Category Archives: Entertainment

friday five, the television edition (minor spoilers possible)

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Some random thoughts about things I’ve been watching on the idiot box:

Two and a Half Men

I liked this show when it first came on, but these days not so much.  It’s not the addition of Ashton Kutcher or the removal of Charlie Sheen that lost me, it’s that they’ve made the Alan Harper character into a douchebag, which process began well before Charlie left.  At first, Alan was likable, if a doofus.  It didn’t take long for me to grow weary of listening to Walden rag on Alan about him living their for free.  If he doesn’t like it, kick him out.  The Jake character has grown terribly unappealing also.  In fact, Walden, kick out Alan and Jake and hang out with Alan’s ex-wife’s husband Herb more.  Bring back Rose and Evelyn Harper…and give Berta a lot more air time.

Or her own show.

Walden has improved a little since his debut, becoming more consistent, and the haircut didn’t hurt matters at all.  He had the funniest line in a comedy for this entire comedy season, but I’m not going to tell you what it was.  I will say it was on Season 19, episode 19, “Big Episode: Someone Stole a Spoon.”

One more thing.  If they were going to rebuild this show from scratch to my specifications, they should convince Jaime Pressly to stay.  The way they have allowed the female characters to dissolve into the background is a huge part of my disaffection for this series these days.

The Middle

I hated this show at first.  If I have to have Patricia Heaton as not Debra Barone, I want her as Kelly Carr on Back to You, a program on the list of cancellations that tick me off right after Whoopi and somewhere before $h*! My Dad Says and Family Law.

Somehow, even though I only watched it if I was excruciatingly bored, it grew on me.  It’s the characters here more than the story line.  The Hecks are a little bit like a skinny Conner family, and–if you can wrap your mind around this–even quirkier.  Unlike Two and a Half Men wherethe characters seem likable until you realize how obnoxious they are, all the characters on The Middle are sweet weirdos. Even horrible teenage son Axl is actually adorable.  Kinda how I hope we are.  Which is probably the appeal.

One other downside of this show is when mom Frankie Heck (Heaton) went back to school and I thought, “Whee, a character is doing something relevant to my life!” but she graduated in about two episodes.  Bummer, that.  I would have liked to cheer her on longer.

The Walking Dead

This program stresses me out!  I’m glad the season is over.  The nine p.m. Sunday timeslot doesn’t really work for me because that’s Mr Moth’s bedtime, and I’m always worried some nimrod will tell me something I’d rather not know before I get a chance to watch.  I don’t really believe in spoilers, but I do believe in surprises, or reversals if you prefer, and I actually had to “unlike” The Walking Dead’s fan page because they post their own spoilers the day after the original airing.  Furthermore–and perhaps unsurprisingly–the person on Facebook who screams the loudest about film and book spoilers has decided there’s no such thing as series spoilers, and even though he allegedly doesn’t watch TWD, he discusses it in detail with his friends.

He’s on haitus from my Facebook feed until the season and my annoyance have passed.

Bates Motel

This is a new one, and the cosmos knows I wasn’t looking for a new show to watch.  It’s a prequel of sorts, showing the teenage years of Norman Bates of Psycho fame, his mother Norma, and his heretofore unsuspected brother by another daddy Dylan Massett.

I wish someone could explain the allure of this program.  It’s all mood.  There are maybe two likable characters, and they are in the supporting cast.  (Dylan has some potential, but he’s not living up to it yet.)  Everyone in the town is either crazy or dying or both.  They all drive ancient automobiles yet text on iphones.

Yet, whenever I see this show waiting on my dvr, I drop everything and watch it.  The entire time it’s on I ask myself, why?  why?  what is the hold it has on me?

And I don’t know the answer.

 Whose Line is it Anyway?, last on this list, but definitely not least.

I love this show and all its predecessors and clones (BBC Version,Green Screen, Drew Carey’s Improvaganza*) and I still mourn its passing.  My love for this show is so well known that a friend I had not heard from in years dropped me a line to let me know it was coming back!  

True this return will be sans Drew Carey because he is tied up with The Price is Right.  I mean to try not to let that bum me out; maybe he can be the fourth performer during his off seasons.  The new host will be someone named Aisha Tyler, who I had never heard of until she showed up on an episode of The Talking Dead.  All I can say is, I hope she’s funny.

Whose Line.  Everybody watch it so it doesn’t get cancelled!  I’m so excited.  😀

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*I tried to watch Trust Us With Your Life, but it wasn’t on long enough for me to get used to it and I never ended up liking it much, and in fact forgot about it until just now.

