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I gave up on "I Will Repay" by Baroness Orczy. ( Why )

Now, I'm trying The City We Became by N K Jemisin, who is a four time winner of the Hugo, apparently. This is a fantasy novel. What is it about?

Well so far a young grafitti artist trying to save a city, by panting holes all over it. In between eating lunch in various places, while being stared at, either because he hasn't washed his clothes in ages and can't afford new ones, or he is Black. He doesn't know which. (I think he's eating in the work establishments.) However, I like the writing and the author's voice - also it's not putting me to sleep. My attention is wondering - but that has more to do with me than the book.

"Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She's got five.

But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs beneath the earth, threatening to destroy the city and her five protectors unless they can come together and stop it once and for all."

I went to some trouble to get it to come up on my Kindle this morning. I'd found it on the HD Fire last night, but it's heavy, so prefer the Kindle.

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My Commuter Pass is damaged. ( Read more... )

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Right now, the best television series that I'm watching is Slow Horses on Apple TV. It's engrossing. I start, and I keep going. Very bingeable.

Highly recommend, if you have Apple TV.

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Mother discovered that the insurance policy that my father had through his former company didn't lasp as she thought, and she may be owed some money, after all. She has no idea what to do about it. And has been fretting over the thing for the last three days. She's afraid to fill out the application - because what if it is fraud.

I don't see how it would be fraud, but one never knows. She's also been procrastinating taken my father's name off various accounts.

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Barbara Streisand in her memoir and the Assistant Minister at my church both felt the need to preach about connecting with people this week. And how important our connections are with others.

Hey, look, I am trying. Lay off.

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I am now lusting after an ice cream maker at Walmart. It's not surprisingly cheaper via Walmart than Amazon, or the maker's website.

I need this like I need a hole in the head.

Favorite Television Episodes...

"Even in shows that are good across the board, we may have favorites for personal reasons. Or maybe a show wasn't that great but there were a few episodes that have really stuck with you.

Can you pick a favorite episode from 5 different shows? Tell us why they're so memorable!"

Not as easy as it looks. I drew a blank and had to struggle to come up with Five. Also, I'd say a few are more memorable than necessarily favorites. They just stick with me, even when I draw a blank.

1. Fool for Love - Buffy the Vampire Slayer (memorable because it's kind of a twist on the flashback and unreliable narrator, where Buffy (a vampire slayer) is asking for information from a vampire (who has tried to kill her on numerous occasions and is known for killing at least three different slayers) on how to avoid being killed by one. But why would he give her the information? And more importantly why should she trust him? What's interesting in the episode - is the vampire, Spike, alternative motive - is not to hurt Buffy, but to get close to her, or gain her trust. And, not because he wants to kill her - quite the opposite. There's a parallel structure here - in that her boyfriend goes off with her incompetent friends to try and kill the vampire that had injured her.
The whole reason she went to Spike for intel is because she was wounded by a vampire.

The twist? Spike tells Buffy that it's nothing that he did or anything special about the vamps that resulted in the slayer's deaths. But the slayer themselves. The only reason he beat them - was they wanted him to. Otherwise, he'd have lost.

Nothing goes as expected in this episode, which makes it fun to watch. And each time I see it, I see something new.

2. Angel the Series - Episode - Dear Boy, in this episode, we get Angel's back story, but mainly through Darla's point of view. He becomes a vampire, and seeks vengeance on his father - by killing everyone in the household including his father. But it is revealed all Angel wanted was his father's approval - which he could never achieve, and Darla reveals that now he never will - because he killed him, and will always be empty and cursed as a result. It's not the soul that is his curse, but that unresolved matter with his father.

3. Breaking Bad - S4 - Problem Dog - Problem Dog - there's a memorable scene in the middle of the episode, that is the only thing I clearly and vividly remember from this series. In it Jesse, partners in crime with Walter White (the show's anti-hero), bares his soul to his Narcotics Anynomous Group - and calmly tells the story of killing Gale. It's a riveting scene. And a bit twisty, in that the group believes he's talking about a dog, when he's actually talking about a man. It's a great scene in how it depicts guilt, and justification. Continues to haunt me.

4. The Good Place - S2, Ep 6 - The Trolley Problem - this may be among the darkest and funniest episodes that I've seen, and the best philosophical satire. In the episode Michael fed up with Chidi's theoretical approaches to ethics, subjects Chidi to variations on the Trolley Problem - an ethical dilemma on how to fix an unfixable problem. A trolley is heading for a construction worker, how do you save the construction worker without killing everyone in the trolley, who do you save? It's the many outweigh the one, or the one outweigh's the many?

"Okay, so that was trolley problem version number seven. Chidi opted to run over five William Shakespeares instead of one Santa Claus." - Michael

5. Doctor Who - Tenth Doctor, Series 4, 9th Episode. "Forests of the Dead" (this episode made me a Doctor Who fan) - in this episode, we meet Dr. River Song, and introduced is perhaps the scariest villain/monster yet - it's air piranha - who we see as creeping shadows. Donna and the Doctor have landed on a planet with an empty library, but where have all the people gone? They were eaten alive by the piranha that inhabited the imported books. Doctor River Song arrives, an interplanetary archeologist who knows all the Doctor's secrets, including his real name, but refuses to tell him anything.