Sunday!

39 thoughts on “Sunday!”

1. Finished rereading Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword. Not because I had a sudden interest in rereading 60-odd-year-old heroic fantasy, but as part of my project to clear the bookshelves (a sub-project of the wife and I beginning to clear out a lifetime’s accumulation, anticipating that we will be old enough one of these first days to want to downsize our housing). Eventually, hundreds of paperbacks will become epubs. I can safely say, after The Broken Sword, that character recognition software that thinks it’s working with English makes multiple interesting guesses about Æsir and Jötun.Report

   1. I never understood why Poul Anderson wasn’t more popular. The Harvest of Stars series is Ayn Rand’s poltics, but actually decently written and somewhat persuasive.Report

      1. Anderson was an amazing writer: almost 70 novels, dozens of short stories, many successful series (Flandry, Van Rijn, Time Patrol, Hoka), many Hugos and Nebuals, etc. But he never had that one big success that defined him: no Foundation Series or Future History.Report

         1. Mike,

            Have you read The Expanse series? The TV show was quite good and I’m curious how the books stack up against it.Report

            1. Ahem…you have to write it as “The EXPAAAAAAAANNNNNSE!”

               And yes, the show was quite good.Report

            2. Sorry, neither read nor watched.Report

2. I haven’t seen Spotlight. Various organizations have nominated either Mark Ruffalo or Michael Keaton for Best Supporting Actor, so who the heck is the lead?Report

   1. GodReport

      1. (the Roman Catholic one)Report

         1. That would be the award for an ensemble cast.Report

            1. The academy tends to vote against pictures with a mass audience.Report

   2. The presses!Report

3. There’s a path to victory for The Room, (whose lead actress iirc has won everything so far), if Revenant and Spotlight split enough votes (and also, if the Big Short siphons enough off, as it has a ‘newsy’ origin too)Report

   1. I can easily see how Room would get more votes than any one of them. I don’t see how it can get more votes than all of them.Report

4. The Academy reliably makes the wrong choice when it comes to Best Picture, so I won’t be at all surprised when they fail to select either Mad Max or The Revenant. These are the same people who chose Forrest Gump over either Pulp Fiction or The Shawshank Redemption, and American Beauty over Saving Private Ryan or Fight Club.Report

   1. Actually, I heard from a very reliable inside source that Fight Club won; but then they remembered the First Rule, and poof… away went the award.Report

      1. It got kind of awkward when they gave Edward Norton the award for Best Actor and Brad Pitt took it home.Report

   2. I can see (and justify) American Beauty winning over Fight Club. Not having Pulp Fiction win is just criminal.
      The Academy loves having smoke blown up their asses (see The Labyrinth of Silence)Report

5. I saw Hail Ceaser and enjoyed. The movie is crypto conservative or it is so over the top that it is really liberal.

   The movie might be a great example of conservative or liberal art that succeeds. My guess is that it is because the Coens are not concerned with wholesomeness like a Ted Cruz culture warrior and not all the jokes are at the expense of leftism.* Some of the best gags are apolitical.

   *There are some jokes that the Coen Brothers can only get away with because they are Jewish. Otherwise they would just be considered anti-Semitic.Report

   1. Regardless of the Coen Brother’s personal politics, Hail, Caesar is a great example of what good conservative art should be like.Report

   2. Sonny Bunch loved this movie.Report

   3. How much does the joke’s acceptability depend on you knowing who’s BEHIND the camera?
      Do you care/know who’s behind the camera right now on the Simpsons?
      How about Big Bang Theory?

      Is this marred by the idea that “there’s probably a Jew behind the camera”, where you might not think that about some “black men can wear pink polka dots and get away with it” joke?Report

6. I saw kung fu panda 3 with the family. It was a good kids movie.Report

   1. My daughter took one of her students and said the same thing. I kind of wish I had small kids to take.Report

      1. I wish the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise was in the hands of someone who respected the source material as much as the people handling the Kung Fu Panda franchise.Report

7. I have about 200 books checked out from my two libraries. Plus Jaybird’s mom took me book shopping (3 different used stores) for Christmas this year…

   All that to say, I’m not sure exactly why I didn’t read much this week except: 1) Spaced second series, 2) the various seasons of The Best of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood leave Amazon Prime on February 19th. I’m having a blast rewatching some of those; always interesting to watch something you internalized when young enough to not know you were internalizing it. (Leaving the Presbyterianism and political subversion aside (No religion! No politics!), I’m amazed at how many of the songs I still know word for word and note for note.) Plus he was just such a lovely man. And it’s cool to see the differences between a week from 1971 vs 1981, etc.

   I read an odd little novel called The Guest Cat which is oh so very translated-from-Japanese, and which I liked very much.

   I read another TP volume of The Wicked and The Divine, which just might be my favorite of all the comics that are publishing right now. It scratches all the right itches in all the right ways.

   Not many podcasts, mostly Midnight in Karachi, Dear Sugar, and Coode Street.Report

8. I’m closing in on finishing the first installment of Dune. It’s… not doing anything for me, sadly.

   Still in the mood for science fiction, so maybe trying Ringworld next?Report

   1. Try Lucifer’s Hammer, if you’re in the mood for fun.Report

      1. Fir a value of “fun” equal to “being preached at by two right-wing drunks”.Report

         1. For a value of fun that includes surfing through downtown L.A. on a tsunami.
            Niven may write on the principle of “what fun thing can I come up with, and how can I make it work?” — but at least he’s able to make the world stick together, unlike Whedon.

            Pournelle is a total ass (though, interestingly enough, I’ve heard of fewer pranks on him than Gaiman or GRRM), but Niven’s not a bad dude (nor is he really all that right wing).Report

            1. Niven is, personally, quite right-wing, but it only comes out when he collaborates with Pournelle.Report

               1. Did you ever read Niven’s “why I’m not a libertarian” short story?
                  [Now I really want my friend the author to write an anti-goldbug short story. Just for the lulz.]Report

                  1. “Cloak of Anarchy”? Yes, it was pretty good.Report

               2. Yes, Pournelle is all “representative democracy was, is, and always will be a bad idea.” Niven is only “representative democracy is okay as long as there isn’t some existential threat, in which case it’s as bad as Jerry says.” Most of their collaborations have such a threat in there somewhere, so they become largely the same.Report

                  1. I’ve disliked Pournelle since he used to write a column for Byte that amounted to “I understand nothing about computers, and I’m going to demonstrate that repeatedly at the top of my lungs.”Report

   2. maybe how the ending (of that installment) does tie everything together will redeem it for you?

      eta: as far as recommendations, I’m guessing you’ve done the (orginal) Foundation series, right? If not, do that. Still with political themes (somewhat, and somewhat but definitely mid-century socialist) but really more a detective novel than anything else (as someone put it when it won either the Hugo or Nebula for best series ever)Report

   3. If you’re looking to sci fi to read and you haven’t already read it, might I suggest Revelation Space? It’s a modern classic for a reason.Report

   4. you ever read any Bujold? If not, look for Borders of Infinity (out of print, I think, but easy to find used online) as an introduction to her Vorkosigan series.Report

      1. I second Bujold. I read Shards of Honor, then the next book….

         What I’m saying is I bought every book in the Vorkogisan series — all like 15 of them — in less than two weeks, because I couldn’t stop reading them.Report

Comments are closed.