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foxofninetales · 3 years

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@lasenbyphoenix tagged me to list my top 5 comfort characters!

Picking just five is HARD (dear god, SO MANY book character wanted to come out to play - I could have filled all five from LOTR alone, and don’t even get me started on Martha Wells), but I tried for some variety in sources/media types!

Xie Lian from Heaven Official’s Blessing

Look, a character who has seen the worst the world has to offer and deliberately chooses kindness is like kryptonite for me. At the same time, Xie Lian very much illustrates the difference between kind and nice, because he’s not soft and he’s not weak (martial god!), and he’s spent most of his life living with the consequences of his actions trying to save everyone in a world where it was impossible. He also, importantly, has a wonderfully wry (if a little too self-deprecating) sense of humor that gives a lovely little edge to his POV.

Maia from The Goblin Emperor

I love this boy a completely normal amount. Oh, who am I kidding? Plunged from a spare and wretched existence into coldly glittering court life, knowing that he’s nearly certainly doomed to be a brief and ignoble blip in history, desperate for any kind of caring connections in a world that won’t allow it, and yet he still perseveres through death and loneliness and the crushing weight of power with a teeth-clenching, dogged determination to do the right thing. I love this boy like breathing.

Psmith from the P.G.Wodehouse novels

Don’t get me wrong, I love many, many of Wodehouse’s better known characters, but none of them have ever stolen my heart like Psmith. (The P is silent.) Impeccably dressed and utterly shameless, he commits himself wholeheartedly to whatever course of action he is pursuing and overcomes any obstacles or ridiculousness with utter aplomb. The only thing he can’t cope with is being bored, so be very wary if he gets that gleam in his eye.

Percival Fredrickstein von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III from Critical Role

Speaking of debonair - but with a bit more bastard. I love Taliesin’s characters because they often seem like easily classifiable sterotypes but he never takes the easy outs. Percy has so many of the classic angsty hero tropes, but what really sells him for me is what Tal described as his “conviction that he is always the smartest person in the room”. Look, if you can’t bond with a character over your own annoying traits, what can you bond with them over?

Liu Sang from The Lost Tomb Reboot/Restart/The Sound of Providence

Oh, like my boy wasn’t going to make this list? I think I’m preaching to the choir here! It’s the sass. It’s the pride. It’s the embarrassing hero worship. It’s the way he latches on to the least crumbs of affection and acceptance. It’s the competence. It’s the whump. It’s the absolute dogged determination to keep struggling onwards in a world that’s never held any softness for him. It’s my BOY.

Unsure who’s been tagged, so I’ll tag @hils79, @thesporkidentity, @hesayshesgotboyfriend, @aurawolfgirl2000, @psychic-waffles

#tag games

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chilling-seavey · 3 years

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Qui Totum Vult Totum Perdit (d.s.) - 9

A/N Okay I’m excited for this one because we’re meeting my favourite character and if you’ve read my lil notes while I was writing a few weeks back you’ll know right now who it is hehe

Warnings: This story is centered around a murder so there will be graphic descriptions of blood, death/manslaughter, dealing with corpses, possible domestic abuse (physical/verbal), crime/covering up a crime, shock/grief, and other possibly heavy or triggering topics. Please read at your own discretion.

Zach Herron was the kind of young man who made an impression on you. Honestly, he had that popstar look that any nineteen-year-old boy should have to really make it in the industry; the fluffy brown hair, big brown eyes, and cheeks that would make any young girl or old woman alike want to pinch them. He had promise, he had the look, he had charisma, sure. The only catch was that he had no fucking talent. He could sing well, this was fair to say I suppose, but he just sounded like any other choir boy. He didn’t have that special gift that Jonah and I always tried to reach for when it came to our clients.

So we denied his demo.

His agent pushed him on us in a few emails and even a phone call and she sounded nearly desperate to get this young guy a record deal but Jonah and I knew what image we wanted for our brand and just another pretty boy who had a mediocre voice was not who we wanted to sign.

We were persistent in our decision.

We only met the kid in person once. He showed up uninvited to our studio and demanded to speak to us. We stayed firm but fair with our choice to decline his demo.

