Below are posts associated with the “media” type.
📺 tvblog: Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 3 (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
This felt more consistent than the second season. The in-jokes and continuity nods continued to be great, especially the Deep Space Nine episode and its riffs on that series’s opening credits. I love so much that this is a Star Trek show about loving Star Trek (even its dumb bits).
🍿 movieblog: When the Wind Blows (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
I still want to read the original comic that this and the radio adaptation were based on, but the Internet Archive copy is hard to read, and I had some work to do this afternoon that made it easy to put this on in the background. I liked this a lot (well, “liked” as much as one can appreciate a black comedy horror story about nuclear war. Some of the experimental animation choices and blending of animated and film footage seemed odd, and I’m torn between appreciating them and finding them distracting.
📚 bookblog: Queen & Country, Definitive Edition Volume 02 (❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️)
As I wrote in my last review of this volume, this really steps things up. It better captures the ugliness and senseless brutality that The Sandbaggers also did—it also liberally cribs from Sandbaggers plot points, but I see it more as loving homage than plagiarism. I still don’t think it’s as good as The Sandbaggers, and the changing art style sometimes bugs me, but I think this might be the peak of the series.
🎙️ radioblog: Wyrd Sisters (❤️❤️🖤🖤🖤)
I don’t know if I didn’t like the adaptation or if I wouldn’t have liked the source material, but this just felt like a slog to get through, and I didn’t really enjoy it.
🎙️ radioblog: When the Wind Blows (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
There’s something especially dark about the voice actor who played Wallace (of Wallace and Gromit) starring as a naïve Englishman in this story about the horrors of nuclear war. I’ve wanted to read the book this is based on for quite some time—and may yet read it now that I’ve found a copy on the Internet Archive—but I got to the radio adaptation first. The couple at the heart of the story are so naïve as to make the story heavy-handed, but it’s also a good literary device for just how helpless one is in the face of nuclear weapons.
🎙️ radioblog: Mort (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
This bounced off of me at first, which surprised me, because I remembered liking it when listening to it years ago. I think it might have been a case of the Mondays, though, because by the last episode, I was totally on board. It’s funny, adapted well to radio, and worth the listen.
📚 bookblog: Picks & Shovels (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
I was intrigued when I heard that Mormonism would feature prominently in the third (but first?) Martin Hench book. Mormonism is hard to get right in fiction, and I wondered how Doctorow would do. The answer: Some things were off, but overall, he got things right. It nagged at me some, but overall, I appreciated his take. That’s not the most important part of my review, but it’s representative of everything I want to say about this book.
📚 bookblog: Queen & Country, Definitive Edition Volume 01 (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
I’ve been revisiting a lot of my comics collection in recent months, and after finally finishing XIII, I thought I’d revisit this series. In fact, I’ve been wanting to reread Queen & Country basically since I first read it. This first volume in particular has seen a lot of revisiting, especially the early pages. That made it hard to appreciate the volume this time around, and it was harder to get through.
📚 bookblog: Trois montres d'argent (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
Alors, quelques mois plus tard, j’ai enfin fini de relire les albums XIII dans ma petite collection. J’avais l’intention depuis plusieurs années de grandir cette collection, mais après cette relecture, je ne suis plus sûr. J’aime bien l’art, les histoires sont parfois intéressantes, mais il y a bien trop de choses stupides qui se déroulent dans ces pages. Cet album-ci montre bien une chose : Vance et Van Hamme sont attirés par les États-Unis (par le bien et le mal américains), et ils essaient d’incorporer tous les genres possibles de la fiction américaine dans leurs histoires : les espions, les militaires, les immigrés, les cowboys, les complotistes… tout ce qu’on pourrait imaginer dans un film hollywoodien doit aussi être intégré chez XIII.
📚 bookblog: El Cascador (❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤)
Bon, ce n’est pas que j’avais fort envie de reprendre cette série, mais il n’y avait que deux tomes qui restent dans ma collection, et j’ai d’autres choses à relire après avoir terminé cette relecture. Il y a dans ce tome tout ce qui m’attire et tout ce qui m’agace de la série XIII. J’ai pas trop envie de tout répéter. Il suffit de dire que c’est intéressant comme histoire d’aventure tant qu’on arrive à oublier toutes les bêtises y présentes.
