emo_snal, posts by tag: media reviews - LiveJournal

   Every two years the World Beekeeping Federation "Apimondia" holds a congress (founded in 1895 this was their 49th so they missed just a few). I first attended in 2017 in Istanbul, and again in 2023 in Santiago, Chile. This last week it was held in Copenhagen, Denmark.

   I had always planned to attend, though its a very difficult time of the year for us here in Australia, practically the busiest part of the beekeeping season at the best of times, and in my current job as a varroa extension officer, the invasive pest mite varroa is just burgeoning across my state at probably its most critical rate right now, AND my colleague the OTHER senior extension officer also wanted to attend Apimondia! So I booked flights to just be there for the conference and the few days before and after during which there would be "technical tours" -- which I've found one of the most rewarding parts of these conferences.
   I booked my flights and tickets on June 30th so I could write them off on the financial year ending on that date ;) at the time I didn't think Cristina would be coming along, but later it was decided she would. Unfortunately, you know how flights are, you reload a page practically and the price goes up $1000. The exact flights I had booked were, well, $1000 more so we got her on flights matching as closely as possible to mine that ultimately I think were only like $300 more (my round trip flights were AU$2,300) -- the outbound flight matched so closely in fact that we departed melbourne within ten minutes of eachother, arrived in bangkok together, and arrived in Copenhagen also within ten minutes of eachother!



Saturday, September 20th - The Journey There
   Even though I booked through Luftansa I was a bit horrified to find my Melbourne - Bangkok flight was on Jetstar, our budget airline. So that was predictably fairly uncomfortable. I'd never been to Bangkok before, I found the airport both on the way out and again on the way back to be one of the more confusing airports I've been in. I'm a veteran of a lot of airports so I can say this with confidence. Guidance signs were sometimes vague, confusing or missing and asking airport staff, they were usually friendly but sounded like they were only taking wild guesses at instructions on how to get to places merely around the corner from them.
   But I did have a moment to eat some thai food in thailand so that was nice.

In Flight Movie Reviews
The Accountant 2 - I had seen the preceding movie in this series, which I recall as "like Rainman if Rainman happened to pick up being a badass cold blooded killer as a random hobby" and in fact trying to remember what happened in the first one I kept conflating it with Rainman. Ultimately the movie was of the genre of people trying to solve a case with frequent gunfights but the plot didn't really make sense, numerous parts of it required people to know things they didn't know until later for their motivations to make any sense. C
Troy - I actually hadn't seen this movie before! And I've been on more of a Greek myths kick than ever, had actually downloaded the Argonautica, Illiad and Odyssey onto my phone before the flight for light reading. All that being said, maybe I'm becoming too hard to please with movies because my feelings about it were just kind of meh. Fun to see all the actors who later became more well known looking so young though. B-
Flow - This was actually the only movie I saw on the flight back. After perusing the movie listings and seeing nothing I was interested in, I noticed more than one fellow passenger watching a beautifully animated film about a cat in a boat with a capybara and became intrigued. In the "Family" category of film options I seldom venture into I found it -- Flow -- it was actually really nice. Not cartoon animations but like, actually trying to be beautiful kind of animations (CGI to be sure but nicely done). For unexplained reasons the forest is flooded and the cat and various other animals escape in a boat. There's no dialogue, no talking animals, but they convey personality with not-implausible behaviors and noises. Sadly we landed when I still had about half an hour left (note to self, I was 59 minutes in). A

   I had a short layover in Munich during which I went through EU passport control, which I only realized when I arrived in Copenhagen stuffed up our plan to go through passport control together. As we had discovered in Mexico, just because Venezuelans officially have visa-free entry into a place doesn't mean it will be granted, so I'd brought our wedding certificate and intended we'd walk through passport control arm in arm, but alas I arrived in Copenhagen outside passport control and she arrived inside passport control. Fortunately she didn't have a problem but I was very afraid for a moment there.



Sunday, September 21st - Arrival
   I've been to Copenhagen airport a few times before and as I recalled it IS a very easy-to-navigate airport. Simple walk from the baggage claim out to the metro where the machines are straightforward (unlike for example Amsterdam where I once spent nearly an hour trying to figure out how to buy a ticket and was nearly reduced to tears). Our AirBNB was literally just ten minutes down the metro. Short walk of a few blocks (400m?) amongst pretty five story apartment blocks, cobbled streets, trees and shops on the first level of the buildings. I immediately noted that even though it being nearly the equinox and the north and south hemisphere's therefore getting very close to equal sunlight and daytime right now, the climate in Copenhagen was MUCH NICER than Melbourne. I forget there's places where you can go out without multimple layers at times other than the one month of a year it might be summer (maybe). Whether was delightful all week, then had a similar shock when we returned to Melbourne and blisteringly cold winds (actually it was freezing rain when Cristina arrived).
   We were unaffected by Russian drone activity a the airport as that began Sept 22nd, though I was worried it could effect our eventual departure, and with the upcoming Trump summoning of all his generals and admirals I wasn't sure WW3 wasN'T about to break out while we were there.

   Our AirBNB was a room in a flat. I thought it was well-reviewed (4.27 stars) though just now looking at it again tehre's an AirBnB note advising that that's in the bottom 10% of available places in Copenhagen. The host, apparently from Shanghai originally, was very friendly and obliging, letting us check in early, apparently getting up early after a late shift to clean the place early for us. Well I would have been content but Cristina who is more discerning about these things noted that while the floor had clearly been hastily mopped and there were fresh bed linens and such on the bed, there was also a large amount of visible debris on the floor under everything, and the window and mirror could use some cleaning. The host's flatmate apparently got deported to China the second day we were there, which didn't really effect us but was, like, a thing that happened.

   We got some delicious pastries at a bakery across the street and then did some sight seeing around Copenhagen. It was a very easy trip of just a few minutes by the same metro to the center of town. Wandering along Stroget street and surrounds, we marveled at all the beautiful architecture and just how clean and safe it was and how happy everyone seemed.
   As can be expected with jetlag we perservered as long as we could but by early afternoon we were fading and returned to the room where we continued to try to stay up until a decent time to go to bed but it was a struggle. (on the flip side of things, which I'm writing this the day after returning, I pretty much passed out just before 21:00, but then was lying awake at 2:30am so got up and began this at 3 or 4am)

Monday, September 22nd - The Equinox
   The morning of this day we had to return to the airport because Cristina was flying to Mallorca to see one of her good friends (she'd be in Spain the duration of my conferencing days, first Mallorca and then Madrid). Fortunately due to the aforementioned proximity and easy of access to the airport this was no problem at all.
   As best I can recall I then strolled around town some more, exploring some fortifications, ate some more delicious food (in this case "Copenhagen's smallest restaurant." Oh I toured the museum of the Danish resistance to the Nazi occupation. It was a well done museum with immersive audio tour though I was mildly annoyed that with lots of individual exhibits sometimes they'd begin with like a minute of scene setting ambiant noise and one wanted to get on with htings, and in general I have a preference for reading exhibits which I can proceed through much more quickly.


and then I stumbled upon German frigate Baden-Wurttenburg, always cool to see a state of the art warship but also a reminder of the crackling tensions with Russia, the Russian drone mother-ship to be discovered off the coast of Denmark a few days later.

Tuesday, September 23rd
   I began this day by trotting down a block or two to a really well reviewed little cafe for breakfast. Sitting outside, Cristina video called me from Mallorca and we chatted a bit in our usual spanglish. Just as I was saying goodbye to her the guy sitting at the next table cheerily waved to the camera and said something simple in Spanish (I forget what exactly but it was thematically related to goodbye). I was greatly amused by this and began talknig to him once I was no longer on the phone with Cristina, we ended up talking for an hour and a half, he was a very interesting and friendly Danish fellow named Ole who had also traveled a bit. I'm not sure what his current project is but he had run and then sold a kayak related company. So I made a new friend (spoiler alert we caught up with him again the last evening but we'll get there when we get there).



   I had meant to spend as much time as possible in the national museum but this delayed me a bit. On a previous visit Ii had spent several hours and only succeeded in seeing the first floor (of like five) of the museum which covers from earliest prehistory through the vikings. The rest of the history museum was also really interesting. I particularly liked a room full of things one might think of as sort of "steampunk" but they were real historical items from the middle ages at a time when gunpowder was becoming a thing and people were experimenting with making combination gun-warhammers and crazy things like that.
   Another big exhibit they were promoting was titled "the viking sorceress" which was an audiotour through some surreal rooms while it talked about viking mythology, which I already knew beyond the level covered therein so I was once again feeling annoyed with the pace limiting effect of audio tours. Also, starting to run out of time I finally got to the fnial part of the exhibit which actually did have a lot of artifacts that looked interesting, but at this point I didn't have time for the audio tour to take its meandering-ass-time to explain them to me. There was also a whole other wing on the traditional clothing of various people throughout the world I would have liked to see but by now we were really getting up on running out of time for me to get to the opening ceremonies of Apimondia and my colleague Ashton was texting me to hurry up and get outta there. I ran into the traditional clothing exhibit just to see if I could quickly find anything on the native people of Venezuela but at least cruising through the exhibit at nearly a run I was not able to discern such.



   Took the metro down to the conference center (the Bella Centre) arriving a comfortable 20-30 minutes before opening ceremony, but I think I'll begin a new etnry for the conference itself (:

   It all began with Master and Commander. And that was so good that then there was Hornblower. And then, between audible and amazon there were recommendations of more and more similar series. The weirdly specific genre of dozen-book-series-about-a-protagonist-in-the-Royal-Navy-during-the-Napoleonic-Wars seems to have a surprising number of series in it. I made an excel document because I thought it would be fun to read those that I haven't read already in chronological order bouncing between them, though I had read most of most of the series already by the time I got this idea, and the Master & Commander series is the only one I think I would like to re-read.

   But on any account the books are similar enough in scope that they actually make for easy analysis of what the various writers are doing well or badly.

Jack Aubrey - "Aubrey-Maturin Series" / "Master and Commander Series"
   This is the gold standard of the genre. This series follows Captain Jack Aubrey, and his friend (and Naval doctor) Stephen Maturin who is so thoroughly fleshed out and a character of his own that it's often called the "Aubrey-Maturin Series." The characters are all unique and believable, the descriptions ranking with the highest of literature, the amount of nautical knowledge the author clearly possesses is unbelievably vast. A truly amazing series. Most of Aubrey's actions are actually based on the historical actions of Thomas Chochran, so it can't be said any of his victories are implausible, they basically happened as described. (And by an astounding coincidence I just realized I had last sung its praises in review _exactly_ a year ago!)

