What I watched: The Madame Blanc Mysteries is reminiscent of Agatha Raisin in tone and style. The premise is of a widowed antiques expert/dealer moving to the Sainte Victoire, France to wrap up her husband’s estate and claim the body. There she finds that he was living a double life with excessive spending and another woman, whom the villagers’ thought was his real wife. Upon arrival she finds a valuable ring is missing and comes to believe her husband was murdered, perhaps by a mysterious femme fatale. She acquires sidekicks, a love interest, and a police relationship. Each episode includes a one-show mystery that is solved via her antiquities expertise under the season-long whodunit. It is fluff, but fun fluff.
Here is a trailer:
What I read:
After last week’s reading binge, I got fewer reading hours in:
- Bat Out of Hell: An Immortal Ops World Novel (Crimson Ops Series Book 4) by Mandy M. Roth, a formulaic paranormal good guy vs. bad guys novel with government labs and fated mates.
- Four Roads Cross (The King’s Watch Book 10) by Mark Hayden. I liked it, as I like the series, but this book was a “move the story on with wrap-ups and set-ups for the next book” type of story. And, if you’ve not read the first books you will be totally lost. That said, I do recommend the series – just start at the beginning.
What I listened to this week: Grandbrothers – Organism; Kele – Django Django – Under Fire (Perel Remix); and Joon Moon – Tiger.
So, dearest DeadSplinterites, how are you doing? What have you watched, read, or listened to? What’s new with you? Please check in, tell us how you are, and share what you are up to!
I just binged The Great, season 3 of Succession and am now midway through Mare Of Easttown- which we call Beer of Easttown because of the amount of beer the characters drink in every scene. Also, I’m reading Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. So far, so good.
I liked Mare, but at a certain point it felt overloaded to me, like I wouldn’t have been surprised if her ex was eaten by monkeys who escaped from the Philadelphia Zoo after the fences were destroyed in a gas main explosion triggered by an opioid-addicted arch bishop.
…does that mean succession has made it to the end of its 3rd season?
…been meaning to get around to that
…also, would be interested to know what you make of seveneves when you get to the end of it…it’s not likely that stephenson will ever write anything I’ll enjoy as much as snow crash but I think I’ve read all his other books all the same & it’s always good to know what other people made of them?
Succession‘s series 3 finale airs tomorrow. I finally watched the penultimate episode last night (which is unusual for me to wait, but I had a busy week), and it’s a doozy. It’s also been impossible to avoid spoilers because I listen to too many podcasts that wanted to discuss it.
…cheers for the heads up…that sounds like I might manage to binge my way through it fairly soon, then…which is good to know
Watched: Mrs. Butcher and I watched U-571 for the first time. It’s your basic WWII action film, but well written and well acted so there was that. I also appreciated that at the end of the movie they listed all of the Allied missions which inspired it.
Read: America’s Forgotten Internment, which is a surprisingly well written piece on Politico of all places. It is an insanely fucked up story about Latin American citizens of Japanese descent who were kidnapped by their own nations and then shipped off to the US to be used as bargaining chips for hostage swaps with Japan. Spoiler alert: the horrors didn’t end with the war.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/12/05/japanese-latinos-us-war-hostages-history-523711?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Listened: My journey though the best engineered albums of all time has led me to Getz/Gilberto from 1965.
I finished S7 of Trailer Park Boys. I need to pace myself through the next 2 seasons because I’m going to hate seeing it end. If we ever get this pandemic under control I intend on going to one of the live shows. Watch this dammit!
I read Outlawed by Anna North. It’s a feminist alt history western. It’s the 19th century and the Great Flu has wiped out 90% of the population. Women who are barren, independent, or unnatural are suspected of witchcraft. And so, our protagonist Ada, is cast out of her husband’s home and becomes a fugitive. Trained as a midwife she becomes the doctor to a group of outlaws. It was a quick and easy read, a good adventure yarn in spite of the seriousness of the subject matter.
@Hannibal Have you read Charlaine Harris’s Gunnie Rose series? If not, it sounds like those might be right up your alley!
I have not but will see if the library has them, thanks!
