Consider Phlebas, Banks. Yes. What most struck me about this one after having very recently read a much later installment in the Culture series is how much more complex Banks’s narrative style apparently became as the series went on.
Surface Detail, Banks. Yes. I appear to have developed enough time to do more reading, though that time has not been accompanied by enough executive function to look for new things to read, so I landed on the Banks Culture novels, and this one was immediately available. To mix things up a bit, though, I’m […]
The City We Became, Jemisin. Yes. One of my favorite things about the OverDrive ebook reading application is that it remembers where I was when the book expired, say, a year and a half ago, and puts me back there when I check it out again. I can’t think of a better writer out there […]
Galactica 1980, Awful. Unlike its predecessor, much of whose charm (it turns out) lay in playing it completely straight, this hot mess wanted to be cute, with the goofy music stings (à la the worst of Star Trek) and the fish-out-of-water hijinks. At least it’s only ten episodes, but it’s going to be quite a […]
Battlestar Galactica, Okay. I picked this up in preparation for taking another run at the 2003 series. I don’t know if I didn’t see very much of it or just didn’t remember most of it, but the result is the same: it was almost entirely new. While it was bad, it was not unwatchable; the […]
While the tuner in my new(er) TV is way better than the tuner in the set-top box I was using for OTA back when my 270lb. TV didn’t have a digital tuner, it is apparently not quite as good as the tuner in the OTA-to-streaming appliance I have (so I can watch my local TV […]
This could likely be made brief enough for Twitter, but it’s a little off-brand for there, so it’s here. With all the sports on hold, many teams are re-running their “greatest hits”; I can imagine a number of reasons for this: stations need to do something with the already-scheduled time slots (hoo, boy, the Olympic-sized […]
The Collapsing Empire, Scalzi. Yes. Perhaps because it was written before November of 2016, but at least as likely because Scalzi is Scalzi, this book has a pleasing amount of fun in it. The introduction of the chief of staff character, in particular, is an early positive delight. Mechanically/editorially fine, though there are roughly as […]
Look Both Ways. Good. I was pleased to learn from watching this movie that I can still enjoy something with relatively sedate pacing. I chose this due to a recommendation in a Maltin on Movies episode. I didn’t note anything about the recommendation other than that the film was one of Maltin’s 151 Best Movies […]
I feel so whorish saying it, but I’ve really had some excellent customer service from American Express. Second-most recently was something of an exception, as they apparently didn’t think that I’d be buying a new iPhone 5 minutes after they first became available, but that was easily rectified. Most recently, they sent me email about […]