Horatio Hornblower
   It's long enough since I read this series that I don't remember the details quite so well, except inasmuch as I didn't like it as much as Master & Commander. In many people's opinion though it seems to possibly rival M&C -- I think it less strives for the kind of high literary heights M&C does and tells simpler more straightforward stories. Whereas Master & Commander begins during a concert and proceeds immediately with a chapter on the outfitting of the ship, which I found to be a geniusly executed maneuver, Hornblower would probably tend to tell any story in a much more straightforward right-to-the-action manner. M&C is for if you want to be carried away by literary genius, however, if you're motto is more along the lines of "never mind tactics just lay her yardarm to yardarm" Hornbower is more straightforward swashbuckling sea adventures. Another contrast I think is that Horatio Hornblower doesn't really have a particularly memorable personality. Googling "Hornblower personality" in case I'd forgotten, it just says "courage and integrity." Those are admirable but not really the makings of a thoroughly rounded character. Jack Aubrey on the other hand is just bursting with personality, he has "courage and integrity" and so much more, including a raft of faults that come front and center almost immediately (a certain nativity towards non maritime matters, brushing people the wrong way with his exuberance, trouble caused by his romantic pursuits). I was rather wondering why Hornblower seemed to have more cultural hold until I compared the publication dates: 1937-1967 compared to Aubrey-Maturin's 1969-2004.

Ramage
   The protagonist of this series is Lord Nicholas Ramage, whom we meet in the first book as a young lieutenant. He is an aristocrat from a seafaring family. His sidekick is an American seaman (his coxswain) on his crew. I read the first book of the series long enough ago that I don't really remember it, but, having caught up with it chronologically while recently reading the Bolitho series, I just read the second book in the series. The writing is clear and the adventures varied and continuous.. but every character has the personality of an exuberant 13 year old, the protagonist's creative solutions often depend on obvious counter-actions not occurring to the enemy or reader, and, for example, while spying in an enemy port random strangers he approaches on the street seem over-eager to just volunteer all kinds of useful information. He greets a fisherman and by almost the second sentence out of said fisherman's mouth he's mentioning where there are forts with guns (because they "scare the fish"), or, similarly, the enemy admiral's gardener can't wait to tell random passersby everything he knows about the admiral's schedule and habits. For these reasons I think it might be best enjoyed by a less discriminating audience, perhaps one that is itself 13.

John Pierce
   The protagonist in this series actually has a background that breaks the mold (nearly) all the others are set in -- he was pressed (forcibly conscripted -- literally kidnapped at night from a pub, an actual practice) involuntarily into the royal navy. Through the course of the series he continues for one reason or another to be pressured into staying in the Royal Navy and even accepting commission as an officer. I had read the first fifteen books of the series earlier and just recently read the 16th. And upon commencing this reading of the 16th I don't know how I made it through the first 15; I'm finding the writing quite tedious: (1) The first two chapters and more are just thick thick exposition of everything that's happened in the prior 15 books, most of which turns out to be barely relevant to the current book, and involves various plots and connivances of lawyers in London, with numerous characters mentioned who don't feature in this book and having forgotten them all since I read the rest of the series it was just an overwhelming amount of thick incomprehensible blathering; (2) I don't know the literary analysis word for this but he keeps instead of saying "[dialogue]" he said the author writes "[dialogue]" was what he had said next or instead of he kicked the door in he writes kicking the door in is what he did next. This kind of thing certainly doesn't help not make it a tedious read. Also I think I can never forgive the protagonist and author for having the protagonist in one of the books enter an enemy camp under a flag of truce and then commence an attack from the inside -- having read a lot of books about the period I feel confident that everyone in the Royal Navy would thereafter consider him a despicable honorless poltroon to be never employed again in any capacity, but in the book his superiors are just like jolly ho good job. Also in for example the most recent book I read (spoiler alert) with a particularly bad crew (mentioned frequently) he captures a much bigger French frigate with no clever explanation other than they somehow just outfought them, somehow, with a smaller less trained crew just kinda won by fiat.

Bolitho
   The protagonist of this series is once again the scion of an aristocratic seafaring family. In general I find the stories well enough written to be worthwhile reading, without feeling like they're written for insultingly-less-discriminating audience as some of the others. Just a few quirks though: the author seems to lack imagination: the protagonist's clever solution to attacking an enemy strongpoint is always to come ashore and approach from behind, and/or the enemy does it to them; he has a fiercely loyal immensely strong crewman sidekick, who then dies and is replaced by a carbon copy character; every admiral he encounters is absolutely falling down incompetent, and the protagonist keeps falling in love with their wives and stealing them away (but then both the admiral and then the wife sadly dies). Another annoying thing is the protagonist's personality seems to be mostly inclined to be cold and snappish to everyone else, which is fine, characters don't have to be likeable, but when the author/narrator doesn't seem to realize they've written a not-super-likeable-personality character it's a bit of a disconnect -- almost every single time another character addresses the protagonist the protagonist responds with the kind of curt snappishness you'd think people would soon learn not to address him if avoidable, and yet the author has so many asides about how much other characters like Bolitho, it starts to feel like he's severely Marie-Sue-ing (that is, tying his own ego to the protagonist). There's a really gratuitous amount of references to nearby minor characters saying how damn impressed they are with Bolitho.

Thomas Kydd
   It's a been a bit of time since I read most of this series, but the one thing that really stuck with me is that the protagonist's sidekick in this one is like a cheap knockoff of the famous Maturin of Master and Commander. That is to say, a philosophical naturalist. But while Maturin is a delightful character full of quirks and authentic philosophical musings which seem perfectly natural in context, "Renzi" of the Kydd series is always spouting disjointed snippits of philosophy that DON'T feel like they fit in context and just acting snooty. It was really offputting. The protagonist, Thomas Kydd in this one is originally pressed into service like Pierce was, and also has the immensely strong coxswain sidekick trope going on.

Alexander Clay
   This one frustrated me from the start by being very unclear what size vessel they were on (there's a world of difference between a sloop and a 1st rate!), where they were and what the even approximate date was (I eventually figured out they appeared to be participating in the British expedition against Ostend, May 18th 1798 by googling Ostend, which had been mentioned). The ship turned out to be a 32 gun frigate but the fact the author didn't immediately mention this shows immediately a lack of understanding of what's important (read a Patrick O'Brien book, the size of every ship by guns is always the first thing mentioned). And yet, and yet, while being unclear about things like that the author uses character dialogue to explain painfully obvious things like what latitude is and that ships of the era can primarily only fire off to the side -- I mean that might not be obvious to everyone today but he actually has one sailor asking another, while at sea chasing an enemy, like how could they possibly not know that when they're actually on such a ship. What the author does well is that there's actually several point of view characters among the crew rather than the one protagonist ... but there's a lot of tedious dialogue between them -- tedious mainly because the author doesn't seem to realize that in real life nearly everyone talks with as few words as possible to express a thought unless they're particularly pompous. Every one of the sailors is stringing unnecessarily long sentences together that don't get to the point until a dozen syllables in, by which point his mates would probably have wandered off. Also, as in the Pierce book, in the one book of this series I read they also out fight and capture a bigger French frigate with again no explanation other than > ??? > win. OTHER than characters being frequently inexplicably idiots and everyone talking pompously, it's a decent book, but author should definitely devote some time to those things. I however don't think I'll continue reading the series as between the tedious dialogue and insults-your-intelligence explanations I found it a bit tedious.

Merriman Chronicles
   After the above, I was starting to think I might have to draw a line and just steer clear of the lesser-known series, assuming they're lesser known for a reason. Nonetheless when audible recommended yet another to me I couldn't resist. The Merriman Chronicles thus far focuses on Commander James Merriman (but the introduction seems to indicate the whole series will feature multiple generations) in 1792, returning home after the loss of a ship (it seems like perhaps it's meant to come after an earlier book the author never got around to writing?). Numerous of these series have a book in which the protagonist finds himself assigned to a revenue cutter off England's shores combatting smugglers (it always predictably turns out to be the wealthy and well respected local landowner who is behind the smuggling ring). When Bolitho has these adventures I seriously questioned whether I was accidentally re-reading the same book twice but no I was remembering the Kydd version. I'm currently paused in the Ramage series on a book that seems to be that again (Ramage and the Freebooters) because I'm kind of unenthusaistic to go through it all again, it's not my favorite plotline. He does of course have the obligatory common-sailor-sidekick accompanying him, who like in the other books, infiltrates the smuggler's ring. And like the other books as a test has to kill someone. I haven't gotten to the resolution yet but dollars to doughnuts says it's a wealthy respected local figure. So here I am starting a yet even more unknown series that's embarking immediately down a plotline I'm already tired of ... and actually I really like it! It's well written, without the stilted dialogue or overwrought philophizing of some of the others. And, being as I'm listening to it on audible one can never rule out the effect the voice acting has on the work, whether it be to the benefit or detriment. In this case, the voice actor (Nigel Peever) is excellent. And not only that, but the narration is backed by appropriate background noises throughout, which I have never heard done well before but here it is! I looked up the publisher wondering which major publisher was doing such a good job and the publisher is listed as "The Merriman Chronicles." It IS its own publisher?? Like is it self published and the author just somehow arranged such good audio production?? Anyway I recommend this series, I'll definitely be continuing to read it.
   Edit to add, after finishing I do like it, the audible production is great. To a certain degree the plot was as expected kind of predictable to this trope plot but it was better written than some of the others. One little detail that I liked is that they had a midshipmen, always noted for being young and squeaky (they're typically aged 12-16), but while they're usually barely competent (expected for the age), this nervous and squeaky midshipmen exhibits impressive flashes of initiative on several occasions.

William Bewer Series
   What, is this genre truly endless?? This one I haven't even started yet, but audible recommended to me and I note it has the same voice actor as the Merriman Chronicles which bodes well for quality. I don't see a year listed for the first book of this series but according to the blurb it begins with Lt Brewer as an aide to Admiral Governor Lord Horatio Hornblower, whose fictional biography on wikipedia informs me was made an admiral in 1823 and governor 1829-1831 so it presumably takes place then, which is a fair bit later than all the other abovementioned series.

