Legends of Tomorrow 4x01-05

I don’t think I’ve ever written about Legends of Tomorrow before, so let me start this review with a little confession: it is my favourite Arrowverse show, and no one is more surprised by that than I am. For starters, I only started watching it for two, maybe three reasons: Arthur Darvill, Sara Lance, and to not miss out on any lore-building or continuity nods to the other shows (which, back then, were only Arrow, which I loved, and The Flash, which I liked quite a bit, but not enough to get all the hype for it). What’s more, I couldn’t stand Ray Palmer on Arrow (seriously, I even listed him as one of the many things that ruined season 3 for me), and I wasn’t at all interested in Captain Cold or Heatwave either: they were, in my opininon, unfairly lauded boring, one-note villains, just like every single other villain of the week on The Flash. So pretty much EVERYTHING was against Legends when it started, and season 1 didn’t inspire too much confidence either. But along the way, things started to shift imperceptibly. Ray became insanely likable, Snart and Rory were expanded and built upon as characters I could actually care about, and when season 2 got rid off all the deadweight and introduced Nate and Amaya to the cast, well, that was pretty much it. Couple that with Arrow’s increasingly dark storylines and stagnating quality, The Flash becoming pretty repetitive, as well as Supergirl’s subpar debut season, and Legends quickly became one of the shows I most looked forward to every week.

The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky - John Hornor Jacobs (2018)

I'm not quite sure what to make of this book. Cosmic horror as a genre intrigues me because I think the fear of the unknown (and what lurks beneath) is so deeply entrenched in all human beings that, if done right, such a work can evoke emotions stronger than any psychological or gore-based horror novel ever could. That is why I’m so confused about and disappointed in this book, because at its most basic it had everything to tell an absolutely terrifying story, but instead it chose to meander and not say or do anything meaningful with the groundwork it laid for itself.

All of this is pretty confusing without mentioning some specifics, so I will try to do so without really spoiling anything. The two main characters are exiles from a fictional South American country that has been torn apart by rebellion and the subsequent rise to power of a military dictatorship. At first I didn’t understand the author’s decision to invent a such country when there are so many where such a thing actually happened in real life, but over the course of the book I came to appreciate the additional layer of otherworldliness this choice has added to the story. Our protagonist, Isabel, befriends Rafael, a mysterious poet from her home country, who eventually leaves his comfortable life in Spain to go home and search for his lost family, which leaves Isabel in charge of his apartment. There she discovers a written account of his friend’s former life, and the strange and more than a little distrubing path that led to his exile. This is where the horror elements really start to come into play, not only through the vivid descriptions of torture he has endured at the hands of his captors, but also through the interwoven story of his attempts to translate an old manuscript. For some reason his captors are really interested in this piece of work, in fact they even suggest that him taking it on was what drew them to him in the first place. Naturally, Isabel finds the manuscript and begins to work on her own translation, which is when she is forced to realize that Rafael is not safe back home and she decides to go and find him.

Sounds pretty amazing, right? Spooky, mysterious, bone-chilling even, thanks to Rafael’s memoir (you’ll see what I mean when you read it), this is the groundwork I was referring to earlier. Everything is in place for a spectacular conclusion where we finally get our answers for all the important questions, such as: Who are these people? What do they want with the manuscript? What IS the manuscript? What cosmic powers are at play here? Well, we never find out any of that. The ending of this book is a confusing mess, at least for me. I realize that so far I will be the only one giving it less than four stars, and I could praise the writing style and the character of Rafael (not Isabel, who was pretty bland in my opinion) as reasons why I liked the book overall – and I did, in a way, because it had beautiful imagery and kept me interested until the very end. But it had the potential to be so much more, and while I’m generally not opposed to open endings (sometimes I even like the whole „decide for yourself what happened after” approach), there was not even remotely enough material here for me to come up with anything that makes sense.

The Walking Dead 9x06 Who Are You Now?

