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Wed Reading Meme...amongst other things
Mar. 23rd, 2016 07:31 pm1. Felt like crap today. As if I was attempting to walk around in low gravity or something. Learned that there is a Penumbral Lunar Eclispe, which is interesting, because the last time I felt like this was when we were having a Solar Eclipse which was on March 8th. So I'm either sensitive to the universe, or it's just nifty timing. Feeling slightly better now at any rate.
2. If you want to watch a satire of our current election (although to be honest, not sure why you would considering the election itself is satirical and a bit hard to top), go watch Scandal. Sadly, it's not quite as funny as the actual election. Apparently there is some stuff you just can't make up.
( our nutty election )
Maybe aliens will invade and we won't have to worry about all of this come November? Until then, I'm going to continue to ignore it as much as possible. The media is admittedly making it difficult.
3. The Wed Reading Meme
* What I just finished reading?
An atrocious romance novel, which I don't feel like discussing again. Decided I'd finally burned myself out on the genre and it was time to pick a new genre to binge read. So off to fantasy, mystery, and heist novels...I've meandered.
*What I'm reading now?
The Palace Job by Patrick Weeks
It's basically what you would get if Terry Pratchett decided to write the television series, Leverage or Oceans 11. So if you're a fan of Pratchett, you might enjoy this a great deal. (Pratchett tends to be hit or miss for me.)
I'm enjoying it. Not loving it. The humor is, how to put this? A bit too obvious for my taste. My sense of humor tends to be very dry and subtle. This is more ...loud and raunchy, slapstick, with a heavy emphasis on parody. That said, it has its moments. There's some nice one-liner's here and there. The political satire isn't quite working for me, though, mainly because I'm not quite sure where the writer is going with it yet.
I like the characters, particularly the leads - Loche, Kail, and Justiciar Pyvich. At the moment, I'm sort of shipping Justiciar Pyvich and Captain Loch. Loch, by the way, is a favorite female character archetype of mine. She's a tough as nails fighter, a Captain, and smart. Also tall. Pyvich is a Justiciar, which is this fantasy world's version of a Marshal or Investigator/Cop. He's been appointed to catch Loch and Kail, who escaped from prison.
Loche also is black, which is nice for a change. This is a diverse cast. Not that I tend to really notice or care about these things when I read books. She's a disenfranchised minority in her world.
There's a lot of world-building in the book, which I think bogs it down a bit. Too many details to keep track of. And it's at heart a political satire. The writer definitely has an agenda. Although I'm not entirely sure what it is, so maybe not?
I'm about 27% of the way through. Loch has finished recruiting her team and has just found a way to take out two of her obstacles. The team is made up of a Wizard who got thrown out of the University for stealing, a young hunky male virgin named Dairy (example of obvious and raunchy humor), a Unicorn shape-shifter who has a thing for male virgins, a death priestess, a warhammer, a tinker, and a cartortionist/acrobat samuri who won't kill people or fight, because it is against his religion.
[The book reminds me a little bit of Prachett's His Monstrous Regiment, except more fun and less political, also no footnotes.]
It's not an easy book to read on busy public transportation. I was doing fine, for the most part, this week - since Spring Break, so not as crowded. But this morning...just as I was getting to a good part, three nasty teens got on the train and felt the need to regale the entire train with their nasty love lives or lack thereof. They spoke in a sort of high-velocity teen urban slang that was littered with the words: bitch, faggot, faggots, bitches, and losers. I wanted to smack them. More to the point, I wanted to smack their parents.
*What I'm reading next?
Well, the book club appears to have petered out a bit. They were arguing over who should take over the emailing duties and which book to read next, when I left. It's either Patti Smith's Just Kids or The Buried Giant
by Kazuo Ishiguro, an author that my book club is enamored with, they've read all his books.
I think I'd like his book better, I already know a lot of cult artists like Patti Smith via SIL, and honestly it's hard to care. But am vaguely curious about Robert Mapplethorp. It's a memoir about Patti Smith's college years with Robert Mapplethorp at Pratt.
But, I don't really want to read either. And since nothing's been scheduled...I'm thinking maybe The Lies of Lock Lamora or perhaps Moon Called by Patricia Briggs an urban fantasy novel about a mechanic who is also a skin walker, that shapeshifts into a Coyote. Takes place in Arizona, which is at least different. Most of them seem to take place on the East Coast. Plus it has some good one-liner quotes posted on Good Reads.
