1. Since finishing up my Books of 2017 post, I ended up finishing 3 more:
- Denise Mina, “The Long Drop”, which I’ll give a B; it’s a fictional retelling of a true event (i.e., the events leading to the hanging death of Peter Manuel, a brutal serial killer in Glasgow in the 1950s). Quite absorbing and dark, and also GODDAMN those people can drink.
- Mohsin Hamid, “Exit West”, which earns an A; a beautiful and melodic love story as seen through the eyes of refugees, and also there are magic doors.
- Patty Yumi Cottrell, “Sorry To Disrupt the Peace”, which gets a B; I don’t know how to describe this book at all, except it’s a remarkable look at mental illness from the mind of someone who probably doesn’t realize that they are incredibly mentally ill.
And now I’m reading Daryl Gregory’s “Spoonbenders”, which is long enough that it’ll almost certainly end up being my first finished book of 2018, and which can probably best be described as a book version of The Royal Tenenbaums, but about a family of psychics.
2. Due to a sudden and unexpected influx of Amazon gift cards, I, um, bought a 55″ 4K HDR TV. It is not the best 4K HDR TV one can buy, and indeed the transaction happened so fast I didn’t even have time to properly make sure I was getting what I actually wanted (I probably should’ve waited to do some actual research), but it was (a) available and (b) cheap and (c) it showed up on Tuesday. So that happened. Now I just need a decent sound bar and my gaming room will be complete.
3. I still don’t know if I’m gonna do a Games of 2017 post. I’m looking over what I played this year and despite other people saying that this was the best year in games since 2007, there’s only a handful of games that I can say are worth a damn. Or maybe it’s just me. I played a lot this year but I don’t know that I enjoyed very much. I still can’t get into Breath of the Wild, which is probably heretical to admit, but there it is. If I had to round up a top 5, it’d probably look something like this:
- Horizon Zero Dawn
- Assassin’s Creed Origins
- What Remains of Edith Finch
- Gorogoa
- Super Mario Odyssey
There’s a ton of stuff I didn’t finish, and there’s even more stuff that I never even got to.
4. Similarly, I don’t think I’m going to do a Music of 2017 post, but for wildly different reasons; I got turned on to a ton of amazing music this year, but I can’t necessarily say I listened to all that many new albums. My Favorites from the Spotify Discovery playlist is at least 150 songs deep, though.
5. And I didn’t watch nearly enough TV or film to even bother pretending to make lists for those things. I think I can safely say that Baby Driver was the most fun I’ve had in a movie theater in years, and the best shows I watched were Dark, Stranger Things 2, Legion and… hmm… I’m forgetting something, I know it. (I only made it 3 episodes into Twin Peaks.)
This is almost certainly my last post of 2017, and given that I’m restless, I may end up doing a redesign over the next few weeks or so. In any event, here’s hoping you had a lovely holiday, and I hope you have a much better 2018. Indeed, I hope we all do.
Shouts From The Couch 