Television and Books...and reviews
May. 31st, 2019 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Television shows...that I need to find time for:
* Good Omens just started on Amazon Prime and is getting good reviews.
* The Americans -- apparently had a great series ender and highly recommended by everyone who saw it. Hmmm...is it still on Netflix? (It's another series that keeps getting rec'd by everyone who shares my taste or has excellent taste. Now if I can just get past the first three episodes...)
* The Deadwood Movie -- not only got good reviews as a satisfying wrap-up to the series, but you don't have to have seen the series to enjoy it. (Hmmm..this is good news, it means I don't have to try and watch the whole series first.)
* Fleabag -- this also keeps getting rec'd. It's like Barry. Everyone who has good taste is raving about it. Now if I can just get past the first couple of episodes..
* The end of Killing Eve S2 (which is apparently controversial and not everyone loved?) -- I need to watch the last three episodes.
Oh..and The Good Fight is coming CBS on Sunday nights -- June 16. I need to remember to inform my mother. This is the legal political satire that is a spin off from The Good Wife by the Kings, and Ridely Scott. It stars Christine Baranski, Gary Cole, among others.
Plus the stuff I already have in my queue. Can we say too many television shows and too little time? And I may try The 100 again -- the icons on fandom icons look intriguing.
2. Making my way through "Where'd You Go Bernadette" -- which is not at all nice to Microsoft. Or Seattle for that matter. I'm amused by both -- since I visited Seattle last year to see my cousin, and I have a co-worker who raves about it and his son working at Microsoft constantly.
There's a heavy feminist theme in it -- about how women are treated in our society and in the workplace. Although I'm not sure if everyone will pick up on it? Co-worker didn't -- she's listening to the audio version, which is admittedly an entirely different experience. The book has a fascinating structure -- it's told in the perspective of Bernadette's 15 year old daughter, who is riffling through a bunch of correspondence her mother had sent to her -- and writing a book about it, as a means of making sense of the correspondence, and figuring out what happened to her mother and why. So, you see and read each piece of correspondence, from hand-written notes (not literally handwritten in the text, thankfully), emails, police transcripts, an FBI report, a psyche report, grade cards, a captain's log, and various faxes and letters. Each piece of paper put together -- tells a story from various perspectives.
But how this works as an audio book or a film, which it has been adapted into, is beyond me. The film's second trailer sort of spoiled me on what happens. So if you want to read the book without any plot spoilers? Don't watch the film trailer.
Also, the film trailer spoils you on the entire plot of the film. Which is odd.
As an aside -- why would you spoil the entire plot of a movie in the trailer??
What I told you above is on the book jacket. The marketers of the book spoil you on that. But I tried to hide it just in case.
I think it's very hard to go into content blind nowadays, you can of course, but it's not easy.
The other thing that I'm reading, because why just read one thing at a time? What would be the fun in that? Is Lucifer -- the newer version -- in it Lucifer was attacked by something in the void, and has teamed up with his brother Gabriel, whose lost his heart and blames Lucifer for it, to find the person or persons that killed their father. It's interesting and the art is REALLY good. Also it's heavily into Gaiman's world -- of the Sandman, Dream, Death, etc. I think Gabriel was made mortal though, although how he's walking about without a heart -- I've no clue. Also, weirdly, none of the Angels have sexual organs. So they are naked a lot, but there's no penis to speak of. In short, they look a bit like Naked Ken Dolls, except more interesting and better looking. Maybe Ken was meant to be an Angel -- hence the lack of genitilia? I digress.
In some respects I like comic book Lucifer better than television Lucifer -- mainly because he's snarkier and less goofy. OTOH - I do adore Tom Ellis. But I also adore snarky thinly muscled naked blond angels with a devilish sense of humor...although the lack of a penis is somewhat disturbing. I'm guessing if you are an angel -- you wouldn't need one, would you? No need to eat, pee, procreate...it makes sense, actually. Also none of those wonky desires that come with it.
Yes, I know...I'm overly distracted by this. But I've been watching the television series which made no end of jokes about the size of Lucifer's penis. So for the comic version not to have one at all was sort of jarring and highly entertaining. I'm wondering if anyone has told Ellis?