Edit to add: in the 24 hours since I originally posted this I've discovered two MORE similar series! "Adventures of Charles Hayden," and Bliven Putnam (who at least changes it up by being in the American navy, and an "Isaac Biddlecomb" series! Even as a fan of this genre I'm amazed there's so many long series in it!

Edit edit to add: Isaac Biddlecomb
   I've now started the Isaac Biddlecomb series and I'm actually pleasantly impressed with this one. So far the protagonist began as an American merchant/smuggler captain, was reluctant to support the budding American revolution, has had a series of misadventures ultimately ending up at this point pressed into a British warship, which is to say so far it hasn't fallen into any of the familiar trope plots. The writing is good, the characters well rounded, I especially like how the author doesn't make everyone's loyalties hard and fast things but really explores the contending arguments splitting people's loyalties at the time. One thing that's distractingly weird about the audiobook though is the narrator reads every line with that weird distinctive cadence that Captain Kirk is famously parodied for.

Honorable Mention: The Honorverse
   The "Honorverse" series takes place 2000 years or so in the future from present, and is overtly a sci fi space homage to Horatio Hornblower -- it makes literal references to Hornblower and to the fact that the protagonist has the same initials. The protagonist, Honor Harrington,'s career doesn't follow Hornblower's exactly though so much as is as much as possible parallel to Admiral Nelson. That and she has a cat modeled off my own former cat friend Cato. Though the author isn't terribly great at writing unique characters, they all are either resourceful, friendly, plucky protagonists or dastardly, cowardly, scheming bad guys, but other than that I really like the universe (figuratively and literally) the author has created. I do recommend to anyone who has both enjoyed books of the above maritime genre and also enjoys science fiction.

And now, the spreadsheet! As you can see the dates are the Y axis going downward. In bold are the books I've already read. I'm essentially in 1797 with my most recent attempt to read chronologically across series, and Spain has just entered the war on Frances side.




   I made this spreadsheet because I both had this idea to read the books in chronological order even if it meant flipping between series, and also I was very curious to try to figure out if any of the characters crossed paths. Apparently Aubrey and Hornblower were both in eachother's vicinity during the capture of the Spanish treasure fleet on Oct 5th 1804; and a bunch of the protagonists seemed to be around the 1793 Siege of Toulon (probably because it was the first time General Napoleon would have come to particulr notice of anyone, and one of his few campaigns that directly abutted naval action).

   I'm really surprised given the popularity of this genre and the popularity of pirates, there's not a similar series written 80-100 years earlier during the Golden Age of Piracy in the Caribbean. (Obviously there ARE pirate books but they're not as nautical focused as this genre and usually essentially hokey, IMO. Like Michael Crichton's Pirate Latitudes (barf) (though in his defense it was published posthumously and maybe he'd have improved it but it was never gonna be Master & Commandeer))


   I think tomorrow I'll polish this up and post to Medium in search of a larger audience, so if you have any perspectives on any of these series please share them!

   So I just finished reading It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis in which a demagogue takes power in the United States in 1936 and quickly brings fascism to the United States, complete with the police state, concentration camps, and aggressive invasion of its neighbors (Mexico) in 1939 after staging false flag attacks by Mexico. I assumed this was all written after WWII with the benefit of hindsight but was surprised to realize after I finished that it was written in 1935, before Germany had concentration camps much less had invaded Poland in 1939!! (well okay google just now informs me German concentration camps began in 1933, but still it seems like it was pretty prophetic.)

   Altogether the book was very good and had one constantly thinking both about what it would have been really like to live in Nazi Germany at that time, and what the Trump administration almost turned into / what a new Trump administration would certainly be like. But before we get into those points I want to discuss three decisions of the author I felt distracted form his main goals.
   (1) almost immediately he has the new fascist administration completely, and I mean completely, overhaul the institutional framework of America, there are no longer fifty states but (a dozen) administrative sectors, with different subdivisions than our current counties and such. Maybe the author did that so he didn't have to concern himself with adhering to actual political considerations, but it seemed both very implausible, and it robbed the whole story of a great deal of verisimilitude. Ie it would have been much more poignant if the American fascism was more recognizably American.
   (2) for some reason the author chose to make a major plot point that the protagonist doesn't love his wife and is having an affair. This seemed completely unnecessary to the main thrust and personally I have these chivalric ideas of romance that find such things extremely distasteful. Sure I understand that in real life people are up to such shenanigans but why does it need to be in this book where the protagonist having an affair does not have anything inherent to do with fascism in America? I could see how it could have been worked in as a corruption of an institution or something but its not, its put in like something we should be totally okay with, and I'm not.
   (3) I thought it was funny how at pains the author was to ridicule and discredit communists at every opportunity. It makes sense at the time, I suppose the author was anxious to make sure their anti-fascism wasn't labeled as communism but reading it from the modern perspective you can't help but notice how much he shoehorns in the communists being laughably ridiculous and no good to the resistance or anything else.

   But more generally on the it-can-happen-here-ness of it. It had me thinking of a moment in Ms Lesowitz' English class in 9th grade. I don't remember why it had come up in English class, or what she had even said specifically, I just remember that the teacher had just said something about Nazis, and the entire class was loudly expressing their disapproval of nazis. And yet, and yet. I remember looking around and thinking, feeling quite definitely, that everyone was expressing their hatred of nazis not because they understood and hated nazis, but because they knew that they were expected to hate nazis and therefore they did. It was a slightly surreal moment for me, because of course getting groups of school kids to hate broad groups of people on principal is exactly what the nazis DO, and here, unironically, all my classmates were doing exactly that. Nevermind that nazis ARE hateable, but I felt I was the only one there who hated their beliefs from actual examination and understanding of them. It was at that moment i realized in fact how very easily it could happen here.

   And/or fast forward to another memory from high school, this during summer school (I had to take summer school every summer to make up classes I'd missed during my year abroad in Sweden), English class again, and our teacher asked us to write what we would have done if we had been in Germany during the rise of fascism. I'm sure most of my classmates wrote they would be partisans or something heroic like that. Probably in fact most of them would have been nazis but that's not the point of this paragraph. I wrote that honestly I probably would have just left the country at the first sign of it all and moved to Brazil. Sure I'd like to think I'd be some heroic partisan but to think about it really really realistically its hard to feel that would mean anything other than a death without accomplishing much. Thinking about that now, in light of the Trump administration and not-completely-implausible future Trump administration, its hard not to see what I had written as coming true -- I have indeed left the country, and if Trump gets back in power I don't exactly see myself rushing back to the states to become a partisan.

   Anyway, it was a good book, it does do well at driving home the point that it could happen here and while reading it one will be constantly thinking about how it almost did. Really I think we were only saved by Trump's colossal incompetence, he so almost got away with it and if he'd just had more coherent cold blooded pragmatism we'd have been living in the world of It Can't Happen Here. I think someone could write a really good book updating it to modern times and inserting the elements of things we actually saw happen ... and reworking that affair plotline please.

July 18th, 22:54 - I was writing that last entry starting while waiting at the gate and finishing literally as we began to taxi down the runway. So it was a bit rushed at the end and didn't include some pictures I've since added.

   Flight was with United, direct from LAX to Sydney. It looks like they'er building a monorail or at least light rail connection at LAX, that would be pretty rad if they actually connect it to the national rail network. I was surprised there was no passport control to leave the United States through the United terminal. Flight was mostly full, but got lucky, had the window seat with an empty seat next to me! 40ish woman on the aisle and I high fived when they closed the door and the seat between us was still empty. Place to dump all our junk! / I totally made use of sticking my feet under the seat in front of that seat for added room. Dinner was a cheeseburger, which I thought lol how very American of United, but it was actually very good. Seatmate remarked on it being surprisingly good. She was a paramedic from Florida, headed to Australia for the women's world cup, was going to potentially visit whichever cities the team she was following (USA?) was playing in.

In Flight Movie Reviews
The D&D Movie - you know, it was actually quite good. I'd heard it was good, and I'd gotten in to D&D the other year, but I was put off from seeing it any sooner because that actor Chris Pine seems extremely hateable to me. I just have this uncontrollable loathing for him. He looks so punchable. I can't even say his acting was bad, I just can't get past how much I hate his appearance. Anyway, I think part of what made this movie so good is that, very much like D&D characters, almost formulaically so, they gave each of the main characters as basic backstory-motivation. I say almost formuliacally because it really seemed like each one had the paragraph one writes when creating a character, almost down to being like the pre-written suggested ones, but it totally worked in the movie and it had me thinking that most movies don't really bother to do that with anyone other than the one most main protagonist. And each of the characters had a meaningful character development story arc. Plot was interesting and had a lot of clever references to D&D things without seeming like it was awkwardly trying to jam them in or in danger of boring people who weren't familiar with the game. In fact I think someone unfamiliar with the game would enjoy it perfectly well purely on its merits as a fantasy movie. I might have given it an A if it weren't for Chris Pine but god I hate him. B+

Avatar: Way of the Water - So the original Avatar didn't exactly have a mind blowing plot, everyone roundly made fun of it for being "dances with wolves with smurfs." Well this one somehow had a worse plot. At the end of the previous one the bad human colonists have to leave the planet Pandora. This one establishes that after (10 years?) another human expediiton arrived with greater force and established a bridgehead on the planet called... Bridgehead City. Our protagonist has been leading guerilla partisan warfare against these colonists, which has been successul in being a huge nuisance to them but not stopping them. It's now (5?) years after the return of the humans. Okay here's where it gets mind bendingly dumb. The colonial authorities want to kill Protagonistface because he's the leader of the resistence, so what does he do? He stops fighting, but leaves his tribe because he fears the colonials will strike his people, and he joins some other tribe, which immediately becomes the target of colonial strikes. Like, what did that accomplish other than the obviously intended meta goal of changing to an ocean based setting? But in universe, why would he stop fighting? Why would the colonials necessarily know where he specifically is? How would he justify really making some other tribe the target for persecution, considering he's supposed to be such a Good Guy and just causing a different innocent tribe to suffer instead of your own doesn't seem like good guy behavior.
   None of this is really spoilers btw, its pretty much established as exposition as soon as they can. And then what I thought was really lame is they have the exact same guy as the bad guy. They're just like "lol look we cloned him before he died!" I think that's a pretty piss poor excuse just to make the same movie again in a different setting. And then, spoiler alert (but really its too lame to be much of a spoiler) they make it clear that the apparently defeated main antagonist has survived, clearly setting up to have him once again reprise the same role (groan) in a third installment. I give this movie a C-, it would be less but I do like all the cool CGI animals they've made and some of the humantech vehicles too.

