Media week in review

[thistlechaser]

What I'm currently reading

Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans (what a long title!). I've been feeding some crows for a couple months now, so my mother got this book for me for Christmas. Really, really heavy nonfiction. In the first 10% or so, it's been mostly just about the physical structures of their brains. More than an hour of reading just about the physical structures in a crow's brain. I'm not sure who the target audience of this book is.

What I'm currently watching

Live TV! I haven't had cable in a couple years, but Comcast is giving it away through its app/website for a week, so I'm very much enjoying the nonstop stream of crap on mainstream channels.

Unsurprisingly, I've watched less other stuff, since I'm feasting on live TV.

Aftermath: So very bad, but I'm enjoying it for some reason. It's like they took every idea from end of the world movies and every idea from horror movies and just jampacked them into each ep. Nothing makes sense, everything is so cliche, and the characters are so stupid and unlikable. I have no idea how or why I'm enjoying it.

Mandalorian: I haven't mentioned this one yet in previous posts, even though I've been watching it weekly. I'm not even a Star Wars fan, but I'm loving this show so much! There's just one ep left until season 2 in fall of 2020 *sob*. I'm going to rewatch the whole thing at least once before then.

Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams: I keep thinking I'm going to drop this one. It's sort of like a cross between Black Mirror and Twilight Zone, but the stories have been falling flat for me. That and the British accents are so thick, I wish there were subtitles. I watched three eps of ten so far. Since each ep is a self-contained story, I might keep going I guess...

The Witcher: OH MY GOD this show is so good. I never read the books or played the games, but man I love this show. The acting, the music, the fights! The story! I love ever moment of it. I'm on ep four of eight. The season is way too short... (I'm going to have to read the books for sure.)

The Man in the High Castle: No eps yet this week. Boo.
The First: Same.

What I'm currently playing

No different than any of the previous weeks. Maybe I need a different section here? I play Jurassic World Alive on my phone while I play FFXIV on my computer. I try to avoid playing Candy Crush in bed before I sleep, since that cuts into my reading time.

Comments

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

I'm also halfway through the Witcher! I'm glad you're enjoying it with no previous knowledge - I was thinking that having read the books makes it easier to follow the story, for sure. The translation quality really varies - the later books have a better translator - but I think they're enjoyable.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I've always liked stories where stuff isn't explained and just handed out to the viewer/reader, so the lack of knowledge and the main character not explaining things really works for me in this case.

Oh! I had no idea the books weren't originally written in English. Google tells me Polish though. Interesting!

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

Hah, yes, actually the author is hugely popular in Poland, and a lot of the creatures and events (and the Law of Surprise) are based on Polish myths and legends. The whole reason the books got made into a series of videogames is that a bunch of Polish videogame fans who were tired of playing bootlegs in other languages started out translating and localizing other videogames, and then decided to create their own, and got rights to his books. The third game was so insanely popular that Netflix decided to jump on the books for a series. I've played the second and third games (in the opposite order) and they are very good games!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I just finished the Law of Surprise ep! I figured it must have been based on something in RL that I had just never encountered.

I was eyeing the games on Amazon, but I think I'll start with the books. For all the time I spend on MMOs, I'm really not much of a gamer. Though on the other hand, my to read book pile is approaching 350, so the game route might be better... Ponder ponder.

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

Just started Witcher tonight and I AM LOVING IT! One episode and all my worries went away. Cavill is nailing it at Geralt (well, at least game Geralt, he sounds just like him yaaaaaaaas) and as soon as he said the line about how the prophecy didn't rhyme so it wasn't very good, I was like YES I AM IN.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yesss! I'm trying to make it last. I watched ep 4 today. I'm still going to be finished with it too soon!

[loup_noir]

Sounds like your crow book is meant for bird nerds like me. We love that kind of thing.

My current happy place in TVland is "Occupation," a Norwegian drama about Russia occupying Norway to force it to keep producing oil and gas. We're about halfway through S1, and all the characters' motivations make sense. How often does that happen? Next up: "Chernobyl." No, I don't sense a trend here.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Chernobyl was really good. Very very hard to watch, but I'm still happy I saw it.

Occupation sounds interesting! I'd put it on my list, but I'm currently in the middle of watching five different shows, and about to start another. (What happened to sticking with one show at a time, brain?)

If you're interested in the inner workings of birds, it would be perfect for you. Now and then he mentions a behavior of the crows, but it's only so he can go into how it changes their brains and such like that. It's really too heavy for me, but it was a gift so I want to try to finish it.