2011 November Reading List

Brilliance of the Moon by Lian Hearn – Good conclusion for the trilogy, decent as a whole. 3/5 stars

The Dark Tower: Waste Lands by Stephen King – I liked the second book better. 3/5 stars

Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead – I was down with a bad cold for an entire week and this is what I read. In my defense, it reads better than Twilight. :P 3/5 stars

Story: Navigating Through Fog

It's time for another story. The action is taking place in Shanghai and... well, you'll see.

Navigating Through Fog

This one is part of the SRSFF monthly contest, so please read, comment and vote. Thanks.

Update: Reviews in Nautilus and SRSFF.

2011 Rostelecom Cup

24-27.11.2011
Moscow, Russia

Full Results

Men

FPl.	Name	Nation	Points	SP	FS
1	Yuzuru HANYU	JPN	241.66	2	2
2	Javier FERNANDEZ	ESP	241.63	4	1
3	Jeremy ABBOTT	USA	229.08	1	5
4	Michal BREZINA	CZE	226.35	3	3
5	Artur GACHINSKI	RUS	221.43	5	4
6	Andrei ROGOZINE	CAN	197.85	7	7
7	Sergei VORONOV	RUS	197.19	8	6
8	Konstantin MENSHOV	RUS	192.68	9	8
9	Brandon MROZ	USA	185.49	6	9

Ladies

FPl.	Name	Nation	Points	SP	FS
1	Mao ASADA	JPN	183.25	1	1
2	Alena LEONOVA	RUS	180.45	2	2
3	Adelina SOTNIKOVA	RUS	169.75	3	3
4	Sofia BIRYUKOVA	RUS	166.07	4	4
5	Kiira KORPI	FIN	160.92	5	5
6	Haruka IMAI	JPN	154.76	6	6
7	Agnes ZAWADZKI	USA	149.38	7	8
8	Amelie LACOSTE	CAN	148.48	9	7
9	Rachael FLATT	USA	147.63	8	9
10	Christina GAO	USA	117.77	10	10

Pairs

FPl.	Name	Nation	Points	SP	FS
1	Aliona SAVCHENKO / Robin SZOLKOWY	GER	208.69	1	1
2	Yuko KAVAGUTI / Alexander SMIRNOV	RUS	197.84	2	2
3	Stefania BERTON / Ondrej HOTAREK	ITA	168.02	3	3
4	Ksenia STOLBOVA / Fedor KLIMOV	RUS	149.66	4	5
5	Katarina GERBOLDT / Alexander ENBERT	RUS	148.94	7	4
6	Ashley CAIN / Joshua REAGAN	USA	138.02	5	6
7	Brittany JONES / Kurtis GASKELL	CAN	136.54	6	7

Ice Dance

FPl.	Name	Nation	Points	SD	FD
1	Meryl DAVIS / Charlie WHITE	USA	179.06	1	1
2	Kaitlyn WEAVER / Andrew POJE	CAN	161.18	2	2
3	Ekaterina BOBROVA / Dmitri SOLOVIEV	RUS	156.83	3	3
4	Ekaterina RIAZANOVA / Ilia TKACHENKO	RUS	132.73	4	5
5	Isabella TOBIAS / Deividas STAGNIUNAS	LTU	130.47	5	4
6	Pernelle CARRON / Lloyd JONES	FRA	126.04	7	6
7	Ekaterina PUSHKASH / Jonathan GUERREIRO	RUS	124.53	6	7

It was nice to see Hanyu, Fernandez, Brezina, Asada, Leonova, Savchenko/Szolkowi, Davis/White again. And now we get a two weeks break until the Grand Prix Final.

2011 Bolero - Alexei Yagudin - Vampires

Well, I guess it had to be done since vampires are so fashionable these days. I'm still amazed by his speed and stamina.

Venus - Erotic Sci Fi Stories

This is it, my first collaboration with SRSFF (Romanian Society of Science Fiction and Fantasy). They publish a yearly anthology on a given theme and have done it for three years in a row so far. This time around the theme was love.

The anthology is titled "Venus - Erotic Science Fiction Stories", compiled by Antuza Genescu and published by Eagle Publishing House.

Table of content:
Foreword - Marian Truta
"The Alphabet to Venus" - Cristian Mihail Teodorescu
'The Crippled People's Conspiracy" - Stefana Cristina Czeller
"A from Amsterdam" - Silviu Genescu
"The Truth in their Sights" - Ioana Visan
"Emanoil Popescu, Superhero" - Stefan Ghidoveanu
"The Lost Toys" - George Lazar
"White Stain, Silver Knight, Blonde Panther" - Liviu Radu
"A Temporary Phenomenon" - Antuza Genescu

The official launch will take place during Gaudeamus International Book Fair (November 23-27, 2011) and then during the ProspectArt meeting on December 16, 2011.

Me happy and can I say that I just love the cover?

Breaking Dawn or Where were the Spice Girls when Bella grew up?

Why am I writing about Twilight? I have a cold. A medium to bad one. As usual, when I’m sick, I can’t work, I can’t write, and I get all these weird ideas. Oh, and how else am I supposed to draw traffic to the blog? :)

So Twilight… well, it’s called Breaking Dawn these days, but it’s the same thing. I can’t find the mini-review I wrote about the first movie when it came out, so maybe I never posted it. Anyway, it was merely one paragraph long, no loss there. Besides, this isn’t supposed to be a review of the books or the movies, I have better things to do than that.