Generally, I’m not a big fan of time jumps. I hate the feeling of missing out on potentially important developments concerning my favourite characters or couples (you hear that OUAT season 4? Those six fictional months were really important to me), and it’s even riskier when there’s such a big jump that characters invariably have to be recast with actors who will fit their new ages better. You can tell me that it’s the same character all you want, but if the new actors’s not good enough, I simply won’t feel about them the same way ever again. On the other hand, I will admit that sometimes it’s worth to have a time jump for all the new mysteries such a big change could bring (wait, when did that happen? Why are they not talking to each other? Oooh something BIG must have went down, I can’t wait to find out what!)… except when you have insufferable showrunners who handwave it all away with „oh you know, time has passed, people change, you’ll get used to it”… and then that’s another whole new kind of feeling fucked over. So with all that said, I’m happy to say that I really enjoyed The Walking Dead’s first post-time jump episode! By jumping forward a whopping six years, I was spared from having my heart broken from watching Michonne’s fresh grief over Rick’s „death”, which I appreciate a lot. Moreover, the only character who had to be recast was Judith, and her new version is wonderful so far, and there was even a little bit of mystery peppered in, although this is not necessarily the kind of show where I expect that sort of thing. So it was great! Overall I’m still surprised by how much I’m loving this season, and I’m a bit sad we only have two more episodes to go before the winter break.

The Walking Dead 9x05 What Comes After

 

Well that was… an episode. I’m not sure what I expected since it’s been known for a while that it would be a kind of flashback/hallucination episode leading up to Rick’s departure, but was it wrong of me to want a little more out of it? Not more action, necessarily… in fact, I’m kinda loving how lowkey and subdued this season has been so far. It’s been nine years, I don’t crave outrageously gory zombie slaughter every second episode anymore. I like heartfelt conversations and small but meaningful character moments just as much. So was that the problem? That Rick spent his last remaining moments on the show conversing with dead people, instead of getting some closure with his loved ones? Nope. For me, the problem lies in the very fact that this was Rick’s last episode, or more accurately, the fact that I knew this was his last episode. How am I expected to enjoy anything about it when I know that whatever happens, by the end of it Rick will be gone? I guess I could say props to everyone involved for still managing to make it somewhat suspenseful, but that’s hardly consoling. Like, can you imagine the absolute gut-punch this episode could have been if they had kept Rick’s exit a secret? I know I complained about this before but it’s something that’s on my mind a lot, and not just regarding TWD. Generally, I would prefer never to know when an actor is about to leave a show. I want to be surprised and outraged, dammit, not just mildly sad when it finally happens after half a year of knowing it would.

Top Ten Tuesday 11.06. - Backlist Books I Want to Read

It’s Top Ten Tuesday Time! This was a bit of a tricky topic for me because I wasn’t sure how to interpret the word ’backlist’ at first, and usually just thinking about the books I said I would read but then never got around to it is enough to give me a mild headache. Also since I have way too many unread books both on my Kindle and my Goodreads To Read List, so many it would be impossible to choose just ten of them, I decided to narrow the scope down to „Ten Books Released Earlier in 2018 that I Want to Read Before the Year Ends”. Even that should be difficult enough, not only to select but to actually read... I should really learn the art of selecting a book to read and then actually fucking reading it, is what I’m trying to say. Anyway, here’s my list, you guys! Let me know what you think about any of my choices in the comments.

1. In Byron’s Wake – Miranda Seymour

Lord Byron is one of my favourite poets, and I’ve always found his daughter, Ada Lovelace, to be a fascinating woman. This book promises to teach me more about not only her but her mother too, and I’m here for it.

2. Legendary (Caraval, #2) – Stephanie Garber 
Caraval was one of my favourite books of last year, and I was eager to read its sequel when it came out in the spring... and then I didn’t. Typical. I still really want to, though! 

3. The Romanov Empress - C.W. Gortner

I discovered this book after reading Queen Victoria’s Matchmaking, and I was hoping it would be about Alix, but it turns out the Empress in question here is her mother-in-law. That’s cool with me, too! The more historical figures I can learn about, the better.

4. An Absolutely Remarkable Thing - Hank Green 
I read two John Green books so far, one I hated with a burning passion but the other I liked, so I’m still undecided as to how I feel about him as a writer. Now it’s his brother’s turn to amaze me, and I kind of want to love this book. 

5. A Keeper – Graham Norton
I’ve been watching Graham Norton every week for the last four years or so, and I didn’t have any idea that he was also a writer. I expect his book to be as fantastic as his interviews always are.

