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Rated Doctor Who: The Chimes of Midnight 10/10
What an audio classic. I really had to listen to so much more of the Eighth Doctor and realize the connections and references to other things to really appreciate it. A proper British Spooky Christmas Mystery that also manages to be quite funny. The story also goes back to that recurring theme in Doctor Who of, "I've never met anybody who wasn't important."
Rated Judging a Book by Its Lover: A Field Guide to the Hearts and Minds of Readers Everywhere 4/10
This started out better than it ended. The title is very misleading, and I'm also not very interested in faking my way through my reading life or pretending like I've read things I haven't.
Rated Terror of the Master 8/10
This is a near-perfect Third Doctor/Master story, and Jon Culshaw does a great job with all the voices. Very much enjoyed this.
Rated One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This 10/10
<div>"It is a hallmark of failing societies, I’ve learned, this requirement that one always be in possession of a valid reason to exist," Omar El Akkad writes. Later in the book, he adds, "Much like the insidious foreign plot, the notion that people simply aren’t prepared for democracy is a fundamental rhetorical tool of failing regimes."<br><br>If you want to understand how the world largely works, look at how we talk about the horrors of Palestine, the occupation and destruction, and look at the parallels between that treatment and what we're expected to stomach in our own country. When you wonder why tf Greta Thurnberg has shifted her focus, it's because she understands it's all connected.<br><br>"Many people’s governments are cruel, many people’s governments are indifferent. It’s this relentless parachuting of virtue. It’s these speeches and statements of eloquently stated concern for human rights and freedom and the demand that those who abuse human rights or withhold freedom be held to account. And it’s the way every ideal turns vaporous the moment it threatens to move beyond the confines of the speeches and statements, the moment it threatens even the most frivolous parcel of self-interest."<br><br>Much has been written about this book, and much will continue to be by people much smarter than me, but let me be another person who says, if you haven't already read One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, please do. <br><br>"When the time comes to assign blame, most of those to blame will be long gone. There will always be feigned shock at how bad things really were, how we couldn’t have possibly known. There will be those who say it was all the work of a few bad actors, people who misled the rest of us well-meaning folks. Anything to avoid contending with the possibility that all this killing wasn’t the result of a system abused, but a system functioning exactly as intended."<br><br>So what are you going to do right now? How will you withhold your participation in this system? How will you lessen the damage? Your lawn signs will never be enough.<br><br></div>
Rated The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin 8/10
<div>I had a free month of audiobooks.com, and instead of using my credit on one book, I used it to stream as much as I wanted from their sci-fi audiobook club, which included this collection of Ursula K. Le Guin novellas. I didn't love every story, but the writing is excellent throughout, so I'm glad to have listened. She was such an innovator. We also get to hear what happens when women are finally inching into the world of Earthsea wizardry, which is cool. (I've only read the first Earthsea book, so I'm sure I didn't glean all the references to previous books.)</div><div><br></div>
Rated Strangers on a Train 10/10
This was so great. I almost wanted to start over and immediately read it again. With this being her first novel, there's a paragraph that I think sets the stage for many of her forthcoming books' themes: <br><br><blockquote>He thought of his mother, and felt he could never let her embrace him again. He remembered her telling him that all men were equally good, because all men had souls and the soul was entirely good. Evil, she said, always came from externals. And so he had believed even months after Miriam, when he had wanted to murder her lover Steve. So he had believed even on the train, reading his Plato. In himself, the second horse of the charioteer had always been obedient as the first. But love and hate, he thought now, good and evil, lived side by side in the human heart, and not merely in differing proportions in one man and the next, but all good and all evil. One had merely to look for a little of either to find it all, one had merely to scratch the surface. All things had opposites close by, every decision a reason against it, every animal an animal that destroys it, the male the female, the positive the negative. The splitting of the atom was the only true destruction, the breaking of the universal law of oneness. Nothing could be without its opposite that was bound up with it. Could space exist in a building without objects that stopped it? Could energy exist without matter, or matter without energy? Matter and energy, the inert and the active, once considered opposites, were now known to be one.</blockquote><br><br>That's it. That's her wheelhouse.<br><br>Also, I gotta rewatch this movie. It's been ages since I've seen it.
Rated Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler 10/10
<div>I greatly appreciated this look at Octavia E. Butler's life and career. Because it does dive into plot points and details of so many of her books, it's probably better for someone who is well-acquainted with her work. I have read just about everything of hers that's easily available, but never in a classroom (or even a bookclub) setting, so I enjoyed Susana M. Morris' analysis a lot. She really knows her stuff.<br><br>And I know Butler did not love <em>Survivor</em>, and thus never had it reprinted, but sorry, I hunted it down on Internet Archive anyway. I think it's the only novel of hers I haven't read, so my inner completist is curious about this offshoot of the Patternist series.</div>
Wants to read Before Watchmen: Ozymandias/Crimson Corsair
Rated Homie 10/10
<div>Love, lust, loneliness, and longing. Friendship, family, fear. All the good, hard, exultant stuff is here.</div>
Rated Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction 8/10
<div>Higher rated as a fan of Patricia Highsmith's work, since it's interesting to see some of her thinking that went into different short stories and novels, as well as her thoughts on some of the different adaptations of her work.<br><br>As a craft book, there are some good, useful bits, but also a lot of time spent on publishing norms during the time this was written (or was during the time she was shopping around different work). Some may not find that satisfying, but I enjoyed it for biographical context purposes.</div>
Rated Doctor Who: The Zygon Who Fell to Earth 8/10
The Zygons aren't necessarily my favorite (I get stressed out by the dramatic irony of their body-snatching, but that's me), but this was a good story. The Eighth Doctor is a romantic in many cases, but there are bits (like at the end of this story) that reveal some of his icier, "I know best" traits.
Rated Doctor Who: Inferno 6/10
Enjoyable enough to read with my son, but I think the TV episode version is a bit more brisk and to the point. And oh man does Terrance Dicks love his adverbs. I'm not an adverb hater, but wow... she said astonishedly (ha).
Rated Doctor Who: Excelis Rising 7/10
<div>Very much the middle bit of the Excelis story, but still a good installment. I definitely want to keep going with it, and the Sixth Doctor is always a fun listen.</div>
Rated Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive 7/10
<div>Stein profiles people with rare or disappearing jobs from around the world and uses that as a springboard to talk about the surrounding history of the job and the area, but also talks a little bit about himself. I found the memoir aspects less compelling — I wanted to hear more about these interesting people with interesting jobs. Some profiles succeed more than others, but overall, I liked this. I particularly recommend the chapter on los lectores in Cuba (people who read news and novels to cigar rollers during their shifts), and the chapter on the "romantic" oak tree in Germany that ended up profoundly affecting the postal worker assigned to deliver letters there. Both of these chapters appeared in a previous form on BBC Travel, so I wonder if having extra time to percolate helped. Even if, overall, this wasn't love for me, ymmv.</div>