BlackberryJam

@blackwing I will have so much to say in this thread! Thank you. My first recommendations for male protagonist cozy are books by David Handler. His Stewart Hoag mysteries have Hoagy, a flash in the pan writer who now ghost writes celebrity memoirs, solve mysteries with his dog, Lulu. They take place in the 80s/90s. His other great series are the Berger and Mitry mysteries. Mitch Berger is a short, widowed, Jewish film critic who moves to a small new England town. Des Mitry is a tall, artistic, Black state trooper stationed in the area. You get both of their POVs.

Finding good recent ones can be..tough. I am so sick of the plucky protagonist just out of a relationship with a city slicker who moves to charming hometown to waitress in the family dessert shop, no matter that she has a degree in astrophysics, only to come a cross the body of the big city guy who wants to buy her family’s store. SO BARFY. I recommend the Raquel V. Reyes I mentioned before, which is modern and skips those tropes. My work is requiring a ton of driving right now, so I’m big on books on tape. I want more of the Knott books. I’m all right with some romance, but not…a ton. My big pet peeve is people acting stupid to further the plot.

While I might not always like the stories she's telling, I can't deny that they are fully fleshed out plots with writing at is a comfortable read. That does take talent. Writing is difficult.

Actually it does have silver in the title, but still, just a Hoag. I really feel like Berger and Mitry are two full realized characters with interesting backstories who just happened to live in a small New England town where they solve crimes. Way to hard into the paranormal. (@DearEvette your avatar looks like the cover of the Harlem Renaissance mysteries. I've read the first, and I think the series has real potential.) Katy Munger has a Dead Detective series in which the ghost is just the narrator, rather than the crime solver. I like that level of supernatural. I'm a bit burnt out on supernatural mysteries. They use the paranormal is ways that become silly. I realize most cozy mysteries have a silly element to them, but there is a difference between Murder, She Wrote silly and Gilligan's Island silly. Also, I'm so sick of protagonists doing stupid things, like turning off their cell phones. I haven't turned off my cell phone in a decade or so. Silent mode is as close as I come. When life gets too...lifey, and the world seems to be crumbling, I find solace in mystery novels. I try to mix them up with what I call, "Improving" books. I'm not in a place where I can read anything to angsty or gutwrenching or enraging. So if anyone has more recommendations, I'm always open.

Ugh… I hate hearing that. I could have cut out the supernatural element, but I loved Gesthemane and the school/village. Have you read Raquel V Reyes? A Caribbean Kitchen mystery. Only one out but it has real potential.

I finished SJ Bennett All the Queen's Men, UK title A Three Dog Problem. I listen to it on Audible and the narrator does a great job. It was delightful. Fluffy, meaningless, Queen Elizabeth at 90 solving crimes. It was just what I needed to escape from watching the world implode. I've started listening to Neil deGrasse Tyson, Death by Black Hole and wow does he sound like a douche. He narrates a particularly snotty interaction with a waiter wherein This annoyed me because I really enjoyed Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. I really wish Alexia Gordon would put out a new Gethsemane Brown novel or a Raquel V. Reyes Miriam Quiñones-Smith mystery. I read the latest Stewart Hoag by David Handler. It was nice, but he'd previously ended the series and has now gone back to it, so I feel like the timeline is wonky. I want another Berger and Mitry book by him. I loved Mitch Berger and Des Mitry. The problem is I can read a book in a day or two and it takes authors months, sometimes years to write them.

My name doesn't fit on the test either, which I found SUPER annoying as a child and was kind of a bitch about it. Like 11 year old me raising my hand and saying, "Since the testing form doesn't allow for my actual name, will my results make it into my permanent record?" I didn't take my exhusband's last name because well, why? His last name is kind of ugh, whereas my full name, though it be long, has lovely rhythm when spoken aloud.

Wait. I do. Bwhahaha. That's how little of an impression these films made on me. The Witcher is the plasticky Superman, right? I could edit, but no, it's actually funnier that I fucked them up.

I don't care about Batman movies. I'm sure at some point I've seen them all in that, "I've had a shit day, I'll watch some meaningless drivel of a movie that requires absolutely no mental engagement to follow, oh look another Batman film." I absolutely can't remember one from the other. They all just check boxes of "dark, gloomy city, lots of black against a black background for costuming with maybe some weak lamp light, silly villain in silly costume." I couldn't rank them because in my mind, they are all the same damn movie. Not one of the Batman actors left more of an impression than the other. I don't understand why they keep making Batman movies in groups of three telling the same story over and over again. There are tons of excellent stories out that should be made into movies. I also maybe saw the Christopher Reeve Spiderman film maybe when I was young. I saw the one Spiderman with Tobey Maguire because I liked him so much in The Ice Storm.

