Weekly Media Roundup

[cittasette]

I expect this weekly roundup to be thoroughly demolished since classes have started up again, or maybe dominated by my class readings.

What I've recently finished reading:

Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett. This was fun, though not as good as Going Postal, which I felt had a more character-driven plot. In Guards! Guards! it was just "hey, let's summon a dragon in a convoluted plot to gain power" and the consequences thereof. But there were some brilliant moments, like Vetinari and his dungeon, and the attitude of Ankh-Morpork citizens (really, the city itself could be called a character). I think I'll keep reading the City Watch series and see where it goes.

What I'm currently reading:

Red Rising by Pierce Brown.

Made a bit more progress. I'm not really liking the narrator so far, though I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the cockiness, the anger, and the lack of other personality traits. Moist von Lipwig might have been a liar and a cheat, but he had personality in spades. But this guy? Eh.

Worldbuilding is interesting so far but I'm still 30 pages in. What I really want to know is why the reds are on Mars in the first place and if these people are humans or some alien species. The color-coded caste system (?) reminds me of Amenta except Amentans are actually aliens.

China Wakes by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.

It's been a month and I'm still reading this book. So much of it is still relevant that it's easy to forget that it was written in 1994, and then they mention that Hong Kong is still in British hands. There's also an extreme lack of internet. They mention that in the 1990s censorship around literature and media was actually loosening up -- I wonder if the internet gave Chinese citizens more freedom or gave the government more ways to monitor them. (The answer is probably "both".)

I know that much of Chinese fandom is in forums, locked behind registration requirements to make it harder for the government to take them down for writing, say, porn. And then you have all the web novels, which I assume still exist because it's hard to filter through so much text, even with the help of technology. But visual media (or maybe just shows?) seems to be more constrained -- you still have crackdowns on content like Guardian the drama, which was released just last year. Ugh.

In other news, I found that really good Newt/Newt/Hermann fic (yes, there are clones, and yes, there are identity issues in spades) that I read a long time ago back when I was heavily into Pacific Rim and am trying not to waste all my free time reading that instead.

Comments

[sylvaine]

It's not a waste of time if you're enjoying yourself ;D

If I'm remembering right, Guards! Guards! was one of his earlier novels - and as I'm sure you've heard from everyone who has ever recommended Discworld to you, the newer novels definitely improve a lot.

[troisoiseaux]

I found that really good Newt/Newt/Hermann fic (yes, there are clones, and yes, there are identity issues in spades)

Cool, I know what I'm doing instead of my homework today!

[trobadora]

Yeah, Guards! Guards! is early, and everything grows more complex after that. But it's definitely worth it for the Vetinari stuff.

"Down there," he said, "are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathesomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don't say no."

That whole scene? That's the moment I really fell in love with Vetinari. He's great before that - the dungeon scene, OMG! - but that was what really got to me.

[cittasette]

Yes! I loved that whole scene.