6. The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock – Imogen Hermes Gowar

I'll be honest, I don't even remember what this book is about, but it's been on my To Read for ages, and since then it's generated incredible buzz, so now I'm more eager than ever to finally read it. 

7. I Was Anastasia - Ariel Lawhon

The second Romanov book on my list, this time about a more well-known subject. And yet, I'm not exactly sure what this book will be about. Will it acknowledge "Anna Anderson" as an impostor, or will it be more of a "what if?", historical fantasy kind of approach where she really is Anastasia? I'll have to read it to find out.

8. Lady Mary – Lucy Worsley

I adore Lucy Worsley’s TV documentaries, but I’ve never read anyhing she’s written. I think it’s high time I remedy that, and a novel about the breakdown of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon’s marriage narrated by their daughter, the future Mary I, sounds like an excellent place to start. Plus, it was published on my birthday. Better late than never to read it then! 

9. The French Revolution – Stephen Clarke

Stephen Clarke's 1000 Years of Annoying the French is one of my favourite books of all time, so much so that it's barely ever left my bedside since I brought it about eight years ago. I'm not even exaggerating, it's right here next to me this very moment. For some reason, though, I've never read anything else he's written.

10. Meet Me at the Museum - Anne Youngson

This is supposed to be a love story that somehow involves the Tollund Man, and I'm all about him and other bog bodies ever since I wrote my MA thesis on Seamus Heaney's bog poems. Bring on the museum romance!

+1 The Secret Language of Cats: How to Understand Your Cat for a Better, Happier Relationship – Susanne Schotz

This book is coming out exactly today! So it is a bit like cheating to include it on my list, but I couldn’t help it. I adore cats, and although I never had any of my own, I know that I absolutely will one day. It’s out of the question that I won’t. In the meantime, I’m okay with familiarizing with all the strays in the neighbourhood, and reading this book to make sure I don’t fuck up with any of them.

You 1x09 Candace

I expected this episode to be momentous ever since I looked through the upcoming episode titles like two months ago, and boy did it deliver! True, we didn’t meet Candace in the present day just so she could deliver some shocking truths to Beck like I originally expected we would, and neither did we really find out what happened to her - that’s the job of next week’s episode, I guess – but so much else happened in these forty minutes that I almost don’t mind any of that.

The Walking Dead 9x03 Warning Signs

Going into the new season of a beloved TV show knowing that not only one, but two of your favourite characters will be gone by the end is tough. If it was up to me, I would forbid actors and writers to spoil things like this beforehand, because really, what’s the point? Don’t you want your audience to be surprised and outraged when it happens? That’s like the best part of watching any TV show: the fucking plot twists. And while killing off Rick Grimes might not have been such a big twist four seasons ago, it damn well it is NOW. For my part I always thought Rick would die eventually and Carl would take over his legacy, but now that Carl is dead, Rick might as well be invincible… and THAT’S why it would have been the mother of all surprises if he just… died. And then Andrew Lincoln would have been like „Guess what my dudes, I knew this would happen a year ago when I quit my job, but I kept it a secret for all these months because I didn’t want to spoil it for you”. Wouldn’t that have been neat? I can’t believe they cheated me out of it.

Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages - Gaston Dorren (2018)

As an amateur language enthusiast/wannabe polyglot, a book like this is heaven for me. I’m constantly in the mood for starting to learn a new language, and then I never actually do it, but I have plans, you see. Before reading this book, my plans were, in a nutshell: touch up (basically re-learn) my German and my Spanish, really lay into my Swedish (so that I won’t start forgetting it like the other two), and start either Welsh, Russian, French, Finnish, or maybe all of them at the same time, who cares, languages are fun! Then I read this book and basically it went like this:

Chapter 20: Oh hell Vietnamese seems really interesting! Sure all those diacritics look complicated as hell but it makes the language look so fun, and it would be way more unique to learn Vietnamese than Mandarin. Might give this a look later.

Chapter 19: I never in my life thought about learning Korean but now that I’m reading about it, I’m loving this concept of ’ideophones’ (basically words that imply their meaning just by how they sound, kind of like onomatopoeias but not exactly). Maybe it would be worth a try?

