Dinara Tengri

Title: Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1) Author: Dan Simmons First published in 1989 by Doubleday. I read the 1995 reissue by Bantam. Source: the school library On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all. On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Each carries a desperate hope—and a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands.  Well, it's finally over. I finally finished what must have been one of the longest reads in the history of books. Hyperion - the first novel in Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos series. Yup, it's ove...

Welcome to Weekly Small Talk, where I catch up on the latest book and pop culture- related news. This week, I also come to you with a very special book haul. For the past three weeks, I have been a pious attendee at the annual Swedish book sale , one of the most important events in the life of any professional book nerd. I have been attending this book sale thing for many-many years (although I rarely went home with as many books as this year), and I got curious about its origins. In my search for the truth I turned to where any self-respecting writer would turn: the Wikipedia. The annual book sale - or Bokrean , as it's called in Swedish - started all the way back in the 1920's as a means for publishing houses to get rid of the books that were no longer in publication. There were no rules as to how this event was supposed to be managed. One publishing house would usually start it up and the others would follow suit. Over the years, some basic rules and agreements were...

Welcome to Weekly Small Talk, where I catch up on the books, movies and other fine/pop culture I have consumed in the past week. This week, I want to talk a little bit about Bill Paxton , who passed away a week ago. So much has already been said about this talented and charismatic actor and director, and I cannot say anything that hasn't been said before. Most of the movie fans remember Paxton from movies like Aliens, The Terminator and Predatpr 2. And even though his resume was far more impressive than just his roles in the cult sci fi franchises , for many of us who grew up in the 1980/90's, Bill Paxton will always be remembered as that badass who wasn't afraid to face off with the most dangerous alien monsters. When I was a kid, we had a bootlegged VHS copy of Predator 2 in our home, and naturally the quality of that tape was so atrocious, that for years I didn't even know that it was Paxton who played Jerry, the cocky cop with a heart of gold. Not until I fin...

Welcome to Weekly Small Talk, a new feature that I started because I'm both too swamped and too lazy to come up with fresh and original material. This is where I talk about books movies and other cultural stuff that I've consumed in the past week. This week I want to talk about Youtube, and some of the channels that make you happy that you have wifi. There are so many Youtube channels dedicated to movie reviews, book reviews, and just pop culture in general, that sometimes you need to seep through a lot of material to find the channel that really speaks to you. Here are some that speak to me in particular, and I want to share them with you. The Nerdwriter is the most popular channel on this list. I only discovered it a few months ago, but its creator, Evan Puschak has been making videos for years now. What makes The Nerdwriter stand out in the crowd is that Puschak isn't just making videos, he's making video essays . Now, he's far from the only video essayist ou...

Weekly Small Talk is a new tradition, where I talk about books, movies, and other pop culture stuff that I have consumed in the past week. *** I don't know if I mentioned this before, but the library in my school has a great collection of fiction. Sci fi, YA, classics, contemporary, you name it. They have pretty much everything. Including the entire Hyperion Cantos series by author Dan Simmons. Hyperion Cantos is an epic sci fi series, that has won a lot of awards, and is considered to be a classic in the genre. I didn't know anything about these books, but my brother loaned them at the library, and I decided to give them a try. Right now I'm reading the first book, Hyperion . This book is a chunkster. It's almost five hundred pages long, and I'm not planning on finishing it anytime soon. Last week I watched a movie called The Babadook , on Netflix. The Babadook is an Australian-Canadian horror movie, that despite all the positive reviews didn't do th...

In the big exam/Christmas/back-to-school frenzy I completely forgot to do my obligatory book haul. Well, better late than never. The list is pretty long, but four of these books I bought at a sale as well as the two DVD's. And there's also that one book that I got for free. All in all, it was quite a bargain. Starting off at number one is the freebie, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.  by Rebecca Skloot. I had to read this book in school, and I loved it. You can read my full review of it right here. Next we have Stephen King's memoir/writing advice book, On Writing. I actually read it a couple of years ago, and I'm looking forward to re-reading it someday. Then we have a classic, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , by Robert Louis Stevenson, that I bought for my brother. I read it once before, but it was such a long time ago, so I'm looking forward to that re-read as well. The are three books that I got at an outlet for only one hundred kronor. These are St...

I'm not a big theatre goer. In fact, the last time I went to see a play must have been ten years ago. While I have great respect for the theatre, I never developed a taste for this particular art form. Which made last Friday a bit of an exception, when I went to see a musical with a friend from school. Our school got a bunch of free tickets to the preview of the new adaptation of the musical  If/Then  at the Malmö Opera, titled Tänk Om ("What if"). And who can say no to a free ticket? If/Then was originally a Broadway musical that opened on March 30th 2014. It was written by Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt and starred Idina Menzel in the lead role. It closed the following year. And now it made its way to Sweden. I had never heard of this musical before, and I was intrigued by the plot. If/Then is about a woman named Elizabeth, who moves back to New York City after a rough divorce. As she is waiting for her two friends in the park, her phone rings. And this is where th...