Frail

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Frail (Dust, #2)Frail by Joan Frances Turner

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I loved this book when I began reading; the combination of lyrical prose and zombie dystopia appealed to me on every level. Unfortunately before I was a hundred pages in the style changed, the language became more common. There was a period in the middle of the story where there were so many characters, all with suburban names (Amy, Lisa, Billy…really? An evil overlord named Billy?) Some character names began with the same first letter, adding to my confusion. I made notes to tell them apart. The style then took yet another turn, and it seemed as though the author was channeling Dean Koontz during his Christopher Snow period, which might have been a good thing except the tale became somewhat surreal and even more difficult to follow. Also the odd combinations of simile and metaphor became distracting.

I give this book two Ds–one for Disjointed and one for Disappointing.

View all my reviews

in which I send my first rejection letter

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That’s right, SEND. Me, sending a rejection.

A self-published author sent me a message on goodreads. It said:

As you may recall, you entered to win my book [REDACTED] from the Goodreads giveaway.

As I would like to have a few more reviews for the book, I am writing to offer you a copy of the book, free of charge, if you would be willing to read it and post a review on several of the online book sites (Amazon, B&N, GoodReads, your blog).

Of course, I would ask that you give the book a completely honest review.

If you are interested, please let me know. I can send the book in any format (Kindle, Sony, Epub, Palm, PDF or a printed copy).

Thank you in advance.

Warmly,

[REDACTED]


I have no recollection of entering any such giveaway, but that doesn’t mean anything. Thank goodness goodreads has a page of giveaways I’ve entered. (This link will probably only work if you’re a goodreads member and have entered giveaways.) Anyhow, I gleefully pounce on the link to see whether my CRS has struck again or what, and nope–this book isn’t on it.

My reply:

Actually I don’t recall, and goodreads has no record of it either. Regardless, I’m extremely busy and can’t guarantee I’ll review any books at this time, much less promise to post reviews on multiple sites.

Thanks for thinking of me, though.


Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like someone was trying to hustle me here. As a result I am NOT HAPPY.

As an aside, maybe my mother did too good a job of pounding it into my head, “If you can’t say anything nice, just keep it to yourself,” but I never post bad reviews. Just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean it has no merit, or that other people won’t adore it, and just because a story is not to my personal taste doesn’t mean I’m all cool with making the author’s job harder. The Silmarillion springs to mind. Also Twilight, or pretty nearly anything with monsters as sex objects. I like my monsters ugly and eating people… No one’s really tickled my “monstrous and sensuous” bone since Claudia.

And yeah, sometimes books are not just not to my taste. Sometimes they’re really bad. But I am not the book police, and at least you know when I rate something highly, I really mean it.

the hunger games

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The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was surprised by how much I liked this story. It was a quick read in first person present tense–naturally. It didn’t put me off the way many YA novels do, by spending far too much time on dialogue and exposition. There’s enough action, and it’s well done. At no time did I pray for the death of the female protagonist. This is a rare and wondrous accomplishment, although I may have wanted to shake her once or twice.

This book is an odd blend of Witch World and The Long Walk, but it works.

View all my reviews

a book devoured

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It took me rougly eight tries to make it through Stephen King’s The Stand. At first he kept losing me after he turned his camera away from Stu Redman. I just didn’t care for Frannie, and I outright disliked Larry. Everyone said what a wonderful book it was though, so I kept trying, and Nick was okay. It was M-O-O-N, and that spells Tom Cullen, who led me through the rest of The Stand–although it took a couple of more tries, because King lost me again at a certain spoilery plot point late in the game.

It never pays to get too attached to King’s characters.

So another month, another attempt to make it through, and finally–success! I had finished reading The Stand. I didn’t care for the ending much at all. With King, and for me as a reader, endings are hit or miss, and he is one author where I never skip to the end to see what happens and then back track to find out why and how it happened. With King, the why and how might be the only part I want.

And with his science fiction, I might even want the why and how only once.

Is The Stand SF? Technically yes, although it’s softer SF than some. When I think of King’s SF, I’m more inclined to think first of The Tommyknockers and Dreamcatcher. I’ve not been able to make it through either of those a second time despite multiple attempts, and despite the fact that I enjoyed them just fine the first time through. Under the Dome was ok, but I doubt I’ll ever try to read it again. And…the jury’s still out on Cell. I actually want to read that one again (since I’ve forgotten most of it) but I’m afraid it will fall under the Curse of the SF Re-reads.