To be brutally honest with you, dear reader, he lost his fucking mind.

Zach wasn’t one to take no for an answer – I assumed his mother coddled him a bit too much as a child and he wasn’t used to not getting his way – and when he realized we weren’t changing our minds, he lost it. I’m talking screaming and swearing and completely destroying my office until we had to call up security to restrain him and escort him out of the building while he cursed us to hell and back the whole way into the elevator.

“You’re going to regret this! You’re going to regret this until the day you die!”

The kid was literally fucking psycho.

It made perfect sense to add him to this list of potential suspects.

We had his work address from when he first sent in his information (along with a ton of other things we needed to know as potential record owners to a new artist) so Jonah and I drove right into the heart of Los Angeles to confront him. Was it the smartest idea? Probably not. But I mean we weren’t going to walk in there and directly ask ‘did you murder my wife’ but at least we could figure out some sort of verdict.

The bars on the window of the shop were not unlike a lot of places downtown, theft rates high in some neighbourhoods so smaller businesses opted for safety over aesthetics. Jonah and I stepped inside the small store together to find not a lot of customers filling the aisles. Probably suspected for a Tuesday after lunch hour. The smell of fresh cheese and meat waved through the air and I forced myself not to cover my nose. Could you blame me when I had been staring at a dead body all morning? Fresh meat wasn’t my first choice of a preferable scent at that moment.

Standing's Butchery was an unfortunate destination in that sense but if we were trying to prove my innocence then it was an important step.

“Should we buy lunch while we’re here?” Jonah asked me.

“No.” I answered easily. “I want a damn salad after this morning.”

Zach was behind the counter at the far end of the restaurant, his hair tucked in a hair net and his gloved hands busy behind the glass display case. He didn’t notice at us when we walked in until we were nearly directly in front of him.

His brown eyes raised to us, flicking between Jonah and me a few times, before coolly dropping his gaze back to the large chunk of steak he was filleting.

“Come here to beg for me back?” he asked egotistically.

“Not a chance.” I answered easily.

“Your lame-ass record company is going to swim with the fishes without me.” Zach said flatly. The knife hit the chopping board loudly before he pulled it back and slivered it down another strip of steak. “What can I do for you jackasses then?”

“Where were you around 7 last night?”

Zach’s eyes raised to mine, knife pausing mid slice before he focussed back to his work, “None of your business.”

“My house was broken into and I’m trying to figure out who I need to report to the police.” I said. It was only a half lie.

“I wouldn’t waste my fucking time breaking into your house full of useless fucking trash. What would I want out of it anyway?”

He didn’t look up as he sliced another thin fillet of steak with precision and a steady hand. He tossed the piece to the side and it hit the counter with a wet smack, a few splatters of blood streaking across the laminated granite. I focused my eyes on his face even if he refused to look at us.

“Doesn’t matter. What were you doing last night?” I tried again.

“I had a meeting at another record company.”

“Which one?”

“None of your business.”

“Yeah, it fucking is. Which one were you at, you fucking-”

Zach set the knife down hard against the countertop, cutting me off mid-sentence and his angry eyes bore into mine. He didn’t even glance at Jonah. Obviously his personal issue with one of us was decided.

“You already ruined my fucking dreams with your tasteless bullshit company thinking you can tell me ‘no’. Now you’re coming back here to interrogate me? I’m sick of you.” he waved the knife between us.

“Learn how to take criticism before you get yourself arrested for assault or destruction of property.” I retorted strongly. “Your attitude isn’t helping your case here.”

“There is no case.” Zach picked up the knife again and shook his head as he went back to slicing through the beef, “You’re pathetically obsessed with me, Seavey. You want to keep my name in your mouth so bad, so what, you want my dick in there next? At least that would shut you up. Fuck off.”

I scoffed loudly and tried to form a rebuttal, but he was continuing, his voice low to keep the sharp conversation between the three of us but thick with anger enough to make my blood pressure rise.