Chapter 17: Turkey and Hungary have a lot of history together, so I already knew that we have a lot of loanwords from Turkish, but somehow I never thought about how much easier that could make learning the whole language. Plus, I do want to go to Istanbul at one point, so maybe it’s not such a crazy idea.

Chapter 13: Japanese used to be on my list back when I was briefly really into anime (I know, typical), and I never completely lost my interest in the language, even though now I only occasionally watch anime. I never knew about this really werid distinction between male and female Japanese, however, and that seems like the kind of challenge I would like to take on. Maybe I should put it back on my list.

Chapter 8: Russian was already on my list but this chapter was one of my favourites. I love etymology, and this short breakdown of how some complicated-looking Russian words actually have cognates in English was brilliant, and it only reinforced my belief that I need to learn Russian one of these days.

Chapter 6: Both the look of Bengali and its system of indicating vowels by attaching different tiny marks onto its consonents remind me of Sindarin. If I ever bring myself to learn an Indian language, I’m now almost certain it’s gonna be Bengali.

Chapter 5: The chapter about Arabic was actually a short dictionary of loanwords that made it into English, but I made tons of notes about words that are even more apparent in Hungarian. For example, the Arabic word for parrot is apparently ’babagá’, which somehow morphed into ’popinjay’. But in Hungarian, parrot is actually ’papagáj’, which is much more similar. Same with kahwa – coffee – kávé, and a few others I can’t recall right now. Did I mention I love etymology?

Chapter 2: Yep, Mandarin is exactly as complicated as I suspected. But I got enamored by the part about compound characters, how one half of them is a clue about meaning and the other about pronunciation. It makes learning the characters a bit like solving riddles, and I love a good riddle.

So yeah. It was a journey, with a lot maybes and mights in there, and I know myself well enough to know that there’s a 90% chance nothing will ever come of this. But that doesn’t make my time reading this book any less meaningful or amazing. Even if I don’t actually learn any of these langauges, I sure learned a lot about them from Gaston Dorren’s Babel.

You 1x07 Everythingship

Things have improved a lot for Joe Goldberg in the past couple episodes. Not only did he manage to convince Beck to give him a chance, he also eliminated his last remaining rival for her affections, her best friend Peach. Of course, getting rid of Peach didn’t magically make all his problems go away, as any sane person could have told him if only he asked for a second opinion. Murder is very rarely the answer, Joe! But at least it did take the show to some previously unexplored places, for example we got to see Joe and Beck spend some quality time together that was not constantly interrupted by her other jealous psycho stalker. Things were only perfect for a short time, though, as Beck grew increasingly resentful of Joe just… being there for her. If Joe was anyone other than you, you know… himself… I would actually feel bad for him. As it is, I spent a good chunk of this episode gleefully cackling. Finally, he has all he’s ever wanted – that is, Beck all to himself – and she’s ruining it. Fantastic. I truly love this new development.

American Horror Story 8x04 Could It Be... Satan?

 

If you, like me, were starting to get this deep, sinking feeling in your stomach about halfway through the premiere of AHS: Apocalypse, that you and everyone else are about to see your hopes crushed when it’s going to be revealed that the so-called „Murder House/Coven crossover” storyline was supposed to be taken metaphorically… You know, because the season is gonna take place in something like a coven/secret society, but there are also ghosts and shit like in Murder House, but no actual characters from those seasons were ever gonna show up… Well now you can breathe again because nope, the witches are finally here!

This Is Us 3x02 A Philadelphia Story

 

The Pearsons are back! And for some reason I feel really optimistic about this season. I know that we ended things last spring with some pretty difficult cliffhangers that foreshadow dark things ahead, but for me the one big hurdle that made me almost anxious before watching every episode is finally out of the way : Jack is dead. I mean, he’s really dead this time. We saw it, we cried, we never have to worry about „Will this be the episode where Jack dies? Oh god, I can’t watch this.” ever again. It’s kinda like a weight has been lifted off my shoulder and now I can just watch the show, like a normal person. Yay!

