Cultural musings...books, tv...the usual
Jul. 28th, 2010 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatWatched the season finale of Doctor Who this morning, was impressed. One of the better season finales. It is viewed mainly through the pov's of Ameilia Pond and her lover, Rory.
As another person wrote, I forget who, this version of the Doctor - is written mainly through the perspective of his companions. While the previous two versions, 9 and 10, were written mainly through the Doctor's eyes. Changes the series a bit, makes it a little less chauvinistic or sexist in character, and a little less preachy. I'm finding that I prefer Moffat to RTD as a writer at least in regards to Doctor Who. RTD did a better job with Torchwood in my opinion.
This last episode - featured Amy Pond and her imagination, her ability to remember, to hold on to what was important to her. It also, unlike previous seasons it referenced previous episodes, and to a degree the end explained the mystery at the beginning - which was not what was causing the crack in Amy Pond's home, but rather, why a little girl was in a huge house all by herself.
Plus this season featured the wonderful Dr. River Song as a recurring character. A mysterious character - who is both the intellectual and physical match of the Doctor. Song is possibly the closest I'm going to get to a female version of the Doctor. She's Donna Noble with a clever streak. I'm not sure if she is human. But I adore her.
In other news, finished A Dark Matter by Peter Straub, which was disappointing. I think I'm going to dump my Peter Straub's at work - we have a little bookshelf in the kitchen for books that people can take home and read. People bring in used books. Usually mysteries and thrillers. Straub is not as good a writer as Stephen King, which is saying something. And no where near the ability of Donna Tartt. He's easy to read, requires little effort, and the fact that he has published nineteen novels, won several awards in his genre, sort of explains why no one takes genre seriously. That said - his biggest accomplishment and most noteworthy one is most likely his wife's - which is, the creation of the READ TO ME program - advancing literacy amongst children and adults. For that accomplishment, not his writing, I applaud his wife and his ability to support her for it. Also he does provide a good airplane read. Airplane books are books that you don't have to pay attention to and can finish in one sitting.
While I no longer review or really mention fanfic (for reasons I won't go into to preserve my sanity and yours), will state that a 28 page Buffy/Spike fanfic about Spike hunting a soul, was actually more engaging and dealt with the complex themes of good and evil far more effectively than Straub did in A Dark Matter. This depresses me for a lot of reasons. 1) The writer who wrote this story is fantastic but getting a book published is so painful that she'd rather write fanfic than attempt it. (She's write, I've finished a novel and hate the publishing process and am dragging my feet - it's like having a root canal.) 2)Straub is so successful that he can write poorly and no one cares. There were mistakes in this novel that people online would bitch and moan about it if it occurred in a fanfic they were betaing. 3) Popular taste is well, not my cup of tea. So, I've decided that I will only buy best-selling novels on my kindle for dirt cheap prices. Or not at all. They don't deserve actual book status. Actual book ownership status is being reserved to books I want to own and writers who earn it.
Current book? The Lobster Chronicles by Linda Greenlaw - this is a memoir of Linda Greenlaw's experience as a lobster fisherman in Maine. She had left a seven year career as a swordfish fisherman and the Captain of a Swordfish ship, to fish for lobster. To do this - she moved in with her parents, in their 60s and 70s, and bought a boat. The book details her life as a lobster fisherman over a two-three period, the lives of the people around her, and what it is like to live on a small island in Maine, with only 47 people - most of whom you are related to. It was between this book and a chick-lit book that Momster tried to foist on me, entitled, The Way Life Should be - about a thirty-something New York event planner who meets a goregous sailor via an online dating site, gets fired from her job and decides to move to Maine and in with him. He turns out to be jerk and she has to find her way amongst the locals. Getting a job in a coffee shop and cooking, because of course she's a great cook trained by her Italian grandmother and the book is littered with recipes. It's well-written, but read one of these books, read them all. Plus the glamorization of small-town, island life and domesticity, gets old fast.
Realized something while away on vacat with family, that I come from a highly opinionated and critical family. But I think most folks are, to some degree or another. It's a plus and a minus.
Like all things.
Still trying to wean self off of Farscape addiction. The more I think about that show, the more brilliant it is. It is amongst the few shows that fully explores the effects of violence on the human soul. Crichton is driven nearly insane by it. Aeryn almost loses herself and her life. IT also discusses how the best of intentions can be turned against you whenever violence is involved. Farscape makes it clear that regardless of the justification - all violence has nasty and irreversible consequences. This is oddly being echoed by a rather violent and up to now, whitewashed soap I've been watching - GH, where the hitman is increasingly being depicted as an anti-hero, not a white knight, someone who puts vengeance and his own desires before everyone and everything else and justifies his use of violence as a means of protecting who he loves, forget about how it warps them and himself and everything around him in the process.
Hmmm, apparently, I'm editing the church newsletter this week. Should probably get to it.