“I’m sick of seeing the two of you all over this fucking city; on every stupid fucking billboard and news channel. You don’t know what it’s like to suffer. You’re selfish pricks and you’ll get what’s coming to you sooner or later.”

“Tell your mommy to get you a mental test, you fucking psycho.” I spat. “If we don’t get a restraining order today it will be too fucking soon.”

“You came to find me, remember? Nice to see I have a little fanboy and his sidekick following me around like stalkers.”

“Fanboy my fucking ass, Herron.” I slammed my palm down against the glass display case. “Were you or were you not at my house last night?”

Zach looked back up at me but didn’t answer. The smirk on his face made me sick. He looked back down to his work.

“Just answer the question.” Jonah chimed in coolly.

“I was not.” Zach answered slowly as if he enjoyed seeing me angry.

“Fine.” I took a step back from the case, all too aware of his manager eyeing us and our confrontation from a few feet down the counter. I started back towards the door to the butcher without a look back, Jonah following quickly behind me. What use was my interrogation if all he gave me was snark and a denied accusation. Our darling fate would take care of him one way or another…whether he was responsible for Avalon’s death or not. I must say, though, if it was him, that was a disgustingly sick method of revenge for just a denied demo.

Zach called after us as I pushed open the door and stepped out to the sunbathed sidewalk, “And Seavey, tell your wife I say hello. If she wants a real man who knows how to work with meat, she knows where to find me.”

Detective Team: @jonahlovescoffee @randomlimelightxxx @stuffofseaveyy @hopinglimelight @tempus-ut-luceant @br4nd1s @xkelsev @hiya-its-amber @sexyseavey15 @the-girl-who-cried-wolf

#🔪#daniel seavey #jonah marais #why dont we #jack avery #zach herron #corbyn besson #why dont we fanfic #daniel seavey fanfic

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theliterateape · 3 years

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I Like to Watch | Zack Snyder’s Justice League

by Don Hall

Mythology is fun.

As a kid I loved reading Edith Hamilton’s book on the Greek gods and the myths. Hercules, Perseus, Apollo, and Hera—this fell completely in line with my love for superhero comics. The strangely petty human traits of envy, greed, and lust combined with the power to level cities make for some great storytelling.

Zeus was basically Harvey Weinstein in the retroactive revision we’re mired in today. If Harvey could’ve changed into a golden animal and boned unsuspecting ladies looking for careers in Hollywood I’m pretty certain he would. The gods and demi-gods of the Greeks dealt with daddy issues, mommy issues, bad relationships, and fighting. Lots of fighting. Sometimes for the good of humanity but more often for the glory of winning.

Zach Snyder is in the business of tackling myths and reframing them with a style all his own. His career has become its own myth.

From Dawn of the Dead (not so much a reboot of Romero's zombie mythology but a philosophical reimagining of the genre that arguably jumpstarted The Hollywood fascination with it), 300 (a borderline homoerotic take on the myth of the Greek underdog), and Watchmen (a ridiculously ambitious attempt to put one of the most iconic takedowns on the potential fascism of the superhero legend machine ever written) to his nearly single-handed hack at answering the Marvel juggernaut with Man of Steel and Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, Snyder is in the artistic business of subverting and re-envisioning the mythologies we embrace without even seeing them as such.

Snyder's style is operatic. It is on a grand scale even in the most mundane moments. The guy loves slow motion like Scorcese loves mobsters and Italian food. When you're tackling big themes with larger than life stories, the epic nature of his vision makes sense and has alienated a good number of audience members. With such excess, there are bound to be missteps but I'd argue that his massive take on these characters he molds from common understanding and popular nomenclature elevates them to god-like stature.

Fans of Moore's Watchmen have much to complain about Snyder's adaptation. The titular graphic novel is almost impossible to put in any other form than the one Moore intended and yet, Snyder jumped in feet-first and created a living, breathing representation of most, if not all, of the source material's intent. Whether you dig on it or not, it's hard to avoid acknowledging that the first five minutes of Watchmen is a mini-masterpiece of style, storytelling, and epic tragedy wrapped up in a music video.

