February Media
According to Goodreads, I read 50 books in February. Also according to Goodreads, I currently stand at 115 books for 2017.
According to my own record keeping, of those 50 books, 28 were books I was reading for the first time, maintaining the slightly-more-than-half ratio from January. Of those 28 first-reads, 6 were comics or graphic novels; 9 were Doctor Who related; 3 were Star Wars related.
Of the 22 rereads, 8 were Animorphs; 7 were The Baby-Sitters Club; 7 were The Saddle Club.
According to my records, I watched 186 episodes of TV in February, which is a respectable drop from January's 254. 99 of those episodes were new to me. There were two new-to-me series, consisting of 20 episodes, a serious drop from January's 104 episodes. A little more than half of my TV consumption was new material, but a small portion of it was completely new.
I watched five new-to-me movies and rewatched five.
According to last.fm's 30-day tracker, I listened to 544 tracks in February, an average of 18 tracks per day. Top artist was, unsurprisingly, The Pogues, with 54 scrobbles. The rest of the top 5: Markéta Irglová (42), The Swell Season (41), Megan Hilty (38), and Flogging Molly (37). A total of 74 artists and 51 albums. (Most played album: the Dear Evan Hansen cast recording, 79 scrobbles; most played track is a 9-way tie between various songs on the same album.)
Away from things that last.fm tracks, I listened to an enormous amount of Hamilton this month due to suddenly acquiring an enormous number of audio recordings. This will continue into next month at minimum.
Individual thoughts:
Books:
I maintain that Animorphs #14: The Unknown is massively underrated. It's fairly light on the body horror/gore/emotional trauma as far as Animorphs books go (there's only like three near-death experiences), but sometimes you need the funny books that are light on the PTSD.
I finished reading my not-very-impressive collection of Star Wars book. Super hit-or-miss. I rated all three of the ones I read in February three stars; The Rise Of The Empire is probably the best of the lot, the Star Wars trilogy (a collection of the original novelizations of the original trilogy) is mostly interesting to see the little things that changed between the novelization being written and the movie being completed (apparently Yoda was originally intended to be blue?), and the World According To Star Wars never does quite enough with its concept.
Having done that I started a read-through of the Doctor Who Target novelizations in broadcast order. Also super hit-or-miss. I am irrationally but deeply annoyed that The Daleks novelization erases the events of An Unearthly Child and completely changes both Barbara and Ian's history and characterization, presumably to explain to people unfamiliar with the earliest era who these people are and why they're traveling with the Doctor. Why not just dedicate a couple paragraphs at the beginning to "Barbara and Ian used to be Susan's teachers and ended up following her on the TARDIS and now travel with the Doctor" instead of this whole convoluted and not quite logical new backstory? I don't know. It also completely screws with Barbara and Ian's relationship in general and thus gets weird about their respective motivations in various scenes and I'm annoyed about it. On the other hand, I really enjoyed the Planet of Giants novelization; I think Terrance Dicks used the space afforded to flesh things out very well and elaborate on a serial that's already full of great character moments.
My unsolicited book rec of the moment is Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood Of 1919 by Stephen Puelo. I probably should do an actual post about this or something since it's likely no one's reading this wall of text navel-gazing I do. But it's a great look at a historical event that has fascinated me since I first heard about it, and I'm glad I picked it up. Highly recommended.
Neil Gaiman's new book, Norse Mythology, came out this month. It's a fun, easy read, retelling a number of Norse myths, as you might be able to guess from the title. "One of the dwarfs walked in front of Thor to get a better view of the prye, and Thor kicked him irritably into the middle of the flames, which made Thor feel slightly better and made all the dwarfs feel much worse."
I also have to say that while I quite enjoyed Jim Butcher's The Aeronaut's Windlass, I spent most of the book going "oh, I know where you got that from". It's SUPER derivative, in other words. A fun read! So derivative.
TV:
I finished watching The Clone Wars! My feelings about it haven't changed significantly since last month, aside from abruptly getting really attached to certain clones. (Don't do that.)
I started watching Orphan Black on Amazon Prime. I'm about halfway through season two now (and Prime only has the first three seasons available for free, which is going to be a problem), and enjoying it a lot. About 80% of what I had osmosed from fandom turned out to be wrong, but I like the show it actually is better than the show I had thought it was going to be. Tatiana Maslany is every bit as spectacular as people said.
I've also started watching Powerless! I don't know how I feel about it yet. I'm still waiting to get seriously attached to a character or two. (It's okay, it's only been four episdes, they've got time.)
After dropping No Tomorrow back in the fall because it conflicted with other shows, I got caught up on it on Netflix, and the number one thing I have to say about it is how astonished and delighted I am that Xavier was 100% correct about the asteroid. I have no idea how they're going to handle season two, but I'm excited to see where they go from here.
