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Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

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47 Responses

  1. Murali says:

    Spoiler alert!!

    The peace talks are with the vampire courts. Remember, the council was at war with all of the courts, just not the red-court. The destruction of the red court did not end the war (though it did end any reason for further hostilities) The peace talks are between the remaining courts and the white council. Thomas is likely to make an appearance, as is Mavra.

    As I’ve predicted on tv tropes, Thomas is going to end up with Amoracchius* and hopefully kill Mavra. As a member of the white court who can feel true love, the sword of love is strangely fitting for him. Given that he has taken down the one of the nickleheads before, and that he is the son of the white king, looks to be a good candidate for it. And if Jim’s teaser is accurate, Thomas is going to be a dad.Report

  2. Glyph says:

    Hannibal last night was…bonkers, even by the standards that show has previously set. And now begins the Red Dragon arc.

    Is anyone else watching Wayward Pines? I’m about 6 or 7 episodes in, and it’s also bonkers, except it’s just…not good, yet I can’t stop watching. It’s entertainingly awful. Matt Dillon in particular is just atrocious.Report

  3. Morat20 says:

    I thought they hammered out what the parasite was pretty thoroughly. Not what it could do, of course, but what it was.

    I suspect Peace Talks will cover more than the Courts, as Dresden — in his new role — has come to see more of the larger picture, and learned quite a bit about the Nemesis and the increasing threat of Outsiders.Report

  4. Tod Kelly says:

    I haven’t had the opportunity to note stuff on a Sunday post fro a while, so this is actually a few weeks worth of stuff…

    READING

    Between the Wold & Me : The shortest of everything I’ve been reading, the new book by Ta-Hehisi is taking the longest time to read. Not shockingly, I love it. The content is powerful, obviously, but there is also the fact that Coates might craft the most beautiful non-fiction prose in the writing world today. I can’t recommend the book enough.

    The Girl With All the Gifts : A great page turner that kind of is, and kind of isn’t, about the zombie apocalypse. Highly recommended beach read material.

    J : Another highly recommended title, this one a quite, reflective and rather heartbreaking dystopian novel by Mann-Booker winner Howard Jacobson. Like all my favorite dystopian novels, it focuses less on the politics of what makes a dystopia or lionizes rebellious leaders, but instead focuses on the way societies can crush the lives of ordinary people. The actual mechanics of the dystopia — the result of what is referred to only as What Happened, If It Happened — plays a very second fiddle to the characters whose everyday lives are impacted.

    Station Eleven : Another dystopia novel, and one that I liked. But also one that suffered in my eyes by the mere fact that I read it immediately after reading J. I wonder if I would have liked it more if it hadn’t come along at a time when it had impossibly big shoes to fill.

    More Mexican Everyday : One of those cookbooks that is interesting enough in it’s presentation — more talk about how and why to do things that lists of ingredients and instructions — that I actually read it cover to cover. Will be making great use of this book in the coming months.

    Up next, based partially on the recommendation of Mr. Likko and partially on the my love of palindromes, is Seveneves.

    WATCHING

    Mr. Robot : If you are on this site, you will love this show. Period.

    Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell : I confess, I tried to read the book years ago and just couldn’t wade through it without being distracted by… well, anything, really. The BBC miniseries is a hoot, though.

    Aquarius : Not a bad show, but one that would have been better if it had been more like the cable fare NBC was trying to mimic and limited to 10-14 episodes. As it was, it just dragged on a wee bit too long.

    Heroes, Season 1 : The subsequent seasons were so arduous that I plum forgot how fantastic the first season was until I watched it again last week.

    Wayward Pines :Great start, then it got slow, then it got mind-numbingly stupid. The “big reveal” anticipation that kept me in the Wayward Pines game made me want to punch the show’s writer in the face when it finally came. I have abandoned it.

    Sense 8 Here is my rule of thumb for recommending the the Wachowski’s Netflix series Sense 8: Did you love or hate their Cloud Atlas? If you loved Could Atlas, you will love Sense 8; and likewise you should avoid it if you were a CA hater.Report

    • Glyph in reply to Tod Kelly says:

      RE: Wayward Pines. Yes, the Big Reveal was stupid…but I suspect that the Big Reveal was in part or whole a lie, and there is another Big Reveal coming.

