They say it takes 30 days to form a habit...
... so, like some other people on my flist, I'm going to try to get back into the habit of posting more regularly with the 30 days of TV meme.
Day 01 - A show that should never have been canceled
It's hard to settle on just one show. Firefly had a lot of potential, though I think its incoherent worldbuilding would have manifested in more and more problems as time went on. Farscape had so much more story to tell, but it's hard not to be grateful that we got some closure with the miniseries. The Sarah Connor Chronicles was definitely killed in its prime, but it did get two seasons, and the finale--which was meant to be a season finale instead of a series finale--still managed to end with just the right notes. I am super-sad about the cancellation of Legend of the Seeker, but it was a weird one, both in terms of fannish niche and media marketplace niche. I definitely could have watched Ben Browder and Claudia Black on SG-1 for a few more seasons, but I can't argue that a show that ran for 10 seasons deserves more. Angel's last season was deeply uneven; it had a good run and a great (at least to me!) finale. That apparently counts for a lot with me; I seem to be scoring for both potential and the cut-short-before-its-time issue, and for that, I have to echo thomasina75 and award the crown to Wonderfalls. I think it was much less oddball and much more relatable than Pushing Daisies--a show I also loved a lot, and that managed to pull out two abbreviated seasons with a little more support from ABC. But FOX (say it with me now!) aired Wonderfalls out of order in the Friday night death slot, then unceremoniously dumped it after, what was it, three episodes? SO UNFAIR.
That show had everything! Awesome female friendships, a wonderfully strange and loving and fractious family, gift shop kitsch, romance, talking animals, and Gretchen Speck. Plus, I loooooved the theme song, and that almost never happens. Again, SO UNFAIR.
* * * * *
And while I'm at it, it's time to start catching up on a year-long backlog of my reading. Book report -> around August 2009. I'm doing these for my own benefit, because I have a terrible memory, but maybe it's time to consider just making a list.
The Prestige by Christopher Priest--The Prestige is the story of two rival magicians in Victorian England, and the secret one of them used in his act, and the legacy that both the bitter rivalry and the secret left to their descendants. Most of the story is told in the form of journal or memoir entries, and Priest uses a clever combination of unreliable narration and careful attention to viewpoint to lay out the pieces. Part of the fun of the narrative comes from that unreliability--the way the characters twist events to justify themselves or present their actions in the best light; part of it comes from the assumptions they make, based on the information they have at the moment--how understandable those assumptions are, and how wrong they often turn out to be. That the rivalry begins with misunderstanding, and escalates into a thing that has its own life, and wreaks terrible destruction on all involved, is one of the creeping horrors that thread through the story; the biggest horror, though, is the prestige itself. The Prestige is a fast and entertaining read, especially if you like unreliable narrators.
Cyteen by CJ Cherryh--Cyteen feels like a wonderful literary science experiment, one where Cherryh sets up variables--nature and nurture, people who are genetically identical but were nurtured differently, people who are genetically identical and were nurtured in (almost) the same way, and people who are genetically engineered and programmed--and then puts them together. The results are complicated, and sometimes unexpected, and sometimes wrenching. I thought Downbelow Station was fairly dry and intellectual, but in Cyteen, the murder mystery and political intrigue that form the plot drive the characters' emotional lives, and there's a wonderful dissonance between the characters' assumptions about their brave new world and what the reader understands it has done to them. This is what science fiction is all about.
Poor People by William T. Vollmann--Vollman makes no pretenses about exploring poverty in a methodical way; instead, he uses the stories of the poor people he encounters as a springboard for meditating on the nature of poverty, and concludes convincingly that it is not described adequately as a lack of material wealth, but as a combination of physical poverty, despair, and accident proneness.
Wit's End by Karen Joy Fowler--Fowler's prose is a joy to read, and the novel delves deeper into the theme she's explored with her last few novels, starting with The Jane Austen Book Club: the dynamic, two-way relationship between text and reader. In Wit's End, she explicitly explores the relationship between an author and online fandom in a way deals with both the problems and advantages of that relationship, as well as its inevitability in modern publishing, and she does so with a wry understanding of fandom in all of its weird and wacky glory.
The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon--I am not sure I can textually render my love for this novel. It was a bit of a gamble for me, since I have been unable to get further than 30 pages into Kavalier and Klay in several attempts, but there is something insanely wonderful about the meshing of noir detective story, bare Alaskan wilderness, and alternate history of a long exile of the Jewish diaspora after World War II. It is a story of trying to ameliorate loneliness, since eliminating it is impossible; and Meyer Landsman is a fantastic noir hero.