Continuing shows:
I don't love everything about where The Magicians is going but I love more of it than I don't. (I JUST WANT JULIA TO BE OKAY.) This Is Us makes me bawl on a weekly basis and I should feel emotionally manipulated but instead I love it. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend took a big risk with the season finale and it didn't entirely work for me but I'm game to see where they go with it. Elementary only aired one episode in February and that seems like it can't possibly be right, but it was an excellent episode and it was written by RHW so I guess I can't complain too loudly. Timeless wrapped up its first season and I'm 98% sure I won't be bothering with season two; it never gelled for me. Oh, and Star Wars Rebels! I don't know what I can say except Rebels is consistently great and I am terrified of how they are going to wrap this series up.
As far as the DC shows go: Supergirl is beginning to annoy me -- the focus on Mon-El, the focus on relationships even when it doesn't make sense for the focus to be there, the sidelining of James (and his excellent friendship with Winn I miss those two sparking off against each other). Maybe it will improve, or maybe this is just what the CW wants, I don't know. Arrow continues to be...Arrow. It's weird, even when stuff is happening in Arrow I feel like nothing is happening. Legends Of Tomorrow is still a lot of fun, at least, even though I miss Rip being part of the team.
Oh, and I rewatched all of the River Song episodes of Doctor Who in order of her internal chronology, which is a really cool experience even though The Impossible Astronaut turns up three separate times. I recommend trying it once if you like River at all.
Movies:
I watched five new-to-me movies this month: Cáca Milis, The Submarine Kid, Iron Man, The Hulk, The Book Of Life. (Yeah, I've seen very few Marvel movies, I don't have an excuse.) The Book Of Life was the best of the lot. The Submarine Kid I really just watched for Emilie de Ravin and I think I would've been disappointed in it if I'd had any other expectations, but no, there was plenty of Emilie, so I was pretty content. Cáca Milis I watched for Gaeilge practice.
I also rewatched some random movies because they were airing on TV and I have literally nothing to say about any of them.
Music:
The Dear Evan Hansen cast recording dropped this month! 10/10 do recommend Disappear makes me cry every time. I know everybody thinks either Waving Through A Window or You Will Be Found is the defining song of this show, but, no, it's Disappear, I will fight you on this. And that's really all I have to say about music in February.
According to my own record keeping, of those 50 books, 28 were books I was reading for the first time, maintaining the slightly-more-than-half ratio from January. Of those 28 first-reads, 6 were comics or graphic novels; 9 were Doctor Who related; 3 were Star Wars related.
Of the 22 rereads, 8 were Animorphs; 7 were The Baby-Sitters Club; 7 were The Saddle Club.
According to my records, I watched 186 episodes of TV in February, which is a respectable drop from January's 254. 99 of those episodes were new to me. There were two new-to-me series, consisting of 20 episodes, a serious drop from January's 104 episodes. A little more than half of my TV consumption was new material, but a small portion of it was completely new.
I watched five new-to-me movies and rewatched five.
According to last.fm's 30-day tracker, I listened to 544 tracks in February, an average of 18 tracks per day. Top artist was, unsurprisingly, The Pogues, with 54 scrobbles. The rest of the top 5: Markéta Irglová (42), The Swell Season (41), Megan Hilty (38), and Flogging Molly (37). A total of 74 artists and 51 albums. (Most played album: the Dear Evan Hansen cast recording, 79 scrobbles; most played track is a 9-way tie between various songs on the same album.)
Away from things that last.fm tracks, I listened to an enormous amount of Hamilton this month due to suddenly acquiring an enormous number of audio recordings. This will continue into next month at minimum.
Individual thoughts:
Books:
I maintain that Animorphs #14: The Unknown is massively underrated. It's fairly light on the body horror/gore/emotional trauma as far as Animorphs books go (there's only like three near-death experiences), but sometimes you need the funny books that are light on the PTSD.
I finished reading my not-very-impressive collection of Star Wars book. Super hit-or-miss. I rated all three of the ones I read in February three stars; The Rise Of The Empire is probably the best of the lot, the Star Wars trilogy (a collection of the original novelizations of the original trilogy) is mostly interesting to see the little things that changed between the novelization being written and the movie being completed (apparently Yoda was originally intended to be blue?), and the World According To Star Wars never does quite enough with its concept.