…on a similar note, although it’s only the one book & not all that long at that…I’d recommend sunset & sawdust by joe r lansdale
I’ve read a lot of Lansdale but not that one, it’s going on my list. Thanks
…maybe it’s a good thing that the expanse might be a short season…because if I don’t get around to watching trailer park boys pretty soon I think myo may hunt me down & introduce me to one of those you-will-watch-this chairs from a clockwork orange
@SplinterRIP I resisted watching it because my brother hounded me about it for years. I thought there was no way it could live up to the hype. I was wrong. It’s better than I could have imagined. Don’t watch it for myo, do it for yourself.
My book club read Outlawed, but I missed it and couldn’t get past page ten. I recall North wrote for Jezebel, but people from the book club who read it were critical of its limitations. Apparently its version of feminism is extremely binary and cis-centered and therefore left a good number of the club readers out in the cold.
“Apparently its version of feminism is extremely binary and cis-centered”
I don’t agree with that. The main character is cis-het but many others are not. And they are strong, sympathetic characters, important to the story, not tokens
This one is for Meg and it is full of Spoilers.
Watched the Sex and the City re-re-reboot (if you count the movies). I will start by saying that I watched the full series when I was in my late teens/early 20s and I used to love the glamour and all things Samantha. I couldn’t stand Carrie’s incessant whining and shitty self-centered behavior. Charlotte was also insufferable. Miranda was ok.
Fast forward to them in their 50s. Everything feels the same except that times have changed and they are only now trying to adapt to the new world… Miranda is going back to school driven by her white savior complex. She has many cringe moments with her Black professor. The cringe is layered. There’s the cringe that the writers wanted you to feel and under that there’s the cringe that you feel because the writers are probably white. Carrie is expanding her brand via IG and joining a sex centered podcast. She is struggling to do her job because she is not actually comfortable talking about her sex life (and also might not masturbate???). Her boss is cool and I would rather watch a show about them. Charlotte has a “Black Charlotte” friend (their term, not mine)… so many things wrong with that. Her story arc is going to be about her youngest kid being queer and her failure to recognize that. Her life is so “stressful” because her kid doesn’t want to wear a designer dress. Samantha is out of the picture and Big dies in episode two. The outfits are amazing but is that enough to keep me watching? I’ll let you know next week.
I finally watched Gone Girl. I have a pretty good ability to avoid spoilers so i never knew the twist or whatever, but i did guess it before it was officially revealed in the movie. And since i am terrible at guessing endings or seeing easter eggs, I’m not sure what this says about the movie. I liked it though. I forget that Ben Affleck is actually an ok actor, but Tyler Perry was my favorite.
Congrats at avoiding spoilers this long. There are whole troves of cultural discussions available about the discomfort people feel at cheering on Amy Dunne so hard, despite her being a sociopath, because society and her husband have done her so wrong. I’m just “yeah, Rosamund Pike!” She should have won the Oscar that year, but Julianne Moore won an “It’s your turn” award by doing a baity role in a forgettable film. (Also, Hollywood doesn’t quite know what to do with her because Amy Dunne roles don’t come around often enough.)
Also, the detective and Ben Affleck’s sister were the other standouts. Basically, this was a good film for showcasing three wildly different, headstrong female characters surrounded by mediocre-to-idiotic men.
Oh yes, i loved the sister and the detective, too. Basically all the non main characters. You could tell they’d both been “why are men”-ing their way thru life for a while.
I didn’t find myself rooting for Amy Dunne, though. I definitely found her approach to problems (of her own making) interesting, but why would anyone root for her?
ive been watching a bazzilion little mini documentaries on youtube… mostly by plainly difficult…seems ive got a little bit of an obsession going on for 15 minute ish docu blurbles
itll pass
other than that my prime form of entertainment today was getting a 7ft christmas tree home on a bicycle
its hilarious and ill advised….gets lots of reactions from people you pass by too (granted half of them are wtf)
good fun
and listening to the temperance movement
they have a good sound
First of all, for @elliecoo : If you haven’t gotten around to Michelle Sagara’s Chronicles of Elantra series… don’t bother. The first book dragged on and on.. and on… and the second was even slower and more repetitive than the first, to the point that I gave up 200 pages in (not even halfway!!) The world she’s tried to create is fascinating, but the story and main character… not so much.
Moving on! Recently read: 3 of Kerry Greenwood’s Miss Fisher Mysteries – Urn Burial, which was quite good.
Raisins and Almonds, which was decent, if a little preachy.