Despite a host of critical backlash for his one fully original take, Sucker Punch is an amazing thing to see. More a commentary on video game enthusiasm with its lust for hot animated chicks and over-the-top violence that a celebration of cleavage and guns, the film is crazily entertaining. For those who hated the ending, he told you in the title what his plan was all along.

The first movie I saw in the theaters that tried to take a superhero mythology and treat it seriously (for the most part) was Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie. Never as big a fan of the DC characters as I have been of Marvel, it was still extraordinary to see a character I had only really known in pages to be so fully realized. Then came Burton's Batman movies. The superhero film was still an anomaly but steam was gaining. Things changed with Bryan Singer's X-Men in 2000, then Raimi's Spiderman, and those of us who grew up with our pulpy versions of Athena, Hermes, and Hades were rewarded with Nolan's Batman Begins. A far cry from the tongue-in-cheek camp of the 1966 TV Batman, Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne was a serious character and his tale over three films is a tragic commentary filled with the kind of death and betrayal and triumph befitting the grand narrative he deserved.

I loved Singer's Superman Returns in 2006 because it was such a love letter to the 1978 film (down to the opening credits) but by then, the MCU was taking over the world.

Snyder's first of what turns out to be an epic storyline involving perhaps seven or eight movies was Man of Steel. It was fun and, while I had my issues with the broodiness of Kal El, the odd take on Jonathan Kent, and a redheaded Lois Lane, I had no issue with Superman snapping Zod's neck. Darker and more tragic than any other version of the Kryptonian, it was still super entertaining.

Then came Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. By 2016, Marvel had codified their formula of serious characters wrestling with serious issues of power and responsibility peppered with lots of good humor and bright colors. Snyder's desaturated pallete and angst-filled demi-gods was not the obvious road to financial competition.

I'll confess, I hated it. BvS felt half-rendered. Lex Luthor was kind of superficial and played as a kind of Joker. The whole Bruce Wayne wants to kill Superman thing felt undeveloped and the "Martha" moment was just stupid.

When Joss Whedon's version of Snyder's Justice League came out in 2017, I was primed for it to be a turd and I wasn't surprised. So much of it didn't work on any level. I dismissed it as DC trying and failing miserably and was comforted by the coming of Thanos.

Following Thanos and the time heist was COVID. Suddenly, we were internationally sidelined and the movie theater industry caved in. Streaming services started popping up like knock-off smartphones and Hollywood was reeling, doing anything and everything to find a way back. Since Whedon's disastrous helming of Snyder's third act, fans online had been demanding to #ReleasetheSnyderCut but no one was ever really taking them seriously until all movie production was shut down for a year.

The stage was set to remedy a mistake (or at least make some bucks on a do-over of a huge box office failure). Snyder had left the production in part because of the suicide of his daughter and in part due to the constant artistic fights over executives looking for the quippy fun of the MCU but he still had all the original footage. Add to that the broiling accusations that Joss Whedon was "abusive" during the reshoots, the path seemed destined. For an additional $70 million and complete control, Snyder delivered a four hour mega-movie streamed on HBOMax.

Of course, I was going to watch the thing as soon as I could.

The Whedon version opens with an homage to the now dead Superman (including the much maligned digitally erased mustache on Henry Cavill). The SynderCut opens with the death of Superman and the agony of his death scream as it travels across the planet. It's a simple change but exemplifies the very different visions of how this thing is gonna play out.

Snyder doesn't want us to be OK with the power of these beings unleashed. He wants us to feel the damage and pain of death. He wants the results of violence to be as real as he can. When Marvel's Steve Rogers kicks a thug across the room and the thug hits a wall, he crumples and it is effectively over. When Batman does the same thing, we see the broken bones (often in slow motion) and the blood smear on the wall as the thug slides to the ground.

The longer SnyderCut is bloated in some places (like the extended Celtic choir singing Aquaman off to sea or the extended narrations by Wonder Woman which sound slightly like someone trying to explain the plot to Siri). On the other hand, the scene with Barry Allen saving Iris West is both endearing and extraordinary, giving insight to the power of the Flash as well as some essential character-building in contrast to Whedon's comic foil version.