📺 tvblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Star Trek: Lower Decks (Season 2)
The finale was a perfect summary of everything I love about this show, but I had some trouble getting into the earlier episodes.
📚 bookblog: Chroniques birmanes (❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤)
J’aime bien les « Chroniques » de Guy Delisle, et j’étais content de pouvoir acheter cet album-ci. Pourtant, je l’ai trouvé moins intéressant que les autres que j’ai lus. C’est peut-être que le Myanmar a beaucoup changé depuis—même si je suis loin d’être expert sur le pays, ça fait bizarre d’entendre parler d’Aung San Suu Kyi avant sa libération, et avant le commencement de la tragédie des Rohingya. En tout cas, je continue à aimer le style de Delisle (en écriture et en dessin), et ça fait que je pardonne beaucoup même si je m’ennuyais plus que prévu.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for The Yiddish Policemen's Union
I’ve read this before, so I knew that I would enjoy it this time, but I had forgotten just how good it is. The premise is bonkers: It’s a noir story featuring a detective from an alternate history where the U.S. made part of Alaska available to Jewish refugees in the 1930s. The story picks up in the mid-2000s, when a strange murder unfolds in the months before the “Federal District of Sitka” is returned to Alaska.
🍿 movieblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for The Princess Bride
It was really fun to introduce this to kiddo this weekend by watching it as a family. I don’t think this movie will ever be as good as it was when I was a teenager, before I could see the seams and tiny faults with it, but it will always be beloved in my family—and now including kiddo.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy, by David Graeber
When I was in grad school, I was pretty centrist: more liberal than most of the students from BYU (where I’d just finished my bachelor’s) but more conservative than most of the students at MSU. I had an odd experience one day when a fellow student far, FAR to the left from where I was teasingly chided me for a Facebook post I’d made defending Common Core from one of my BYU friends who was convinced it was a communist plot.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Joseph Smith and the Mormons, by Noah Van Scriver
This is an excellent graphic novel adaptation of the earliest of Mormon history. The art is good, the story is compelling, and I enjoyed reading it. I came close to buying this twice in the past year after finding it in comics shops, and I was delighted to find that my local library had a couple of copies. I do wish that I either knew a lot more history or a lot less history going into this.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, The People, The Bible, by Mitri Raheb
This book has been on my radar for a few months, and I’m glad to have found an audiobook I could check out (though I doubt I’d have regretted an impulse buy—this would be a good book to have on hand). Palestinian Christian ministers and theologians always call me to account in a way that I appreciate. I don’t think I should need someone from my own faith tradition (broadly speaking) to tell me how bad the situation in Palestine is (i.
📺 tvblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Silo (Season 2)
I really liked this season. Each of the actors feels perfect for their role, the writers had some good fun with us through twists and turns (I’m sure some of it was original to the source material), and I’m looking forward to the next season.
📺 tvblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Star Trek: Lower Decks (Season 1)
This is such a fun show. I am not as well-versed in Star Trek as I’d like, so I’m sure I’m missing some of the jokes, but there are still so, so many of them. It’s bizarre, it’s a loving homage, and it’s really good.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Debt: The First 5,000 Years, by David Graeber
Like everything I’ve read from Graeber, I appreciate the overall argument that he’s making and I find the evidence he marshalls compelling. At the same time, there’s a density to the latter that I admit having trouble following, so I don’t always see how it leads to the overall argument. Even with those caveats, I’m happy to endorse this read. I’m interested in how Graeber explores the relationship between moral thinking and economic modeling—as I posted earlier, I also find his thoughts on the moral dangers posed by abstracting interpersonal obligations into quantifiable debt with the help of money.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (Volume 1), by Kanehito Yamada and Tsukasa Abe
John Siracusa recommended the anime adaptation of this on the year-end episode of The Incomparable, and the premise sounded interesting enough to try getting into manga again. I love stories that explore the mundanity of fantastic worlds—there are lots of things I don’t like about the Star Wars prequels, but Jedi Knights resolving trade disputes is great—and this story delivers on that. It picks up after a D&D-style adventure party has completed their quest and asks what happens next.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for The Bezzle (A Martin Hench Novel), by Cory Doctorow
