Wed Reading Meme ?

[shadowkat]

Very odd, the ceiling sounds like it is farting again. At least I think it is the ceiling. It might be the sink? I can't figure it out. It comes and goes. Renting apartments in NYC is always an experience.

I haven't read anything interesting in a long time. Or at least it feels like a long time. Big old reading slump. Also on a bit of writing slump. And a television slump. I blame February. It casts its drab exterior over everything like so much muck.

Finished The Sins of Lord Easterbrook by Madeline Hunter which I don't recommend. Boring. Shouldn't have been. We had a somewhat autistic lead, who sensed others feelings a bit too much for his own good. An exotic heroine, who was investigating the opium trade and the hero's role in it.
And well, a conspiracy by a bunch of Lords regarding said opium trade, smuggling of British secrets during the War, and their role in her father's demise. It should have been interesting. But alas, the writer was more interested in writing incredibly long graphic sex scenes...and in an academic style fitting with the time period. Sex scenes should not be written in that manner. Either do the darn things right or not at all.

Her book, "Stealing Heaven" which is in Medieval Times, and concerns a Welsh Princess attempting to win a War of sorts against Britain, was much better. Hunter's Medieval books are her best. She sucks at other time periods.

Now reading Courtney Milan's Once Upon a Marquess - which oddly is about the same thing that Sins of Lord Easterbrook was about, with a Marquess who has the same name, Christian, and some interesting issues. He's OCD. The heroine in this novel is into designing clockworks. Milan is a much better writer than Hunter. She also has a sense of humor, similar to Georgette Heyer, except a bit more biting and far more subtle. In this book the hero turned in the heroine's father and brother as traitors for smuggling state secrets. And he struggles with his desire for laudenum - which is basically opium. So very similar, but far better written. Also the hero isn't an domineering, controlling guy, more a joking, kind sort of guy. Beta hero instead of Alpha hero, rare for these sorts of books. Milan is one of those writers who likes to subvert the genre, as opposed to just following the template.

Next? I need to read Euphoria by Lily King for book club. But I have mixed feelings about the book club, so am dragging my feet on the book.

Really am having issues finding things that thrill or enthrall me at the moment. Everything feels so...drab.

Did love The 100 - which I binge watched last weekend. 4 episodes. Also Grey's Anatomy, The Good Wife and Scandal. Have come to the conclusion that The 100 is the best sci-fi show currently on. (Sorry, I'm not really a fan of episodica television series like Doctor Who or the X-Files, never have been, never will be...it's the short story aspect I think that turns me off. Really don't know. I keep trying. But alas, the appeal of episodic television appears to be largely lost on me. And yes, I know, both have arcs, but the arcs don't work for me...well except for the River Song arc, that worked for me. It's subjective thing. Either works or doesn't for you. I used to think math wasn't subjective, but I've changed my mind. I think everything is subjective. Even how you view yourself and your world. There is no such thing as objective...which sort of shines a weird light on awards shows, doesn't it?)

Getting to back to why I no longer think math is subjective? There's this question on Facebook, one of those social media math memes...in which they tell you to calculate a bunch of numbers without using a calculator. What fascinated me was the responses.

Here's the math question:

Take 1,000
Add 40
Add 1000
Add 20
Add 1000
Add 30
Add 1000
Add 10

As quickly as you can.



1. 5000
2. 4100

(oddly about 50% got 5,000 and 50% got 4100)

3. 3090 (1 person)

Me? Bewildered by anyone who didn't get 5,000. How did they figure this out? I've done it two ways and still get 5,000. (My math phobia makes me question whether that's the correct answer. LOL!)



I like words better. More honest. You know there's multiple translations and interpretations going in.
Math reminds me of the historical fiction genre...it lies to you. And gets off on it too. Yet, somehow, I managed to find a way to do it for a living (math not historical fiction -- if only it were the latter, although probably far less lucrative).

Comments

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

4X1000= 4000
40+20+30+10=100

Yeah, this trick is something they should have taught everyone in the second grade. (yes, you can do it purely by adding, but third grade multiplication gets you there faster. .

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Thank god for excel and calculators. ;-)


(Particularly for those of us unlucky enough to be born with dyscalculia, so are unable to always understand numbers and number games like the one above. And add 0's when there aren't any, but don't realize it.)

