I actually finished one book and read two others this week, which surprises me now that I look back at it. I was running a bit behind my goal of a book a week, so I put my nose to the grindstone to get ahead again. (My experience with goals is that it’s always more fun when I feel on top of things, as opposed to when I’m running behind.)
First off, I finished book 8 of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, A Parade of Horribles. I enjoyed it, but I also felt like my reread of the series was a bit too soon, to tell the truth. I enjoy chocolate cake, as well, but if I ate it every day for a month, I don’t know that I’d still enjoy it as much, if that makes sense. At the moment, I’d say it’s a series that’s excellent to begin with, but then starts to balloon as the series goes on. I still really like it, but there are so many characters and side quests in the air that it becomes increasingly difficult to remember who’s doing what, where, and when. It’s the same sort of feeling I get with later Marvel movies. Sometimes you can have too much of a good thing. I don’t think I’ll reread the whole series when book 9 comes out.
Next up, I read the short book The Woman in Black, by Susan Hill, which feels like a Victorian-era horror even though it was written in 1983. A young man travels out to a remote part of England to settle the estate of a recently deceased woman, and her corner of the country is decidedly disturbing. It’s a ghost story by way of Dickens. I enjoyed it a great deal, though it was a book where it felt to me like the writing got in the way of the story. This might be a shortcoming on my part: when I’m reading, I want to lose myself in the story. I want to just consume it like a movie playing in my head as I read. With Hill’s prose, I had to keep rereading things to see what was going on. It felt more like I was reading Literature than a ghost story, if that makes sense. Which means this book is probably even better for some people than my reaction to it would imply.
Finally, I read Orson Scott Card’s Homebody, the story of a man renovating an old mansion as a way of dealing with the death of his baby girl a few years before. Only the renovation starts to strike a few supernatural elements. It actually worked well as a companion piece to the Woman in Black: same sort of themes in many ways, and same haunted house story vibes. Card’s writing, in contrast to Hill’s, is super readable. I was able to lose myself in the story, and it was a very fast read, even though it’s a longer book. There were elements to the plot that didn’t totally click with me, but overall I had a fun time with it and would definitely recommend it. (It’s also much less scary than Hill’s book, if that’s something that concerns you.)
When it comes to media, I watched all of Ben-Hur, which is just as big of an epic as it’s always been. When I started watching it, I saw it was available for purchase on the major platforms or for streaming on Tubi, and I was reluctant to pay for it, so I asked, “How bad could ad-supported streaming be?” 20 minutes in, I bought the movie instead, because I have no patience for ad-supported streaming, it turns out. I was stunned to see how better the picture quality was. Tubi must have been showing it in 720p or something like that, and the 4k remaster on Apple was amazing. The audio was a big jump up as well. The movie was tremendous, though the use of brownface for Hugh Griffith (who played the Sheik) comes across as quite unsettling these days, and even worse when it’s clear how poor the makeup is in 4k). Still, it’s a movie that won 11 Oscars, and it’s amazing to see just what sort of scale the film worked on. That chariot race is jaw dropping still. It’s certainly a must-see movie in my book, particularly if you’re at all interested in the history of cinema.
The night before Daniela was set apart as a missionary, it was her call on what she wanted to watch. Her choice? Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Talk about a proud parent moment. 🙂 I remember when the movie first came out, my cousin brought it up to the family cabin for us all to watch. My grandmother was much less than pleased to have it there, but I liked the movie. (It came out in 1986, so I would have been 9 or so, and I have to say I can see why she wouldn’t have been crazy to have her pre-teen grandchildren watching the movie.) That said, I consider it a classic now in every sense of the word. John Hughes directing Matthew Broderick in one of the quintessential 80s/coming of age movies. The whole thing works on so many different levels. I know some criticize Ferris for being a jerk in the film. I don’t see it like that. Hughes is always careful to have the people Ferris faces down be unlikable for a variety of reasons. And Cameron turns into the real protagonist of the film, as he’s the one significantly changed by all of the events of the day. (Well, him and Ferris’s sister.) I could go on and on about how great this movie is. (But I won’t.)
Finally, Denisa and I blazed through the rest of Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed on AppleTV. Definitely enjoyed it, though it was frightening in many different ways. Watching it, I wondered if AI video would be the new cell phone when it comes to “technology that potentially ruins plots.” Just as any decent horror movie now has to somehow grapple with the question of “Why doesn’t the main character just call for help?”, many movies and plots will have to establish why the main character can’t just blame AI for whatever incriminating footage someone has of them. Makes blackmail much trickier, no doubt.
Anyway. That’s all the time I’ve got for today. Anyone have anything they’d heartily recommend we watch? I’m in between shows at the moment.