Finished reading What Judgments Come (Star Trek: Vanguard)
book
Rated This Inevitable Ruin 8/10
Edited 32d ago
Rated Doctor Who: Neverland 8/10
Good stuff. Includes Lalla Ward as Romana, ends on a cliffhanger as a lead in to the next story, Zagreus. Definitely liked this one.
Rated Doctor Who: Prisoner of the Sun 6/10
Rated The Race for Paris 8/10
It feels weird to say I think I'd LOVE this as a mini series, but as a book I just really liked it. I like that the three main characters are more or less in a romantic relationship with another, though it all manifests in different ways. Would recommend.
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>