Having done that I started a read-through of the Doctor Who Target novelizations in broadcast order. Also super hit-or-miss. I am irrationally but deeply annoyed that The Daleks novelization erases the events of An Unearthly Child and completely changes both Barbara and Ian's history and characterization, presumably to explain to people unfamiliar with the earliest era who these people are and why they're traveling with the Doctor. Why not just dedicate a couple paragraphs at the beginning to "Barbara and Ian used to be Susan's teachers and ended up following her on the TARDIS and now travel with the Doctor" instead of this whole convoluted and not quite logical new backstory? I don't know. It also completely screws with Barbara and Ian's relationship in general and thus gets weird about their respective motivations in various scenes and I'm annoyed about it. On the other hand, I really enjoyed the Planet of Giants novelization; I think Terrance Dicks used the space afforded to flesh things out very well and elaborate on a serial that's already full of great character moments.
My unsolicited book rec of the moment is Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood Of 1919 by Stephen Puelo. I probably should do an actual post about this or something since it's likely no one's reading this wall of text navel-gazing I do. But it's a great look at a historical event that has fascinated me since I first heard about it, and I'm glad I picked it up. Highly recommended.
Neil Gaiman's new book, Norse Mythology, came out this month. It's a fun, easy read, retelling a number of Norse myths, as you might be able to guess from the title. "One of the dwarfs walked in front of Thor to get a better view of the prye, and Thor kicked him irritably into the middle of the flames, which made Thor feel slightly better and made all the dwarfs feel much worse."
I also have to say that while I quite enjoyed Jim Butcher's The Aeronaut's Windlass, I spent most of the book going "oh, I know where you got that from". It's SUPER derivative, in other words. A fun read! So derivative.
TV:
I finished watching The Clone Wars! My feelings about it haven't changed significantly since last month, aside from abruptly getting really attached to certain clones. (Don't do that.)
I started watching Orphan Black on Amazon Prime. I'm about halfway through season two now (and Prime only has the first three seasons available for free, which is going to be a problem), and enjoying it a lot. About 80% of what I had osmosed from fandom turned out to be wrong, but I like the show it actually is better than the show I had thought it was going to be. Tatiana Maslany is every bit as spectacular as people said.
I've also started watching Powerless! I don't know how I feel about it yet. I'm still waiting to get seriously attached to a character or two. (It's okay, it's only been four episdes, they've got time.)
After dropping No Tomorrow back in the fall because it conflicted with other shows, I got caught up on it on Netflix, and the number one thing I have to say about it is how astonished and delighted I am that Xavier was 100% correct about the asteroid. I have no idea how they're going to handle season two, but I'm excited to see where they go from here.
Continuing shows:
I don't love everything about where The Magicians is going but I love more of it than I don't. (I JUST WANT JULIA TO BE OKAY.) This Is Us makes me bawl on a weekly basis and I should feel emotionally manipulated but instead I love it. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend took a big risk with the season finale and it didn't entirely work for me but I'm game to see where they go with it. Elementary only aired one episode in February and that seems like it can't possibly be right, but it was an excellent episode and it was written by RHW so I guess I can't complain too loudly. Timeless wrapped up its first season and I'm 98% sure I won't be bothering with season two; it never gelled for me. Oh, and Star Wars Rebels! I don't know what I can say except Rebels is consistently great and I am terrified of how they are going to wrap this series up.
As far as the DC shows go: Supergirl is beginning to annoy me -- the focus on Mon-El, the focus on relationships even when it doesn't make sense for the focus to be there, the sidelining of James (and his excellent friendship with Winn I miss those two sparking off against each other). Maybe it will improve, or maybe this is just what the CW wants, I don't know. Arrow continues to be...Arrow. It's weird, even when stuff is happening in Arrow I feel like nothing is happening. Legends Of Tomorrow is still a lot of fun, at least, even though I miss Rip being part of the team.
Oh, and I rewatched all of the River Song episodes of Doctor Who in order of her internal chronology, which is a really cool experience even though The Impossible Astronaut turns up three separate times. I recommend trying it once if you like River at all.
Movies:
I watched five new-to-me movies this month: Cáca Milis, The Submarine Kid, Iron Man, The Hulk, The Book Of Life. (Yeah, I've seen very few Marvel movies, I don't have an excuse.) The Book Of Life was the best of the lot. The Submarine Kid I really just watched for Emilie de Ravin and I think I would've been disappointed in it if I'd had any other expectations, but no, there was plenty of Emilie, so I was pretty content. Cáca Milis I watched for Gaeilge practice.
I also rewatched some random movies because they were airing on TV and I have literally nothing to say about any of them.
Music:
The Dear Evan Hansen cast recording dropped this month! 10/10 do recommend Disappear makes me cry every time. I know everybody thinks either Waving Through A Window or You Will Be Found is the defining song of this show, but, no, it's Disappear, I will fight you on this. And that's really all I have to say about music in February.