I just want to write some thoughts on Bella. *gasps* Yep, not Edward. Movie Edward looks nothing like the Edward I imagined while reading the books *embarrassed smile* so there’s no comparison there. All I’m saying is that my Edward looked less creepy and less clown-like chalk-white than Robert Pattinson does in most of the scenes. This is the advantage of reading books, you can imagine anything you want. With movies, you’re stuck watching images meant to give you nightmares later on during the night. That’s why I prefer books, but back to the point.

Bella. I’ll skip over the part where I should complain about the mannerism used by Kristen Stewart to portray Bella. She’s usually a good actress, but all she succeeds here is to make Bella even more annoying than she is in the books. No, I’m going to complain about the way Bella thinks. You see, Bella is a coward. Even worse, she’s a selfish, stubborn coward. She doesn’t want to learn, go to college, expand her horizon, she doesn’t want to work, have a family, a life. She has no aspirations for herself. The world moves around her, but she makes no impact on it. It’s like she doesn’t even exists.

She thinks she wants Edward, but what she really needs is a fairy godmother, who can snap her fingers and make her instantly beautiful, physically perfect, and a good match for her prince without any effort from her part whatsoever. She takes the easy route and jumps directly to the accomplished stage. And even then she shows no sign of self improvement, she still wants just one thing: to be with Edward.

I dread to think what such a mother’s influence could do to that poor child. Child protection should look into that, both parents are completely off the rails. They should both undergo a decade or two of therapy before having anyone entrusted into their care. Come to think of it, I’m not sure Bella should even be legally allowed to get married considering how immature she is. Ah, no worries, no one in their right mind would want to marry her in the real world… except for a controlling freak who can’t get anyone better. So she’s screwed either way. Do we really care? I think not.

Personally, I still have some hope left for her character to get interesting in part 2 of Breaking Dawn, and get some cool action scenes at least, but given how long and tedious the previous movies have been so far I better not hold my breath.

OK, end of rant. Send in the hate mail. It will make my recovery more entertaining. Tee-hee!

2011 Trophee Eric Bompard

17-20.11.2011
Paris, France

Full Results

Men

FPl.	Name	Nation	Points	SP	FS
1	Patrick CHAN	CAN	240.60	1	1
2	Nan SONG	CHN	224.10	2	2
3	Michal BREZINA	CZE	218.60	3	4
4	Adam RIPPON	USA	217.89	4	3
5	Florent AMODIO	FRA	201.34	5	5
6	Alexander MAJOROV	SWE	190.60	8	6
7	Nobunari ODA	JPN	167.20	7	9
8	Romain PONSART	FRA	160.45	9	8
9	Chafik BESSEGHIER	FRA	160.39	10	7
WD	Kevin REYNOLDS	CAN		6

Ladies

FPl.	Name	Nation	Points	SP	FS
1	Elizaveta TUKTAMISHEVA	RUS	182.89	1	2
2	Carolina KOSTNER	ITA	179.32	2	3
3	Alissa CZISNY	USA	179.15	3	1
4	Kanako MURAKAMI	JPN	161.31	4	4
5	Viktoria HELGESSON	SWE	154.90	5	5
6	Mae Berenice MEITE	FRA	145.44	6	6
7	Sonia LAFUENTE	ESP	136.32	7	8
8	Yretha SILETE	FRA	135.90	8	7
9	Lena MARROCCO	FRA	126.97	9	9

Pairs

FPl.	Name	Nation	Points	SP	FS
1	Tatiana VOLOSOZHAR / Maxim TRANKOV	RUS	194.13	1	1
2	Vera BAZAROVA / Yuri LARIONOV	RUS	184.91	3	2
3	Meagan DUHAMEL / Eric RADFORD	CAN	176.62	2	3
4	Amanda EVORA / Mark LADWIG	USA	169.58	4	4
5	Jessica DUBE / Sebastien WOLFE	CAN	150.68	5	6
6	Huibo DONG / Yiming WU	CHN	147.75	6	5
7	Ksenia STOLBOVA / Fedor KLIMOV	RUS	137.06	7	8
8	Vanessa JAMES / Morgan CIPRES	FRA	133.31	8	7

Ice Dance

FPl.	Name	Nation	Points	SD	FD
1	Tessa VIRTUE / Scott MOIR	CAN	176.93	1	1
2	Nathalie PECHALAT / Fabian BOURZAT	FRA	164.56	2	2
3	Anna CAPPELLINI / Luca LANOTTE	ITA	153.76	3	3
4	Elena ILINYKH / Nikita KATSALAPOV	RUS	140.32	4	4
5	Madison CHOCK / Evan BATES	USA	130.94	5	5
6	Xintong HUANG / Xun ZHENG	CHN	126.69	6	6
7	Kristina GORSHKOVA / Vitali BUTIKOV	RUS	118.48	7	7
8	Sara HURTADO / Adria DIAZ	ESP	103.75	8	8

Eurosport screwed up big time this weekend. The Men's FP was supposed to be broadcasted live and they ended up showing only the last three programs. The feed from the gala also had some weird cuts.