Books:
A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan #1) by Arkady Martine
This multi-award winning highly non-Janice lauded SF book was a very very slow DNF by which I mean I really liked it at the beginning but, over time, as things went on - or didn't actually - I began to get that sinking feeling that this book sucked but kept going anyway out of a combo of sunk-cost in terms of what I'd already read plus a hope that became fainter and fainter that the potential at the beginning would reappear and make the investment worth it. Then… no. The basic setup is there's a big universe-spanning empire and an ambassador from a - I don't know, "country" or however you'd designate a space habitat - is murdered and a new ambassador, who, via technology, has the poorly integrated decades-old memories of the prior ambassador, is sent to find out what happened. So perhaps, if you enjoy SF (and even those who don't but are still hanging onto my every word which makes you a genius clearly), you can see how this setup might be fun in that it has a mystery component, a lead character who has to navigate potentially dangerous waters, and the tech thing in which two different people are (kind of) in the same body one of whom has valuable but outdated information and the other of whom needs to be in charge to figure out what's going on. Sadly, beyond the opening, the book has none of that, and I made to 35% before DNFing so I feel I'm on pretty solid ground here. You know what it has instead? Poetry as everyone in the empire is obsessed with poetry and poetry competitions. Also, every character's name, except our lead, is number word, a kind of email format, like "Three Seagrass" and good luck keeping track of all the numbers and names. In fact, it began to read like the author couldn't come up with characters so just created a spreadsheet to list all the people, populated the columns with random words, then just named them as the Excel reference. So so far we have poetry, a vast number of non-characters with I'd say designations rather than names and, to tack on, words like qqkasdhfoashetpoiasdtoi or zcxlkghkwqejhklasdhfhwe or the one in the title above - isn't that fun to read things like that on every page? But fine, I probably could've lived with that because the writing itself wasn't bad if either the poorly-integrated tech thing or the mystery thing were the main (or even remotely present) parts of the story. But they vanished almost as soon as they were introduced. Like the internal battle where one dead character's prior self is implanted into the main character? You know the thing that could give drive and interest? Yeah gone almost within pages of being mentioned. The investigation into the dead ambassador, the one that could've been interesting because new person, new culture, needing to sneak around and get information which of course would involve danger and perhaps even an international (or whatever we're calling that empire-spaceship relationship) incident? That? Yeah, non-existent. Instead our lead is a tourguide into the most boring culture of all time where absolutely nothing happens and where it more or less feels like a cliche harpischord-scored period film about Versailles as the empire itself is basically the SF equivalent of poetry-spewing bewigged bebeautymarked 18th century snobs which, combined with the total absence of plot and character, left me bebored.
TV/Streaming:
Love Me (Seasons 1-2):
Note: I think this title is pretty common so just FYI the show I'm reviewing is a Swedish series originally title Alska Mig. Well I'll just give you the tl;dr: if you like modern romantic dramas with prickly amusing characters getting in their own way in relationships and struggling for something better, then you will likely love this show as much as I did. The series focuses on a family - a older father, his late-30s daughter, and his mid-20s son - as each of them, very different characters, collide in their own very different ways with love and its consequences. I'm not going into plot, not really for spoiler reasons but because, as with other shows of this ilk (like Last Tango in Halifax and Bonus Family to name two), the pleasure is in how these specific characters manage to mess up and clean up their lives rather than the specifics of plot. Like what’s funny and great is how the daughter - Clara - stumbles into a relationship as opposed to the plot details of how that happens. While it's not a comedy, the characters are witty and funny in their communication with each other even when what they're dealing with is heavy and/or complicated. In fact, this balance is part of what I enjoyed so much about the series in that it's unafraid to create real character drama with actual heft while still being extremely amusing. Also, the struggles portrayed in the show feel somewhat, if not universal, at least highly relatable and not just in the romance world but in the friendship, family and, to an extent with the younger son, working world in the way that we all have to grope our way through Life and deal with (or not) our issues and change (or not) and deal with the consequences of that and repeat. If you like this genre, this show just works on every level - the writing is great, the acting is great, I mean even the seeming side characters are well crafted and given enough breathing room to make them more than just foils for the leads. I have nothing further to add and you don't need to know anything more - if this sort of thing is up your alley (and believe me, I tried to come up with American shows in this genre but the only one I could think of (and it's not exactly right either plus it's ancient) is Six Feet Under in the way that that show focused on a family, love, life, etc. but in none of the other ways (like the corpses that infused the first few seasons) or dreadful network TV versions of this genre which are bad enough and pablumy enough and shallow enough to turn you off the genre entirely - I mean, take your pick - Parenthood? This Is Us (shudder)? they're so awful that I was loath to list them because I didn't want to turn anyone off though I guess I just did) - whatever, if you like these things, watch this one because it's only 2 6-episode seasons (I think it ended but I'm not sure) and I loved it.