One thing I noticed in this variant is that Zach wants the audience to experience the sequence of every moment as the characters do. An example comes when Diana Prince goes to the crypt to see the very plot she belabors over later. The sequence is simple. She gets a torch and goes down. Most directors which jump cut to the torch. Snyder gives us five beats as she grabs the timber, wraps cloth around the end, soaks it with kerosene, pulls out a box of matches, and lights the torch. Then she goes down the dark passageway.

The gigantic, lush diversity of Snyder’s vision of the DC superhero universe—from the long shots of the sea life in the world of Atlantis to the ancient structures and equipment of Themyscira— is almost painterly. Snyder isn't taking our time; he's taking his time. We are rewarded our patience with a far better backstory for the villain, a beautifully rendered historic battle thwarting Darkseid's initial invasion (including a fucking Green Lantern), and answers to a score of questions set up in both previous films.

Whedon's Bruce Wayne was more Ben Affleck; Snyder's is full-on Frank Miller Batman, the smartest, most brutal fucker in the room. Cyborg, instead of Whedon's sidelined non-character, is now a Frankenstein's monster, grappling with the trade-off between acceptance and enormous power. Wonder Woman is now more in line with the Patty Jenkins version and instead of being told about the loss of Superman, we are forced to live with the anguish of both his mother and Lois Lane in quiet moments of incredible grief.

To be fair to Whedon (something few are willing to do as he is now being castigated not for racism or sexism but for being mean to people) having him come in to throw in some levity and Marvel-esque color to Snyder's Wagnerian pomposity is like hiring Huey Lewis to lighten up Pink Floyd's The Wall or getting Douglas Adams to rewrite Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

I loved Snyder's self-indulgent, mythologic DC universe.

So much so that I then re-watched Man of Steel and then watched the director's version of BvS (which Snyder added approximately 32 minutes). The second film is far better at three hours and Eisenberg's Lex Luthor now makes sense. Then I watched Zach Snyder's Justice League a second time.

After nineteen hours of Snyder's re-imagining of these DC heroes and villains, I saw details that, upon first viewing, are ignored or dismissed, but after seeing them in order and complete, are suddenly consistent and relevant. Like Nolan or Fincher, Snyder defies anyone to eliminate even one piece of his narrative no matter how long. With all the pieces, this is an epic story and the pieces left at the extended epilogue play into a grander narrative we will never see.

Or maybe we will. Who knows these days?

#I Like to Watch #Zach Snyder's Justice League

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gossipnetwork-blog · 7 years

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Michael Moore's Broadway Show 'Terms of My Surrender' Review

New Post has been published on https://gossip.network/michael-moores-broadway-show-terms-of-my-surrender-review/

Michael Moore's Broadway Show 'Terms of My Surrender' Review

Michael Moore knows many people are still too depressed and paralyzed to feel they can do anything to fight Trump and his cronies who are bent on destroying the United States and the rest of the world. That’s why his one-man Broadway show is for those “self-hating liberals.”

“They’re the liberals who weren’t paying attention to what needed to happen last year to stop Trump,” he tells Rolling Stone the day after opening night. “Trying to break through that bubble was very difficult. Trying to warn them what was going to happen, it was an impossible task. This show is for them. It’s why I’m glad I’m doing it here in New York, right now, rather than in Atlanta or some other place. … Unless you have the attitude that you’re in the French Resistance at this point, I don’t know how we’re going to defeat this. All of us have to be willing to put ourselves out there.”

In that way, his stage presence in The Terms of My Surrender – which opened last week on Broadway – feels crucial after these first six, grueling months of Donald Trump’s toxic presidency. Although it may feel a bit disorganized and disorienting, it’s meant to be a way for progressives to wake up, “be bold” and realize they can do things, any number of small, feasible things, to help the fabric of society from completely unraveling. It’s not a political rally, as he’s said before (although it does involve a moment in which Moore announces his 2020 presidency on the simple platform of having a single, universal charging cord for all electronic devices), nor is it “a kumbaya piece of theater.”

