fajrdrako | Reading and watching... (Reply)

A few odds and ends...

Castle - This has been, in my opinion, the best TV show of the year, and it's just getting better - adding a new layer of cleverness and depth without losing its charm. I'm behind in watching this because of the cruise, but what fun to come home and have episodes to watch. I just saw "Sucker Punch" tonight, and love the way Becket's character developed. Not much of Alexis this time, but we can't have everything.
Supernatural - Somehow this has quickly gone from being one of the best written things on television to something reasonably mediocre. Tonight we watched "Swap Meat" and asked, "Is this an after school special?" It felt like an episode of Smallville without the sexiness. In the past, even the poor episodes have had something to catch the attention, but there really wasn't much here. Sam and Dean seem to have dropped a few dozen IQ points, and the demon wasn't too bright, either.

On the plus side: Dean is still nice to look at. But I don't like seeing his personality fade.
Hundred Dollar Baby by Robert B. Parker. When Parker died two weeks ago, I felt the urge to reread one of his books, and picked this up second hand in Florida. Imagine my surprise and delight when I realized I'd never read it - so I had a new Spenser novel in hand. Bliss.

The story revisits April Kyle, whom Spenser rescued as a young girl when she had fallen into abusive relationships and prostitution. Now April is a reasonably successful madam who begs for Spenser's help to save her business from bullies, or possibly organized crime. She makes a feminist issue of it.

But any astute reader would have their warning bells going off from the beginning, and Spenser learns that April has a few secrets she isn't sharing.

I liked Susan Silverman here more than I usually do, but I was vaguely disappointed in the resolution of the plot.

Still. Spenser. And Hawk. Wonderful characters still.
What I Did For Love by Susan Elizabeth Phillips, who happens to be my favourite romance writer. I love the way she uses song references for her titles. I love her perplexed macho heroes and resourceful heroines. I love the way she makes me cry. (And laugh, too.)

This time, the protagonists were once stars in an ongoing comedy TV series. It was wildly successful, but Bram's wild bad-boy ways finally brought a scandal down on the show and caused its cancellation. Georgie, a former star of Annie, at 15 had loved her gorgeous co-star until she saw what a rotter he really was. And as the story begins, some 14 years later, she is reeling from an unhappy divorce and has to deal with him again for the sake of her career. Sparks fly.

The plot is far-fetched, but manages to make a virtue of its implausibility - and its familiarity. As usual, the characters are all delightful, secondary ones as well, and when I got to the end of the book it felt like a wrench to leave these people. I love the way so many of the characters get their own corner of the story - Georgie's father, Bram's housekeeper, even the Executive Producer next door.