You 1x05 Living with the Enemy

Unbelievably enough, Joe and Beck are now officially in a relationship, or I think so, anyway. In American media they usually make a big deal about whether two people are „just dating”, „messing around”, or „being exclusive”. I said it once that this is weird to me because I always imagined that if you don’t like someone after about three dates you should just cut it off and not stay in this undecided place until you can finally decide whether you want to make it exclusive or not, because that’s not fair to anyone. Anyway, Beck was referred to as Joe’s girlfriend by another character in this episode and Joe didn’t correct her, but why would he? It’s Joe. He not only thinks he’s a boyfriend, he’s the PERFECT boyfriend. Jury’s still out on Beck’s opinion though ,since it was already established that she likes to mess around with guys on Tinder and have one night stands, so I’m not sure whatever it is that she has with Joe constitutes a relationship in HER mind. What’s clear is that they’ve been spending a lot of time together, which means that Joe constantly has to hang out with Beck’s awful friends, and needless to stay, things spiral out of control pretty quickly.

Mayans M.C. 1x05 Uch/Opossum

It’s been a while since I checked in with the boys and girls of Santo Padre, but the truth is, not much has happened in the past four episodes that merited a full review. That’s not to say they were bad - if they were, I wouldn’t watch them every week (okay that’s not strictly true since I’m still watching One Dollar too, even though I feel like it’s going absolutely nowhere). It’s just that the storyline is still extremely simple and right now it’s being dragged out to the point of paper thinness, which means that there’s not much to say about it on a weekly basis. That said, the show did earn the fall’s first renewal out of all the new series, so I figured that’s a nice enough reason for me to check in and summarize where we’re standing right now.

The Gown - Jennifer Robson (2018)

Manifest 1x01 Pilot

Manifest was hands down my most anticipated new series of the fall season, partly because its premise sounded very intriguing but more importantly because it stars Josh Dallas –the first of my main OUAT crew to be back on the screen (unfortunately, Rebecca Mader’s Like Family and Ginnifer Goodwin’s Steps didn’t get picked up, although apparently the latter still has some chance next season). I’ve read many opinions about the premiere before I watched it, indeed some before it even aired. Naurally, most people immediately latched onto the similarities with Lost – disappearing plane and all that – but opinions varied as to whether it could become a great success like its predecessor, or if it’s gonna be another one and done series with an interesting idea that it will ultimately fail to build on. As for me, I don’t form opinions before I’ve actually seen the thing. I’m old-fashioned that way. That said, when one commenter desribed the premiere as „This Is Us on a plane”, I was surprised: surely this implies that the show will focus more on family relationships and the personal drama ensuing from people returning after having been presumend dead for five years, instead of the actual mystery behind said disappearance? An unexpected development, but then again, Lost was so great in the first place because somehow it managed to focus on both and never made a big deal about it.

You 1x03 Maybe

Things were heating up on You quite a bit this week, both literally and metaphorically. I was right when I said Beck would fall for Joe if only he asked her out on a date like a normal person. He did, and she had. The problem is, Beck kept putting him at arm’s length because she had fallen for him. She had no problem going on meaningless Tinder dates and having sex with all the guys she met, but with Joe she didn’t want to rush into anything because she likes him. It’s the kind of logic I see a lot on American TV and one I am absolutely unable to relate to. This whole culture of dating multiple people at the same time and being unable to decide whether you want to be exclusive or not is completely alien to me, but hey. It’s just TV. In any case, even if Beck took the simple route and just started dating Joe like she clealy wants to, there’d be obstacles galore.

American Horror Story 8x01-02

This is going to be my first year of watching American Horror Story as it airs live, as I’ve only just recently caught up on all the previous seasons, but even I could tell that this summer there was a louder buzz around the upcoming storyline than usual. It’s pretty easy to guess why: this is going to be the show’s first ever crossover season, bringing together characters from Murder House and Coven, and fans are excited! Everybody from Connie „not seen since season 1” Britton to Frances Conroy to Jessica Freakin’ Lange is back, and that spells something huge, undoubtedly. But what it might also spell is confusion, since most of these people are reprising previous roles as well as playing new ones, and while I know it’s not unprecedented for some of them to play multiple characters in the same season, it’s never happened on this scale before. So it’s either gonna be amazing or a colossal clusterfuck, it can really go either way when it comes to AHS.