Banshees of Inisherin - The official plot summary of this movie is "Two lifelong friends find themselves at an impasse when one abruptly ends their relationship." Which doesn't actually sound that exciting but the movie is actually very amusing. There's a subtle humor to almost every line and it moves along quite well. Unfortunately I only started the movie near the end of the flight and we reached the gate when I had just about exactly half an hour left of the movie. Now I'm quite wrapped up in wanting to know how they resolve their plot arcs! It's apparently on Disney+ but I was getting Disney+ through my former roommmate Trent and it appears he has changed his password. And after he moved out he started being kind of a dick to everyone and only hanging out with his 18 yr old girlfriend so I'm not terribly inclined to beg him to give me his new Disneyplus password. Guess I'll need to fly on United again so I can finish the movie. (But note to self its literally on the 30 min remaining mark I left off!) A-

/End In Flight Movie Reviews

   At Sydney in the baggage claim I had some confusion, because as I had checked my checked luggage the handler had said it would go through all the way to Melbourne and the luggage tag I was given reflected that, indicated pick up at MEL, but conventional wisdom would be that I'd have to retrieve my luggage on arrival from international flight, go through biosecurity/customs, and recheck for domestic, and an employee I asked said yes I would have to collect it here. Aggravating things was the fact that it continued to not come out onto the belt until I was really starting to wonder if it wasn't coming out here at all and had indeed continued on automatically. But then finally it came out. By now I had an hour to catch my connecting flight (only half an hour till boarding!), deja vu of the JFK debacle!
   Emerging from international arrivals it was entirely unclear where to go for my domestic flight and I couldn't even find an airport employee, until I asked someone at a currency exchange desk who pointed me in the right direction for the inter-terminal shuttle. Arriving there a airport staffmember was advising us that if we had a tight connection to make it would be faster to take the train, so I rain in the direction indicated, down the two flights of stairs to the subway. Train came within a minute (unlike th NYC JFK train that took ten minutes to arrive!), at this point it was only about half an hour to departure (8:30) and I was afraid they wouldnt' check me in but they did, got through security and arrived at the gate just in time to board the plane.

   Once again had a window seat with an empty middle seat behind me. This time the woman in the aisle seat was matronly and threw her purse into the middle seat in what felt like an unfriendly hostile manner. We never spoke. Looking out the windows as we flew over the mountains of the Great Dividing Range there was an impressive amount of snow.



   Stepping out of hte Melbourne airport it was indeed coold! 9c (48f) "feels like 4" (39f). I had just missed the earlier Gull shuttle bus to Melbourne, would have to wait an hour for the next (which was the one I had expected to catch anyway). Changed into some more layers in the restroom while waiting. Bossman picked me up from the shuttle stop in Geelong, filled me in on some of shenanigans that had occurred while I was gone, sounds like an eventful two months!
   Kind of expected the car to need to be jumped but it started right up. Went and got lunch at the schnitzel-wrap place nad then some groceries since I obviously have no perishables from before I left. Then headed home.
   Just on the edge of my village I pass a police car, which I see promptly do a u-turn behind me. Which isn't a normal place to do so so I was bracing myself for what came next which was the reds and blues behind me. Remember my car? Having collided with a cow on the road? Well, I was waiting for their insurance to pay me for my damages, finally finally after taking seemingly forever (literally 7 months) they emailed me while I was in Africa saying they (the insurance company) found their client was not at fault because the fences were in good order and a cow jumping over a fence is an "act of god." I responded by sending the photo of the numerous cows on the road, and reminder that the farmer had admitted to owning the cow I hit, and they responded that it was unprovable that those other cows were also the farmers, which in my opinion stretched credulity beyond reason. So now that I'm back I've made an appointment with a lawyer to sue them for the damages. But long story short my car has not been repaired yet.
   The copper, who it turns out is the local Birregurra copper, was relatively friendly, said he wasn't going to ticket me or condemn my car with a "canary" (yellow ticket making a car officially unroadworthy), but he would if he saw me on the road with it again. Soo I was going to go to work tomorrow but I think I'll instead take the day to buy another car. As I've mentioned before I hate hate hate hate hate shoppinig for cars. But I think, though I innately feel like one "should" shop all around for the best car, I'm literally going to buy the first reasonably priced reasonable car I find because did I mention I absolutely haaaaate shopping for cars?
   Anyway, welcome home ey?

   Arrived home at 15:45 local time, which I think would have been 22:45 July 19th back in California, ie right on about 24 hours after my flight took off from LAX.

   My neighbor who i left my house key with wasn't home just yet, which presented a bit of a pickle. But weirdly, considering I recall having a hard time finding a house key to lock the house with at all before I left, on this occasion I went to where I felt my spare key should be and lo there was a key tehre that opened the house. I don't know why I couldn't find that key before I left? Or maybe I knowingly put it there at the time in addition to giving one to my neighbor and have simply forgotten.
   Anyway, the end.

   Let us pick up directly from where we left off, at the airport gate to leave Melbourne, and stressed about whether or not I'd be able to get in to Guinea due to accidentally failing to have my yellow fever certificate with me.

   Sitting nearby in the waiting area was what appeared to be a couple of African descent with their 4 year old daughter, and the precocious little girl was telling another woman "I'm going to Africa!" So I thought I'd be so bold as to ask the man where in Africa they were going.
   "Conakry Guinea"
   "Me toooo!"
   We immediately began comparing notes on the trip to Guinea (there's direct flights from Dubai now!), how things are there, etc. They turned out to be extremely friendly. Not a couple as it happens. The man (Sam) was traveling with his wife's best friend and the latter's daughter.

   Had an aisle seat beside an older caucasian couple. It would be my assumption they're just doing something boring like being on a vacation to Rome but last year when I finally talked to my older caucasian seatmate three quarters of the way through the flight it turned out she was on her way to Lagos Nigeria for a development project. So with that in mind this time I greeted my seatmates as soon as we were seated. They were on their way to Rome for vacation.

In Flight Movie Reviews
Woman King - This movie is about the legendary female warriors of the Dahomey kingdrom in West Africa in or around 1823. The plot is kind of a bit full of ahistorical fluff -- in the movie the Dahomey are adamandtly opposed to the slave trade and fighting to end it when in reality the Dahomey under that specific king tremendously _increased_ their participation in the slave trade and it was only under pressure from England that they eventually moved away from it. But other than that it's a fun movie and it's good to see a hollywood movie set West Africa actually striving to do serious justice to the culture rather than have it be some anarchic backwater of simple "natives." One review describes it as "Braveheart with black women" and that seems accurate.
   Also noteworthy that John Boyega, who played the Dahomey king, is ethnically Yoruba, ie, of the people who are portrayed as his enemies here. And it was interesting to me because the Yoruba history I'd read as background for the historical bits of my book as generally from the Oyo / Yoruba perspective, so funny for me as well for them to be cast as the villians. Also, as portrayed here, they come across more like their own enemies the Sokoto Caliphate horsemen than as themselves.
   I give it an A-, it was enjoyable and my only quibbles are with their historical liberties.

The Legion - This movie about a Roman scout escaping an encircled Roman camp and fleeing across the Armenian wilderness pursued by two enemies in order to go ask for help from another Roman general was extremely unimpressive. It felt like I was watching a student film project made by about half a dozen film students (I'm surprised to read now there's as many as sixteen actors in it). I didn't even try not to fall asleep during it and I don't think I missed anything. Looks like the professional reviewers pretty well skewered it too. F

Unknown Richard the Lionhearted Movie Kingslayer - then I tried to watch some Richard the Lionhearted movie that also didn't seem like it was proceeding very promisingly and I was at my limit for bad movies so just went to sleep. Googling it now I find it has 4/10 stars on IMDB, and the first result besides that is a google auto generated "People Often Ask: Is Kingslayer a good movie?" with the answer "Kingslayer is a poorly written, poorly acted, poorly directed film where the plot makes as little sense as why John Rhys-Davies agreed to associate himself with it." sooo I think my initial impression was probably correct and I'm going to go ahead and label it with the F
End Movie Interlude

   Arrived at 5:20am local time in Dubai, which would have been 10:20am in Melbourne, I guess making it only a 13 hour flight.
   Met up with my Guinean friends, who of course were making the same connection as I. Because I'm almost always traveling alone it's kind of novel and fun for me to feel like I'm traveling "with" people and they made me feel like I was part of their little group. In fact I had a very unusually social time in the airport because then a Muslim man approached us, he couldn't speak English but it was clear he couldn't figure out where his flight's gate was so I went off with him in search of his proper gate until he found some Arabic speaking people to help him. Anyway took off about two hours later.



   Flight would be bound for Dakar after Conakry and wasn't full. I was kind of anticipating most of the passenger would be onward bound to Dakar but (spoiler alert) it seemed like roughtly half got off in Conakry in the end. I would have had a seatmate but the cheeky woman moved to an unoccupied seat in the front row of the section, which I'd just heard the flight attendant tell someone else they'd have to pay $100 if they wanted to upgrade to it ahaha. So I had the aisle seat, empty seat beside me and a young man by the window spoke no known language (which is to say not English or French), and didn't deplane in Conakry.
   As the flight was all day time, and had the same set of movies of which I'd already seen all the ones I wanted to watch, I just read my book(s).

In Flight Book Reviews
In Trouble Again by Redmond O'Hanlon -- I had greatly enjoyed reading his later book set in the Congo, and in this one he is traveling by boat through the Venezuelan Amazon. Again I loved his mix of well portrayed characters, beautiful descriptions, and interesting all around setting, observations of natural history, etc. I think I slightly preferred Congo Journey for its tighter Heart of Darkness style plot arc of descent into near insanity, but no complaints about this book, I quite liked it. Finished the book ... great I haven't even arrive yet and finished one of the two books I brought with me. And I like this book too much to discard it, want to keep it on my shelf / loan it to other people, so guess I'll be carting it around now.