3. Still on books...while reading a guest review of the book Teach ME on Smart Bitches.. I got distracted by this:
This is the teacher that recommended Tam Lin by Pamela Dean and countless other books to me.
Okay, I know this is...how to put it? Unpopular opinion time? Because most of my DW correspondence list, or at least the LJ one loved Pamela Dean's Tam Lin. And I read it on their fannish recommendations.
But.
I don't understand the appeal of this book. The appeal of this novel -- dear friends, is completely and utterly lost on me. But this is true of a lot of hyped books that I've read and writers. Also television series and films. So it's nothing new to have an unpopular opinion...
I think that it is really subjective. Whatever grabbed fans of Dean's novel didn't grab me. Someone once told me that it has a lot to do with a love or nostalgia for academia -- or the idea of academia.
Me: We should have been teachers.
Lando: Eh, did you like school?
ME: Really not. I liked learning, school tended to get in the way of it.
Lando: that's the problem, to teach, you have to love school.
Me: Yeah, I can see how that would be a problem.
I think in order to like Tam Lin by Dean, you have to have a somewhat romanticized view of academia and love it? Maybe not. It's not really about academia -- we don't go to class with them, we get a summarization of them going to class, quoting old English poets, and time passing -- it's not like Harry Potter (which I enjoyed) or Up the Down Stair Case, or any of the other in the classroom novels that I've read. If anything it's a glamorized take on being on a midwestern college campus (but not a realistic one).
If however, your view of academia skews closer to Donna Tart, Jane Smiley, or Elizabeth Hand...maybe not. Or if you were an English Lit Grad in a small midwestern college -- and it was so much more eventful and interesting than this book...
Same with how you view fairy or the depiction of fairy or the fae and the stories surrounding them -- I'm very picky about this. Not helped by a background in Welsh and Celtic folklore, and having studied fairy tales, and read a lot of fantasy. Most depictions of the fae annoy the hell out of me. I like the original folk tales, and I liked how the Perilious Guard, Jim Butcher and Shakespeare depicted them. I do not like how Sceanne McGuire, Cat Valente and Pamela Dean did. I don't know why. Something about their depiction didn't work for me. And their dialogue -- well, this is not how people speak. It didn't sound real. And everyone sounded the same in my head.
I am admittedly rather picky about writing style. I need my prose to have a poetic edge to it. The dialogue should snap, crackle and pop. I want it to be distinctive. And creative. I don't want to read journalistic prose -- or what I'd read in a magazine or journal article or newspaper. I hate it when writers summarize -- I find it passive and goes against everything I was taught. Also I am not a fan of formal writing -- or academic and legal writing. They don't say what they mean, they talk around it, and suffocate you with words. Legal prose spends a lot of time hedging, or swirling around the point. It doesn't want to take responsibility for anything. Drives me crazy. I've spent most of my working life interpreting legal prose and arguing over it's correct interpretation. Formal writing -- which I do for a living, is not what I want to read for pleasure.
I know I just contradicted myself. I don't like minimalism, but also hate wordiness.
I don't claim to make sense, even to myself.
I don't know, I just remember being terribly disappointed by Tam Lin, and that could well be because it was hyped up as the best thing ever. This is never good. It's better to go into something with low expectations, less likely to be disappointed in it. It's probably not a good idea to read a book that a fan recommends...at least not until you read a lot of negative review of it first? On Good Reads and Amazon, I will often read the three star reviews. I skip the two and one for the most part, and the five. Mainly because the person tends to be incoherent with glee or incoherent with spite. Three star reviews are more balanced and tend to tell you more about the book and less about the reviewer.
If the book only has five or four star reviews -- I've learned to ignore it. If it only has one or two star? Same. But if it has a little of all of the above? I'm interested -- because the more diverse the responses -- the more interesting the book.
Also, when reading a five star review -- if the reviewer never makes it clear why they like it or can't do it in a manner that is coherent, the review tells you little.
I have a friend who never reads reviews -- she states that they are either rants or filled with spoilers. I love them, but so many people can't write them.
* Good Omens just started on Amazon Prime and is getting good reviews.
