This Week, I Have Been Mostly...

READING:

Far North, by Marcel Theroux. Loved this. I don't think I've ever met a post-apoc story I didn't like, and this was a great one. Reminded me of The Road, but less soul-crushing.

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn. An intriguing, page-turning central mystery that's satisfyingly solved, with fascinatingly damaged characters. Flynn is now officially going on my list of auto-buy authors.

Short stories: 198 - 237 of 500. Faves:

Water Finds Its Level by Matthew Bernardo at Lightspeed. Great story of merging universes, told as a personal love story that's neat, plausible and affecting.

Mongoose by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear at Clarkesworld. Fabulous horror romp about a monster-hunter and his monster partner. Loved the rich worldbuilding, the Lovecraftian descriptions and the wonderful relationship between Irizarry and Mongoose.


WRITING:  A post-apoc short, 'Jessica's Theory of Yak Herding,' an SF short, 'Personally Energised by Jaclyn Castleton,' and another 10.5k on the WIPs.


WATCHING:  Hannibal. I was very much looking forward to this, but 2 eps in I am... unexpectedly unengaged. Something isn't quite doing it for me, but I'm not sure what that is. Possibly some of it is baggage: I think Silence of the Lambs is a masterpiece, and Red Dragon is both one of my favourite books and favourite film adaptations--and features Ed Norton, one of my favourite actors. So there's a lot of 'still in love with the ex' going on, which could be a factor.

I'm also finding that this portrayal of Will Graham reminds me of the 'eccentric psychological genius calmed down by female shrink' in Perception, a show I didn't like. And the 'psychopath playing at being a good-guy crime-fighter' is being thoroughly and gloriously explored in Dexter, a show I adore. Mikkelsen's Lecter has the same kind of cool, opaque quality--which works, and makes sense in character terms, but without Dexter's intimate POV, it feels remote and hard to care about.  And the guy from Perception just got on my nerves, so neither comparison is helping me. I'm left with the feeling that it's all just been done already.

It's a good-looking show, but... maybe that's not helping, either. There's a sleekness and glossiness to it that takes away from the realism for me. The films had striking imagery too, but they felt grounded--and frightening--in a way that the show doesn't manage, somehow. The antler room, the mushroom-covered bodies--again, very memorable and very good-looking, but not as... something. Visceral? Personal? Affecting? Was it different in the films because we 'knew' the victims? I'm not sure.

Perhaps another factor is (making allowances for the fact that I have only seen 2 eps: this could be a premature judgement) that there seems to be no sniff of an arc story--other than the general Lecter one, which doesn't count because we all know what happens and it's about as exciting as watching the Star Wars prequels and wondering how it turns out for for Anakin Skywalker.

There's enough to like that I'll stick with it, but I was certainly hoping to like it *more*. So far, watching it is making me want to watch the films again, rather than Ep 3.


LOVING: The Spock v Spock Audi commercial. Hilarious, inspired, and better than some films I've seen lately.


PUBLISHING: Getting Shot in the Face Still Stings, a crime/horror short, at Black Treacle Magazine.