      At least, I hope so. I’d also like to see what they do with the Toby Jones character…I’d like to see a work of fiction in which a mad scientist (who is basically correct/righteous in broad outline, if not his methods, which are….unsound) plays God, and things go wrong (as they do) so he starts over and tries again, and again, with varying degrees of success and shadiness involved each time, as his “creation” “betrays” him via chance or intent or his own error/shortsightedness.

      I think in the hands of the right creators, the story of a fallible (but basically good) Creator struggling and doing the best he can with and for his even-more-fallible creation could be really compelling and moving metaphor.Report

      • Glyph in reply to Glyph says:

        I should make clear though – these are not those creators. I have no hope that this show will suddenly get a brain. I just think there’s at least the germ of an interesting idea in that character and the setup.Report

    • aarondavid in reply to Tod Kelly says:

      ” Coates might craft the most beautiful non-fiction prose in the writing world today. ”

      Yeeeaaahhhh… no. John McPhee is still alive, and Coates has a long way to go craft a sentence at that level.Report

      • Stillwater in reply to aarondavid says:

        Hmmm, McPhee is a delight for sure, but I’d have to go with David Quammen and (especially) Barry Lopez (Arctic Dreams!!) in the Best Non-fiction Prose category. Just an opinion, of course, and heavily weighted, since it’s MY opinion!Report

        • Maribou in reply to Stillwater says:

          Although those are three of my favorite writers, I’d also put Maggie Nelson, Kiese Laymon, and Anne Fadiman up against them in a beautiful-nonfiction-writing-cage-match and cheerfully bet on my team to win. (Granted the odds ratio would be small.)

          I’m really looking forward to Ta-Nehisi’s new book, @tod-kelly – good to hear it is the all-that I was expecting it to be.Report

          • Stillwater in reply to Maribou says:

            I don’t think I’ve read anything by any of those writers, which is sorta sad, really. I’ll check em out (I lovs me some beautiful prose).

            Re: TNC’s new book: Tod’s review was an additional push to read it, but I was pretty much committed when I read David Brooks white splain to TNC that he’s just wrong wrong wrong.Report

            • aarondavid in reply to Stillwater says:

              It’s funny how that works, as after I read Brooks, I said “yeah, I am done with TNC, that cements what I felt for the last 5-6 years” I was never a Brooks fan, but that helped me put my finger on why I was never a TNC fan (no politics.)

              Oh, Anne Fadiman is good, really good.Report

          • Mike Schilling in reply to Maribou says:

            Fadiman is an uncommon name. Is the any relation to …

            Yup, Clifton’s daughter.Report

          • aarondavid in reply to Maribou says:

            Speaking of Anne Fadiman @maribou I was living in Merced and managing a book shop when Spirit Catches You.. came out. Tried mightily to get her to do a signing, but to no avail.Report

  5. Will Truman says:

    I finished Game of Thrones.

    Damn, Stannis.

    Started second half of the first season of Game if Thrones.

    Listening to Watchman.Report

  6. Kazzy says:

    Packing! Moving! To Yonkers! Many more changes afoot, perhaps more to come…Report

  7. aarondavid says:

    Well, speaking of expecting this popped up on the the Cormac McCarthy forum:
    Amazon Uk (Which, for whatever reason, always lists books before its US counterpart) has these two entries…
    Untitled McCarthy 14 Mme – 1 Sept 2016 Macmillan Hardbacks – 9780330457422
    and
    Untitled McCarthy 15 Mme – 13 Oct 2016 Macmillan Hardbacks – 9780330457446

    So, there goes my next year of waiting…

    As of right now, rereading The End of The Affair for something I am writing now, also still working on Mobey Dick.Report

    • Tod Kelly in reply to aarondavid says:

      @aarondavid Moby Dick is the epitome of the book that you hated when you read it in high school, and loved when you reread it as an adult. Or at least, it sure was for me.Report

      • aarondavid in reply to Tod Kelly says:

        I didn’t read it in high school, but am loving it now. It is one of those books that you just want to savor. I picked up a weird/bad habit working in book stores of reading a chunk of a book and putting it down partway to start another. I often have 5-10 books going at once that I will pick back up (or not) as the mood catches me. This is not helped as I am a compulsive book buyer, with new books coming in all the time.Report

      • JustRuss in reply to Tod Kelly says:

        For me it was Heart of Darkness. Hated it as a college freshman, 5 years later found it lying around in my brother’s room and couldn’t put it down.Report

  8. Chris says:

    Still reading Zweig’s WWI cycle which, for those of you also obsessed with that war, is wonderful. Also Virgil is still dying.

