately, it is published under the name Betty Ann Green, so he has to keep his real identity a secret. That does cause problems every so often, like when Dr. Alan Tolzer wants to bury the hatchet with Betty, and insists they meet in person. Dr. Tolzer is famous for creating the Westport Diet, and he has an institute nearby, so Quincy goes there hoping that his usual trick of saying he is Betty’s assistant will work to get a meeting. While Quincy is there, Dr. Tolzer dies. The institute is quick to say it was natural causes, but some things Quincy saw lead him to question that. Can he figure out what really happened?
It took a couple of chapters to full get into this book, but once I did, I was along for the ride. I really liked Quincy, and the rest of the cast grew on me pretty quickly as well. The plot was a little rough with a few leaps in it. Don’t worry, everything makes sense at the end, but a bit more set up would have helped me as I was reading it. Still, it has some interesting twists and complications that I really enjoyed. Unlike many culinary cozies, there are no recipes, but based on the humorous scenes where Quincy was cooking, I think that may be a good thing. Overall, I really had fun reading this book. I’m anxious to see how Quincy and the series grow in future books.
It took a couple of chapters to full get into this book, but once I did, I was along for the ride. I really liked Quincy, and the rest of the cast grew on me pretty quickly as well. The plot was a little rough with a few leaps in it. Don’t worry, everything makes sense at the end, but a bit more set up would have helped me as I was reading it. Still, it has some interesting twists and complications that I really enjoyed. Unlike many culinary cozies, there are no recipes, but based on the humorous scenes where Quincy was cooking, I think that may be a good thing. Overall, I really had fun reading this book. I’m anxious to see how Quincy and the series grow in future books.
