TV: I rewatched "33", the first episode after the Battlestar Galactica miniseries. Sure, the miniseries is good: a solid introduction to the premise for the whole show. But "33" is stellar--one of the best episodes of any sci-fi television, period.
When did I last (re)watch any of the show? The last time I even mentioned it was in 2013; in 2012 I briefly mentioned rewatching something from seaon four. So I'm willing to bet that it's been at least nine years since I last watched anything from season one--maybe longer.
For those newer around here: Battlestar Galactica was THE show. The one that led me to finding online fandom, and fanfiction, and livejournal--and eventually, to me participating in all of those things.
I didn't watch from the beginning. Remember back when we had things like cable TV or satellite dishes? And we watched things live, with all of those commercials. Yeah... funny how life changes. I was channel-surfing--remember channel-surfing?!--and stumbled across a season one episode on rerun (remember reruns?!).
There was Katee Sackhoff playing Kara Thrace (Starbuck), with her short hair and pilot uniform, in a full-on fight for survival with a blonderobot cylon, and then she finds out that her BFF Karl has been having sex with another robot cylon--a copy of someone Kara thought of as another friend--and Starbuck lets out this anguished scream, still bleeding from the fight, complete with a blood-formed mustache, and I WAS HOOKED. Went and bought the miniseries and season one on DVD. (Remember DVDs?!)
I caught up to the show's schedule by season three and was engaged in online fandom by episode... eight? nine? Something like that. October or November 2006 was the "read ALL of the fanfiction" time, and I made my own livejournal by December and started writing my own fanfic at the same time.
So. I might be rewatching BSG. Certainly "33" was a positive trip down memory lane, and I can't say that for plenty of other shows that I've tried to rewatch later.
Books! The Girl with All the Gifts was an interesting and well-written book--and probably NOT the thing to be reading in the middle of a world-wide pandemic. Any post-apocalyptic story is going to be difficult, and this one focused on children, and... anyway. Yeah. Also, zombies are still not my thing. (I say that. And yet I've read all of Mira Grant's Parasitology series, and her Newsflesh series as well.)
Meagan Spooner's Hunted was lovely; a Beauty and the Beast retelling that really went for the fairy-tale elements. (I think that's part of why I struggled with Kemmerer's adaptation of the tale: a modern-day setting makes the whole "abduct the future bride" more fraught. Also, Hunted didn't really have an abduction scene; it was--well. Spoiler territory, but I wasn't bothered by it in the way that Kemmerer's A Curse So Dark and Lonely bothered me.)
Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine: dystopian steampunk librarian-run dictatorship. If that sounds like your thing, yay! I struggled with this book; to be honest, the reason I finished is directly related to insomnia. I couldn't sleep, and I didn't want to go to the trouble of finding something else to read in the middle of the night.
The worldbuilding was solid enough; I found the premise itself not very plausible, but Caine fills in the blanks just fine. Her prose needs polishing; she falls back too often on telling rather than showing.
Ilona Andrews has a book series called The Inkeeper Chronicles; the first three books were sold together at a greatly discounted price, and they were fun! The equivalent of a summer blockbuster: not deep, but a cheesy good time. Imagine if, instead of Hogwarts, there was a magical inn. And instead of students, there were innkeeper who can draw on the magic of their homes, and their clients are often intergalactic travelers. So: thumbs up for the diversion factor, and the "not going to make my brain overthink things in the middle of a pandemic" factor.
(I tried another book series by Andrews once before, but didn't enjoy it enough to read past the first novel. I think the silliness factor of these books made a difference; the other book took itself more seriously.)
Didn't finish: The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden. Lovely prose, a compelling cast of characters, a fairy-tale Russia setting... and a fanatical priest character that was introduced later. Killed my interest right there; I'm just not in the mood for religious fanaticism in my fiction. I'll have to check if Arden has other books to try, though.
When did I last (re)watch any of the show? The last time I even mentioned it was in 2013; in 2012 I briefly mentioned rewatching something from seaon four. So I'm willing to bet that it's been at least nine years since I last watched anything from season one--maybe longer.
For those newer around here: Battlestar Galactica was THE show. The one that led me to finding online fandom, and fanfiction, and livejournal--and eventually, to me participating in all of those things.
I didn't watch from the beginning. Remember back when we had things like cable TV or satellite dishes? And we watched things live, with all of those commercials. Yeah... funny how life changes. I was channel-surfing--remember channel-surfing?!--and stumbled across a season one episode on rerun (remember reruns?!).
There was Katee Sackhoff playing Kara Thrace (Starbuck), with her short hair and pilot uniform, in a full-on fight for survival with a blonde
I caught up to the show's schedule by season three and was engaged in online fandom by episode... eight? nine? Something like that. October or November 2006 was the "read ALL of the fanfiction" time, and I made my own livejournal by December and started writing my own fanfic at the same time.
So. I might be rewatching BSG. Certainly "33" was a positive trip down memory lane, and I can't say that for plenty of other shows that I've tried to rewatch later.
Books! The Girl with All the Gifts was an interesting and well-written book--and probably NOT the thing to be reading in the middle of a world-wide pandemic. Any post-apocalyptic story is going to be difficult, and this one focused on children, and... anyway. Yeah. Also, zombies are still not my thing. (I say that. And yet I've read all of Mira Grant's Parasitology series, and her Newsflesh series as well.)
Meagan Spooner's Hunted was lovely; a Beauty and the Beast retelling that really went for the fairy-tale elements. (I think that's part of why I struggled with Kemmerer's adaptation of the tale: a modern-day setting makes the whole "abduct the future bride" more fraught. Also, Hunted didn't really have an abduction scene; it was--well. Spoiler territory, but I wasn't bothered by it in the way that Kemmerer's A Curse So Dark and Lonely bothered me.)
Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine: dystopian steampunk librarian-run dictatorship. If that sounds like your thing, yay! I struggled with this book; to be honest, the reason I finished is directly related to insomnia. I couldn't sleep, and I didn't want to go to the trouble of finding something else to read in the middle of the night.
The worldbuilding was solid enough; I found the premise itself not very plausible, but Caine fills in the blanks just fine. Her prose needs polishing; she falls back too often on telling rather than showing.
Ilona Andrews has a book series called The Inkeeper Chronicles; the first three books were sold together at a greatly discounted price, and they were fun! The equivalent of a summer blockbuster: not deep, but a cheesy good time. Imagine if, instead of Hogwarts, there was a magical inn. And instead of students, there were innkeeper who can draw on the magic of their homes, and their clients are often intergalactic travelers. So: thumbs up for the diversion factor, and the "not going to make my brain overthink things in the middle of a pandemic" factor.
(I tried another book series by Andrews once before, but didn't enjoy it enough to read past the first novel. I think the silliness factor of these books made a difference; the other book took itself more seriously.)
Didn't finish: The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden. Lovely prose, a compelling cast of characters, a fairy-tale Russia setting... and a fanatical priest character that was introduced later. Killed my interest right there; I'm just not in the mood for religious fanaticism in my fiction. I'll have to check if Arden has other books to try, though.