October 13, 2020 at 12:44 am (Books, Explorers, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, television, Women Writers)
Tags: adaptations, COVID Reading, favorites, James Holden, Mondays, mysteries, science fiction, The Expanse, thrillers
Self is still reading Heaven, My Home (which is FAN-TAS-TIC), but as she’s a fan of The Expanse, and they just released the trailer for Season 5 (which drops on Dec. 16 — self can hardly wait), she’s also started reading Book # 5 of the series, Nemesis Games.
She read the first four books early in the pandemic — big, big thanks to James S. A. Corey for helping her power through those first mind-numbing weeks.
MILD SPOILER
Each book starts with a pulse-pounding prologue, and Nemesis Games is no exception. Here’s a description of an attack on the Martian shipyards at Callisto, an attack carried out by a fifteen-year-old. More than anything, self loves the realism of the action scenes:
- At zero, the second strike came. Filip didn’t see the rock hit. As with the tungsten slugs, it was going much too fast for mere human sight, but he saw the dust cloud jump like someone had surprised it, and then the vast shock wave, blooming out so powerfully that even in the barely extant atmosphere it was visible.
Chapter One is “a year after the Callisto attacks … ” Holden is overseeing repairs on the Rocinante. YAAAAS! Self has missed Holden, this most unusual of heroes, a space slacker who nevertheless lavishes attention on his ship and his crew. Three years have elapsed since the last book: Is Holden in his late 30s now? From here on out, they’ll have to start aging up Steven Strait, the actor who plays him in the series. He started doing Holden when he was 28.
She’ll try not to share so much of Nemesis Games. Next posts will be all Heaven, My Home.
Stay tuned.
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August 12, 2020 at 11:38 pm (Flowers, Food and Drink, Links, Lists, Movies, Philippine History, Publishers, Recommended, television)
Tags: blogs, history, inspirations, restaurants, The Philippines, war literature, websites
Self’s List of Bookmarks has grown during the pandemic! And keeps growing.
The past week, these:
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August 4, 2020 at 5:48 pm (Artists and Writers, Recommended, television)
Tags: causes, documentaries, Netflix, politics, review, Vanity Fair
Quoting from Vanity Fair’s Don’t Look Away from Immigration Nation, HWD Daily, 3 August 2020:
- Few docuseries are as urgent and infuriating as Immigration Nation, which premieres on Netflix today. Filmmakers Shaul Schwarz and Christina Clusiau gained rare access to ICE agents and detention facilities, following officers, bureaucrats, and asylum-seekers through our broken system. “Most of the time,” Sonia Saraiya writes, “what emerges is a system increasingly designed to maximize the immigrants’ suffering.” Particularly under the current administration, “it seems that the immigration process has been changed primarily to make immigration as difficult and painful as possible. Donald Trump cannot, on his own, outlaw immigration. But he can cruelly disappoint those who dare to hope that the U.S. could be their home. It’s striking that these apparent undesirables are mostly guilty only of believing they could belong in America; they’re being punished for believing in a dream.”
Watch, and stay safe.
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July 27, 2020 at 4:10 pm (Conversations, Recommended, short story collections, television)
Tags: adaptations, COVID Reading, Justified, Mondays, nostalgia, summer, Timothy Olyphant
He watched Dewy Crowe bring a pump shotgun out of the trunk and start back this way, all business now, his mind made up, his dumb pride taking him to a place it would be hard to back out of.
. . . Raylan in his shirtsleeves, Dewey Crowe taking careful steps now, holding the shotgun out in front of him.
“Mr. Crowe? Listen, you better hold on there while I tell you something.”
It stopped him about fifty feet away, his shoulders hunched.
“I want you to understand,” Raylan said, “I don’t pull my sidearm ‘less I’m gonna shoot to kill. That’s it’s purpose, huh, to kill. So it’s how I use it.”
— Fire in the Hole
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July 27, 2020 at 3:52 pm (Recommended, short story collections, television)
Tags: adaptations, COVID Reading, Justified, nostalgia, performances, praise, short story, summer, Timothy Olyphant, Walton Goggins
Since self is currently reading Fire in the Hole, she’s on a Justified nostalgia kick.
Lookit these two! The hottest dudes on TV for six glorious seasons:
Timothy Olyphant as US Marshal Raylan Givens; Walton Goggins as Boyd Crowder
Chemistry between these two was high, every encounter struck sparks.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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July 26, 2020 at 4:03 pm (Books, Recommended, short story collections, television)
Tags: COVID Reading, Justified, reading lists, short story, summer, Sundays
The title story:
They had dug coal together as young men and then lost touch over the years. Now it looked like they’d be meeting again, this time as lawman and felon, Raylan Givens and Boyd Crowder.
Boyd did six years in a federal penitentiary for refusing to pay his income tax, came out and found religion. He received his ordination by mail order in South Carolina and formed a sect he called Christian Aggression. The next thing he did, Boyd formed the East Kentucky Militia with a cadre of neo-Nazi skinheads, a bunch of boys wearing Doc Martens and swastika tattoos. They were all natural-born racists and haters of authority, but still had to be taught what Boyd called “the laws of White Supremacy as laid down by the Lord,” which he took from Christian identity doctrines. Next thing, he trained these boys in the use of explosives and automatic weapons. He told them they were now members of Crowder’s Commandos, sworn to take up the fight for freedom against the coming Mongrel World Order and the government’s illegal tax laws.