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

We know you have problems with dyslexia. So you are excused. But what about all those other folks who came up with 5000? ;o)

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

The final stage confuses people in a hurry into adding an increment to the thousands instead of the hundreds.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much what I think I did. My brain automatically saw 100, 200, 300, 400...not 10, 20, 30, 40...Hence the reason, I questioned it. I thought okay, why are people coming up with different answers? And with math, I always assume I have the wrong answer - because my brain perceives numbers oddly. But I think a lot of people see numbers differently...

I think it's a good exercise in seeing how people perceive and think differently. There's another cool exercise in this regarding the word "Scalia" that I saw in elsi's lj, it's tumblr post:http://philsandifer.tumblr.com/post/139473929361/andrewhickeywriter-reinderdijkhuis

Where people have different perceptions of what the word Scalia refers to.

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

I love The 100! Especially in their willingness to kill so many people off. I do wish they'd get around to killing Bellamy - has he ever made a good decision? Ugh that guy. But I salute the show's ability to just go for it no matter what the plot.

Ah my problem with S3 so far...

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Nooo...don't kill my Bellamy! ;-)

Hee Hee.

Seriously though, I'm amazed I went from wanting Bellamy and Kane to be killed in the first season, to really liking both characters and finding them fascinating. The writers sort of flipped them, but kept them true to who they were. Same thing happened with Mr. Barrows in Downton Abbey.
That's good writing - the ability to make characters complicated and unpredictable.

And they've gotten very good at flipping characters...showing how someone can do horrible and wonderful things depending on the situation.

However, you do bring up a quibble I had with the last two episodes...that arc with the farm group, echo's betrayal and the decision to attack the 300 person army that arrived to protect them, did not work from a plot, character or structural standpoint.

Up to now, most of the arcs have been built up well...with lots of moral ambiguity. But this? It was so contrived and predictable. Also it was out of character a bit for Bellamy, who would have made that decision in S1 (hence the dislike and I'd have been commiserating with you if you posted this in S1), but had learned from it the hard way -- and was the calm voice of reason last year, while Finn was out to kill and did. That also taught Bellamy not to do it -- in fact he's cautioning Jasper at the beginning of S3.1 (Wanheda - which by the way was the best episode so far.) His handling of Jasper -- also indicates that he would not have made this choice.

Granted Gina, his girlfirend, died. But I knew they were going to kill her the moment she popped up. They hadn't bothered to develop her or their romance at all, and they dropped huge anvils. Talk about plot contrivances - Gina was there not as a fully developed character, but a plot device and a horribly cliche one at that.

As opposed to what they did with Jasper and Mia and Clark and Finn, which was slow burn. Fully developing Mia and Finn so both were complex characters in their own rights and not just a plot device to further the arc of Clark and Jasper. That's the trick of killing off characters -- make sure it has power and isn't just a plot device. The audience needs to know the character to care about their death.

Bad writing there or rather lazy. I remember thinking, okay she's dead. In fact, I was sort of poking fun at it. They'll kill her so they can have Bellamy go off the rails, which seriously they need to stop doing -- once is fine, but with EVERY character? It's getting repetitive and predictable = cliche. Not a good idea.

And the Echo thing made no sense. I'd forgotten the character for one thing. And the writers didn't really do a good job of reminding us who she was. A quick flashback would have been nice. It also wasn't clear why she did what she did. Too out of the blue. Which in of itself is forgiveable...but...you sort of knew that now they'd managed to a garner a peace with the grounders, the writers were scrambling to find a way of blowing that up.
So instead of it coming organically from the characters -- it came from the writers, and was a bit jarring.

Pike and the Farm group just happen to hate all grounders. They decide to attack the 300 people who show up to protect them -- and everyone in camp goes along with them, without question, except for Abby/Kane and a few others? Really? After what happened over the last two seasons?

And it obviously had to happen so the writers can break the truce and get all the characters to decide to go after Theolonious?

Ugh. And the show had gotten off to such a great start this season. That arc just about killed it.

Yes, go dark. But at least do it with moral ambiguity and good build up. Which they did brillaintly in S2 - the whole Finn bit, and the whole bit with Mount Weather was a work of genius.

Sigh, plots that don't organically derive from the characters, where I can feel the writers playing god -- annoy me. I also have issues with contrived romances in stories. Romance should further character, and come organically from them. Action - from character. Character first, everything else second.