Into the Heart of Borneo by Redmon O'Hanlon -- Started this earlier book by the same author. In this one he is in 1983 making his first of what as we know would later be several ambitious expeditions. I'm only a few chapters in and I can tell his writing at this early stage is much less evolved than it would later be. He seems to be hurrying along in his prose, and makes some jokes I felt rather fell flat, but that's not to say it's a bad book at all. In fact it's kind of fun to have witnessed his development as an author through the course of his books. Anyway, I'm not very far in so that's all I have to say about this one so far.

   But in general I think O'Hanlon might be unseating Paul Theoroux in my opinion as the best travel writer, though I just wish he had written more books! It's only these three and one more on a trawler in the North Atlantic.
End Book Review Interlude



   I expected we would just fly more or less straight west across north Africa but we instead took quite the detour north over the Mediterranean. I kind of expected maybe we'd avoid flying over Sudan but looking at the specific route we took I can only guess we were also trying to avoid flying over Libya and Mali as well. And you'd think this would have been planned in advance but then we arrived over an hour late so who knows. As it happens, sometimes like on the Mel-DXB leg, I don't look at the in flight maps but as I was just reading I had he map open the whole time so I'd look up at it every so often and be like "okay we're crossing over Alexandria now huh." "well look there's Malta now. Are we headed to Europe??"
   And also, don't forget, this whole time in the back of my mind I'm a little stressed about what will happen when we get to Guinea in terms of being able to get in without the yellow fever certificate.

   So by and by finally we landed. 3pm local (2am Saturday Melbourne, having left my house at 2pm Thursday). Last year they were checking temperatures and covid vaccination certificates just at the end of the boarding bridge but not so this time (also masks are being worn now by a handful of people but no longer either required or worn by a siginificant number of people). Rather than wait for my friends, I hurried along thinking it might take me awhile to deal with passport control. Proceeded directly to the woman in the "arrival visas" kiosk, who last year had been sullen and difficult and had extracted a bribe from me (by cleverly telling me I needed to pay, rather than actually asking for a bribe, I only realized later I'd already paid for the visa). But this time she waved me away saying "no marshe pas!" which to my very basic understanding of French seemed to be "don't walk" and made no sense -- though now I look it up and apparently it means "do not work" (though I wasn't wrong, marche does walk on its own). So I just went to the passport stamping kiosk and handed the woman there my passport and the paper showing my visa approval. Rather to my surprise she simply stamped the paper and the passport and waved me through.
   Last year not only had the first lady asked me a bunch of questions and made a big deal about issuing a visa, but then the person at hte passport stamping kiosk had ALSO grilled me on things like the address and phone number of where I was staying and my hosts and generally also made himself difficult. But this time and after all that stress I blew through passport control in probably a matter of seconds. Needless to say she didn't ask about a yellow fever certificate.
   And then I ended up waiting around for my friends, they were among the last off the airplane. As we exited the terminal they were met by their joyous families. My ride was a spot late due to traffic but by and by they came and collected me, took me to the hotel. Another difference I noted from last year was a very heavy policy presence last year. There were armed soldiers loitering menacingly in the airport last year, one had to squeeze past them on the narrow walkway out which was kind of intimidating, and then in the drive across town one would see them very visibily present in many places -- as I noted last year I even saw things like a heavily armed policeman (/ military? well I think they're "gendarmes" which are literally both police and military) savagely thwack a motorcyclist for not coming to a stop fast enough. The police presence was overwhelming and imminently menacing. I don't know if the political situation has in general improved here -- they still have the unelected military leader who took over in a coup -- but just from the first day's observations the military/police presence doesn't seem as overwhelming and menacing.



   Otherwise, at the same hotel again. Just chillin here (well it's 36c/98f out so maybe not exactly "chillin") Saturday (today) and then tomorrow I depart for up-country.

   So I just finished reading (with my ears) The Three Musketeers. I thought I was already familiar with the story because I'd seen the 1993 movie thirty years ago plus all the usual cultural references, but it surprised me a bit. I'll be unrestrained with the spoilers here so if you don't want it to be spoilerized quick throw the device you're reading upon out the window!

   From my recollection of said 1993 movie and my impression of the plot up until reading the book was that the Three Musketeers had to foil a plot by the evil Cardinal Richelieu who hoped to betray the King of France to England. That turns out to be really not it at all, that's practically the opposite of it in fact, and in short, my thesis here is that I'm really not sure that the Three Musketeers are the good guys nor Richelieu a bad guy.

   In the first scene the protagonist, D'Artagnan gets in a fight with a gentleman named Rochefort because he percieved that the latter was laughing at his horse. D'Artagnan is beaten unconscious thereupon and a major major plotpoint for most of the book is his desire for revenge for this. This seems a really weird and uncompelling major plot driver to me! The protagonist wants to avenge himself for a beating he received for starting a fight over his perception that his horse was being mocked!

   After listening to about four hours (the whole thing is 28 hours long!) I remarked to one of my friends that it was thus far just essentially a story about gang warfare -- the first four hours is primarily just a series of fights, brawls and duels between the Musketeers and the cardinal's company of guards. I was feeling very "WTF how and why is this considered a classic?" at this point.

   As the more involved elements of the plot begin to develop another thing became clear to me, this story of "heroic, chivalrous swordsmen who fight for justice," to quote the introductory paragraph from wikipedia, does NOT involve the same values of chivalry I'm accustomed to from my Arthurian romances. The protagonists in addition to always getting into fights over trifles and absolutely disdaining to have any semblance of control over their emotions seem to consider debauching other people's wives and/or facilitating affairs to be quite chivalrous. And loyalty? They make a big deal about how they're loyal to the king ... and then immediately and enthusiastically get embroiled in facilitating the queen having an affair (with the chief minister of England!). Not that I'm opposed to a story in which people behave badly, after all I was just extolling my love for the Flashman series, it's just that I'm very confused about what this book seems to set forth as chivalric values.
   Anyway so then D'Artagnan has a case of love-at-first-sight with his landlord's wife and immediately commences to pursue her (though I think through the end that remains unconsummated) -- then he meets the other major antagonist, Milady de Winter, whom he ALSO falls madly in love with on first sight, gets thoroughly distracted from his search for the missing landlord's wife, and he then beds Milady by impersonating someone else in the dark. Which, to accomplish he professes love to her maid Kitty and becomes Kitty's lover. And when it comes out how he tricked her into bedding him she is naturally outraged, and her attempts to get revenge are the principal driver of the rest of the book. So the two main antagonists, the two main plot drivers, are his desire for revenge on a guy who laughed at his horse in a pub parking lot, and the desire of a woman to get revenge on him for essentially raping her. Again, I don't want to sound like I need all my protagonists to be shining knights of virtue but can you see here how at this point I'm like ... are these really the good guys??
   And the Cardinal meanwhile. Other than his guards getting into fights with the musketeers which seems to be a mutual rivalry, his major motivation seems (A) various things for the good of the country; (B) more specifically pertinent to the plot, he's trying to stop the queen from having an affair. The narrative voice tells us this is because he is jealous she spurned him as a lover, but looking at it objectively it seems like it's not an evil quality that he's trying to stop the queen from having an affair, especially as the affair is with the chief minister of their enemy, England. And his attitute towards the titular musketeers and D'Artagan specifically, is throughout that he really wants them to work for him. He really doesn't appear to foster any malice towards them at all.

   In the end the musketeers catch up with Milady, just after she's killed the landlord's wife in an act of revenge on D'Artagan. They hold a trial of her amongst themselves, and convict her of various murders (listen, she has allegedly murdered several people, she's definitely not a saint, but I still maintain that her main role in the book as seeking revenge for having been raped by the protagonist is basically more sympathetic than not). But, and now here I'm going to get legalistically nitpicky but why not -- they happen to have the local executioner with them so it'll be an official execution not a murder; and they explicitly pay him to make it so. But then he throws the money away saying he's not doing it for money (but because she betrayed his brother when she was young), thus making it not an official "impartial" execution by an executioner. And also her accusers all tell her they pardon her just after the sentence is passed, which I'd imagine was intended to illustrate "Christian mercy" or something but the my more lawyerly inclinations cause me to go wait, wait, if each of you that had an accusation that carried the death penalty have all said you pardon her then.. she should go free. You can't both pardon her and carry out the sentence!

   Anyway so in conclusion... what I liked about it was that the nuance of that the author seemed to know that most of his antagonists were not being portrayed as purely evil (Richelieu after all both promotes D'Artagan to the musketeers halfway through and in the end gives him a lieutenants commission, and overtly asks him to join him; and it says in the end-exposition that D'Artagan and Rochefort eventually become close friends); and the king who is ostensibly the subject of the loyalty of the musketeers is generally portrayed as a very poor leader and jealous spiteful husband to the queen. The plots were rather well woven, and when I looked up some things on wikipedia I found a lot of the devious plots had basis in fact, which was interesting. As you've probably gathered, what I didn't like was their distinctly un-chivalrous behavior, which somehow just didn't come off endearing the way Flashman's did. It reminds me of this theory I've been developing since reading Gone With the Wind, that if that author-narrator seems aware that they're writing an unlikable/immoral character it can come off well, but if it seems like the author absolutely doesn't realize how unlikeable or immoral their protagonist is it can be very offputting. And Flashman obviously was very consciously immoral so one didn't have that conflict of values with the author. Whereas Gone With the Wind and this book seem blithely unaware of objections one might have to their protagonist's behavior; which leaves the reader angrily feeling like they'd like to have a word with the author, which of course they can't... so they just vent in a blog post instead.

   I thought about listening to one of the several sequels next, for my at-work audible listening; but decided instead to go right the other direction, classic arthurian chivalry, and am readhearing Four Arthurian Romances of Chretien de Troyes. (In related news i suspect there may be a connection between my love of the Arthurian sort of romantic values and my willingness to pursue my lady love across absolutely absurd distance and difficulties without hesitation)


Monte Cristo Addendum: I just realized I never wrote about the Count of Monte Cristo (also by Dumas, same author as Three Musketeers). Just in a real small nutshell, I liked it, found it better than Three Musketeers (which I hadn't read yet, but in retrospect). The titular count is a total "Mary Sue" but he actually makes it work.

   I recently finished reading the fourth of four related books, and now I will review them!

