It’s been a stormy week around here. A series of systems have brought a lot of storms our way, which makes for great sleeping weather assuming there isn’t a lot of thunder and lightning. Which there was.

Suffice it to say that the past seven days haven’t always been the best for getting a good night’s sleep.

Friday night was beautiful, though, so I went for a walk after work to try out my new tripod. It’s a Sirui A-1005 travel tripod I bought for future travels. I already have a nice little travel tripod, but it’s too little. It goes up a whole two feet, which is convenient for carrying, but not when you need a higher perspective. Suffice it to say that the new tripod works very well, is light, sturdy, and holds the camera steady, just like it’s supposed to.

 

What I Finished Reading Last Week:

• Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come: An Introvert’s Year of Living Dangerously by Jessica Pan (ARC provided by NetGalley)
• Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse #1) by James S.A. Corey

Leviathan Wakes is the first book in The Expanse series by the writing team known as James S.A. Corey. Though I am only one book in, I think this is going to be one of the best science fiction series I have ever read (or watched). It is set in the future after humanity has colonized the solar systems. Planetary factions have been established, and though all the factions rely on each other, they often regard each other with suspicion and disdain. Though there are many characters, the story is told through two points of view which helps the story maintain its tension, which doesn’t let up until the final few pages.

What I’m Currently Reading:

• A Legacy of Spies by John le Carré, audiobook narrated by Tom Hollander
• Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated from the German by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy
• Caliban’s War (The Expanse #2) by James S.A. Corey

I’ve nearly finished A Legacy of Spies, and it’s been a gripping story, which shifts between now and the Cold War during the 1960s, and describes how two British agents ended up dead, and the circumstances that are bringing those events back to the surface after decades.

I’m a bit behind on my 2019 Reading Plan for May since I haven’t read the second work in translation yet. I picked up Rilke’s Book of Hours since it is relatively short (and thus easy to finish), and because I adore Rilke’s poetry. Assuming you have a good translation, its easy to get swept up in these short poems.

What I Plan to Start Reading This Week:

Your guess is as good as mine. Any suggestions?

What I’ve Been Watching:

Game of Thrones, 806: ‘The Iron Throne’. This was the final episode of Game of Thrones (in case you hadn’t heard about it everywhere).

Want a controversial opinion?

I liked how it ended.

Did it end the way I expected it to? Nope. Am I okay with this fact? Yup. I think everyone ended up just where they needed to be, and while there were plenty of moments this season that made me stop and go “hrm….”, as a whole, I enjoyed the eighth season. I think, if I go back and rewatch the whole series, I will see better how all the pieces fit together and it may boost my opinion of season eight, but that won’t happen for a while. My sister has asked to borrow my DVD set of the first season, and I might not get it back for a while. Which is fine. I have other things to watch, namely:

Star Trek: Voyager. When Voyager premiered back in the late 1990s, it was on UPN, a now-defunct station we didn’t have access to where I grew up. Thanks to the free cable my college offered in the dorms, I was able to see more episodes, but there are large chunks of the series I haven’t seen. I am finally rectifying that and discovering how my views of the show have changed. I appreciate Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) even more now than I did before, and I find B’Elanna Torres (Roxann Dawson) to be less annoying, but Neelix (Ethan Phillips) and Kes (Jennifer Lien) are still ‘meh’ characters in my book. And early Tom Paris (Robert Duncan McNeil) is far more irritating than I ever thought possible. I’ve decided that one of the wonderful things about Star Trek: Discovery is that there isn’t a womanizing male character. It’s a breath of fresh air. I’m sure I will have things to say about the differences between Discovery and its predecessors.