* The Americans -- apparently had a great series ender and highly recommended by everyone who saw it. Hmmm...is it still on Netflix? (It's another series that keeps getting rec'd by everyone who shares my taste or has excellent taste. Now if I can just get past the first three episodes...)
* The Deadwood Movie -- not only got good reviews as a satisfying wrap-up to the series, but you don't have to have seen the series to enjoy it. (Hmmm..this is good news, it means I don't have to try and watch the whole series first.)
* Fleabag -- this also keeps getting rec'd. It's like Barry. Everyone who has good taste is raving about it. Now if I can just get past the first couple of episodes..
* The end of Killing Eve S2 (which is apparently controversial and not everyone loved?) -- I need to watch the last three episodes.
Oh..and The Good Fight is coming CBS on Sunday nights -- June 16. I need to remember to inform my mother. This is the legal political satire that is a spin off from The Good Wife by the Kings, and Ridely Scott. It stars Christine Baranski, Gary Cole, among others.
Plus the stuff I already have in my queue. Can we say too many television shows and too little time? And I may try The 100 again -- the icons on fandom icons look intriguing.
2. Making my way through "Where'd You Go Bernadette" -- which is not at all nice to Microsoft. Or Seattle for that matter. I'm amused by both -- since I visited Seattle last year to see my cousin, and I have a co-worker who raves about it and his son working at Microsoft constantly.
There's a heavy feminist theme in it -- about how women are treated in our society and in the workplace. Although I'm not sure if everyone will pick up on it? Co-worker didn't -- she's listening to the audio version, which is admittedly an entirely different experience. The book has a fascinating structure -- it's told in the perspective of Bernadette's 15 year old daughter, who is riffling through a bunch of correspondence her mother had sent to her -- and writing a book about it, as a means of making sense of the correspondence, and figuring out what happened to her mother and why. So, you see and read each piece of correspondence, from hand-written notes (not literally handwritten in the text, thankfully), emails, police transcripts, an FBI report, a psyche report, grade cards, a captain's log, and various faxes and letters. Each piece of paper put together -- tells a story from various perspectives.
But how this works as an audio book or a film, which it has been adapted into, is beyond me. The film's second trailer sort of spoiled me on what happens. So if you want to read the book without any plot spoilers? Don't watch the film trailer.
Also, the film trailer spoils you on the entire plot of the film. Which is odd.
As an aside -- why would you spoil the entire plot of a movie in the trailer??
What I told you above is on the book jacket. The marketers of the book spoil you on that. But I tried to hide it just in case.
I think it's very hard to go into content blind nowadays, you can of course, but it's not easy.
The other thing that I'm reading, because why just read one thing at a time? What would be the fun in that? Is Lucifer -- the newer version -- in it Lucifer was attacked by something in the void, and has teamed up with his brother Gabriel, whose lost his heart and blames Lucifer for it, to find the person or persons that killed their father. It's interesting and the art is REALLY good. Also it's heavily into Gaiman's world -- of the Sandman, Dream, Death, etc. I think Gabriel was made mortal though, although how he's walking about without a heart -- I've no clue. Also, weirdly, none of the Angels have sexual organs. So they are naked a lot, but there's no penis to speak of. In short, they look a bit like Naked Ken Dolls, except more interesting and better looking. Maybe Ken was meant to be an Angel -- hence the lack of genitilia? I digress.
In some respects I like comic book Lucifer better than television Lucifer -- mainly because he's snarkier and less goofy. OTOH - I do adore Tom Ellis. But I also adore snarky thinly muscled naked blond angels with a devilish sense of humor...although the lack of a penis is somewhat disturbing. I'm guessing if you are an angel -- you wouldn't need one, would you? No need to eat, pee, procreate...it makes sense, actually. Also none of those wonky desires that come with it.
Yes, I know...I'm overly distracted by this. But I've been watching the television series which made no end of jokes about the size of Lucifer's penis. So for the comic version not to have one at all was sort of jarring and highly entertaining. I'm wondering if anyone has told Ellis?
3. Still on books...while reading a guest review of the book Teach ME on Smart Bitches.. I got distracted by this:
This is the teacher that recommended Tam Lin by Pamela Dean and countless other books to me.
