2013 - media list

[hermetic]

So, another year come and gone. And what do I have to show for it? A rather lot, actually, but that's a different post. This one is about the stories I've read, watched, and heard.

Read:

• The Fractal Prince, Hannu Rajaniemi (Rajaniemi continues to be amazing. I really enjoy his inventiveness and the way that the story moves forward in ways that I don't expect. I am very much looking forward to the final book in the trilogy.)
• A Memory of Light, Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (It's over. At long last, it's over. It was a mixed bag, and I'm not sure that I like the resolution. It felt very thin at times, and Sanderson was really trying to get as much of it "done" as possible, which because of Jordan's bloat, was impossible to do satisfactorily in the space allotted. The critique that the entire series has suffered (Edit, motherfucker, edit!) is magnified at the end. That said, there are some very cool things that happen. I wish that Jordan had lived to finish it himself.)
• Stray Souls, Kate Griffin (Okay, so I'll take just about any excuse to read more of Griffin's magical London. It's a much broader world than we see solely through Matthew Swift's eyes, so it's a pleasure to see it through Sharon Li's.)
• Felaheen, Jon Courtenay Grimwood (Yay! I like how this concludes the Arabesk trilogy, and it's very deftly done. I love great reimaginings of history, and I have found North Africa to be a place of enchantment since I was a little kid, so reading works set there is a deep pleasure. Grimwood is great, and I love this series.)
• Nightshifted, Cassie Alexander (This was a fun and well-written romp, and I'm glad to see Alexander having success with the series. It's not my cup of coffee, though.)
• Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein (This was beautiful and lovely and you should read it. I love a good exploration of friendship, and this is that and much more.)
• Red Country, Joe Abercrombie (I continue to enjoy Abercrombie's work. I like explorations of the realpolitik of empire.)
• River of Stars, Guy Gavriel Kay (Lovely. This isn't Kay at his height, but it's above average for him--which means that's it's better than most writers' best. I love that he's returned to his analog for China and that we get to see a culture that's aware that it has contracted from earlier greatness. Beautiful writing, as ever, and Kay continues to elaborate on his central themes of the creation of beauty (in so many ways) in a changing world.)
• Rivers of London/Midnight Riot, Ben Aaronovitch (This series, Rivers of London, delights me. It tickles me in the same way that Mike Carey's Felix Castor books or Kate Griffin's Matthew Swift books do. It's vividly imagined and interesting. I really love that the main character's mother is from Sierra Leone and his dad is a white British jazz musician and that both of these things--along with a deep love of architecture--inform who Peter Grant is. It's good to see a white Anglo-Jewish writer have a half-West African protagonist and it not be faily. Peter is primarily a Londoner, a police constable, and a new wizard's apprentice, and it kind of rocks. Also, his police partner, Lesley May, is frigging awesome.)
• Shattered Pillars, Elizabeth Bear (I continue to enjoy this world and this story. Looking forward to the end.)
• Moon Over Soho, Ben Aaronovitch
• Whispers Under Ground, Ben Aaronovitch
• Necessary Evil, Ian Tregillis (It ends! And it's still good! I'm not sure how I feel about the ending--actually, perhaps I am:  Gretel, for all her sociopathy, actually manages to save the world, and while I'm not saying make her queen, putting her out of her misery would be a lot kinder. Then again, I think Marsh has cause... but still.)
• Sea-Hearts/The Brides of Rollrock Island, Margo Lanagan (Rip out my heart, why don't you, Margo? Beautiful and dark and painful, like, well, most of her work. Read it.)
• The Marbury Lens, Andrew Smith (Was all right. Didn't really wind up caring about the characters and not really interested in reading the sequel.)
• The Tyrant's Law, Daniel Abraham (I love how it's unfolding. This series is smart and there are no simple solutions to any of the characters' problems.)
• Infidel, Kameron Hurley (Continues Nyx's story, and I continue to enjoy it.)
• Cold Steel, Kate Elliott (Yay! I really enjoyed wrapping the story up here. Much fun.)
• The Silent Land, Graham Joyce (Eh.)
• The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman (It was an incredibly poignant exploration of what it is to be an artist and what it costs. Lovely, absolutely lovely.)
• The Glass God, Kate Griffin (Okay, here's the thing:  I want my journeys into Griffin's London to be awesome--and this, not so much. I really dislike it when a character's progress in one book is forgotten or undone in the sequel out of auctorial expendience. I felt that Sharon and crew had character setbacks that didn't make sense. I also felt that her leveling up came at the expense of Matthew's, in a way that didn't mesh well with the world as already established, and it could have--that annoyed me greatly. There was an appreciable drop-off in the quality with this book and its predecessors, and that was tremendously disappointing. I felt it needed another editing pass, you know?)
• Rapture, Kameron Hurley (Everything get even more complicated and problematized... and this is a good thing.)