The Great British Menu (Season 17):
While I cannot say this insanely slow competition reality show is any less plodding than it was in previous seasons, it still manages, for me, to be soothing background noise best background-viewed in 20 minute chunks (OMG I can't even imagine the level of nappage watching a full hour of it would induce). I think the reason I like it - or whatever term we'd use to describe something viewed while showered in the above insults - is that it's very very very long. The competition is that there's a big themed banquet at the end of all this - this season celebrates British media so it's plates of Dr. Who-based fine dining or appetizers, sorry “entrees” (and just to sidebar: why in America does entree, clearly derived from the word "entry" meaning start, refer to a main course? though perhaps the fact that we think of a main course as an appetizer also explains why we're all so fat hmmm) delivered to a radio broadcast of some Prime Minister from the '30s. Each week features four chefs from a different region of Britain (I think 8 total?) where they're whittled down to two chefs by a guest judge who then compete with the exact same dishes we just saw them cook but for 4 other judges who then decide which chef will be going to compete at the banquet. At which point the whole thing is repeated all over again with those 8 chefs competing for 4 slots though one chef can win more than once. This show runs 3 hours a week! THREE! Can you imagine the boredom!?!? The first episode of each week is amuse bouche (which counts only in a tie), apps and fish course at which point 1 chef is eliminated. Episode two is mains, pre-dessert (WTF that is though it too only counts if there's a tie), and dessert at which point another chef is eliminated. Episode three is watching those two chefs cook all the food we've already seen judged but maybe with a few changes and watching the 4 real judges (well 3 plus a guest) eat and score and choose just 1 chef to compete at the banquet. I’ll ask again: can you imagine the boredom level? Well here's the thing: if you made it through all the above sentences without skipping to the next review, then this show might be for you. I absolutely watch my fair share of competition cooking shows (favs being Top Chef and Masterchef Australia (country is very important as other Masterchefs don't even come close to the Australian one) and I'm really hard-pressed to think of a competition show with less competition in it. I mean this show is basically chefs preparing food just like they do in a restaurant with, sure, a timeframe but just like in a restaurant where a customer isn't going to wait 10 hours to be fed. But I don't know. It has bouncy music, people, in a very polite cliche British way (apt for a show celebrating Britain), getting upset with themselves when they mess up, but otherwise cooking food I'd never eat and certainly can't taste plated with some vaguely interesting theme-related structures which refer to incidents or pop culture I'm generally unfamiliar with and then people leave and the whole thing repeats. Somehow, in 20 minute chunks while I'm playing on my tablet or getting ready to walk out the door, that is just fine.
Movies:
The Matrix: Revolutions - While this The Matrix reboot was vaguely comprehensible solely due to the fact that it was essentially the exact same as the first one - which was helpful because otherwise I would've had no idea what was going on - I still enjoyed it even if, as noted, I really had no idea what was going on for much of it nor why anyone bothered to remake it other than, you know, venal money-grubbing, but the sad kind of venal money-grubbing that still hasn't realized only GenX uses Facebook and thinks all these old people in an equally old cultural cinematic meme will really appeal to the kids! I'm too lazy to Google the boxoffice so maybe it did, but that's really hard to imagine. So for old Millennials, GenX, and young Boomers: this is a kind of fun nostalgia action movie with actors and setups you've seen before, with effects that are basically the same as the ones from the ‘90s, a plot that's more or less the same, and an overall aesthetic and energy that's, yeah, the same as the first Matrix. The plot, I think, is that Keanu Reeves at some point got recaptured by those bad agents - Jonathan Groff and Neil Patrick Harris in this case - and is back in the Matrix and has to figure out all over again that he's in a Matrix and then rediscover his power to get out of it then hook up with a bunch of other extra-Matrix people to then go back in and somehow save Carrie-Anne Moss who I guess was Keanu Reeves' love interest maybe but whose existence I had entirely forgotten about to hardly mention plot impact on the first Matrix until this movie showed up in my eyeline. Does that sound a lot like the first movie? No really, I'm asking because I can't totally remember. I think the first one ended with Keanu’s revelation of how to conquer the Matrix whereas this one kind of has that happen in the middle/2/3rdsish so the final chunk is a load of total nonsense involving the superpower de-Matrixing abilities that can only come from two humans, computer-generated or otherwise, working in concert (that would be Keanu and Carrie-Ann de-Matrixing the Matrix but in tandem at levels of de-Matrixing I guess unimaginable if they were doing it solo - rah, teamwork!). While, yes, I'm kind of mocking this movie, I can't say I was bored. I mean, it's dumb but the combo of nostalgia, action, and (to an extent) eye candy (kinda) worked in that I was amused for the bulk of it despite its being completely absurd and, as with all action movies, going on way too long. There's no plot to discuss because if you've seen the first movie you know the plot of this one and, if not, I guess there are spoilers though frankly they don't matter at all because the only reason to watch this movie is if you like glib glitzy action in a format you've (likely) seen and would enjoy seeing again. While, yes, I turned it off in the middle and came back to it a few days later, that's not really an insult but rather just the nature of watching something you've essentially seen before meaning, while I felt no compulsion to finish it in one go, I did go back to it as I was enjoying it enough to want to get to the end and that, I believe, serves as the review.