I want humor right now.
2. If you want to watch a satire of our current election (although to be honest, not sure why you would considering the election itself is satirical and a bit hard to top), go watch Scandal. Sadly, it's not quite as funny as the actual election. Apparently there is some stuff you just can't make up.
( our nutty election )
Maybe aliens will invade and we won't have to worry about all of this come November? Until then, I'm going to continue to ignore it as much as possible. The media is admittedly making it difficult.
3. The Wed Reading Meme
* What I just finished reading?
An atrocious romance novel, which I don't feel like discussing again. Decided I'd finally burned myself out on the genre and it was time to pick a new genre to binge read. So off to fantasy, mystery, and heist novels...I've meandered.
*What I'm reading now?
The Palace Job by Patrick Weeks
It's basically what you would get if Terry Pratchett decided to write the television series, Leverage or Oceans 11. So if you're a fan of Pratchett, you might enjoy this a great deal. (Pratchett tends to be hit or miss for me.)
I'm enjoying it. Not loving it. The humor is, how to put this? A bit too obvious for my taste. My sense of humor tends to be very dry and subtle. This is more ...loud and raunchy, slapstick, with a heavy emphasis on parody. That said, it has its moments. There's some nice one-liner's here and there. The political satire isn't quite working for me, though, mainly because I'm not quite sure where the writer is going with it yet.
I like the characters, particularly the leads - Loche, Kail, and Justiciar Pyvich. At the moment, I'm sort of shipping Justiciar Pyvich and Captain Loch. Loch, by the way, is a favorite female character archetype of mine. She's a tough as nails fighter, a Captain, and smart. Also tall. Pyvich is a Justiciar, which is this fantasy world's version of a Marshal or Investigator/Cop. He's been appointed to catch Loch and Kail, who escaped from prison.
Loche also is black, which is nice for a change. This is a diverse cast. Not that I tend to really notice or care about these things when I read books. She's a disenfranchised minority in her world.
There's a lot of world-building in the book, which I think bogs it down a bit. Too many details to keep track of. And it's at heart a political satire. The writer definitely has an agenda. Although I'm not entirely sure what it is, so maybe not?
I'm about 27% of the way through. Loch has finished recruiting her team and has just found a way to take out two of her obstacles. The team is made up of a Wizard who got thrown out of the University for stealing, a young hunky male virgin named Dairy (example of obvious and raunchy humor), a Unicorn shape-shifter who has a thing for male virgins, a death priestess, a warhammer, a tinker, and a cartortionist/acrobat samuri who won't kill people or fight, because it is against his religion.
[The book reminds me a little bit of Prachett's His Monstrous Regiment, except more fun and less political, also no footnotes.]
It's not an easy book to read on busy public transportation. I was doing fine, for the most part, this week - since Spring Break, so not as crowded. But this morning...just as I was getting to a good part, three nasty teens got on the train and felt the need to regale the entire train with their nasty love lives or lack thereof. They spoke in a sort of high-velocity teen urban slang that was littered with the words: bitch, faggot, faggots, bitches, and losers. I wanted to smack them. More to the point, I wanted to smack their parents.
*What I'm reading next?
Well, the book club appears to have petered out a bit. They were arguing over who should take over the emailing duties and which book to read next, when I left. It's either Patti Smith's Just Kids or The Buried Giant
by Kazuo Ishiguro, an author that my book club is enamored with, they've read all his books.
I think I'd like his book better, I already know a lot of cult artists like Patti Smith via SIL, and honestly it's hard to care. But am vaguely curious about Robert Mapplethorp. It's a memoir about Patti Smith's college years with Robert Mapplethorp at Pratt.
But, I don't really want to read either. And since nothing's been scheduled...I'm thinking maybe The Lies of Lock Lamora or perhaps Moon Called by Patricia Briggs an urban fantasy novel about a mechanic who is also a skin walker, that shapeshifts into a Coyote. Takes place in Arizona, which is at least different. Most of them seem to take place on the East Coast. Plus it has some good one-liner quotes posted on Good Reads.
I want humor right now.