• Market Forces, Richard K. Morgan (I think this is his least successful work, and it seems like a dated near-future imagining--it could have been written at the height of the cyberpunk era (despite not being cyberpunk in content, because of all the macho bullshit posturing (although I like the inherent criticism Morgan is making on it)). I had trouble suspending disbelief with it, because it was harder to understand how things evolved to get to that social state. It's cinematic, which makes sense as it started as a screenplay--think summer blockbuster and you're there. Even so, it was well written, because Morgan. On the whole, I'd say it's not bad... it's just deeply cynical (as a critique) and not exactly good.)
• Redshirts, John Scalzi (I wanted to be more amused by this than I was. I get what Scalzi is doing in the first section(s), but it's only towards the end that it develops real warmth and humanity and is actually good. For me, by that point, it's too late.)
• Libriomancer, Jim C. Hines (When I read Hines, I recognize that he's got skill:  I see his craft and know it's good. It's just that it leaves me unmoved. This was a perfectly fine work with a delightful central conceit, and I love how his characters are not uncomplicated, and how comfortable he is making things problematic and acknowledging it... but I didn't really care about it. Hines is good; he's just not to my taste.)
• Turn Coat, Jim Butcher (So, then... is it that Butcher is to my taste? Honestly... yes, at least much more so than Hines, even though I think that Hines is more thoughtful about his problematicals (which I feel are deliberate) than Butcher with his (which I feel are not). Part of it is that by this point in the series, voice and pacing and character are deeply settled and ingrained in both writer and reader. I know how this story goes, and Harry, despite all his numerous idiocies (and they are many), is a friend.)
• The Best of All Possible Worlds, Karen Lord (This was very good. It's smart and interesting and I like the drop-into-the-characters-day-to-day-lives-ness of it, you know?)
• Changes, Jim Butcher
• Ghost Story, Jim Butcher
• Beautiful Creatures, Kami Garcia & Margarent Stohl (I totally read this because I watched the movie. Honestly, I think the movie did some smarter things (like combining characters), but it's not a bad read at all. The book doesn't patronize the reader, nor does it pretend to be more than it is. If you're looking for a beach read, you could do far worse.)
• Consider Phlebas, Iain M. Banks (I need to read more Banks. I think the simultaneous critic and celebration of Western culture as imagined in the Culture is interesting and important, and I appreciate the humor and humanity that Banks uses to examine it.)
• Every Day, David Levithan (It's all right... but not all that.)
• Six-Gun Snow White, Catherynne M. Valente (Beautiful re-envisioning of the Snow White story. It works.)
• Dead and Buried, Barbara Hambly (I'm always overjoyed to see that Hambly has new work out. She doesn't get the kind of attention her work deserves. Her stuff is always smart, with great attention to character and detailed worldbuilding (both ex nihilo as in secondary world fantasy, or deeply researched as here in a historical mystery). I love Benjamin January and his supporting characters, so to read new stories about them is a true pleasure and I'm glad that Hambly found a new publisher for them. HOWEVER, can we please get another frigging editing pass through all these before they get released? I'm not talking about minor copy edits, but rather about the issue of readerly accessibility. I'm a fairly well-educated person who speaks a variety of languages and has at least the rudiments of a classical education--and if I am being repeatedly thrown out of the story at times because Hannibal or Benjamin quotes Cicero or Livy or whomever yet again without translation or sufficient contextual clues and it makes me feel like I'm missing the joke, then I'm pretty sure it's doing the same to a whole lot more readers. I know you're smart, Hambly, that's why I like you; stop showing me so at the expense of the story and my pleasure at reading it.)
• The Shirt on His Back, Barbara Hambly
• Ran Away, Barbara Hambly
• Cold Days, Jim Butcher
• The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell (I finally read it. There's something quite wonderful about starting a book and realizing that you're in strong, sure hands. When it's a first novel, it's particularly exciting and impressive. Russell has a masterful command of her story and it's a compelling story, too. There are issues, of course, but I found them to be handwave-able, as they aren't pertinent to the story. I don't know if I'll read the sequel; I hear that it's a letdown, and I feel that this ends at a good place, and Emilio Sandoz's destruction and approaching renewal is a fine final statement.)
• Shaman, Kim Stanley Robinson (While it's clear that Robinson does his research and as ever, he tells a good story, I wanted a bit more from it. Why are all the shamans male? Did the new evidence that it looks like many--possibly most--of the cave painters were women come out too late to shape the story? Why not imagine it and shape the story better anyway? Why agree to the limits of our current prejudices?)
• The Incrementalists, Steven Brust & Skyler White (I had fun with this, but I think it wanted to be more and wasn't quite.)
• Feast of Souls, C. S. Friedman
• Wings of Wrath, C. S. Friedman
• Burning Paradise, Robert Charles Wilson (Interesting. Not my favorite RCW:  while it does stop you and asks you to think, it's a fairly simple question that's being asked, and it's not fully explored.)
• Legacy of Kings, C. S. Friedman (Okay, Friedman, you had me through this series until you decided to commit one of the classic blunders. Really, there was absolutely no in-story reason for the rape. It added nothing and took away much. I suppose it's proof that we're all subject to the pressures of rape culture, but I was very disappointed.)