Despite meaning to reread this ever since I first read it, this is my first reread. While it’s very clearly related to Red Team Blues, it’s remarkable how different this book is. Rather than a tight thriller, this feels more like a meandering story that has a clear throughline but skips from event to event as more than a decade goes by. There’s a fun framing device that makes this work, though.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Red Team Blues (A Martin Hench Novel), by Cory Doctorow
So, I actually finished this last week and am behind on bookblogging. It’s the third time I’ve read this book (twice on audio), but with the final book in the trilogy coming out next month, it was time to revisit the earlier ones. This book is fun in an action movie sense while also being a searing critique of wealth and of our society’s seeming inability to take care of the poor.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 pour XIII Tome 9 : Pour Maria, par Vance et Van Hamme
C’est méchant de dire que cet album m’a été utile pour combattre l’insomnie hier soir ? Bon, c’est exaggérer un peu (n’importe quel livre aurait suffi), mais mes sentiments complexes envers cette série continuent. C’est assez intéressant de revisiter l’Amérique latine, et il aurait servi comme occasion de critiquer le militarisme américain, mais pourquoi donc éléver un Irlando-Américain comme « sauveur blanc » pour ces rebelles ? Je continue à lire, mais je continue à me demander si j’aurais du me mettre à collectionner une autre série de bd.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 pour XIII Tome 8 : Treize contre un, par Vance et Van Hamme
Je reprends donc cette série en lisant les albums que j’ai en format physique. C’est comme avant : J’aime l’art, et il y a des éléments de l’histoire qui m’intriguent, mais ce n’est rien de spécial.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Karla's Choice: A John Le Carré Novel, by Nick Harkaway
The book feels like fanservice, but not all fanservice is bad! Dan Moren recommended this at the tail end of a recent episode of The Incomparable, and I was surprised that I hadn’t heard that a new George Smiley story was coming out. In conversation with my partner later, she mentioned that she’d told me when she saw it in the news and that I’d brushed it off. That tracks: I had some trepidation about someone else writing in Le Carré’s world, but it’s quite well done.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Saga (Volume 11), by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan
I think I’m all caught up on TPBs now. It looks like a new one ought to be coming soon, but I might start reading issue to issue, because it’s just that good.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Saga (Volume 10), by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan
Strong return to the series after the major twists in Volume 9. It does a good job of continuing the themes of the series while still shaking things up—and continuing to deliver major changes.
🍿 movieblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Vengeance Most Fowl
I don’t think anything beats The Wrong Trousers in the Wallace and Gromit canon, but this could have been much worse as a follow-up to that classic. It’s silly (mostly in good ways), subtly but wonderfully British, and kept kiddo laughing. It’s the best Wallace and Gromit I’ve seen for a while, even if it isn’t as good as the classic stuff.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Saga (Volume 9), by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan
Comics do a lot of dumb things to keep readers hooked, shake up the story, etc. When Saga does them, they work. I knew the twists in this episode were coming, but wow did they still land.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Saga (Volume 8), by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan
I say this about a lot of Saga, but this volume in particular shouldn’t be as good as it is. And yet…
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Saga (Volume 7), by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan
Sometimes depressing art is the best art, and I felt that way about this volume. Saga is violent sometimes, but it never glorifies that violence, and that’s one of its strengths.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Saga (Volume 6), by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan
Like with my first readthrough, I’m noticing that every volume is good, but some volumes are just a cut above. This is one of them. What a series.
📺 tvblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Interior Chinatown
This was a fun show: trippy, clever, and metafictional. It departs from its source material in plot but not in spirit, which I think is a sign of a strong adaptation. It could have been tighter, and some episodes felt like they were stringing the show along, but overall, I think it was well done.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Saga (Volume 5), by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan
Still weird, still grosser than it needs to be sometimes, but still surprisingly good.
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Saga (Volume 4), by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
I suggested this in an earlier review, but there’s a lot in this series I don’t normally tolerate (gore, “will this marriage break up?” plots) but that still somehow works here. I also appreciate how the series pulls off cliffhangers that I actually care about rather than just feeling like they’re obvious.