dianec42

I have been watching Junior Taskmaster which is a hoot. We watched the 2-parter "The Colour of Magic" via Britbox which we missed when it came out, plus the Hogfather miniseries. All highly recommended.

I'm reading The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury and ... wow, it's a product of its time (late 1940s). it's very good, brilliant at times, but I frequently got tired of the Earth Men and had to put it down for a bit. Just before that I read Machine Vendetta by Alastair Reynolds (third book in a trilogy), highly recommend.

I finally joined the local library so I've been reading some fiction I wouldn't normally pick up. Someone had recommended the Louis L'Amour westerns; I picked up a random on (The High Graders) and I didn't really care for it. I finished it, but I don't think I'll go back for more. I read Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler which was very good, if a bit too on the nose for our current dystopia.

Reading:

I finished reading Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse book 1). It was pretty good. I enjoyed the show, but I will say that knowing the characters survive kind of put a damper on some of the scarier predicaments.

Unfortunately I noticed something very similar about this book as I noticed (aged 11) about the first Star Wars movie: Where are all the female characters at?! We have Princess Leia, I mean Naomi, who has to do ALL the heavy lifting: smartest person in the room, our hero's conscience, general badass, oh and she has to double as the love interest because there is LITERALLY NO ONE ELSE FEMALE IN THE ENTIRE SECTOR. Then we have Aunt Beru, I mean Julie, who spends 90% of the movie/book dead. Great. Also Holden is kind of a putz. Also also, it's kind of nifty reading what the characters are experiencing in spaceflight; but the second or third time male body parts get involved, I can't really relate.

Luckily book 2 (Caliban's War) brings in Avasarala and Bobbie, so that was nice. I blasted through book 2 in about a week, which is fast for me these days. I did not get the "Caliban" reference in the title, I had to look it up.

In between those, I read We Are Satellites by Sarah Pinsker. Gosh that was good. Not quite as light and fluffy and escapist, but really satisfying. Near-future SF, tech based main plot device, a good amount of interpersonal and family slice-of-life stuff without bogging the plot down. Plus the obligatory blue-haired rebellious teenager. What's not to love?

I am currently attempting to read The Circle by Dave Eggers. Amazon recommended one of the sequels to me so I thought I should start with book 1. Unfortunately, it's a near-future techno-dystopia... written in 2013. Both the tech and the dystopia have been somewhat overtaken by events. The characters and plot (is there a plot?) are all over the place, and a lot of the dramatic tension seems to hinge on some weird interpersonal stuff that I don't quite understand. I hate to start a book and not finish it - that always feels like failure. I think this may only be the third novel I've given up on. But life is too short to read bad books.


Watching:

We finished up season 4 of Stranger Things (Netflix) and it was good. It spent a bit more time on sappy feel-good moments with the friends than I might have, but not so much that it bogged down. And you can never have too much Kate Bush.

We watched Marvel's Moon Knight (Disney Plus). That was odd, but enjoyable.

We also watched the new Doctor Strange movie (Disney Plus). It was fun but didn't make a lot of sense.

Prefacing the reading and watching with "I don't know if it's the piece or if it's me, but..."

I finished the third Lady Astronaut book. The ending was reasonably satisfying. The first 10% I was very grumpy that she switched narrators from the first 2 books, to a character who I don't even like that much. The middle 80% I was basically waiting for something, ANYTHING, good to happen to these people. A lot of the events were just a little too on-the-nose with real life to be at all enjoyable. Oh well. I persevered! I'm glad I've read it, but I'm now in the mood for something lighter.

We've started watching season 4 of Stranger Things. 3 episodes in, it's not really doing much for me. There's nothing really novel going on, and the bits where The Kids Are In High School Now And Are Trying To Fit In are fucking excruciating. If Stuart wants to keep watching it I'll play along, but I'm finding it rather grim and joyless.

On the joyful and not-grim side of the aisle...

Stitching! Having finished Peeking Cats, my main criteria for what to do next were "smaller" and "absolutely no backstitch". Also, fuck fractionals on Aida.

I've started the third piece in a set, "Art Nouveau Seasons" by Sheila Hudson from the Christmas 2003 issue of Cross Stitcher magazine (UK). I've already done Winter and Summer and am now doing Spring. It's daffodils, and although I don't really care for yellow at all, I thought I'd get it out of the way so I can reward myself with Autumn which is grapes and thus has Many Purples in it. It's very soothing to be working on something blocky and less fiddly. I am not pleased with all of her color choices, as some of them are so close together as to be nearly indistinguishable, but the results are so pretty it's hard to argue. As a bonus, this gave me something simple to record some footage of. (It's surprisingly hard to video yourself cross stitching. Who knew?)

I'm sad that I didn't save more of Sheila Hudson's patterns. She passed away some years ago and I don't think her works have ever been collected and published. I have this set and a really nifty repeating-motif Oriental dragon in magenta and gold shades that I might do someday.

Sorry I'm so bad about posting photos here. I'll see what I can do.

Last weekend we did NOT make it to Gallifrey con. We did sort of make up for it by watching the rest of season 2 on DVD that we ordered from the UK around Christmas.

I miss British TV. We're making a short trip to England soon for a wedding, and I hope I don't spend the entire rest of the time glued to the telly sighing wistfully.

Why are they changing the dates on daylight saving time AGAIN? It's hard enough to get up in the morning as it is. (I know, I know... they're just doing it to piss off grumpy old farts like me.)

My new resolution around the office: If I cannot help making theatrical sighing noises, I shall at least endeavour to do so with my mouth closed.

It is not actually possible to do a "quick" run of any part of Sunken Temple.

When are the Oscars? I volunteered to drive stuartc to a thing in Hollywood tomorrow, how doomed are we?

It took me longer to drive home from Torrance last night than it did to drive home from CYPRESS last Thursday. Grrrr.