Watched:

• How I Met Your Mother, Season 7 (I still think Ted is a jackass, probably because Ted is a jackass. Everyone else is awesome, though.)
• One for the Money (Oh, Katherine Heigl, the things I'll do for you... like watch this dreck.)
• Louie, Season 1 (Kind of frigging brilliant, and deeply uncomfortable.)
• Django Unchained (Yes, awesome, but not really.)
• Sleepwalk with Me
• Nate & Margaret
• Warm Bodies (Saw this on a not-a-date. It's a good movie for that kind of thing.)
• Silver Linings Playbook (Fantastic.)
• Chicken Tikka Masala (Really, don't bother. No, seriously. I took the hit so you won't have to.)
• The Vicar of Dibley, Series 1 (Dawn French is fantastic. This show is smart and often kind, and very funny--all while being absurd in a delightfully British manner.)
• Beautiful Creatures (This was much better than it had any right to be. The story itself is pretty basic, but everyone does a good job (and Thompson and Irons chew all the scenery). All the characters are fairly smart, and everyone has at least one great line. I thoroughly enjoyed it.)
• The Vicar of Dibley, Series 2
• The Vicar of Dibley, Series 3
• The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (web series) (Utterly delightful. Watch it.)
• The Outs (web series) (I'll be honest. I sort of love this. It's got its issues, but it's well-acted and smartly written and very well produced. If you're looking for a story of queer twentysomethings in Brooklyn, you'd do far worse than to start here.)
• Rebel Without A Cause (What is about being young that lends itself to that kind of reckless abandon?)
• Star Trek Into Darkness (Seriously, do I even need to go off on this? 30 minutes worth of rewriting would have turned this into pure, undiluted awesomeness--but instead, it's whitewashing, sexist, and illogical dreck filled with WAY too many lens flares. That said, I did enjoy it, but it required a frontal lobotomy first.)
• I Want Your Love (The short was better.)
• Gayby (This improved on the short.)
• The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
• Extraterrestre (A very human look at people on the day the aliens show up.)
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (So very good.)
• Magic Mike (So very not. But nudity is fun.)
• Alias, Season 1 (Okay, here's the thing with J. J. Abrams:  he absolutely should be reined in. His work would be so much consistently better if he were forced to tell a story in half the time he wants to take for it. He cannot sustain a story arc--whether it's over two hours, a season, or multiple seasons, it falls apart someone in the middle and no longer coheres into anything resembling sanity. Alias hold together all right for the first season or two, but it's like Abrams forgets the point of the story he's telling, and his characters are not so much complex as unfettered kites blowing wherever he decides to take them, never mind if it's 90° off-kilter to their previously established selves. I find his work to be ambitious--and lazy.)
• Alias, Season 2
• Alias, Season 3
• Much Ado About Nothing (Fun!)
• Alias, Season 4
• Alias, Season 5
• The Vicar of Dibley, The Christmas Specials
• Teen Wolf, Season 1 (This is a good show. Damn. Really. Watch it.)
• Teen Wolf, Season 2
• Pretty Little Liars, Season 3 (Why am I still watching this? I never thought I was the kind of person who watches train wrecks.)
• Pacific Rim (This was good, and the visual storytelling was fantastic. I didn't love it as much as some of my friends, but I did think that it was interesting. I focus a lot on dialogue, so I had to reconsider my viewing strategy for this one:  so much is told via color and non-verbal interaction.)
• Going Postal
• In the Flesh
• This Is the End (Utterly ridiculous and I laughed so hard.)
• The Cabin in the Woods (Good deconstruction, and the ending reminded me of how much I hate selfish people.)
• Monarch of the Glen, Series 1 (Okay, so sometimes I watch ridiculous British shows. It happens.)
