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| Buffalo at Yellowstone |
Currently reading:
Malice by Keigo Higashino: This was a birthday present, and I had no idea what to expect from it. Pleasantly surprised so far!
A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas: Uhg. I was looking forward to this one, because Sherlock Holmes, but so far it's meandering and eye roll worthy. This might be a DNF.
Posted:
Mini-reviews of Real Food/Fake Food by Larry Olmsted and But First, Champagne by David White.
TV:
I didn't watch any movies this past week, but I have been watching some TV series I'd like to talk about.
As I mentioned last week, this Netflix series is fairly delightful, even though the final episode was pretty damn grim. After Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire's parents are killed in a fire, they're thrown out into the world and forced to deal with an increasingly myopic and unimaginative series of adults, all while trying avoid falling into the clutches of the evil Count Olaf. There is no happy ending for the poor Baudelaires, but the series is interspersed with a ton of fun literary references, awesome guest stars (including Aasif Mandvi, Alfre Woodard, Will Arnett, Don Johnson, and many others), and on-point art direction. This is a series for book lovers, for sure.
When the first episode of this new series aired, I thought it had fantastic acting and production values, but was a little long and dull. BUT THEN – that second episode! The pope's opening speech went in a direction I totally did not see coming. What is Lenny's long-term plan here? What does that blonde woman have to do with anything? How will this affect the Vatican? Add in some film-level cinematography and I'm officially hooked.
A darker, grittier take on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, because that's what we all need in our lives. /sarcasm I tend to be suspicious of Wizard of Oz adaptations because they're pretty much always a trash fire, and this one makes the same mistakes all the other awful ones do. Dorothy's an adult (and a rode hard adult at that); the Emerald City and its wizard are the opposite of wonderful; and Oz is a depressing hellscape instead of colorful and fun. After the first ep I was like, "Well that was pretty terrible," but decided to keep watching because Lucas is super hot. Unfortunately, ep 2 was boring, and not even the cute guy could save it. Not worth watching imo.
The week in heidenkindom:
My reading so far this year is starting off promising! (I hope I didn't just jinx myself by saying that.) I've read 10 books already and–here's the part I'm really excited about–I've been surprised at how diverse my reading's been in terms of nationality.
I spontaneously started keeping track of the nationality of the authors of my books in the second week of January, and so far 2/3rds of the books I've finished have been by non-US authors. I don't know why I'm so pumped by this because it's a total coincidence and I've certainly not been trying to read internationally, but it gives me a thin sense of accomplishment. We'll see if this trend continues as the year goes on.
And for the first time in years I'm also looking forward to a bunch of new releases this year, including The Last of August, Pretty Face, and A Crown of Bitter Orange.
Bonus:
Don't forget to join me in February for a readalong of Trevor Noah's memoir, Born a Crime, on Book Bloggers International. I don't usually read memoirs at all, but I was intrigued by this one, since it tells Noah's story of growing up in Apartheid-Era South Africa. Every review I've read of the book so far has been glowing.
It's a short book so the readalong shouldn't be too onerous, just about 10 pages a day, or 20 minutes a day if you're listening on audiobook.
Have a great week everyone!
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