First, thank you all for the kind birthday wishes yesterday. I took the day off from work and went to the local fair with my family in the evening. Michaela had tons of fun riding all the rides that do essentially the same thing (go around, really fast), we ate donuts, saw cows, ate fries, and got maple cotton candy. Best of all, I didn’t do much in the way of work. 🙂
But I did have time this past week to finish two books and watch some movies! First, the books:
The Sittaford Mystery, by Agatha Christie, was a fun little read. (Apparently it was originally titled The Murder at Hazelmoor.) In the middle of a “for fun” seance, the spirit reveals that somone’s been murdered in a snow storm, miles away from the seance. When they go check to see if this is true, it (gasp) is. This one hops around with the POV a fair bit, and it doesn’t star one of Christie’s well known detectives, but it was still just what you expect it to be. I like to read Christie from time to time just to revisit what she does with her books and how she does it.
I went from that relatively cozy little book to The Ruins, by Scott Smith, a book that features the fate of five people who trek into the Yucatan jungles to try to find a lost brother. Seeing as how it’s a horror novel that Stephen KIng described as “It does for Mexican vacations what Jaws did for New England beaches in 1975,” you might (correctly) guess that this little jaunt doesn’t end that well for our intrepid group of protagonists. It was a fast read and pretty darned engrossing, though it also put the “gross” in “engrossing,” if you catch my drift. Not the for the faint hearted, but I still enjoyed it and was impressed at how well Smith managed to draw his characters and distinguish them from each other. Definitely recommended for horror fans.
In the TV/Movies department, we finished season 50 of Survivor, and I think I’m good for a bit before we start another. (Then again, I’m also debating watching the new season live, because maybe one Survivor a week would be much more palatable.) Denisa and I are also still working our way through season 4 of Ted Lasso. We both continue to enjoy it, though I’ll say it doesn’t feel nearly as effortless as the first season. (Then again, what does?)
For movies, I ended up watching all three parts of the Fear Street trilogy on Netflix. (1994, 1978, and 1666.) I’m a bit torn about them, however, Individually, I thought they were fine. Nothing I was blown away by, and yet I still found myself wanting to keep watching, because I wanted to find out what happened next. I’m glad I did, because I do feel like the trilogy, taken as a whole, is much better than the sum of its parts. 1666 really managed to bring everything together in a way that I really enjoyed. Is it an instant classic? Probably not, no. But if you like horror movies, it’s got a lot to offer. Based on the RL Stine series, it depicts a pair of rival towns: Shadyside (where a series of horrors have plagued the place for centuries) and Sunnyvale (where life is beautiful all day long). Why is that? Watch and find out.