Rashomon Gate by Ingrid Parker--I was really excited to discover that someone had written a series of mysteries set in Heian Japan. Unfortunately, since I know something about Heian Japan, I only lasted about 30 pages into this wretched work. It's a modern mystery full of modern sensibilities, pasted onto a very different setting with very different sensibilities, and while the author obviously did a lot of superficial research, she didn't make any effort to make those sensibilities a part of the story. I think I lost it completely when the protagonist met up with the aristocratic young woman whose father he is friends with (out in the garden! In the open!! With nary a screen in sight!!!) and admired her slim figure and practical, waist-length hair (!!!!!!!!!!!!). Why not just go out of your way to describe her bright white teeth while you're at it?!? Christ.
Forty Thousand in Gehenna by CJ Cherryh--I often have a difficult time establishing an emotional connection to characters in books that span generations; but in this intensely cerebral study of the interaction between a carefully selected genetic mix of abandoned colonists who have been trained to identify with a planet, and the planet's unique ecosystem, it was the generational process of the melding of the two that carried the emotional resonance, rather than any one person. Cherryh sets up two oppositional forms of melding and pits them against each other; the female-dominated Cloud Towers civilization, which exists in harmony with the landscape, is clearly more sympathetic than the domineering, male-dominated Styx civilization; but both are outgrowths of that interaction, different systems of coping, and I like the way Cherryh explores all of the implications of both systems.
Blood and Politics by Leonard Ziskind--Although Ziskind's prose is never more than serviceable, and occasionally clunky, he has spent years researching the intersection of far-right political, militia, and white supremacist movements in America, and lays out their origins, philosophies, and the publications they have used to inject their ideas into the broader political conversation. What's particularly striking is the way the ideas espoused by these movements, which churned in the background in the Clinton years, have really moved into the mainstream since Obama's nomination in the Democratic party; I consider this book a must-read for anyone who wonders what the hell has happened to this country's political discourse in the past couple of years.
* * * * *
I am really excited about some of Dreamwidth's latest features, like the expanding cut tags and the crosspost URLs. LJ, on the other hand, has given us a reposting button? Um, yay?
* * * * *
And finally, via 50mm, best World Cup schedule ever.
This entry was originally posted at http://danceswithwords.dreamwidth.org/147501.html (
comments). Comment at either site.
Day 01 - A show that should never have been canceled
It's hard to settle on just one show. Firefly had a lot of potential, though I think its incoherent worldbuilding would have manifested in more and more problems as time went on. Farscape had so much more story to tell, but it's hard not to be grateful that we got some closure with the miniseries. The Sarah Connor Chronicles was definitely killed in its prime, but it did get two seasons, and the finale--which was meant to be a season finale instead of a series finale--still managed to end with just the right notes. I am super-sad about the cancellation of Legend of the Seeker, but it was a weird one, both in terms of fannish niche and media marketplace niche. I definitely could have watched Ben Browder and Claudia Black on SG-1 for a few more seasons, but I can't argue that a show that ran for 10 seasons deserves more. Angel's last season was deeply uneven; it had a good run and a great (at least to me!) finale. That apparently counts for a lot with me; I seem to be scoring for both potential and the cut-short-before-its-time issue, and for that, I have to echo thomasina75 and award the crown to Wonderfalls. I think it was much less oddball and much more relatable than Pushing Daisies--a show I also loved a lot, and that managed to pull out two abbreviated seasons with a little more support from ABC. But FOX (say it with me now!) aired Wonderfalls out of order in the Friday night death slot, then unceremoniously dumped it after, what was it, three episodes? SO UNFAIR.
That show had everything! Awesome female friendships, a wonderfully strange and loving and fractious family, gift shop kitsch, romance, talking animals, and Gretchen Speck. Plus, I loooooved the theme song, and that almost never happens. Again, SO UNFAIR.
* * * * *
And while I'm at it, it's time to start catching up on a year-long backlog of my reading. Book report -> around August 2009. I'm doing these for my own benefit, because I have a terrible memory, but maybe it's time to consider just making a list.
The Prestige by Christopher Priest--The Prestige is the story of two rival magicians in Victorian England, and the secret one of them used in his act, and the legacy that both the bitter rivalry and the secret left to their descendants. Most of the story is told in the form of journal or memoir entries, and Priest uses a clever combination of unreliable narration and careful attention to viewpoint to lay out the pieces. Part of the fun of the narrative comes from that unreliability--the way the characters twist events to justify themselves or present their actions in the best light; part of it comes from the assumptions they make, based on the information they have at the moment--how understandable those assumptions are, and how wrong they often turn out to be. That the rivalry begins with misunderstanding, and escalates into a thing that has its own life, and wreaks terrible destruction on all involved, is one of the creeping horrors that thread through the story; the biggest horror, though, is the prestige itself. The Prestige is a fast and entertaining read, especially if you like unreliable narrators.
