![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Books/TV Recs: Totally Surprised Edition
Monday, November 21st, 2011 11:23 amOn TV:
The Simpsons: This season continues to be quite good, with an episode lampooning the teen lit industry and featuring Neil Gaiman and Andy Garcia. (Homer calling Gaiman "British Fonzie" was a thing of voice acting beauty.) There were all sorts of great visual throwaways (Teenlit titles included, "Nosferateen," "To Kill a Mockingjay," "Shaun White: Snow Vampire," and "Percy Sledge and the Olympians") and a good A-plot holding the episode together that parodied the Ocean's 11/12/13 movies. I am so pleasantly surprised that this season is not, in fact, terrible, that it makes my critical heart grow... maybe 1.1 sizes? I'd be worried if my heart grew more than a few sizes, since my chest would get crowded. Anyway, this episode is well worth catching on Hulu if you're able to.
Work of Art: In an unexpected twist, WoA eliminated its simultaneously most villainous and honest character. ( Spoiler alert! )
In Books:
Specials (Uglies Trilogy #3), by Scott Westerfield: Although I had a fairly good idea of where this book would go, how Westerfield got there was very surprising, and I'm not entirely sure it was a satisfying ending. The trilogy as a whole is very good--gripping and emotional without being forced or overwrought. But the ending... reads as a little strange. The society that the books have built obviously cannot last, particularly as the actions of our heroine and her friends/frenemies threaten its ideological basis and infrastructure. However, the revelations of the last fifty pages or so of the last book undo the world construction of the first two, and this is a bit too arbitrary for this reader's taste. I'm glad I read the whole series, and the themes that the first two books so effectively present still hold true, but the ending is off-kilter.
The Son of Neptune (Heroes of Olympus #2), by Rick Riordan: A highly satisfying book, although I worry that with installment #3, Riordan will fall into the "too many characters" trap and have to hastily divide everyone up again. I also found myself liking two of the new characters even better than the main hero(-es), and I sincerely hope they're not sidelined. Most of all, I like the contrast of the original Greek gods and their personas with the Roman ones. It's in the weaving of the mythologies that these books really shine.
The Simpsons: This season continues to be quite good, with an episode lampooning the teen lit industry and featuring Neil Gaiman and Andy Garcia. (Homer calling Gaiman "British Fonzie" was a thing of voice acting beauty.) There were all sorts of great visual throwaways (Teenlit titles included, "Nosferateen," "To Kill a Mockingjay," "Shaun White: Snow Vampire," and "Percy Sledge and the Olympians") and a good A-plot holding the episode together that parodied the Ocean's 11/12/13 movies. I am so pleasantly surprised that this season is not, in fact, terrible, that it makes my critical heart grow... maybe 1.1 sizes? I'd be worried if my heart grew more than a few sizes, since my chest would get crowded. Anyway, this episode is well worth catching on Hulu if you're able to.
Work of Art: In an unexpected twist, WoA eliminated its simultaneously most villainous and honest character. ( Spoiler alert! )
In Books:
Specials (Uglies Trilogy #3), by Scott Westerfield: Although I had a fairly good idea of where this book would go, how Westerfield got there was very surprising, and I'm not entirely sure it was a satisfying ending. The trilogy as a whole is very good--gripping and emotional without being forced or overwrought. But the ending... reads as a little strange. The society that the books have built obviously cannot last, particularly as the actions of our heroine and her friends/frenemies threaten its ideological basis and infrastructure. However, the revelations of the last fifty pages or so of the last book undo the world construction of the first two, and this is a bit too arbitrary for this reader's taste. I'm glad I read the whole series, and the themes that the first two books so effectively present still hold true, but the ending is off-kilter.
The Son of Neptune (Heroes of Olympus #2), by Rick Riordan: A highly satisfying book, although I worry that with installment #3, Riordan will fall into the "too many characters" trap and have to hastily divide everyone up again. I also found myself liking two of the new characters even better than the main hero(-es), and I sincerely hope they're not sidelined. Most of all, I like the contrast of the original Greek gods and their personas with the Roman ones. It's in the weaving of the mythologies that these books really shine.