Death Before Wicket, which was alright but had far too much cricket and not enough mystery.
European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman by Theodora Goss, book 2 of the Athena Club trilogy, which was a really good and interesting (if slightly confusing towards the end) read.
Body Work by Ben Aaronovitch, the first of the Rivers of London graphic novels. I’m not usually a fan of graphic novels… I have a hard time focusing on the story progression and tend to read the panels out of order… but I have to say, this one was pretty linear and easy to read. I have the next one already lined up on my Hoopla app.
A Terrible Fall of Angels by Laurell K. Hamilton which I thought was really good and an interesting premise, but got some really nasty reviews on Goodreads. It does share some of the problems that developed in her Anita Blake series (no, LKH, we really don’t care how tall everyone is and you don’t have to tell us every other page how big or tall or small or petite each character feels in relation to every other character!!), but overall, I think it’s a good start to a new series.
God Rest Ye, Royal Gentlemen by Rhys Bowen, book 15 in her Royal Spyness series, which I have loved since I randomly grabbed the first book at the library 10 years ago. This one had a good mystery and excellent red herrings, as well as continuing the overall story.
The First Signs: Unlocking the Mysteries of the World’s Oldest Symbols by Genevieve von Petzinger. Really interesting non-fiction about the non-human or animal cave paintings… all the dots and smears and shapes that are scattered around Ice Age sites throughout Europe (and a few in northern Africa) as well as similar forms found incised on bone or antler jewelry. She posits that they are the first form of written language – signposts or signatures or clan symbols – and she has some very compelling ideas. I recommend this one!
Currently watching The Hunger Games movies (again)… just started the 3rd one.
Also watching Kitchen Nightmares with the guys… man, there are some seriously gross kitchens out there! I get tired of listening to Gordon Ramsey shout and the incessant bleeping of swear words, so we usually only watch 2 episodes or so at a time. I want to see the British version… apparently, it’s a bit calmer?
…so, I’ve been watching the wheel of time stuff on amazon…which largely compares favorably to my recollection of the books in that there’s less endless walking places & the plot seems to be moving along a good bit quicker than it did in print…though I’m fairly sure that in order to do that it’s also diverging a fair bit from the books…that said…if I hadn’t read the books back in the day I’m not sure I’d have been inclined to persist with the show?
…if you have a tolerance for magic-based tales of probable apocalypse though it’s not bad…it’s not without flaws but the part where the world-building includes a premise that means women are the ones who get to do the magic does make for an at least somewhat different take on that sort of thing?
…also got to the end of the live action cowboy bebop…& had slightly mixed feelings about how that went…so when I saw something that seemed to say netflix wouldn’t be bringing it back for a second season I was inclined to see why…although I suspect that if they had it might have been able to develop into something pretty good…so that’s still sort of a shame
…& lastly…but by no means least…the expanse is back on amazon prime…which is mostly great from my perspective since I like that show a lot…but alas I think it’s the last season…& I think I saw somewhere it might only be six episodes so it’ll be over sooner than I’d like?
I’ve been watching Succession and Insecure (I was going to cancel HBO Max afterward, but now I see there’s a show called Landscapers with Olivia Colman and David Thewlis, so…curses…I may have to keep going and then binge some other things as well, like Love Life with William Jackson Harper, and finally watch The White Lotus.) I didn’t catch the latest episode of Succession until last night because I was finishing up a book on deadline and then other petty shit happened this week. So now I have to watch tomorrow evening’s finale on time or risk having it immediately spoiled (seriously, it’s nearly impossible not to know what happens on Succession for a full week). But Insecure has two more episodes remaining for the entire series and I’ll be sad to see it end. It was so thoughtfully written and produced, and it’s one of the few shows out there that examine how adult female friendships change into your 30s. The cast is great and they’re all strong voices. I cannot wait to see what they all do now.
I’ve also heard advance buzz that Quinta Brunson’s Abbott Elementary is one of the strongest new sitcoms out there. Shout out also if you know and love Philly:
Listening to many things, but I’m happy to hear Perfume Genius finally get to tour their terrific album from spring 2020.
Also, if you’re into Succession, this Jeremy Strong profile delivers. It’s caused quite a stir this week.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/13/on-succession-jeremy-strong-doesnt-get-the-joke