    Watched Ex Machina. I didn’t like it, though it was beautifully filmed. Every step it took was the obvious one, and it was too long for the story, such as it was. Should have been a short.Report

    • Burt Likko in reply to Chris says:

      I enjoyed the hell out of Ex Machina notwithstanding my agreement with your critique. I enjoyed that the screenplay found a way to fill in the backstory using visuals, and the tycoon character played by Oscar Isaac was more than a little bit unexpected, at least as to his personality (as was the dancing).Report

      • Chris in reply to Burt Likko says:

        I will say this much: when the zombie apocalypse hits, I’m taking over his house.

        It was definitely well directed, and superbly filmed. I just wish there had been more to it. And I wish I didn’t know pretty much how it was going to go by the time of the first power outage.Report

  9. Oscar Gordon says:

    Reading Mistborn. Quite enjoying it, too.

    Not watching much of anything, although lately I’ve seen Jupiter Ascending, new RoboCop, AntMan, & Minions.Report

  10. James K says:

    Both reading and watching Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell.Report

    • zic in reply to James K says:

      Had you read the book before? Interesting to do both at the same time. I think they changed the chronology a bit; no? Mr. Norrell appears quite late in the book I thought. Doesn’t it open with the quest to find someone actually practicing magic? Yet the photos I’ve seen have him in the show from the beginning. I wondered how that alters the spell the story weaves?Report

      • Alan Scott in reply to zic says:

        I’m somewhat delayed on JS &Mr.N, but I don’t see it mucking about with the chronology much in the first few episodes. The book introduces Norrell right quick. That quest to find someone actually practicing magic is a short prologue that ends with Norrell established as a main character.

        I like the show quite a bit. It lacks a lot of the narrator’s whimsy that makes the book so wonderful, but the excellent writing and acting makes up for it. I am puzzled by the way the gentleman with the thistledown hair is presented. In the book, he’s very much a character who is affably amoral, whereas in the show he is outwardly sinister.Report

        • zic in reply to Alan Scott says:

          Ha. I think, perhaps, I’m conflating the the time it took for me to engage here; it’s been many years since I read it. But the beginning seemed long before we find Mr. Norril.

          Trying to decide to re-read first, to watch first, or to do simultaneously now.Report

      • James K in reply to zic says:

        @zic

        They do play with the timing a little. I think they’re trying to even the Strange and Norrell sections out a bit rather than having the first third be all Norrell and the second third being all Strange.

        They’re also emphasizing the differences between the magicians, presumably because they’ll have less time for developing them.

        I have only see. The first 2 episodes though, so I. Not sure how far they’ll diverge bReport

    • Glyph in reply to James K says:

      I’ve heard good things about the show and want to watch it, but BBC got dropped from my cable package through a snafu and I haven’t straightened it out yet.

      I have to say that I was very underwhelmed by the book when I read it, despite it sounding like something that would be right up my alley. For magician fiction, give me Carter Beats The Devil or The Prestige.Report

  11. Kim says:

    Someone finally got my friend drunk enough to do voicework again.Report

  12. Richard Hershberger says:

    Reading: “The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pyrates.”

    In other words, the original. It is quite readable, which doesn’t surprise me. I generally find 18th century English prose very readable. More so than 19th century prose. Like most people, I suspect, I only knew the story second through eighth hand, in a compressed form. It is interesting reading Defoe’s text and comparing it with my impressions. As a trivial example, I always assumed that the human footprint Crusoe found in the sand was Friday’s. Friday actually comes into the story a few years later. More thematically, I was surprised to realize that a major point (perhaps *the* point) of the book is a How-I-Came-to-Jesus witness story.

    I may write a review once I am finished.Report

    • Chris in reply to Richard Hershberger says:

      I recommend reading Coetzee’s Foe when you finish, particularly if you like any of Coetzee’s other works. It is probably his best (though I am particularly fond of Life & Times of Michael K).Report