What I'm doing instead of reading
I've written on here before about having lulls in my reading habits. I'm having a doozy right now. I honestly can't remember the last book I read. So instead I'm going to write about what I have been doing.
I love Netflix. It's just the most amazing thing. So many TV shows and movies just at my fingertips. If I could have chocolate or pizza constantly at the ready in the same way, I would be a happy girl. It's getting to the network's summer hiatus, so I'll be re-joining the DVD side of Netflix for a few months to get EVEN MORE movies coming to me. So awesome.
So I just recently got drawn into The Walking Dead. I'm kind of reluctant to jump onto pop cultural bandwagons, and, having worked at Borders, I felt like zombies were just another bandwagon that people were clamoring to willy-nilly. That and vampires. And werewolves. I didn't even start reading Harry Potter until Prisoner of Azkaban was released. So I thought, "Great. More zombies. Just what we need."
But, damn, it is hard to escape stuff on the internet. I started reading some of the articles and they started sounding intriguing. Then I saw some of the fans of the show who appeared on the after show Talking Dead. These were people whose work I enjoyed and admired: Kevin Smith, Nathan Fillion, Paul Bettany, Zachary Levi, Adam Savage, Aisha Tyler, Patton Oswalt. I learned a long time ago that listening to celebrities I admire can pay big benefits (I will be forever grateful to Stephen King for recommending Shadow of the Wind in his column at the back of Entertainment Weekly years ago, even though I don't really read his books). Then they announced Jeffrey Dean Morgan was going to join the show. That was the final nail in the undead's coffin. So I thought I'd at least give the thing a shot.
I honestly don't remember ever seeing anything quite like that premier episode. Someone tell me if I'm wrong. It was relatively sparse, with large portions with no dialogue at all. Those scenes relied heavily on visual impact, which I think is the real difference between this show and anything else out there. There were some gut-punch moments where I literally gasped or was unable to withhold a whispered expletive. Like Harry Potter, I was sold from the (rather belated) beginning. So I spent a month or so catching up on 6 seasons of The Walking Dead. Didn't make the finale when it aired live, but now I get to wait 6 months like everyone else and complain about its vagueness. Misery does love company.
I may be filling the time with the comics. I'm hitting up Free Comic Book Day this weekend to get the new comic by Alan Tudyk that's associated with his Con Man series (which you should totally check out on Vimeo or YouTube). I was thinking of getting The Walking Dead, Y: The Last Man (thanks to a recommendation a really long time ago from a Borders coworker), and a couple of indies I read about on a website called The Nerd Machine (www.thenerdmachine.com) called 4 Kids Walk Into a Bank (what it sounds like) and Legend (where dogs rule in a post-apocalyptic world).
Next I binged a Netflix exclusive called The Ranch. It stars Danny Masterson & Ashton Kutcher from That 70's Show, as well as Debra Winger and Sam Elliot. Winger and Elliot are the parents to Masterson as Rooster, the older brother, and Kutcher as Colt, an ex-semi-pro football player who returns home to his parents ranch after a long time away. There's brotherly friction, there's decidedly un-PC humor, but man is it funny! Then there's always House of Cards and Grace and Frankie. I also plan to catch Ricky Gervais's Special Correspondents soon too. And maybe it's a good thing that Netflix doesn't carry Game of Thrones.
But I still have high hopes that one of the novels on my bedside table will grab my attention. I'm starting with Philip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle, which is an alternate history where the Nazi's win WWII. It's been made into a miniseries on Amazon, but my Netflix addiction is absolute right now; I haven't given any other streaming services a try yet. These are some of the other novels waiting patiently:
I love Netflix. It's just the most amazing thing. So many TV shows and movies just at my fingertips. If I could have chocolate or pizza constantly at the ready in the same way, I would be a happy girl. It's getting to the network's summer hiatus, so I'll be re-joining the DVD side of Netflix for a few months to get EVEN MORE movies coming to me. So awesome.
So I just recently got drawn into The Walking Dead. I'm kind of reluctant to jump onto pop cultural bandwagons, and, having worked at Borders, I felt like zombies were just another bandwagon that people were clamoring to willy-nilly. That and vampires. And werewolves. I didn't even start reading Harry Potter until Prisoner of Azkaban was released. So I thought, "Great. More zombies. Just what we need."
But, damn, it is hard to escape stuff on the internet. I started reading some of the articles and they started sounding intriguing. Then I saw some of the fans of the show who appeared on the after show Talking Dead. These were people whose work I enjoyed and admired: Kevin Smith, Nathan Fillion, Paul Bettany, Zachary Levi, Adam Savage, Aisha Tyler, Patton Oswalt. I learned a long time ago that listening to celebrities I admire can pay big benefits (I will be forever grateful to Stephen King for recommending Shadow of the Wind in his column at the back of Entertainment Weekly years ago, even though I don't really read his books). Then they announced Jeffrey Dean Morgan was going to join the show. That was the final nail in the undead's coffin. So I thought I'd at least give the thing a shot.
I honestly don't remember ever seeing anything quite like that premier episode. Someone tell me if I'm wrong. It was relatively sparse, with large portions with no dialogue at all. Those scenes relied heavily on visual impact, which I think is the real difference between this show and anything else out there. There were some gut-punch moments where I literally gasped or was unable to withhold a whispered expletive. Like Harry Potter, I was sold from the (rather belated) beginning. So I spent a month or so catching up on 6 seasons of The Walking Dead. Didn't make the finale when it aired live, but now I get to wait 6 months like everyone else and complain about its vagueness. Misery does love company.
I may be filling the time with the comics. I'm hitting up Free Comic Book Day this weekend to get the new comic by Alan Tudyk that's associated with his Con Man series (which you should totally check out on Vimeo or YouTube). I was thinking of getting The Walking Dead, Y: The Last Man (thanks to a recommendation a really long time ago from a Borders coworker), and a couple of indies I read about on a website called The Nerd Machine (www.thenerdmachine.com) called 4 Kids Walk Into a Bank (what it sounds like) and Legend (where dogs rule in a post-apocalyptic world).
Next I binged a Netflix exclusive called The Ranch. It stars Danny Masterson & Ashton Kutcher from That 70's Show, as well as Debra Winger and Sam Elliot. Winger and Elliot are the parents to Masterson as Rooster, the older brother, and Kutcher as Colt, an ex-semi-pro football player who returns home to his parents ranch after a long time away. There's brotherly friction, there's decidedly un-PC humor, but man is it funny! Then there's always House of Cards and Grace and Frankie. I also plan to catch Ricky Gervais's Special Correspondents soon too. And maybe it's a good thing that Netflix doesn't carry Game of Thrones.
But I still have high hopes that one of the novels on my bedside table will grab my attention. I'm starting with Philip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle, which is an alternate history where the Nazi's win WWII. It's been made into a miniseries on Amazon, but my Netflix addiction is absolute right now; I haven't given any other streaming services a try yet. These are some of the other novels waiting patiently:
- The Girl With All the Gifts by MR Carey
- The Story of Kullervo by JRR Tolkien
- William Shakespeare's The Jedi Doth Return by Ian Doescher (no Muppets!)
- a new series called Emperor of the Eight Islands by Lian Hearn (the first book is called The Tale of Shikanoko). Her Tales of the Otori was really good - fantastic Japanese cultural fantasy
- Armada by Ernest Cline (so happy about Ready Player One being made into a movie! Steven Spielberg! Simon Pegg! Gah!)
- the new series by Rick Riordan called The Trials of Apollo (oh, I do love mythology....)
- and finally a book called The Everything Box by Richard Kadrey, which kind of reminded me of Good Omens when I read the blurb
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