Which brings me the long way ’round to my actual topic, which is his latest novel, 11/23/63. I very much enjoyed it, far more than UTD, more than any of his books since Lisey’s Story, which is one of my favorites. In this book, a teacher travels back in time to avert the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This premise tickled both my socks off, because godlight originally was supposed to be about someone travelling back in time to prevent the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, which was going to lead to a chain of events that put a Lincoln decendant in the White House at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

See, too often have I come up with what I thought was a fantabulous story idea only to discover (or realize) King has been there first. The Pool Where We All Go Down to Drink from Lisey’s Story explains this metaphorically, but has never made me feel any better about it. I love you, but DAMN YOU, STEVE! I still haven’t forgiven you for Gray Matter, of which my version was called Couch Potato…

But this time, I drank first. This makes me happy.

godlight ended up nothing at all like that original premise, no backward time travel, no changing the past, nothing of the sort. And it’s win-win, because King obviously writes better than I do, and his story is miles and miles better than mine could ever have been.

Oddly, I didn’t care much about the whole JFK/Oswald plot line until just as it came to a head. Until then, King kept my attention with other things, including Oswald’s wife, and other characters also. Especially engrossing was the love story between the teacher and a woman from the past. When the time finally came and the teacher had to decide whether to return to his own time or not, it mattered hugely to me. (This same question failed to matter in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, sad to say.)

Are there ramifications to changing the past? How will we know if the protagonist never returns to the present?

The answer to those questions are spoilers. They are also quintessential Stephen King, and I hardly got any sleep until I found out.

So this book I give a big hooray to. Maybe even enough to forgive him for Gray Matter.

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My Top Ten Stephen King Novels (subject to change and re-ordering almost daily)

The Talisman (co-written with Peter Straub)
Lisey’s Story
It (Bev saved my life)
Dolores Claiborne
11/23/63
Firestarter
Rose Madder
Hearts in Atlantis
Insomnia
Bag of Bones

nook v book

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+1 Nook

11.22.63 fits in my purse.

-1 Nook

I had to stop reading 11.22.63 fifty pages from the end because my battery died.

+1 Book

If a hundred pounds of dog steps on it, a book is not $250 worth of landfill.

nook

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I bought a Nook Color about two or three weeks ago. Now I see they’ve released the next version (the Nook Tablet) for the same price. I didn’t see anything about that in my extensive research, grr!

However, I really like this gizmo. I can finally read all the e-books that have accumulated on my hard drives over the lifetimes of three computers. Well, ok. I probably still won’t read them all; in light of all the free giveaways on various sites, I’ll never be caught up, not even if I never get past the third page of most of the freebies. All the old Bobbsey Twins books? Free. Five Little Peppers, too.

Of course, there are still plenty of hard copies to be read also. You still can’t go to Goodwill and play blind travel among the midlist on an e-reader.

However. The reason I decided to get an e-reader in the first place was because of all the time I spent out on the deck last summer, avoiding the oven that our house had become until T-Moth got the AC fixed. A lot of that time was in the dark. I played a lot of Harvest Moon on the old Nintendo DS, enough to burn myself out on it. And I thought a lot to myself, I wish I was reading. I considered taking my laptop out there, but a laptop battery only has so many charge cycles in its lifetime, and I didn’t want to use it up reading in the dark. Also, it was hot, and hot isn’t good for laptops either.

Then, in one of those bolts from the blue, a friend said, “I’ve been thinking of getting an e-reader, maybe I’d read more, but I wonder if I’d have time to use it at all.” Whereupon I thought to myself of my long hours in the dark on the deck with the dogs, and thought, “I would!”

It was the first time I’d ever seriously considered owning an e-reader, since I never saw any way one would serve a function that couldn’t be served as well or better by an actual book, and with paper books you don’t have to kill yourself if you lose it or it gets stolen. A little research quickly proved that a regular Nook (or Kindle) with an e-ink screen isn’t backlit anyway, so if you want to read in the dark, you have to buy a clip-on light like for a paper book, and hey…I could just buy one of those, right? Read paper books in the dark, no problem.

Then I started school and had zero time for sitting on the deck, never mind reading anything much besides Contemporary American Business, and a few pages before I passed out at night (usually around 9:30, am I old or what?)

Then two thoughts collided in my head. One, that someone told me you could get really cheap textbooks for the Nook. And two, that it would be a lot lighter to lug around than books and a laptop. So I bought a Nook Color.

And learned you can get cheap textbooks for Nook, but you have to read them on your PC?!

But I really like it. I can surf a little internet,or check my e-mail, and read a little too, in those slivers of time otherwise spent staring off into space. I can read on the couch with the lights off while Mr Moth watches Burn Notice. (Although lately I’ve been paying more attention to that show.) And once, on a warmish night, I was headed for bed when it suddenly occurred to me I could sit on the deck and read. So I took the dogs out…and did.

It was all I’d hoped…tablet be damned.