That’s some opening. Probably one of the best short story openings ever.
So Boyd Crowder was a neo-Nazi skinhead? Somehow, this little fact escaped self’s mind when she was watching the show. Or perhaps they downplayed it for the adaptation, to make Boyd more likeable.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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July 25, 2020 at 2:32 am (Food and Drink, Lists, Salon.com, short story collections, television)
Tags: adaptations, COVID Reading, Fridays, Justified, memories, noir, reading lists, short story, summer, Timothy Olyphant
Reading Elmore Leonard’s Chickasaw Charlie Hoke.
There is a “big redhead” named Vernice, looking “like a strawberry sundae in her La-Z-Boy.”
There is “bourbon over crushed ice.”
There are mentions of “a pit boss at Bally’s,” a waitress at the Isle of Capri coffee shop.
There is an “RV in a trailer park on the outskirts of Tunica, Mississippi.”
Very fun reading Elmore Leonard. It brings back all the FEELZ about Justified, the F/X series that ran for six seasons and had Timothy Olyphant! Timothy Olyphant! Who Salon’s TV reviewer described as “one tall, cool drink of water”!
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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July 9, 2020 at 1:23 am (Books, short story collections, television)
Tags: adaptations, COVID Reading, favorites, Justified, memories, nostalgia, performances, praise, reading lists, Redwood City, short story, summer, The Emmys, Timothy Olyphant
Self checked out a collection of Elmore Leonard short stories from the Redwood City Public Library early this year. She hasn’t managed to get to it yet. COVID happened, and then self’s mind flew out the window.
This afternoon, while browsing through her stack of “To Read” books, she encountered the Elmore Leonard collection, and immediately turned to the title story.
Opening line:
- They had dug coal together as young men and then lost touch over the years.
omg!
Justified!
Timothy Olyphand and Walton Goggins! Those two actors were born to play Raylan Givens and Boyd Crowder. Did either of the two ever win an Emmy? Did the show itself ever win an Emmy? For the six years of its run, self doesn’t think she ever skipped an episode.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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July 1, 2020 at 3:12 pm (Books, Lists, Memoirs, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, television, Women Writers)
Tags: biographies, book lists, COVID Reading, Daphne du Maurier, English writers, favorites, literature of medicine, medicine, memoirs, memories, reading lists, summer, The Expanse, thrillers
Self is still reading Cibola Burn. What can she say? It’s been a busy week. Havelock and Naomi are together (She’s his prisoner; they should hook up). But Holden is still Naomi’s titular boyfriend (though he doesn’t think of her much, not for almost 300 pages)
Self does like Havelock. Which is why, if Naomi were to start developing feelings, self would not mind a bit. Besides which, she loves their conversation while she is Havelock’s prisoner.
Did self say caged? Indeed she did! Naomi is in a cage, and she has to do all her business in that cage, including pee-ing.
Perhaps her affection for Havelock developed from the actor who plays him in the series. (He survives a pole sticking out of his chest! He visits a Belter brothel to learn how to speak Belter! He knew Miller!)
Someone on goodreads has written a thesis in the guise of a review on Cibola Burn, and hundreds of people apparently read it and liked it. So Americans do read! Probably as much as, or more than, POTUS!
This post is about all her favorite reads of Julys past. Herewith:
July 2016: Girl Waits With Gun, by Amy Stewart (Is this ever going to be a movie?)
July 2017: Barbarian Days, by William Finnegan
July 2018: Manderley Forever, by Tatiana de Rosnay
July 2019: Open Heart: A Cardiac Surgeon’s Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Table, by Stephen Westaby
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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June 28, 2020 at 3:19 am (Books, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, television, Women Writers)
Tags: adaptations, COVID Reading, indulgences, novel, reading lists, Saturday, science fiction, summer, The Expanse
Wow, self is really enjoying this bodice ripper! The writing is so completely immersive! Chapter One was set in a male brothel in Regency London, and ended with the brothel Madam’s own special man being appropriated by the widow MC for … well, dear blog readers can guess.
Chapter Two takes us to the Thames River Police, which is nowhere near as interesting as the brothel. There are two protagonists: one is a member of the Thames River Police (as dear blog reader might have guessed), the other is a man in his fifties whose name is so close to that of the male prostitute that self first thought they were one and the same, until she came to the spot where the the author describes the man as being in his fifties. At which point, self said, Oh.
Anyhoo, blah blah blah goes on between the two.
Self is alternating between Her Protector’s Pleasure and Cibola Burn. In Cibola Burn, SPOILER ALERT! Murtry and Holden meet. Holden waves and smiles, Murtry shoots a man right in front of Holden. TROUBLE, this man MURTRY is TROUBLE WITH A CAPITAL ‘T.’ Self adores Burn Gorman, the actor who plays him in the TV series The Expanse. And of course it goes without saying that she adores Steven Strait.
Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.
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