I’ve only finished one book this week, and put up one blog post too. However, I’m working on getting caught up on reviews, and am adding a new section to my weekly roundup – Movie Thoughts! I got myself one, of those unlimited cinema card thingies, so I thought I’d share my thoughts on my weeklyish trips to the movies. Read on to find out more!
This Week’s Reading:
Earlier this week I finished Devices and Desires by K.J. Parker. Let’s just say that I haven’t yet decided whether I’ll read the sequel. It was a dense book for a relatively uneventful one, but it still had a lot of that Parker wit and cleverness that I enjoy.
I’m continuing to read The Second Rebel by Linden A. Lewis. I’m enjoying it, but perhaps not as much as the first book? It’s taking me some time to get through, although this may change as I get closer to the end.
I made a start to The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones. It’s a contemporary horror novel, which is not normally my sort of thing, but I’m definitely interested to see where things will go. I’ll probably have this one a little bit on the backburner as I try to finish more pressing books.
I may or may not be doing some SPFBO reading also.
This Week’s Posts:
Sunday: Monthly Reading Retrospective (July) – A mixed month for goals – although book bingo has been going great!
Thursday: Book Review: Revenant Gun – An excellent conclusion to the Machineries of Empire series, I’m looking forward to reading more of Yoon Ha Lee’s work
Next Week’s Posts:
I’ve been trying to catch up on my reviews, both my regular ones and for SPFBO. I’ll have a double review for the sequels Exodus of Gnomes and Charmcaster ready to go, and hopefully at least one more complete next week too.
Movie Thoughts:
I got one of those unlimited cinema card thingies, so this is a new feature where I’ll give some brief thoughts on whatever movie I’ve managed to watch in the past week or so.
The Suicide Squad (in the cinema): I had an incredibly good time with this movie. Almost every single character was magnetic on screen, even the ones that didn’t last very long (and there’s a few that don’t last very long at all). Idris Elba’s exasperated Bloodsport and the returning Rick Flag were funny enough as straight men to the crazy violent antics of Peacemaker, Ratcatcher II, King Shark, Harley Quinn, Polka-dot Man and many more. And it was persistently laugh-out-loud funny too, with high stakes that managed to feel earned despite the madness. As a 15/R rated/whatever rating isn’t for kids where you live movie, it takes full advantage, being relentlessly gory, which I found to be more than a little gratuitous. Other than that (and perhaps the killing off of a couple of characters I’m sad to see die) there was very little the movie did wrong in my eyes. I don’t rate movies currently, but out of successful adaptations of the DC universe, I’d give this movie a Batman the animated seriesverse.
The Gentlemen (at home, in more than one sitting): Having not watched a Guy Ritchie movie in quite some time, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had a pretty good time with this one, the back and forth between Hugh Grant’s slimy PI and Charlie Hunnam’s precise and particular right hand man to a crime boss (played by Matthew McConaughey) being fun to follow. This time we get a crime movie focused more on upper and middle class criminals, as the PI tells Charlie Hunnam’s Ray all he knows about the events of the past few weeks, with the view to extort the crime boss for what he considers a reasonable 20mil. It’s witty, the narration is unreliable, there’s lots of criminals – it’s not quite as chaotic as some of Ritchie’s other crime movies, but it definitely has that feel, with lots of twists and turns and unfortunate coincidences. As far as being a complete story, I found it a little disappointing. The conclusion just sort of happens, and I didn’t find any satisfaction in the way the story ended. To me, The Gentlemen is a very fun ride, but not much more than that. I’ll give it a D.B. Cooper out of real life crime capers.
Next Week’s TBR Shortlist (Not including SPFBO books):
My streak of picking top row TBR shortlist books is broken. I had too many books on the go, then made the choice to pick up something not on my TBR shortlist at all, so I can’t even defer to next week. Ah well.
Here’s a link to my last Weekly Roundup, if you wish to compare the two. The book in the top left is Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao and the book in the top middle is The Bone Ship’s Wake by R.J. Barker. It’s very similar to last week’s, which I suppose is unsurprising!
As usual, let me know if there’s anything there you’d recommend!
Writings of a Doomscribe 