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I had an extremely busy week, so am very late with my reviewes.
( Paradise 1.04 )
( Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 1.09 )
( Paradise 1.04 )
( Star Trek: Starfleet Academy 1.09 )
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Absolutely bloody fabulous!
I have the audiobook and have listened to it many times.
I love the science, I love the characters, I love the problems that the characters have to face and the way these are tackled.
I'm not in the least surprised they're making a movie, and I'm going to see it as soon as it opens.
The plot is ingenious and unlike any other I've encountered. Earth's sun is losing energy - which means everyone on Earth will die as the world gets colder and colder. There is a limited time span in which to try and find out what is causing the problem and what, if anything can be done about it.
Everything goes in a single 'Hail Mary' project - the only thing that might, possibly might, find a solution.
If you haven't already read it, buy it. (Unless you read and hated 'The Martian', but I don't know anyone who did...)
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This book just didn't work for me. I only got part way through before abandoning it.
It's a clever idea, that characters involved on opposing side of a long-running time war start a correspondence, but I found I had little interest in the characters, and little idea of why the time war was being fought.
The descriptive text is very good, but that's not enough to hook me on a book.
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Heroes is well written, as you'd expect from Stephen Fry, and has some gentle touches of humour.
The problem is that after a while the Greek myths all start to feel the same. You don't want to read them all in a short period of time. They're not exactly in depth stories.
This is a book that I think I will dip into now and then, but having got part way through, I've no urge to finish it all in a few sittings.
3/5
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It's so nice to read a book involving narrowboats by someone who actually knows what they are writing about!
I remember once reading a romance involving a narrowboat and spending more time mentally nitpicking than getting involved in the romance...
Beecroft knows how a weed hatch works and what you use it for, and likewise for the rest of the waterways equipment.
Does it also work as a novel? Yes, it's a gentle story, made up of different people whom Emily meets and re-meets along the inland waterways. I particularly enjoyed the group of student with their floating party, who keep needing Emily's help due to their general ineptness with narrowboats.
Emily has her own, health-related problems, but there are also other boaters happy to assist her when her pain flares up too badly.
People help her, and she solves problems for them.
There is also romance, but romance with a very Beecroft twist - which happens to work for me :)
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'Guards Guards' is Pratchett on top form (much though I love his books, some are much better than others...).
It's the first book about Sam Vimes and the Night Watch, and we get to know and love the characters who will make many appearances in later books.
It's got a plot that makes sense, and has some good twists in it.
It's funny, but it also has characters who feel like real people. Sam Vimes the drunk captain of the Watch has pretty much given up on everything, finds there are some things that even he won't give up on.
The various mystical brotherhoods that meet in Ankh Morepork are hilarious.
My favourite character is Lady Sybil Ramkin, breeder of swamp dragons. The kind of person whose family goes back so far that she is perfectly comfortable spending all her days dressed in old clothes and mucking out dragon pens, and feels no need to attend balls and the like.
This is the story where the Librarian (an orangutan, for those who don't already know) gets enlisted into the Guard, and we discover the mysteries of L-space...
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I've had a nice quiet week and a nice quiet weekend and I still don't want to go to work tomorrow. Alas. However, I have caught up with the ironing (my nemesis) and changed the bed and washed the bedding and done as much other laundry as I could fit onto the racks, done some start-of-month admin chores, visited my mother with flowers for her birthday tomorrow (the family celebration is going to be a joint birthday / Mothers' Day affair next weekend, but I felt I ought to!), and eaten some good garlic bread, so it's going OK. Also, my new clothes all fit, and I have thrown out various ratty items which are now replaced, which is nice! And I'm wearing the new hoodie, which is very cosy.
I had a very strange dog encounter this week. I was coming back from my asthma check-up when I noticed that someone was walking a dog on the other side of the road that was staring at me super-intensely. There were parked cars on that side, and every time it got to the gap between two cars it would turn and STARE. Then I crossed over, and it turned around to stare at me some more. The walker was trying to pull it along, so it started turning around and then lying down so it could keep staring at me. Eventually I passed them, and it just lay there and STARED as I went past. They overtook me again going up to the footbridge, but I could hear him saying "stop turning around!" to the dog after they got out of sight, and when I came down the other side it spotted me and turned around and lay down to stare again. It was honestly hilarious - it wasn't barking or anything like that, so I didn't feel intimidated; I couldn't tell how it felt about me, but it was fixated. Genuinely no idea what was going on in that dog's brain.
Our retired conductor S was back for the rehearsal last week, and it was nice to see him, but also really weird after spending the last couple of months auditioning new people! I felt much more aware than usual of his habits and quirks, instead of them just being the baseline that everyone else is compared to. It's going to be a relatively informal concert, with some fun tunes (I'm a sucker for Rutter's The Lord Bless You And Keep You and I don't mind admitting it). But this week we're starting the Brahms German Requiem, which is epic but awesome, so I'm looking forward to that.
I had a very strange dog encounter this week. I was coming back from my asthma check-up when I noticed that someone was walking a dog on the other side of the road that was staring at me super-intensely. There were parked cars on that side, and every time it got to the gap between two cars it would turn and STARE. Then I crossed over, and it turned around to stare at me some more. The walker was trying to pull it along, so it started turning around and then lying down so it could keep staring at me. Eventually I passed them, and it just lay there and STARED as I went past. They overtook me again going up to the footbridge, but I could hear him saying "stop turning around!" to the dog after they got out of sight, and when I came down the other side it spotted me and turned around and lay down to stare again. It was honestly hilarious - it wasn't barking or anything like that, so I didn't feel intimidated; I couldn't tell how it felt about me, but it was fixated. Genuinely no idea what was going on in that dog's brain.
Our retired conductor S was back for the rehearsal last week, and it was nice to see him, but also really weird after spending the last couple of months auditioning new people! I felt much more aware than usual of his habits and quirks, instead of them just being the baseline that everyone else is compared to. It's going to be a relatively informal concert, with some fun tunes (I'm a sucker for Rutter's The Lord Bless You And Keep You and I don't mind admitting it). But this week we're starting the Brahms German Requiem, which is epic but awesome, so I'm looking forward to that.
In which we find out the writers of this show must really like both Thornton Wilder and the last two seasons of Angel: The Series while having issues with one particular Voyager episode, or rather its aftermath. Also, at last, at last, SOMEONE is back an my screen!
( Spoilers take back a key nitpick from last week and are an Angel fan anyway )
( Spoilers take back a key nitpick from last week and are an Angel fan anyway )
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Last year I marathoned the very well made series “Paradise” (Hulu in the US, Disney + for the rest of us), but was quite torn about whether or not I was happy regarding the announcement of a second season due to the show’s success. It seemed to me the first season told a mostly self contained story and the premise would lose its key ingredient in a second season. Also, there had been a couple of shows which were terrible when more than one season was greenlighted because they clearly hadn’t planned for it. Otoh: nitpicks aside, I did love Lost, which made a pretty radical premise change and pulled it off. And the first season of Paradise had been pretty perfect for what it was. So I watched. And based on the first three episodes now released (and there is a reason why the first three came together, more beneath the spoiler cut), I am happy to report that it looks like I was wrong in my fears. Those three eps are excellent.
( Spoilers are now all pumped up and ready… )
( Spoilers are now all pumped up and ready… )
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