As another person wrote, I forget who, this version of the Doctor - is written mainly through the perspective of his companions. While the previous two versions, 9 and 10, were written mainly through the Doctor's eyes. Changes the series a bit, makes it a little less chauvinistic or sexist in character, and a little less preachy. I'm finding that I prefer Moffat to RTD as a writer at least in regards to Doctor Who. RTD did a better job with Torchwood in my opinion.
This last episode - featured Amy Pond and her imagination, her ability to remember, to hold on to what was important to her. It also, unlike previous seasons it referenced previous episodes, and to a degree the end explained the mystery at the beginning - which was not what was causing the crack in Amy Pond's home, but rather, why a little girl was in a huge house all by herself.
Plus this season featured the wonderful Dr. River Song as a recurring character. A mysterious character - who is both the intellectual and physical match of the Doctor. Song is possibly the closest I'm going to get to a female version of the Doctor. She's Donna Noble with a clever streak. I'm not sure if she is human. But I adore her.
In other news, finished A Dark Matter by Peter Straub, which was disappointing. I think I'm going to dump my Peter Straub's at work - we have a little bookshelf in the kitchen for books that people can take home and read. People bring in used books. Usually mysteries and thrillers. Straub is not as good a writer as Stephen King, which is saying something. And no where near the ability of Donna Tartt. He's easy to read, requires little effort, and the fact that he has published nineteen novels, won several awards in his genre, sort of explains why no one takes genre seriously. That said - his biggest accomplishment and most noteworthy one is most likely his wife's - which is, the creation of the READ TO ME program - advancing literacy amongst children and adults. For that accomplishment, not his writing, I applaud his wife and his ability to support her for it. Also he does provide a good airplane read. Airplane books are books that you don't have to pay attention to and can finish in one sitting.
While I no longer review or really mention fanfic (for reasons I won't go into to preserve my sanity and yours), will state that a 28 page Buffy/Spike fanfic about Spike hunting a soul, was actually more engaging and dealt with the complex themes of good and evil far more effectively than Straub did in A Dark Matter. This depresses me for a lot of reasons. 1) The writer who wrote this story is fantastic but getting a book published is so painful that she'd rather write fanfic than attempt it. (She's write, I've finished a novel and hate the publishing process and am dragging my feet - it's like having a root canal.) 2)Straub is so successful that he can write poorly and no one cares. There were mistakes in this novel that people online would bitch and moan about it if it occurred in a fanfic they were betaing. 3) Popular taste is well, not my cup of tea. So, I've decided that I will only buy best-selling novels on my kindle for dirt cheap prices. Or not at all. They don't deserve actual book status. Actual book ownership status is being reserved to books I want to own and writers who earn it.
Current book? The Lobster Chronicles by Linda Greenlaw - this is a memoir of Linda Greenlaw's experience as a lobster fisherman in Maine. She had left a seven year career as a swordfish fisherman and the Captain of a Swordfish ship, to fish for lobster. To do this - she moved in with her parents, in their 60s and 70s, and bought a boat. The book details her life as a lobster fisherman over a two-three period, the lives of the people around her, and what it is like to live on a small island in Maine, with only 47 people - most of whom you are related to. It was between this book and a chick-lit book that Momster tried to foist on me, entitled, The Way Life Should be - about a thirty-something New York event planner who meets a goregous sailor via an online dating site, gets fired from her job and decides to move to Maine and in with him. He turns out to be jerk and she has to find her way amongst the locals. Getting a job in a coffee shop and cooking, because of course she's a great cook trained by her Italian grandmother and the book is littered with recipes. It's well-written, but read one of these books, read them all. Plus the glamorization of small-town, island life and domesticity, gets old fast.
Realized something while away on vacat with family, that I come from a highly opinionated and critical family. But I think most folks are, to some degree or another. It's a plus and a minus.
Like all things.
Still trying to wean self off of Farscape addiction. The more I think about that show, the more brilliant it is. It is amongst the few shows that fully explores the effects of violence on the human soul. Crichton is driven nearly insane by it. Aeryn almost loses herself and her life. IT also discusses how the best of intentions can be turned against you whenever violence is involved. Farscape makes it clear that regardless of the justification - all violence has nasty and irreversible consequences. This is oddly being echoed by a rather violent and up to now, whitewashed soap I've been watching - GH, where the hitman is increasingly being depicted as an anti-hero, not a white knight, someone who puts vengeance and his own desires before everyone and everything else and justifies his use of violence as a means of protecting who he loves, forget about how it warps them and himself and everything around him in the process.
Hmmm, apparently, I'm editing the church newsletter this week. Should probably get to it.
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Date: 2010-07-29 01:28 am (UTC)I just watched the first episode of Stephen Moffat's new 'Sherlock Holmes' (out in the UK, I'm not sure when, or if, it will air in the USA... but eventually it will be available on DVD... I assume) which is set in modern day, with Dr. Watson being a stressed veteran Military medical doctor who was wounded in Afghanistan.... and Sherlock is something of a sociopath (it actually seems to fit very closely with Conan Doyle's original vision of his characters). I do enjoy Moffat's writing a lot.
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Date: 2010-07-29 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-29 06:58 pm (UTC)