Too Fond of Books

I'm pretty loyal to most of the shows I watch, and this either has to do with a plot I'm invested in, or characters I care about. However, as I blogged about previously, when a show gets down to *one* character I care about, I'm pretty hard-pressed to keep up with it, and then if a bad plot comes along, it's curtains for the show in general. A case in point is "Dexter", a show which I've been watching on DVD since season 1, but am thoroughly done with now. This most recent season, the fifth one, was rife with plot contrivances, disturbing subject matter (more so than the series' usual fare), and characters behaving utterly unlike themselves. ( More here, with spoilers. )

In sum: it's a challenging season, and I'm glad it's done now. This break-up was sort of odd, in that I'd read that this season was wildly uneven and knew the basics of the plot going in, but I was still unprepared for the level of squick I found there. I suppose I'd still recommend the first few seasons of the show to people who like that sort of thing, but in general, I think I've had it with serial killers and semi-true-crime TV shows.

Jin and Mugen pretty much sum up my reaction to the works below, although I'm not quite as appalled as they are. :)

In Books:

Night Child & A Flash of Hex, by Jes Battis: It's a pleasure to read a series of books set in a city I know well, and Battis has a light touch with his descriptions of Vancouver. For me, mentions of the Downtown East Side and Kitsilano are more than name-dropping and his descriptions of the neighborhoods are spot on; for a reader unfamiliar with the city, the same descriptions are never labored or distracting. The concept for these books (occult CSI!) sounded cheesy at the outset, but it works well, and I like the main characters very much. Science and magic mix very, very well in these books, and it's clear that Battis has done his homework on crime scene investigation techniques. It all pays off in a very neat, exciting package. New readers should beware, though: the descriptions of the gore in these pages spare no expense. (The violence is never sexualized and the main character's reaction to it is often what I suspect mine would be, given the circumstances.) Still, the gore's not the major part of the plot, and the rest of the books are well worth the read.

Catching Fire & Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins: ( Insert your own Capslock of Spoilery Flail here and click only if you don't mind having the entire series spoiled for you. )

Spoiler-y discussion aside, I can say that I really did enjoy these books, and I do recommend them to all and sundry. They're shelved in Young Adult, but these are books for very mature young adults, and I see no reason why adults won't gain from reading these as well. I only hope now that rumors of a feature film vanish. There is no way to make this movie and do the book justice, not without an R rating, which will bar the much-sought-after kid audience. Honestly? I'm not sure I want to see it in movie form anyway.

On DVD:

Dexter, Season 4: Not since I read Graceling (by Kristin Cashore, last blogged about here) have I wanted a villain to die quite as much as I did when we watched this season. And it's a testament to all of the actors involved in the show that I cared as much about all of the characters as I did. Having said that, I knew a MAJOR SPOILER going into this season, and watching the show with that knowledge in mind certainly changed the experience. ( More, with me dancing around this spoiler as best as I can, although I make no promises... )

On reading/watching disturbing material, in general: A while back, when I was in a very depressed state, I obsessively read Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville, which is a book that I really, really love, despite its very disturbing imagery and plot. (My bargain with myself at the time was that I would read the book anywhere but in my bedroom, lest the images take root in my dreams.) When I mentioned the book to my therapist at the time, she got that "concerned therapist face" on, and suggested that perhaps I shouldn't read disturbing material when I was trying to sort out my mental turmoil. "But it's so good!" I protested. And that's what I find with the books and TV shows above: they're disturbing as all get out, but they're too damned captivating to put down. There's a thin line between escapism and fetishizing a dark mental state, and I like to think I know myself well enough to realize when I have to put a book down/turn the TV off. But there's a strange thing that I notice lately, which is my genuine interest in said dark/disturbing material. I suppose part of this is my brain wanting examples of how best to deal with bad situations so that I can cherry pick solutions and coping strategies. But another part of it involves perspective. You'd think that just looking around or watching the news would provide that: there's bad crap going on all over the world, but seen through the two-minute news bite, it's way too big to comprehend. Books and TV episodes provide me with enough depth to develop these ideas, but in a finite package, and perspective, when presented that way, is more easily digestible. My life may have scary challenges, but at least I don't have a Dark Passenger goading me into murder, or life and death choices presented to me every thirty seconds in an arena of death for the sake of a government-sponsored reality show. I couldn't articulate this my therapist at the time, but I firmly believe I'm not doing anything unhealthy by seeking these things out, then or now.

That said, my next book choice will definitely involve happy puppies and no one getting hurt. ^-^;;