50/50 Challenge
I decided to hop on the proverbial bandwagon. I don't think either goal will be too much of a stretch, but it seems interesting just to keep track for a while. So, here's the list for January.
Books:
The Ghost Map, by I forgot to check the author while I had it in hand. A scientific investigation piece that reads like a crime thriller. Good stuff.
Reamde Neal Stephenson - Stephenson tends to balance back and forth between nerdy/cerebral and action/adventure focuses, usually both in the same book, but in this case it's almost entirely action/adventure, which is probably fair because _Anathem_ was so extremely cerebral I found it to be a challenge, and those are the ones I usually love best. I enjoyed it, even when I wanted to pelt the author with tampons for one truly epic piece of logic fail when writing the female POV. This was 1000+ pages, so if I come up short at the end I could theoretically count it as 2 books.
Currently, I'm working my way through Shadow Unit, which is essentially a series of novellas, and I'm sure it's several books by wordcount. So far I'm mid Season 2.
Movies:
Monster's Ball It was not what I expected, but I can see why it won the awards it did.
Hugo was delightful and was, as advertised, a very lovely use of 3D. It's not about what the trailers make it look like, and a number of the characters are notable historic people. I want to hunt down the book it's based on somtime.
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, which we saw at the Guthrie. We liked the production, but had some quibbles - the stage was too large for a play set in a single room and we were baffled by the sound designer and some of the later blocking choices.
George Carlin's concert show "It's Bad For Ya" was generally okay, but a lot of it didn't really click for me.
Elizabeth, the latest Netflix arrival is David Starkey's documentary, which is four hour-ish long episodes, so I figure it counts. I thought it was interesting, and it pointed out how very scrambled the timeline is in the Cate Blanchette movies.
Books:
The Ghost Map, by I forgot to check the author while I had it in hand. A scientific investigation piece that reads like a crime thriller. Good stuff.
Reamde Neal Stephenson - Stephenson tends to balance back and forth between nerdy/cerebral and action/adventure focuses, usually both in the same book, but in this case it's almost entirely action/adventure, which is probably fair because _Anathem_ was so extremely cerebral I found it to be a challenge, and those are the ones I usually love best. I enjoyed it, even when I wanted to pelt the author with tampons for one truly epic piece of logic fail when writing the female POV. This was 1000+ pages, so if I come up short at the end I could theoretically count it as 2 books.
Currently, I'm working my way through Shadow Unit, which is essentially a series of novellas, and I'm sure it's several books by wordcount. So far I'm mid Season 2.
Movies:
Monster's Ball It was not what I expected, but I can see why it won the awards it did.
Hugo was delightful and was, as advertised, a very lovely use of 3D. It's not about what the trailers make it look like, and a number of the characters are notable historic people. I want to hunt down the book it's based on somtime.
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, which we saw at the Guthrie. We liked the production, but had some quibbles - the stage was too large for a play set in a single room and we were baffled by the sound designer and some of the later blocking choices.
George Carlin's concert show "It's Bad For Ya" was generally okay, but a lot of it didn't really click for me.
Elizabeth, the latest Netflix arrival is David Starkey's documentary, which is four hour-ish long episodes, so I figure it counts. I thought it was interesting, and it pointed out how very scrambled the timeline is in the Cate Blanchette movies.