The woman seated next to me in the orchestra last Wednesday – a pleasant, gray-haired woman who responded vociferously to the many pokes, prods and revelations on stage – certainly seemed to need a balm to assuage her worry about her political moral compass. After Moore urged everyone to download the 5calls.org app to make daily calls to Congress a part of their morning ritual, she turned to me and whispered a confession: “We live in D.C. We don’t have any representatives.” And I empathized with her. She obviously does want to be fired up, as did the majority of the thousand or so people packed into the Belasco Theatre who had paid hundreds of dollars to bask in Moore’s presence and hear his calls to action. Although respectful, the audience’s energy crackled, electric with needing to grumble, chuckle and respond to any and all criticisms of the current administration. He may be preaching to his choir, but there’s nothing inherently wrong about needing a little bit of preaching.

On previous nights, Moore has interviewed guests on stage – Representative Maxine Waters of California, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell and documentary provocateur Morgan Spurlock – but that wasn’t the case the evening I attended. Moore says it hasn’t been scrapped, and that the segment depends on who they see in the audience or who may agree to the spotlight. He says Stephen Colbert has already agreed to sit in the hot seat, and he hopes Hillary Clinton will be one of those notables. “I’d love for her to visit, and I think we have a 50/50 chance,” he says, adding, “I predict that by the end of this run, someone from the Trump administration will attend – well he may be a ‘former member’ of the administration, the way he’s firing them.”

He also explains that the show is constructed so as to address headlines of the day, that it’s “flexible to respond to any type of nuclear attack. Not that there’s going to be an actual nuclear attack.”

But for those who are expecting fire-and-brimstone proselytizing weighed down with a lot of concrete facts or motivational moments, they may be left slightly disappointed. In some ways, this production is meant to showcase Michael Moore the man, toned down from Michael Moore the brand, the symbol, the polemicist.

The visual and rhetorical gimmicks in the show include a bit about what the T.S.A. now prohibits passengers from taking on a plane, in which he pulls objects – dynamite, a cattle prod, a Muslim woman – from a Mary Poppins-esque carry-on and a game show that pits the “dumbest Canadian” against the “smartest American” sourced from willing audience members. Spoiler: The Canadian always manages to win since their competitor ultimately fails at correctly answering the number of provinces of our neighbor to the north and how many Americans have lost their homes due to medical expenses, since the answer for Canadians is indubitably zero.

The most surprising, and moving segments are when Moore turns the attention on himself, revealing his own vulnerability. After airing a recording of Glenn Beck’s 2005 radio show in which he openly discusses if he should assassinate Moore, we learn about the many attempts against Moore’s life – and the body guards that have protected him. “I’m conflicted about the decision to include that,” Moore admits. “I’m telling people, ‘Stand up and be brave.’ But I’m also telling them that one of the side consequences could be harm to themselves.”

He says he’s not concerned that protestors, or worse, may try to disrupt his show, the way members of the alt-right did this past summer during the Public Theater’s production of Julius Caesar in Central Park. “I haven’t anticipated it, but I’m sure it could happen,” he says. “What usually drives the right crazy about me is when they see how wide my audience is. When they think I’m in Noam Chomsky territory, they don’t have to worry. But if they suddenly see me appearing on the Martha Stewart show – that I’m reaching a very wide, mainstream audience – that’s scary to them. This show has sold out every night. So I’m sure when it dawns on them, thousands of people are coming to see this, they will do what they do.”

(Moore is quick to correct and assert he’s not criticizing the left’s revered social critic and political activist. “You know, I love Noam Chomsky. I wish more people listened to him,” he says. “I wish ESPN would hire him as a commentator on Monday Night Football. I’ve lived long enough to see Howard Cosell in the booth – a real smart, thinking individual – to Tim Tebow now, so there you go.”)

The longest, most passionate segment takes place when Moore zeroes in on the Flint water crisis, accusing Michigan Governor Rick Snyder of murder. When asked whether it was meant to shore up his argument after being criticized that he didn’t do enough for his hometown, he explains why the story continues to be so urgent.