• Monarch of the Glen, Series 2
• Monarch of the Glen, Series 3
• Monarch of the Glen, Series 4
• Let My People Go!
• Mona Lisa Smile
• Driving Lessons (Meh.)
• Hansel & Gretel:  Witch Hunters (Ridiculous, but that was expected.)
• The Men Next Door (Fuck, I have no excuse.)
• Revenge, Season 2 (Not as strong on the first season, but it remains enjoyable to me on a gut level.)
• John Adams (Really magnificent. Giamatti and Linney in particular are amazing, but the entire cast is great.)
• 30 Days of Night (More the idea of it than the execution. That kind of isolation is terrifying.)
• Kung Fu Panda
• Looper
• Wit
• 3 Guys, 1 Girl, 2 Weddings
• The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
• Away We Go
• Yossi (It's nice that he finely gets some happiness, although it's sad that it takes him ten years. Then again, that's not an unrealistic thing.)
• The World's End (I didn't see that coming, actually. I mean, I hadn't heard anything about it save the premise of the first part of the movie, and it's Simon Pegg, so of course I'm going to go see it... and yeah, so much fun.)
• Struck by Lightning
• Admission (Fey and Rudd. Yeah, that works for me.)
• Gossip Girl, Season 5
• Gossip Girl, Season 6 (And it's over. Finally. I still think Serena is a pathetic person, and so is Dan... so, kismet.)
• How I Met Your Mother, Season 8
• Arrow, Season 1 (Am I watching this for the abs and pecs? Sure, but also for the surprisingly good story. Fun.)
• Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (Ha!)
• Europa Report (Nicely done. I don't particularly buy it all, but it was worth watching.)
• Thor 2:  The Dark World (Seriously, you couldn't take the twenty minutes to fix the story before shooting it? Because while I thought it was mostly better than its predecessor, I really hated that the women were less well-realized. There's really no excuse for that shit. Really.)
• Criminal Minds, Season 1 (I need to watch the rest of this series. It's a good show. I really like procedurals that have character and narrative arcs, especially where people get to be competent. Mmm, competence.)
• Leverage, Season 5 (Is it silly that I really wanted to know Sophie's given name? Also, it's kind of fun to watch the last season and recognize the exterior shots.)
• 28 Days Later (Finally watched it. Damn. Ow. Good movie.)
• Catching Fire (Better than the last one, which is definitely the trajectory you want to be on.)
• Red 2 (Eh, mostly. I still love Helen Mirren as an assassin, but I sort of fell asleep towards the end.)
• Mine Vaganti (This was very enjoyable, although I don't care for that kind of faux resolution. You can't change the rules of the story so late and not have it be cheap.)
• Continuum, Season 2 (I love how it seeks to make you complicit. After all, the goals of Liber8 are not actually wrong, are they?)
• Whatever this is (web series) (By the same people who did The Outs, and it's probably the stronger work, although I'm not sure I liked it better--but I liked it very much.)
• C.O.G. (Better than I expected, but I'm not sure that I'd call it good.)
• The Good Wife, Season 1 (Why haven't I been watching this show all along? It's so good!)
• The Good Wife, Season 2

Heard:

• Santogold, Santigold
• Un pokito de rocanrol, Bebe
• Sueño de la máquina, Kinky
• Objeto antes llamado disco, Café Tacuba
• The Lumineers, The Lumineers
• 1977, Ana Tijoux
• La Bala, Ana Tijoux
• Independiente, Ricardo Arjona
• Kala, M.I.A.
• Heartthrob, Tegan and Sara
• Dire Dawa, Minyeshu Gozen
• Modern Vampires of the City, Vampire Weekend
• Trouble Will Find Me, The National
• The Electric Lady, Janelle Monáe
• Aims, Vienna Teng
• Pure Heroine, Lorde
• Wounded Rhymes, Lykke Li
• Shapeshifting, Young Galaxy
• Circles Super Bon Bon..., Mike Doughty
• Bad Blood, Bastille

Spectacle:

• Keane (concert)
• Ra Ra Riot (concert)
• Macbeth, Original Practice Shakespeare Project (play)
• Pink Martini (concert)
• Janelle Monáe (concert)
• Vienna Teng (concert)