The trip yawns before me. Colorado Springs to the East Coast. The East Coast to Europe. Europe to Qatar.
Man. That flight takes forever. I mean, when Maribou and I fly back to Prince Edward Island, that takes all day and we arrive at the hotel frazzled and needing a shower and a belt of something. Flying to Europe/Qatar is a whole other level.
It’s not enough to bring a Sudoku book. It’s not enough to bring a page-turner or two. It’s not enough to bring a 3DS.
You’re just sitting in a chair for 24 hours straight. Have a nap if you want, it’s not going to be close to long enough to dent the sleep schedule you’re fiddling with. Have a glass of wine (or three!) and try to coast while staring at the surprisingly deep list of in-flight entertainment options (last time I flew, I got the opportunity to watch Ex Machina
It’s almost enough to get you to shell out the 10 bucks for wifi. Almost.
Anyway, I will be gone for a couple of weeks and I hope to come back with some really awesome stories about the entertainment options in Qatar.
Until then… what are you reading and/or watching?
(Photo is “Movie Night“, taken by Ginny, used under a creative commons license.)
I am reading the short stories of Saki (H.H. Munro) and City in the Mist by George W.S. Trow. My roommate and I have been watching Kenneth Anger’s short films when time permits.Report
Let me know what you think about Saki. The only work of his I know is The Open Window, which is brilliant, but which I suspect we all had assigned in high school.Report
I am a sucker for Sredni Vashtar, and have been since I was a small child who occasionally dreamed of revenge.
I’ve read several volumes of his short stories, and always enjoy them – he’s one of the funniest writers I’ve read, and incisive – but other than Sredni Vashtar, and Tobermory, they do tend to blend together in my mind.Report
Wow, Conradin is a name you don’t see every day. Unless you’re writing a book on the decline and fall of the House of Hohenstaufen, I suppose.Report
That’s quite a story. It makes Roald Dahl seem like A. A. Milne.Report
I am dying for a good book. I wrapped up Louis de Berniere’s The Dust That Falls From Dreams, and loved it so much that now every time I crack open a book I put it down after about 20 pages because it isn’t Louis de Berniere’s The Dust That Falls From Dreams.
I saw two brain candy movies this weekend: Age of Ultron and Jurassic World. Each was pretty much was I had been expecting, and therefore satisfying in an empty calorie kind of way.
I also started watching Person of Interest on Netflix. I have been surprised to find that, despite the intensely silly and unintentionally creepy premise of the show, it’s actually quite fun — even addicting. Also found myself watching an early episode of West Wing, and was once again reminded that for all of the crap Sorkin gets on the internet, he really is so much better at what he does than pretty much anyone.Report
@tod-kelly unintentionally creepy
Not so much unintentionally, I think.Report
Do you really think so?
I have the impression that I’m supposed to be rooting for the two random guys that spy on everyone for non-national security reasons. More than rooting, actually: wishing that there really were people doing that in the real world. With Dexter, to take counter example, the viewer was always being reminded that the protagonist/hero was really a monster. that just so happened to be doing something less horrific than what he might otherwise be doing. I don’t get that sense when I watch POI. Report
@tod-kelly 1) You are supposed to be rooting for them, true.
2) Nonetheless, I am quite confident, sitting here from the 4th season vantage point, that you are ALSO supposed to be very creeped out by what they are doing. All the bad things that are wrong with the scenario will be explored in depth. Report
I am dying for a good book.
I’ve been pretty deeply enmeshed in The Book of the New Sun for quite a while now, based initially on Aaron David’s recommendation. It is definitely a good book (and if you read all 5 it’s long, which I personally like), but it sorta requires going down the rabbit hole to make any sense of. In a good way. 🙂 In my own case, fwiw, I read it, then read exegesis about it, promptly re-read it (and it read like a completely different book the second time thru), then read book 5 (the sequel, of sorts), and reread it, and now I think I’m gonna re-read the whole five volume set again.
A heavy-reading friend of mine is currently reading it for the sixth time, if that’s any indication of how good – and perplexing! – some people think it is.Report
@tod-kelly
I would suggest pulling a Jack Move and read something totally out of your balliwick. That is always my plan after reading something that is head and shoulders above the other things out there. I would suggest something like Peter Hopkirks The Great Game, John McPhee’s Annals of the Former World or fiction of a completely different sort, such as William Hjortsberg’s Grey Matters.
Just to clean the palate, so to speak. (All of those are very good and quite worth reading.)Report
Just in case you didn’t already know, the show starts to shed the case-of-the-week style to an extent after Season 1 in favor of more serialized elements, and by Season 4 it’s pretty much fully serialized. It goes from cool but silly to really deep and powerful as it goes, too…it’s an impressive transformation.Report
One of those weeks when I’m in the middle of a half-dozen different books, chiefly H. L. Mencken’s triad of autobiographical works. I have mixed feelings about them, mostly because I find the normative, casual racism of the time uncomfortable – the bits that don’t have that problem vary from splendid to fascinating to tedious.
I finished the TV version of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which I greatly enjoyed. Now I’m catching up on season 10 of Bones (which I love although when they call Candida albicans a bacteria in one episode and then characters bitch about people who aren’t scientists in the next episode, it does strain credulity a bit). And listening to old library instruction podcasts a bit. It’s good to have my curiosity about my profession start trickling back in – that last push to finish library school had kind of burnt out those circuits.Report
Reading Wooden Boats, by Micheal Ruhlman. Loving it. I needed to break from the heavy fiction that I had been wallowing in, just go for something completely different.
We watched some british cooking show on YouTube this week, which the wife really seemed to enjoy (she is as much of a foodie as Burt) and as she has been gone this weekend, I enjoyed 2 blissful days sans TV.
And as the TV hasn’t been on, I have been listening to all sorts of thing, from Mastodon to Sub Rosa to Live Calexico. Constant sound. The one great thing about batching it.Report
Somehow, today is the first time that I’ve seen Chrysler’s Miami Vice commercials for their muscle cars. While I have fond memories* of the period when Vice was new, I have to admit that I have two reactions to a commercial that seems targeted at my demographic: (a) 700 hp and a six-speed manual, combined with my present-day reflexes, seems like a bad combination, and (b) my penis still does all of the things that it’s supposed to, thank you.
* Infant/toddler son, suffering from the respiratory-disease-of-the-month, seemed inclined to go to sleep snuggled into my neck as we walked/danced to the Jan Hammer and Phil Collins music.Report
It is a long flight, I went for a job interview in Doha a few years ago and was only there for three days so I did not get to see a lot. We ate at Al Bandar in the Souq Waqif food was good but the view from the roof top dining was great. Hope you enjoy your trip!Report
I’d spring the $10 for wifi on a flight like that. For a four-hour flight from, say, LA to Chicago, I might hold out if I had a decent book to read. But for what you’re undertaking? Easy call.Report