RE: Ah my problem with S3 so far...

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think with the election of Pike they were trying to parallel the power struggle in Lexa's city and show how quickly alliances can change, but since they've done the whole "don't trust the grounders, let's attack first," before, it just comes across as characters being stupid. That's my problem with Bellamy - in fact I at first thought he was going along with Pike as a double cross, it seemed like such a regression for his character. Bellamy! You've never made a correct decision in your life! Try doing the opposite of your instincts!

RE: Ah my problem with S3 so far...

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I don't know, my memory may be playing tricks on me -- considering all the information I've crammed into it, but I don't remember any bad or dumb or incorrect decisions that he made prior to that one and possibly the attempt to save Clark (which I don't think was that dumb, considering he's done something similar before as has she, and it worked.) Also you can't hold his decision regarding Echo and Gina against him -- seriously anyone would have made that choice in his place. He had no reason not to trust Echo -- they'd helped each other in the previous season and in his view, shared a common enemy. Also, why wouldn't Gina be safer at Mount Weather - a protected underground compound that Abbey had decided to make a medical facility?
The only dumb decision was following Pike.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Still haven't read Once Upon a Marquess yet though I have it on my kindle. Courtney Milan and Rose Lerner both post a lot on Twitter. Interning to see her views on stuff.

Will also Rec "His Road Home" (link summary in my LJ the other day).

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Will also Rec "His Road Home" (link summary in my LJ the other day).

Was this the one about the Korean nurse who travels to see the guy who lost both his legs and people claimed was her fiancee? And she traveled home to see him, to figure out what the heck was going on...and they established an odd text messaging, long distance relationship?

Because that looked really interesting. (I normally can't abide contemporary romance novels -- well except for Sherry Thomas and Courtney Milan's odd take on them.)

You tempted me into follow Courtney Milan and Elizabeth Hoyt on Twitter, also Joy Bendel ( I think that's her name) - you evil person. ;-) I rather like Milan - who is sharp as a whip, and a liberal former corporate attorney.

Still haven't read Once Upon a Marquess yet though I have it on my kindle.

I finally got around to it. It's slow not quite as good as her other novels. But better than the Madeline Hunter which has a similar subject matter/trope. (ie. both heroes are named Christain, both Marquess, both struggle with an opium addiction, both have social anxiety, and weird quirks that make people think they are mad. Both heroines are independent, taking care of their families and feel betrayed on some level by the hero, who must redeem himself in her eyes.)

I find the hero in Once Upon a Marquess oddly adorable. I don't know why. I think it's Milan...her heroes are oddly adorable.

But it is slowly paced. Either I'm burning out...or it's the book. Can't tell. I've hit a reading slump.

Oh my mother recommends a historical based on Robert Louis Stevenson's life entitled "Under the Wide and Starry Sky" -- which focuses on his romance with a married woman who was much older than he was, and highly independent...while he struggled becoming a writer. By the same author who wrote Paris Wife (about Hemingway's wife). Haven't read either - I find the historical real person fiction genre (aka real person fanfic but about well known and thankfully dead historical figures, or they wouldn't be able to get away with it) grating. So tend to avoid.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

That would be the one Korean marine biologist and son of Mexican American migrant workers who became an army medic until losing his legs in Afghanastan.

I don't usually read contemporaries either, but I quite like this one.

And Rose Lerner (another romance novelist) is interesting to follow on Twitter (though she's amusingly obsessed with the musical "Hamilton").

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Hmm...Has Rose Lerner seen Hamilton? I ask because that musical is impossible to see. (It's the big thing right now, apparently. Got two 60 Minutes reviews, a lengthy interview on PBS, and a standing ovation at the Grammy's.) Also, tickets are sold out until 2020. I know, I tried to get some. Resale tickets are available between $600-$1200.

I refuse to get obsessed over that musical. (I am a musical theater geek, so this could legitimately happen. "Hamilton" is basically catnip to musical theater geeks and history geeks. Also works really for politically correct/conscious geeks. Luckily, I only fit the musical theater geek category.) But I'm not that masochistic -- if it's not available, then I won't be obsessed with it. It's insanely painful to get obsessed with theatrical productions, for one thing, you can't really rewatch them, well you could, but it's too expensive to do so and time-consuming.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

No clue. Just that her Twitter feed is peppered with factoids about Hamitin and Burr