The Weeks in Entertainment

Being on vacation is bad for blogging ... or at least it was this time. I didn't do much at all, and I even kept forgetting to create one of these with a delayed post date. So here are several weeks' worth:

Film: Inside Out, which was delightful. Avengers: Age of Ultron, which was good - though my friend who had seen precisely one other Marvel film was pretty much confused. And Woman in Gold which was extremely good.

TV: A lot of baseball games. Some episodes of House Hunters International, which my father enjoys a lot. I usually enjoy looking at the houses.

DVD: My Old Lady, a story not entirely worthy of the stars (Kevin Kline, Kristin Scott Thomas and Maggie Smith) but they make it worth watching - which is not to say that it's bad, it's just that it's a little bit predictable. From Up on Poppy Hill (コクリコ坂から, Kokuriko-zaka Kara), beautifully animated and a touching story.

Read: All of the Whidby Island trilogy (The Edge of the Shadows, The Edge of Nowhere, The Edge of the Water). The Annihilation Score, the latest in The Laundry - this one narrated by Mo, which was a change of pace and quite enjoyable. Shadowshaper, which was truly brilliant, and which led me the author's Bone Street Rumba short stories (all excellent) and the novel Half-Resurrection Blues, almost equally excellent. I've preordered the next one, because this was heavily invested in origin stuff and the next one will probably be better - though I hasten to say that this one was really very good. Deadly Election, the latest Flavia Albia book, which was well up to standard. The first three of Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles (Cinder, Scarlet, Cress) and the back-story novella Fairest (which you should read after Cress), all extremely good - I can hardly wait for the final book, which is pre-ordered. Superposition, another SF book from Scalzi's Big Idea, an intriguing mystery entangled with quantum physics.