Unaccompanied Females in Norway; or, the Pleasantest Way of Traveling There, Passing Through Denmark and Sweden - I had first come across people making fun of the title on Twitter, being as the first part of the title, of which was the only part therein given, could be read as a kind of creepy guide to the unaccompanied females of Norway, but of course it's not that; and being a fan of travelogues, history, and Norway, I had decided to order it on Amazon forthwith. It's written be a young woman traveling with her mother in Norway in 1857. While it's not Paul Theroux or Patrick Leigh Fermor, it is written with enough attention to detail and context to make for an interesting read. The anonymous author is evidently a bit upper-class, one gathers from her comparisons to more luxurious lodgings and to other travels she's done, but is charmingly game to be lodged in haylofts in remote farmsteads. It portrays a country of bucolic rural life, in which habitations are often quite far apart, the local farmers seem very friendly, and there seems to be a surprising amount of tourist traffic (not like traffic jams but that they encounter other people just touring about as they are). I'm not sure I'd quite recommend the book if you're looking for your next thriller but if you fancy a window into a bygone rural idyll its a pleasant read. Ii give it a solid B



Three in Norway (By Two of Them) - Three young men, also from England travel to Norway in or before 1882 (which is to say it's published on that date. I suppose the same can be said about the date of the unaccompanied females), to spend the summer fishing and hunting reindeer. Like the unaccompanied females, class distinctions aren't examined but by having such copious free time and money to easily employ a handful of locals as servants / trackers / porters all summer we can deduce they aren't out-of-work-newsboys. Though, like the women, only moreso, they're perfectly happy to spend their time essentially camping in shelters they've constructed. I'm not familiar enough with Norwegian geography to have immediately recognized the location of placenames, and I'm not sure any other than the larger towns cropped up in both books but I got the impression they were in about the same area, and/or it sounded essentially similar. One feature that crops up prominently in both books are the mountain "saeters" which appear to be communal shelters built up in the mountains used by locals who are up there seasonably with their herds and traveling huntsmen / tourists. It seems they're free for use by all comers and it sounds like quite the social experience, a bit like staying in a hostel.
   What I like most about this book though is that it is a rare example of a book written in first person plural. And it genuinely feels like the two of them wrote it together, seemlessly giving both's perspectives on events where they might diverge, and most amusingly of all, casually making fun of both of them. One gets the impression they had an agreement not to delete, or were just too comfortable and easygoing to care to do so, any teasingly satirical portrayal of themselves by the other. Where the one female writer of the prior book seemed good natured but rarely dabbled in actual humor, this book has some passages that really make you smile and laugh as you can feel the jests the boys are making of eachother. Aside from the barbs they aim at eachother, the authors employ satire and the humorous turn of phrase very effectively throughout. Their primary interest is in fishing and hunting, which aren't actually interests of mine, through roughing it in the Norwegian wilderness is.
   I'm not so into reading ebooks and/or books on my computer but it appears this book is available as such; The same two authors seem to have written another book A Ramble in British Columbia (and apparently mountains in British Columbia have been named after both of them, see note at previous link); and one of the two authors has written an additional book about Norway: Peaks and Pines: Another Norway Book.
   As with the above, if the subject matter is within the wheelhouse of what you're into it's a good read. I'd give this one an A, and if I happened to come across either of their other books in physical form I'd happily acquire and read them.



Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the dog) - this is seemingly the most famous/successful of these books, and I had read somewhere was directly inspired by the above. In this one three young Englishmen take a boat up the Thames in 1888. It's a lighthearted adventure, in which most of their most adventurous experiences are the result of them being rather more along the line of idle gentlemen than outdoorsmen and not particularly competent at boat handling or things such as not getting into fights with swans. Significant portions of many chapters are actually very extended tangental asides by the author, more along the lines of humorous essays sparked by some thought. It rather reminded me of the style of a stand up comedian, and I rather think the author missed his true vocation -- there's some biographical details at the end and I see he did try his hand at the stage for awhile, it's just bad luck stand up comedy probably hadn't been invented yet. Personally, personally, I found his attempts at humor often struck me as overwrought and trying-too-hard. It was interesting to read also in the note at the back (spoiler alert) that the trip is apparently fictional, though based on a boat trip he went on with his wife. Though I'd imagine a lot of the actual incidents mentioned either did happen on that trip or he'd heard about happening to friends. Among the particularly remarkable windows into life-at-the-time, fairly casually the protagonists find a dead woman floating down the river. I mean they do seem to be a bit struck by the occurrence but its not like today where that would be a trip-stopping occurrence. In their case they find that other people have already notified the authorities so they continue on their way.
   I give it a B- (just less than the unaccompanied females on account of that trying-too-hard feel of its jokes -- though according to Wikipedia "the jokes have been praised as fresh and witty" so maybe you'll enjoy it more).



To Say Nothing of the Dog - is.. was.. well I was expecting it to be more of an homage to its namesake, but it really has very little to do with it. fauxklore put me on to it after I'd mentioned the above book in a previous entry. A future time traveler (in 2057) travels back in time to 1888 and travels by boat down the Thames, passing the protagonists of the above book at one point. The protagonist of this book has read the above book and overtly references it a number of times, but their river journey is a relatively small portion of the book. The rest of the book was entertaining enough, but I guess I never recovered from a failure of management of expectations, as I'd expected more of an homage. Actually what it's more an homage to is classic murder mysteries a la Agatha Christie or Poirot, both of whom are explicitly mentioned. Not that there's a murder, rather the driving plot element is a search for a missing McGuffin, the mysterious and famously banal "bishop's birdstump"
   Other notes about this book included that, having been written in 1997, it references a fictional "great plague" that occurred in 2018, which feels like it had been quite prophetic. And also I was a bit annoyed with the execution of the romance of the protagonists, which (spoiler alert), a potentially mutual interest was kind of hinted at earlier on but then in the last chapter or two it just suddenly went from unresolved romantic tension between coworkers to of-course-we're-getting-married. As a bit of a hopeless romantic I don't terribly mind a well executed love story... this was not that.
   It also seemed to me to be science fiction with a prominently deist bend. The time-stream itself has intent, corrects itself with seemingly conscious cleverness and everyone is clearly fated to do whatever it is they are fated to do. That doesn't quite fit with the infinite anarchy of my cosmology.
   I give it maybe a C+ or B-- if I can. It wasn't bad, it was well enough written (it "won both the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1999, and was nominated for the Nebula Award in 1998."), cleverly woven together even, just if I'm going to read science fiction I prefer it not to be deist, and if I'm going to read an homage I prefer it to have more parallels to the original. If one's into mystery novels and approaches the book as an amusing specimen of that genre one probably wouldn't be disappointed.

This will be a long round up of media (netflix series and books) since I've been meaning to do one since at least December and books keep getting added!


STREAMING SERIESES
Andor
   A friend gave me his password for Disney+ so I once again had access to Star Wars stuff. This seems to be what we do now to get around the multitude of streaming services -- share eachother's passwords.
   Anyway so I'd been hearing good things about this "Andor" series so I decided to check it out. I really liked it! It had that feel of the original Star Wars universe, as opposed to the overly-CGI feel of most Disney Star Wars productions. But best of all I liked the setting (right around the time the "Galactic Republic" is becoming The Empire and becoming evil), and the chosen theme of this descent into evil. Too often, almost invariably really, shows like to use the shortcut of X is already evil, and the evil characters are just .. evil. Several reviews I've read of it refer to it showcasing "the banality of evil," which is to say how it follows several "bad guy" characters and shows how they by pursuing their own relatively reasonable personal goals are the gears that make the whole thing more evil. I feel like I'm not at my most eloquent right now, how many times have I used the word "evil" here? I'm descending into banality. Where's chatgpt to rewrite this?
   Anyway, I digress. My one criticism of Andor was that the main character suffers from severe maincharacterism. A driving plot element in the beginning, and this isn't a spoiler because it's literally the first thing that happens, is that he kills two security guards on one planet and then flees to another -- the Star Wars universe I've known all my life is a gritty place where it's not an interstellar incident when two low ranking security guards are killed, so it kind of immediately stretched my suspension of disbelief of the established norms of this universe when great efforts were made to track down and apprehend him (notwithstanding they establish the supervising security lieutenant is super OCD, still in the Star Wars universe I've always known, on the scale of a planet, security guards would be getting killed daily and it wouldn't be this kind of big deal) and in fact it's immediately discussed among Imperial security staff on the capital planet Coruscant. In a universe of millions of planets the death of two security guards in some backwater comes up?!?!?! Imagine, two security guards at the remote Russian industrial city of Norilsk are shot in some late night scuffle and it ends up getting discussed at the UN shortly later. Now multiply how absurd that sounds by about a million. And much later the fact that this main character's adopted mother's funeral (or was it birthday?) is coming up again somehow makes interstellar news and significant resources are put into preparing for his expected attendance there (notwithstanding he's become of more interest to the Empire by then, it's still a stretch I think that they're so excited about his mom's party).
   So all in all I really liked it and I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for the next season, but definitely suffers from some plot weirdnesses pertaining to a tendency to shoehorn the importance of the main character to the galaxy at large.

Mandalorian Season 3
   I had watched the first two seasons of Mandalorian and generally liked it (although, magic key fobs that can track anyone anywhere seriously?). This time, watching it right after the really good series Andor it didn't shine so brightly. By comparison the plots were cheesy, almost cartoonish, and it broke something fundamental about the universe. In bad bad bad sci fi, characters fly at less-than-light-speed from one planet to another in a different solar system -- in reality solar systems are lightyears apart (our nearest neighbor is 4.35), so it would take years in sublight to get anywhere, which is why all but the dumbest sci fi have some sort of warp or hyper drive to surpass light speed. In every other Star Wars thing I've seen they always go into hyperspace from one place to another, which you don't have to be a theoretical physicist to assume is much much faster than lightspeed. Anyway guess what the Mandalorian did? In an epside where they quite unnecessarily harped on the plot point that they couldn't enter hyperspace tehy just flew at sublight speed amongst three planets that appeared to be in different solar systems. Ugh. I don't think I finished the season.