Cyteen by CJ Cherryh--Cyteen feels like a wonderful literary science experiment, one where Cherryh sets up variables--nature and nurture, people who are genetically identical but were nurtured differently, people who are genetically identical and were nurtured in (almost) the same way, and people who are genetically engineered and programmed--and then puts them together. The results are complicated, and sometimes unexpected, and sometimes wrenching. I thought Downbelow Station was fairly dry and intellectual, but in Cyteen, the murder mystery and political intrigue that form the plot drive the characters' emotional lives, and there's a wonderful dissonance between the characters' assumptions about their brave new world and what the reader understands it has done to them. This is what science fiction is all about.
Poor People by William T. Vollmann--Vollman makes no pretenses about exploring poverty in a methodical way; instead, he uses the stories of the poor people he encounters as a springboard for meditating on the nature of poverty, and concludes convincingly that it is not described adequately as a lack of material wealth, but as a combination of physical poverty, despair, and accident proneness.
Wit's End by Karen Joy Fowler--Fowler's prose is a joy to read, and the novel delves deeper into the theme she's explored with her last few novels, starting with The Jane Austen Book Club: the dynamic, two-way relationship between text and reader. In Wit's End, she explicitly explores the relationship between an author and online fandom in a way deals with both the problems and advantages of that relationship, as well as its inevitability in modern publishing, and she does so with a wry understanding of fandom in all of its weird and wacky glory.
The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon--I am not sure I can textually render my love for this novel. It was a bit of a gamble for me, since I have been unable to get further than 30 pages into Kavalier and Klay in several attempts, but there is something insanely wonderful about the meshing of noir detective story, bare Alaskan wilderness, and alternate history of a long exile of the Jewish diaspora after World War II. It is a story of trying to ameliorate loneliness, since eliminating it is impossible; and Meyer Landsman is a fantastic noir hero.
Rashomon Gate by Ingrid Parker--I was really excited to discover that someone had written a series of mysteries set in Heian Japan. Unfortunately, since I know something about Heian Japan, I only lasted about 30 pages into this wretched work. It's a modern mystery full of modern sensibilities, pasted onto a very different setting with very different sensibilities, and while the author obviously did a lot of superficial research, she didn't make any effort to make those sensibilities a part of the story. I think I lost it completely when the protagonist met up with the aristocratic young woman whose father he is friends with (out in the garden! In the open!! With nary a screen in sight!!!) and admired her slim figure and practical, waist-length hair (!!!!!!!!!!!!). Why not just go out of your way to describe her bright white teeth while you're at it?!? Christ.
Forty Thousand in Gehenna by CJ Cherryh--I often have a difficult time establishing an emotional connection to characters in books that span generations; but in this intensely cerebral study of the interaction between a carefully selected genetic mix of abandoned colonists who have been trained to identify with a planet, and the planet's unique ecosystem, it was the generational process of the melding of the two that carried the emotional resonance, rather than any one person. Cherryh sets up two oppositional forms of melding and pits them against each other; the female-dominated Cloud Towers civilization, which exists in harmony with the landscape, is clearly more sympathetic than the domineering, male-dominated Styx civilization; but both are outgrowths of that interaction, different systems of coping, and I like the way Cherryh explores all of the implications of both systems.
Blood and Politics by Leonard Ziskind--Although Ziskind's prose is never more than serviceable, and occasionally clunky, he has spent years researching the intersection of far-right political, militia, and white supremacist movements in America, and lays out their origins, philosophies, and the publications they have used to inject their ideas into the broader political conversation. What's particularly striking is the way the ideas espoused by these movements, which churned in the background in the Clinton years, have really moved into the mainstream since Obama's nomination in the Democratic party; I consider this book a must-read for anyone who wonders what the hell has happened to this country's political discourse in the past couple of years.
* * * * *
I am really excited about some of Dreamwidth's latest features, like the expanding cut tags and the crosspost URLs. LJ, on the other hand, has given us a reposting button? Um, yay?
* * * * *
And finally, via 50mm, best World Cup schedule ever.
This entry was originally posted at http://danceswithwords.dreamwidth.org/147501.html (
comments). Comment at either site.