A History of France - John Julius Norwich (2018)

As a keen student of English history, it was inevitable that I would keep bumping into French kings, dukes, and other notables during my studies, and the more books I read about the same topics, the more the same Fenchmen kept popping up. The problem was, I had a hard time placing them in relation to each other, and remembering which Philip or Louis or Henri was present during which conflict with England. So while I eventually built up a cursory knowledge of some eras of French history, I know precious little about others. Basically, my knowledge consists of bigger chunks from 1066 to Catherine de Medici, and after that only a few tiny snippets about the Revolution, Napoleon, and the two World Wars. I decided a while ago to read a complete history of France to fill in the rest, and when I found out that John Julius Norwich (whose Four Princes I read and loved) was coming out with one this year, I knew it was the one for me.

You 1x01 Pilot

Usually when I start a new show, I give it 3-4 episodes before I decide whether to keep watching it or not. If I still don’t care about the story or any of the characters after four episodes, it’s time to let go. But every once in a while there comes a series premiere which grabs me by the shoulders, pulls me close and whispers „I’m amazing… you need me in your life” into my ear. Of course, there’s always a chance of deterioration of quality as the season continues, but as a general rule of thumb if I love the premiere, I’m gonna love the rest of the show as well. So chances are I’m gonna love You! It’s definitely my favourite new series of the season so far, and I can easily see it being in my top ten come the end of December.
 

Top Ten Tuesday 09.18. - Books on My Fall 2018 TBR

This is going to be my first Top Ten Tuesday entry, and I’m excited! I was trying long and hard to think of some theme to make it special, but in the end I settled for the most obvious one: books published in fall 2018. That’s about as vague as you can get so there’s really a little bit of everything in here: fiction, non-fiction, fantasy, history, a bit of humour... now that I think about it, it’s a pretty good overview of my reading tastes in general! So without further ado, the top ten books I’m looking forward to read this fall are...

1. I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life – Anne Bogel

Reading has been an integral part of my life, not to mention my nr. 1 hobby, ever since I was about four years old, so I have a feeling I’m gonna find this book insanely relatable

2. Small Spaces – Katherine Arden

I loved the first two books in Katherine Arden’s Winternight trilogy, and while I eagerly await the conclusion of Vasya’s journey, I got myself pretty psyched up for her upcoming children’s horror story.

3. Bridge of Clay – Markus Zusak

His first novel since The Book Thief, which is one of my personal favourites, so there was never any question about whether I’m gonna read this or not.

4. My Squirrel Days – Ellie Kemper

I don’t know much about Ellie Kemper as a person, but I LOVE Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and if her book proves just half as funny and  adorable as an average Kimmy episode, it’s gonna be great. 

5. Phoenix Unbound – Grace Draven

Grace Draven created one of my all-time favourite romantic pairings in her Wraith Kings series, and now she’s back with another unique fantasy romance that I’m expecting to love.

6. Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America's Most Notorious Pirates – Eric Jay Dolin

Pirates! ...yeah, that’s pretty much it.

7. The Clockmaker's Daughter – Kate Morton

I’m a sucker for novels dealing with related events set in multiple time periods, and this one seems particularly interesting from the blurb.

8. The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein – Kiersten White

Who knew I ever neeed a book about the childhood of Elizabeth Lavenza, or a retelling of Frankenstein from her point of view? I didn’t, but I soon as I found out about its existence, I was sold.

9. How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England: A Guide for Knaves, Fools, Harlots, Cuckolds, Drunkards, Liars, Thieves, and Braggarts – Ruth Goodman

That title pretty much sells the book I think. 

10. An Assassin's Guide to Love and Treason - Virginia Boecker

And finally, another Elizabethan adventure that promises to be both fun, romantic, and possibly educational.

+1. Blood’s Revolution – Angus Donald

I’m putting this in the ’+1’ position because it doesn’t even have a cover yet and right now I’m not convinced it’s actually coming out this October, but the first book in the series was one of my favourite historical fiction novels ever, and I know that if and when the sequel comes out, I’ll be here for it.

So there you have it! Please tell me what you think in the comments! Have you read any of these books? What other books along similar lines can you recommend to me? What are you planning to read this fall? What do you want for Christmas? Aren't kittens just the absolute best?

...Please just talk to me.