I have this problem where when I start reading a book, I can’t really stop until it’s over or else I don’t pick it back up again. Some books are easier to return to than others, but in general if more than a day passes after setting it down, I’m not gonna finish it.
Luckily, I’m a pretty fast reader, so I can generally scarf something down and then move on with my life. But when I’m reading a long series, it can kind of consume me. When I was reading Wheel of Time, I would spend, like, all of my free time on it, for months – we’re talking like three hours a day most days, more on weekends.
I’ve started rereading Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive now that I have the fifth book and both the interquel novellas, and I just feel like reading is all I’m doing now. Each book is as long as, like, two normal fantasy novels. It’d be easier if they weren’t as good, but they’re Sanderson’s best work; I can set down most of his stuff after a couple chapters and move on with my day, but Stormlight Archive I just don’t want to stop.
I’m having fun rereading them this time after having read a lot of his other books. For those of you who don’t know, Brandon Sanderson has this shared universe called the “Cosmere” that like half his books take place in, with a few characters and a lot of concepts being shared between them. Generally speaking it’s unimportant to most of them, but Stormlight Archive leans into it a little more than the others, so it’s fun to catch more of the references this time around.
It’s certainly not necessary to enjoy them, probably not even recommended. There’s just so much of it and a lot of it is just okay. I think I’ve been reading all of his stuff as a sort of intellectual laziness – Sanderson is consistently above-average and easy to read, so I’ve just been going through his back catalog because that’s easier than taking risks on new authors. But it is paying off now that I’m back to Stormlight, because it is a genuinely excellent series.
I started reading Sense & Sensibility, but I made the mistake of putting that one down for a solid 24 hours and boy, that one is harder than most to get back into. So many characters have the same name and similar positions and relationships that it’s just hard to remember what on earth is going on. I liked the first half of the book, but I think the only way I’ll ever finish it is if I start over from the beginning. Maybe in a couple years.
I’m also reading C.S. Lewis’s The Problem of Pain, which is really good, if a little… I dunno. I think the more of Lewis’s nonfiction I read, the more seriously I take his self-appraisals – which tend to be self-diminishing. He opens The Problem of Pain talking about its limitations, how it’s not a scholarly work, how he’s not trying to accomplish X or Y or Z, and like… he’s right. It’s not scholarly, it doesn’t accomplish those things, and it’s at its best taken very casually as food for thought rather than a solid work.
When I was younger, I thought of C.S. Lewis as, like, a religious authority, but the more of his stuff I reread now, the more I think of him as just sort of an insightful guy who often, but not always, makes good points – which is, I think, all he really thought of himself most of the time. It just feels like a big change in how I read him because I used to view his genuine humility as inaccurate self-effacement.
That said, I also recently reread Til We Have Faces, which he really praises like it’s the best thing he’s ever written, and I think he’s right about that, too.
I dunno, I haven’t read nearly the majority of his work, and it’s been a while since I’ve read most of it. I picked up an anthology of his nonfiction so I’ll see how reading that goes. Maybe I’m misremembering some things.
As for other media, Cassie and I recently watched season two of Andor, which is phenomenal, possibly the best TV show in the last ten years. (But then, we haven’t watched season two of Severance yet, and all accounts are that it’s also excellent.) We, of course, rewatched Rogue One after finishing it, and I do think Andor does a good job giving more weight to that movie – but at the same time, it’s still the same movie. The best of the Disney Star Wars films, but not, like, a must-see.
I saw Friendship in theaters the other day; that was lovely, but I don’t think it resonated as well with me as it has for some people. I liked the comedy but didn’t connect with the theme; I’m a confident person and I don’t have trouble making friends, and the movie is about insecurity and how destructive it is to your social life. I could recognize the characters in the movie but I didn’t really relate to them, I just felt sorry for them.
We also saw Mission Impossible, and that was… horrible. Like, offensively bad. I almost walked out and went home – I might’ve if I’d been seeing it alone. It repeatedly followed the same cycle:
- Characters talk about how they need to do something impossible or else the entire world will end.
- Somebody says they shouldn’t do the thing, it’s impossible/reckless/stupid; Tom Cruise begs them to trust him, and they do.
- Tom Cruise attempts the thing; something goes wrong, making the task even more impossible, but then he just does it anyway with no explanation as to why he was able to accomplish it.
- Slow-motion shots with no sound but dramatic music as characters reunite/reminisce/whatever.
Intersperse some incoherent flashbacks/flashforwards and some references to past films, throw in a few abject plot holes, and make it last about eighteen hours.
I’m not normally one to knock “popcorn movies.” I know I’m one of those Film Snob types now who likes movies general audiences hate and dislikes movies general audiences love, but I can still respect them. I think he makes bad movies, but I totally understand the appeal and the success of Michael Bay, for example.
This is not that. If all this movie included was the action setpieces, it would still be odd and boring because the setpieces have such incoherent stakes. You can’t spend three whole scenes telling us that X is impossible, then have something happen that makes X even more impossible, and then just have Tom Cruise do it anyway with no explanation as to why he’s able to do it. If that’s the kind of movie you want to make, just have Tom Cruise do the cool setpiece without an hour and a half of boring conversation beforehand. They want to have the schlock of Transformers and the pathos of Civil War and they completely flub it, making both halves of the movie boring.
Oops, I ended the post complaining, I didn’t want to do that. Okay, I’ve gone on too long, but let’s instead talk about how spectacular the 2005 Pride and Prejudice movie was. We rewatched it in Los Angeles for the 20th anniversary, and I think it aged so well, it’s actually better now than it was when it came out.
It’s very possible that’s just because I was a 15 year old boy when it came out and I have much better appreciation for good movies now, but I think it’s more than that. The movie was very modern in its sensibilities, and has a lot of trust in its audience, which feels better now than it did at the time. It felt long in 2005, but in an era where action schlock can have 3 hour runtimes, 2 hours for a dramedy feels like a great pace. Its message is timeless, its characters and conflicts are well-defined and thoroughly believable… it’s just a great movie.