Okay, I know this is...how to put it? Unpopular opinion time? Because most of my DW correspondence list, or at least the LJ one loved Pamela Dean's Tam Lin. And I read it on their fannish recommendations.
But.
I don't understand the appeal of this book. The appeal of this novel -- dear friends, is completely and utterly lost on me. But this is true of a lot of hyped books that I've read and writers. Also television series and films. So it's nothing new to have an unpopular opinion...
I think that it is really subjective. Whatever grabbed fans of Dean's novel didn't grab me. Someone once told me that it has a lot to do with a love or nostalgia for academia -- or the idea of academia.
Me: We should have been teachers.
Lando: Eh, did you like school?
ME: Really not. I liked learning, school tended to get in the way of it.
Lando: that's the problem, to teach, you have to love school.
Me: Yeah, I can see how that would be a problem.
I think in order to like Tam Lin by Dean, you have to have a somewhat romanticized view of academia and love it? Maybe not. It's not really about academia -- we don't go to class with them, we get a summarization of them going to class, quoting old English poets, and time passing -- it's not like Harry Potter (which I enjoyed) or Up the Down Stair Case, or any of the other in the classroom novels that I've read. If anything it's a glamorized take on being on a midwestern college campus (but not a realistic one).
If however, your view of academia skews closer to Donna Tart, Jane Smiley, or Elizabeth Hand...maybe not. Or if you were an English Lit Grad in a small midwestern college -- and it was so much more eventful and interesting than this book...
Same with how you view fairy or the depiction of fairy or the fae and the stories surrounding them -- I'm very picky about this. Not helped by a background in Welsh and Celtic folklore, and having studied fairy tales, and read a lot of fantasy. Most depictions of the fae annoy the hell out of me. I like the original folk tales, and I liked how the Perilious Guard, Jim Butcher and Shakespeare depicted them. I do not like how Sceanne McGuire, Cat Valente and Pamela Dean did. I don't know why. Something about their depiction didn't work for me. And their dialogue -- well, this is not how people speak. It didn't sound real. And everyone sounded the same in my head.
I am admittedly rather picky about writing style. I need my prose to have a poetic edge to it. The dialogue should snap, crackle and pop. I want it to be distinctive. And creative. I don't want to read journalistic prose -- or what I'd read in a magazine or journal article or newspaper. I hate it when writers summarize -- I find it passive and goes against everything I was taught. Also I am not a fan of formal writing -- or academic and legal writing. They don't say what they mean, they talk around it, and suffocate you with words. Legal prose spends a lot of time hedging, or swirling around the point. It doesn't want to take responsibility for anything. Drives me crazy. I've spent most of my working life interpreting legal prose and arguing over it's correct interpretation. Formal writing -- which I do for a living, is not what I want to read for pleasure.
I know I just contradicted myself. I don't like minimalism, but also hate wordiness.
I don't claim to make sense, even to myself.
I don't know, I just remember being terribly disappointed by Tam Lin, and that could well be because it was hyped up as the best thing ever. This is never good. It's better to go into something with low expectations, less likely to be disappointed in it. It's probably not a good idea to read a book that a fan recommends...at least not until you read a lot of negative review of it first? On Good Reads and Amazon, I will often read the three star reviews. I skip the two and one for the most part, and the five. Mainly because the person tends to be incoherent with glee or incoherent with spite. Three star reviews are more balanced and tend to tell you more about the book and less about the reviewer.
If the book only has five or four star reviews -- I've learned to ignore it. If it only has one or two star? Same. But if it has a little of all of the above? I'm interested -- because the more diverse the responses -- the more interesting the book.
Also, when reading a five star review -- if the reviewer never makes it clear why they like it or can't do it in a manner that is coherent, the review tells you little.
I have a friend who never reads reviews -- she states that they are either rants or filled with spoilers. I love them, but so many people can't write them.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-01 03:30 am (UTC)I'd be very interested in your opinion.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-01 03:35 am (UTC)So, will stream this weekend.
I've actually enjoyed it more this season than last -- it moves quicker, and I find the characters slightly more compelling. The Russian bit last year sort of lost me and I got bored.