Rings of Power
   I watched the first episode of Rings of Power but it really didn't grab me. I've been a lifelong fan of the Lord of the Rings books. But the first episode of this series just seemed to be kind of all over the place, not starting in a riveting manner. It seemed really to be filled with whatever the inexpressible je ne sais quois frou frou of what I didn't like about the Peter Jackson movies was. I didn't hate his Lord of the Rings series, but there was something I didn't like about it, a overly romantic hollywoodness of people slowly turning their heads while the light plays around them and their hair blows in the wind and some soulless warbling music plays. It's like they took the essence of that to make this series. Or at least that's how I felt about the first episode, and I didn't watch any more.


BOOKS
The Travels of Ibn Battuta - Okay let's see the furthest back book I can remember recently reading since last set of book reviews is The Travels of Ibn Battuta. Ibn Battuta is often described as "the Muslim Marco Polo." In 1325 he departed his home in Tangiers, Morocco, to embark on what would turn out to be a 70,000 mile journey through Egypt, the Middle East, down the African coast to the coast of Kenya and Tanzania (but not, as is often mistakenly reported, to Zanzibar, as I found upon reading it), Turkey, Byzantium, the Crimea and the Mongolian khanate then occupying the area of southern Ukraine, down to India, and the Maldives. The actual book he wrote (well someone else apparently wrote by taking down his stories directly) is apparently really really long but the book I read is an abridged version that seemed really good. It seemed true to the original text, with frequent useful annotations. I'm not sure if it was the original tone or the translator's but the writing felt so casually contemporary I found myself forgetting just how long ago it's set -- much earlier than most anything else one is likely to read -- until there'd be a reference to something seemingly anachronistic to the later time period my brain kept drifting into thinking it must be. I found his details of visiting the Byzantine court particularly interesting. There's those famous varangian guards (apparently they stand on slightly raised platforms in front of the doors, who knew?), and the famous palaces I've seen the barest ruins remaining of.
   Ibn Battuta himself is a devout Islamic scholar of the medieval era and some of the things he culturally accepts as perfectly normal sometimes come across as jarring notably when he seems to casually marry and divorce women with such casual reference it seems on a scale of some modern dudebro saying he got laid in this city or that. And then he casually mentions buying a slave girl, later mentions the slave girl was with child and it's only much later he mentions what I suspected, that the child was his own.
   Anyway, it was a very interesting book. I wish I could find a similar book about Marco Polo's travels. I've googled around for it before but as far as I can tell there's a confusingly vast variety of versions and it's further confused by his departures into pure fantasy.

Congo Journey by Redmond O'Hanlon - This book has been on my shelf since I was about to go to the Congo way back in 2017. Was planning on reading it while I was in the Congo. Finally decided that since I had no Congo trip in the foreseeable future I might as well read it. I loved it! I don't know how much is strictly true and how much has been shaped to make beautiful plot arcs, but clearly he's taken some literary license because plot arcs don't just work out that perfectly all on their own. But I didn't mind it at all, in fact I was in awe of it. Clearly he made the trip and I have no doubt most of the events happened though maybe not his very topical dreams or the predictions of the fortune teller and the like. I was so impressed I immediately went on amazon and ordered two more of his books ("In Trouble Again" (subtitle: "A Journey Between the Orinoco and the Amazon") and "Into the Heart of Borneo"), which I haven't read yet. I'm particularly interested in the In Trouble Again one because the Orinoco flows through the middle of Venezuela so presumably a fair bit of the story is set there before they then get into Brazil.

Throwim Way Leg - This book I had actually been given by my friend Billie a bit ago (We often exchange books, I gave her the abovementioned O'Hanlon book just last weekend) but somehow that title just didn't really call out to me. But actually when I had a houseguest visiting from the states in late January she read it and then recommended it to me as being kind of like the book I'm currently trying to write. So I picked it up and verily it was quite enjoyable. The author had been a biologist studying the mammals of remote Papua New Guinea (which notably features illusive tree kangaroos), and the book is an entertaining and interesting collection of notable stories of his adventures there in the 70s through 90s. The title is a pidgin phrase for embarking on a journey. Every time I think of this book I remember I had been talking to a Papa New Guinean chief about a beekeeping project there and I should get back in contact with him.

African Kaiser - This book had also been on my shelf for a fair bit of awhile until I finally got around to it. It's about WWI in Tanzania, East Africa. The main character and hero of the story is German colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, who throughout the war defies something absurd like 137 British generals sent against him (obviously not all at once) leading of ever smaller force of Germans and locals in guerilla resistance to all the allied efforts to snuff out his force. Told with scrupulous historical research and detail and frequent quotes from the diaries of many of the people involved. von Lettow himself comes across as an honorable admirable individual who treated the locals as equals, earned the respect of his adversaries .. and much much later essentially told Hitler to fuck himself when offered an ambassadorship by the same (and had his generalship revoked for being implicated in a coup plot)(I noted that it was principally the Germans who had come across as the biggest asses who supported Hitler later). I was surprised to find author Karen Blixen (Out of Africa) make a cameo appearance herself when she was on the same ship as von Lettow to East Africa (and apparently they became close friends); and the Battle of the Bees, one of my favorite battles for obvious reasons, which I previously only knew from a short wikipedia entry appears in minute detail -- I was disappointed to find that as pieced together here it doesn't actually appear the bees were the cause of both sides being in simultaneous retreat as I had always thought. Also there's a very interesting chapter about an attempted zeppelin flight from Germany to East Africa to resupply von Lettow that all of itsself sounds like a fascinating story. And then there's the whole plot line of the German cruiser Konigsberg that ends up being besieged in the Rufiji Delta for 252 days -- the longest naval engagement in history to this day.
   In conclusion I really liked this book and strongly recommend it if your interests touch on any of the subjects covered in it.

Last Cruise of the Emden - Okay this isn't a recent read, in fact I read it way back in The Beforetimes before covid (2018 I think actually) but because it relates to the above and I don't think I've written about it before I'll write about it here. The Emden was a German light cruiser (ie fairly big warship) in the Indian Ocean in WWI. It was very successful at capturing or sinking allied commerce but also earned a reputation for treating the captured crews very humanely. When the Emden was eventually sunk the crew captured a sailing yacht, sailed across the Indian Ocean to Arabia, and had many further adventures traveling overland before they finally reached a railhead in Turkey that made the remainder of their return home finally unadventurous. Another very good book I recommend. I think my copy is also out on loan to Billie.

The Long Way Home - Okay now I'm just rounding up related books, this one I also read back in 2018 just after Emden. This in WWII. In this case a Pan Am flying boat ends up somewhere west of Hawaii when Pearl Harbor is hit and can't fly back home via the planned route back East but must continue West the long way around the world. Not as quite as well written as the other books above but written in a clear workmanlike manner nonetheless and its a very interesting story. I ended up giving my copy to a friend who is a retired airplane mechanic since a lot of the adventures the crew of this flying boat encountered involved jury-rigged fixes to mechanical problems. Recommended if you're into that kind of thing!

For Future Review: I saw people making fun of a book title on twitter: "Unprotected Females in Norway" and after reading the actual description of the book (two English women travel through Norway in or just prior to 1857) I decided it actually sounded very interesting and ordered it. Have since read it. And reading about that book led to reference to another book: "Three in Norway (By Two of Them)" in which three English young men travel through Norway in 1882. I am reading this book now. Reading about this book led me to references that it had inspired a sort of homage book that was well received itself: "Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog)" published in 1889 about the described travelers boating on the Thames. This book I have also acquired and will read next.


AUDIOBOOKS
The Flashman Papers - How did I not know about this series earlier??? I only stumbled upon it quite by accident while reading wikipedia entries about historical Ethiopian figures, as one does. The Flashman Papers are a series of books about the protagonist Harry Flashman, who rather stumbles into numerous hisotricl events between 1839 and 1894. The author, George MacDonald Fraser was a journalist and an impressive amount of background research is very evident. What makes this series distinctly different from other such series, notably the Sharpe series, is that Flashman is an immoral coward who somehow accidentally winds up in these situations and often comes out with completely undeserved credit for heroics. I found this infinitely more enjoyable than for example the popular Sharpe series (or Last Kingdom series by same author as Sharpe, featuring essentially same protagonist because he sucks as an author) where the protagonist is a badass who laughs at fear and solves all the problems while historical heroes are only unfairly getting HIS credit ::rolls eyes::. I suppose the one reason this series might not be more popular is that the protagonist, in keeping with his scoundrel personality, regularly says fairly racist things (though I don't think the character actually behaves any worse to the derided minorities than he does to everyone else; and crucially the author doesn't seem to have any racism in his portrayals) which can be hard to swallow for today's audiences.
   I don't know why Audible will have nearly all of a series but be missing a few books in the middle but frustratingly two of the 12 books weren't on audible, including the one where he goes to Ethiopia! Such sauce! Anyway I actually really loved this series and was sad to find that the author is now dead and there'll be no more (the series was being published between 1969 and 2005). Frustratingly he clearly intended to write a book taking plae during the US civil war, makes numerous reference to events that presumably take place in that book, but never wrote the book!
   I was also greatly amused that in one of the last Flashman stories he stumbles into a Sherlock Holmes story I recall reading, and Sherlock and Watson (unnamed but clearly recognizable) find him while he's pretending to be passed out drunk, and Sherlock applies his famous deductions to come up with wildly wrong conclusions about Flashman. I liked Sherlock Holmes but felt his conclusions were often tenuous at best so I was highly amused by this little incident.

Thomas Flashman Series - Flashman and the Seawolf So when I saw another author had picked up the torch to publish a series about the abovementioned Harry Flashman's uncle Thomas I was excited and read/listened the first in that series on audible. It.... reads like bad fanfic. It's about the exact same events that Master and Commander (the book not the movie) is about, one of the most adventurous cruises in the age of sail and material Patrick O'Brien ably made into one of the best naval adventure books of all time. So, why Robert Brightwell thought he should even attempt to write a book about what O'Brian had already covered (43 years earlier) is... certainly ambitious. And somehow out of this fertile material he wrote something another reviewer described as "Thomas Flashman watches paint dry" (I should have read the reviews first -- I didn't). It might have some potential for redeeming qualities if Brightwell had managed to capture the same poltroonery as Harry Flashman had, and his book jacket description had promised that, however the character of Thomas Flashman really fails to exhibit any notable moral lapses at all, he's just kind of a boring guy. Needless to say I don't recommend this book and will not be continuing this series.