“We’re the canary in the coal mine,” he says, referring to why Flint matters. “Starting in 2010, we were living out what was going to happen in America in 2016. With Roger & Me, my first film, I was showing the beginnings of the end of the middle class. That wasn’t going on anywhere except in steel towns. In places like Pittsburgh or Gary, Indiana, and places like that. If you lived on Long Island or Santa Monica, you did not think the middle class was going anywhere. That’s the point of that story, that Flint was prologue to Trump’s America…”

Moore goes on to explain an important detail he left out during his delivery the night I attended: That Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, the doctor in the city of Flint whose work exposed the lead in the water and what was happening to the city residents who drank it, is an Iraqi-American.

“I started wondering, ‘If the way we want go is the way of Trump’s travel ban, what if that had happened months or years earlier?’ If Trump’s America existed six years ago, there may not have been any Dr. Mona. Her crime was that she was a Muslim and Iraqi, and we may not have ever found out the truth. The repercussions of allowing Trump and his ilk to get away with this, it goes way beyond the things we can imagine. I need to tell that story.”

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manage-management · 7 years

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A Story of Ups and Downs So I read about Warren Buffett, who has created a steady process of improvement, and to balance that, I read about Steve Jobs. What made him great? I really loved this book, it was emotional, it made you feel that you knew the man, and it was not full of praise, but seemed to be a real look into his life. Jobs is an interesting character. He was full of himself, mean, selfish, and yes, a jerk. But he accomplished some great things. So what made him great. One element of his greatness was his ability to lead forward. He did not let critics or committee influence him negatively. Sometimes when you are right, you need to be right. This is a hard thing for people to deal with in the church, but there are times to stand your ground. You need to lead courageously. You also need to look for the little improvements. The details are important, it is better to do something right, instead of just doing it. Too often we look for progress, but we do not look for perfection in the church. We settle for less too often. There was a lot of negative lessons too that I learned. He was mean to people, and this is a leadership style I always want to avoid, he also forgot about his family, and no success is worth that. Also, never be prideful, he was wrong a lot of times too, but his ego got in the way. This is a great book to read, and is interesting, helpful, and well done. If you love Apple, success, and failure, it has it all. Go to Amazon

Isaacson does it again, illustrating great genius with great writing. I bought this book, not because it was about Jobs, but because I'm a big fan of Isaacson. This work, much like his other works, was unsurprisingly of the highest caliber, but what did surprise me was that the subject matter, Jobs, was much more intriguing than I could have imagined. I was an early Apple computer owner in the 70s which had a huge impact on my life and career as a computer programmer, but I was always a Wozniak fan, and never thought anything of whoever this Jobs person was. Oh how wrong I was, and I think that's a big part about why Isaacson agreed to do this biography. Jobs turns out to be the driving force behind so many huge and successful companies that he built including Apple, Mac, Pixar, iTunes, and others. Not to take anything away from the hardware genius of the Woz, but Jobs was the smartest and most talented of them all. Having not read this book yet, I took for granted nearly all of what he accomplished. What Isaacson has done more than anything, is make us understand how all of these great accomplishments came about despite so many difficulties and obstacles, and yet once he illustrates for us who Jobs really was, his incredible success seems inevitable. Isaacson brings to light the deep artistic passion of Jobs using equally artistic prose which makes the book hard to put down at any hour. Go to Amazon

Amazing story of a complex man With the exception of one laptop and 2 non-smart cell phones, in my personal and professional life since 2004 I've had nothing but Apple products - computers (both desktop and laptop), iPads, iPods, and my crown jewel: my iPhone. None has ever disappointed me. I say this not to put forth a review of the Apple products but to explain that I am part of Steve Jobs's choir: I value, respect and rely on the products that he created. I'm sold, so to speak. And so it seemed only logical that I would eventually read this book to gain insight both in the genesis and evolution of Apple and in the person of Steve Jobs. The book did not disappoint in either. Go to Amazon

Great reading Five Stars Five Stars Steve Jobs Well written book about Steve Jobs An amazing biography of an amazing person... Informative and candid portrayal of Steve Jobs Thorough Research, Brutal Honesty, Deep Insights I believe he was a great visionary of all TIMES Five Stars

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