Master and Commander - I almost never re-read a book, but it has been over ten years since I originally read Master and Commander and after reading the above I really had a yen to reread THE book about those events described. Anyway last time I had read the physical book (while at sea!), this time I listened to the audiobook. Sure enough, within the first paragraphs I was in awe of the quality of this classic. Such descriptions! Such nuance, such fleshed out characters, such skillful hinting at certain events and motivations without having to spell it out. There's some books, like the above Thomas Flashman series, where one reads constantly thinking "god I could have written that so much better," and then there's books like this one where one is just thinking they could never write something so good.
   One thing I like about it is that it subverts the cliche recipe for plot development. I always love things that break the rules. It doesn't begin on a dramatic in media res cliffhanger or action scene, it begins with the two protagonists being annoyed with eachother at a concert and then the whole first chapter or so is protagonist Captain Aubrey outfitting his ship, which would SEEM like a really boring way to start but such is O'Brien's skill that he absolutely makes this work. The reader is just immediately drawn in to the engaging character interiority and immersive setting.
   If you haven't read the Master and Commander series I strongly recommend it. Heck I clearly can recommend it even if you HAVE read it already.

   Not sure if going forward I'll go through the whole Aubrey-Mmturin series again on audible or try to resist to cover new ground.

   So today I went into Melbourne town to go to the German consulate and apply for a German passport, which seems to have been successful, then I met up with my Ecuadorian friend Michelle in an eastern suburb (Michem?); and then I found that the theatre that was showing the new All Quiet on the Western Front was at that point on my way home! So I decided to go see it.

   Got off the train in this suburb called Hawthorne that questionmark was just beside a university? Anyway leaving the train station one proceeds immediately into a cute laneway full of little shops and then the street outside was also full of cute little shops. The cinema seemed to be possibly an independant one, specializing in indie films and stuff. It appeared to have a full bar and coffee-bar in the waiting area.


   Anyway, on to the movie. I had seen the next-most-recent All Quiet on the Western Front (which I guess must have been the 1979 version?) as well as read the book in I think my junior year of high school so like 23 years ago. So the memories I'm comparing to this one to are a bit faded.
   This version had some great cinematography. And they did some clever things such as, it starts with fighting in the trenches, we see a soldier afraid to go up over to make the attack but finally he does and we see all the typical craziness of no man's land, and then we see the dead being collected, and their uniforms and boots being stripped off of them, then we see cartloads of bloody uniforms being cleaned, and repaired, and then we go to the actual protagonist of the film, Paul as a just-graduated schoolboy signing up to join the army with his friends, he receives a uniform, it has the name of the soldier we saw at the beginning on it still.
   What I didn't like about this version compared to what I remember of the last one is they tried to give it more of a plot, which I think actually took away from the point of the film. In the 1979 version, like in the book, the "plot" is mainly just that war is hell and we see the protagonist experience the war until he (spoiler alert) dies. And the story as written does a great job of carrying this to its conclusion. In this version they introduced a parallel storyline of the guy trying to negotiate the armistice, and by cutting between that and the protagonist they kind of make it seem like a race against time -- which, I can see why they thought that might be a good idea but I think it just cheapens the story as originally written. It takes attention off Paul's perspective and kind of eliminates what would be a more "this is never going to end" feel you'd have without it. Another similar decision they made is they also cut to the general or field marshall commanding Paul's area frequently, and he's eating a lavish meal with elegant settings nearly every time he's seen -- he's pointedly not once portrayed being out among the troops or doing anything militarily useful, but he does frequently speechify about how he doesn't want piece because he wants to win glory like his forefathers. I think this also really cheapened the film, in waht is otherwise a very serious film this character comes off like a comic book villian. His comments about how the peacemakers are betraying them did foreshadow the rise of nazism which was nice but the whole thing was too heavy handed. Also when he orders his troops to attack in the literal last fifteen minutes of the war, I couldn't help but be aware that while I've seen no record of the Germans doing so, the AMERICANS were noted to have done that -- having arrived late to the war there _were_ reportly American commanders who were so overeager to win some glory that they pushed futile assaults up until the minute of the armistice (see also, in the book / prev movie, Paul dies a month before the armistice, this one in their wholly unnecessary attempt to increase the tension has Paul die at the minute of the armistice).
   So altogether I enjoyed it though I think it would have been better if they had just had faith that the story as originally written didn't need to be hollywooded up. Ii give it a B+ If you're a connoisseur of war movies definitely give it a watch when it comes out on netflix later this month.

   Recently I was complaining again about how due to the proliferating Balkanization of streaming services increasingly things one wants to watch might not be on the service one wants and one isn't about to subscribe to all the services ... and in particular that I regretted not being able to watch any seasons of the best sci fi series out there, The Expanse, after the second when it changed platforms -- and one of my friends took pity on me and gave me their password to log in to their Amazon Prime account, on which network The Expanse is!
   And upon logging in I found there were several other series I was interested in, such as the new Lord of the Rings spinoff and GoT spinoff, both of which I don't really have high expectations for but they're on my to-check-out list. And Star Trek Picard which I'd been itching to watch!

   I had watched all of Star Trek the Original Series, and began to watch all of Next Generation (I got into the 7th/Last season but admittedly kind of lost steam. I have no complaints with it but just found myself not getting around to making time to watch it). Also in the same post I already linked where I laud how amazing Expanse is I review Star Trek Discovery, which I watched only the first season and a few episodes of second of and didn't feel like continuing. So I decided to watch Star Trek Picard before getting on with Expanse.

Star Trek Picard, A Review
Season I:
   In short, I think they did a really good job with this in the first season. Now it's not quite The Expanse, and it would be sacrilege to compare it to Firefly, but other than those two I think it's one of the better entries in the advantures in space genre and the best Star Trek thing to come out in the last twenty years. The plot introduces characters naturally, avoiding the common pitfall of obviously throwing the main cast together in the first episode -- at least one of them I didn't catch on was becoming a regular cast member until like halfway through the season. The plot and technology level does have any continuity problems (relatively easy I suppose when this takes place, I believe, later than any other Star Trek series), and the level of technology I think is just the right level of further advancement from where we last saw it in the end of TNG, DS9, Voyager. Each episode is both an interesting self contained plot and fits perfectly into the larger season-wide-plot. And they managed to even make it feel a bit like TNG had, such as when they visit an isolated colony on a remote planet and everyone is wearing exactly the kind of dorky costumes all such colonies seemed to have in TNG.
   Of the new characters, I really like the existentially brooding and philosophizing ship captain Christopher Rios, and found his five assistant holograms of himself with different personalities and accents to be delightfully amusing. On the minus side I find new character Raffi kind of annoying in that all she seems to do is whimper, whine, and/or be constantly near or having an emotional breakdown. I do really appreciate that they gave the characters more flaws and weaknesses than TNG had, but some of them such as Raffi seem to be entirely flaws. And one other character who, I don't want to give spoilers away, and maybe skip the rest of this sentence if you want no sort of spoiler but she um blatantly murders someone important to the rest of the crew and they all seem really surprisingly chill about it and I dunno _I_ can't forgive her for that and the fact that they just brush that under the rug kind of breaks willing suspension of disbelief for me and/or my dislike for her immediately became too great for me to shrug off myself.
   Also there's two romances among the main characters which I think both suddenly appeared in the last episode and they really felt like they came out of nowhere. One of them they had hinted at though I didn't really see any actual chemistry between the characters, but the one involving Raffi I had totally missed any hints if there were any.

   Also, IMO, the ship they're using, La Sirena, is possibly the ugliest ship in the Star Trek universe. And this is just a quibble but its been irking me that several times they land on planets (it can land on planets) and you see them having just arrived or just left the ship but the props department has apparently not bothered to make it a door yet so you never actually see them entering or exiting the ship. I was wondering for awhile if the only way to get in and out was by using the transporter.

Season II:
   Season II however I felt like the plot felt much more contrived, and as well this time it DID feel like the characters were just thrown together. They establish that after Season I most of the characters split up, but then Q appears and does some shit, and the characters all rush to get the team back together, but considering all of them presumably have a lifetime of other friends, especially lord knows Picard, it seemed kind of odd that he wouldn't say call up people he served on the Enterprise for 7+ years with but some randos he went on essentially one mission with recently. As the plot goes on through the season it's not terrible but it's not as interesting as the Season I plot, and in particular it felt like they tried to jam a whole lot of really contrived stuff into the final episode of the season.
   Also this time since [minor spoiler alert again] they travel back in time (I feel like this is only a minor spoiler because they go back in the first episode of the season or so and stay there for most of the season, so it's more like the conceit of the season), and they do actually make at least one major change to the timeline, we might have once again broken the timeline and created yet another alternate timeline. Which..... at this point is kind of "classic star trek" but I think creating all these timeline splits is a really offputting thing the franchise does.

   Also Will Wheaton / Wesley Crusher makes an appearance, and I know he's become a bit of an internet darling in some circles of late, but I can confirm that I found his adult character to be just as annoying and insufferable as he had been as a kid.

   Altogether, I'll probably check out Season III when it comes out, even though I found Season II a bit iffy, Season I was really good so we'll see if they correct course from responses to Season II or just get further lost in the interstellar mud.


Seriously this is one ugly ship.

...

   And then I thought I'd pick up on Expanse where I left off, which I thought was Season III Episode 1 but I think I must have seen Season III already, perhaps I'd pirated it, but god damn I forgot how good this show is! I proceeded to binge watch about three episodes on each of both Friday and Saturday nights (of Season III even though I know I've already seen it!). Expanse really is the gosh darn best.

It's also on my to-do list to check out the various Star Wars series on Disney Plus but... that's once again on another streaming service I don't subscribe to. I did watch first season of Mandalorian and liked it. I think I'm hearing good things about this Andor series?

And in vaguely related news I really want to see the new All Quiet on the Western Front movie in the theatres but it only comes out in 11 theatres in Australia, of which none are closer than Melbourne. And I'll be in Melbourne for an appointment at the German consulate Tuesday morning (did I mention I've become eligible for a German passport!), but the nearest theatre showing AQotW isn't even particularly near the city center and four hours after my appointment. So probably won't go see it, but at least it comes out on Netflix (is actually produced by Netflix apparently), the one streaming service I do subscribe to. But I bet its so much better in the theatre ::sigh::