I think they are trying to do too much with each episode. This could have been an Elizabeth Holmes episode without the battered woman portion. The stories aren't given a chance to breathe and develop before we whiplash to something else.

Right, right?? Getting dragged into it. I am secure in myself and don't mind taking a few hits, but at the same time, I'm sure in the past I've, privately with fandom friends, negatively critiqued writing I didn't like. I don't post critique in comments, but part of developing a fandom family is sharing common likes and dislikes about headcanons, writing styles, writing subjects, etc. For example, I am a fan of Jaime and Brienne. Not Jaime, Brienne and a third random character thrown in for purposes of threesome smut. I'm not anti-threesome smut, but I'm anti-threesome for the Jaime and Brienne pairing. I also don't agree with the headcanons that either of these two characters is bi or trans. I respect that representation is important and that's why people write fic. I'm fine with it. I just don't read it. And I'm not going to engage in a debate with someone who says that these characters being bi or trans is canon. (GRRM wasn't subtle about his gay characters, not even a little.) But, "getting dragged into it" sometimes means getting pulled into a debate that I don't want to have. Yet, I'm not into taking the cowardly position of not standing up for this writer being attacked because I'm afraid of taking some blowback. Fandom is supposed to be fun. I hate it when it gets complicated.

So, I mostly read Jaime/Brienne from Game of Thrones. So, some asshole has taken to targeting a couple of writers, posting things like, "You should acknowledge how bad you are," and "I thought you'd finally stopped writing, but I see you're back. So disappointing." It's pretty vile stuff, to the point the asshole is sending the writer anon messages on Tumblr. Of course that person is an asshole, and there is no explaining why people aren't like that. I'm not here to rehash that rant. My issue is that I'm not sure how to counteract that behavior and support the writer. The Jaime and Brienne fandom has piled on the compliments and support, but I feel like I don't know what to say. Should I lash out in response to the nasty comments? Will ripping that asshole make the writer feel better or exacerbate the problem? Because that's what I want to do. I want to write an entire diatribe to that asshole about manners, decency and the like. I want to not just mount a defense, but go on the attack. But I know this writer would never ask that of someone, mostly because she's feeling so fragile.

My soft spot is for The Land of Counterpane from a Child's Garden of Verses.

I agree that the film looks gorgeous, it's just that...well...Poirot solves the mystery by sitting in his chair and thinking. He doesn't rush to and fro. He doesn't hold people at gunpoint. He gathers the facts in a calm, methodical manner, then sits down with a deck of cards, builds a house with them and thinks. By trying to make the story more cinematic, Branagh is taking away the key part of Poirot. He's a thinker, not a doer. Marple is the same way. She busybodies around, peering through the bushes, stopping over for cups of tea, then she scootles over to the Vicar or Inspector Slack and explains everything and they are the ones who then act to capture the killer.

Well, the SAG awards were surprising. Glad I wasn’t in a pool this year. I had everything wrong.

My first of hers was The Ghost Next Door, and I read it so many times. Those books were like no other books I’d read before. I didn’t feel like I was being talked down to at all when I read them. They were age appropriate without being condescending or silly. Her books also weren’t formulaic like Nancy Drew or Trixie Belden. Wylly was my favorite for a while. I also loved those Silhouette First Love teen romance novels.

Did anyone read Wylly Folk St. John? I loved her books.

I saw this post and thought I wrote it....

I could get down with some classic soaps. I like to have what I call "comfort TV" on in the evenings when I'm taking care of other stuff. TV that is easy and I don't have to give it my full attention, but it's also entertaining me. Midsomer Murders is great for that. My unpopular opinion, I can't get worked up into the "unreality" of TV. It's...TV. So what there are 4000 murders in Midsomer. Who cares if Stefano DiMera keeps dying and coming back? As long as whatever happens is plausible within the show universe, I'm fine with it. It's when a show backtracks on itself or is inconsistent within itself that I get annoyed.

The first three or so seasons of Falcon Crest were better than Dynasty or Dallas.

I felt that same way about Jack, but powered through. I actually like Neville second best of all the DIs. It goes Poole, Neville, Humphrey, Jack. (Although on any given day, if Humphrey looked like an unmade bed, he might fall to the bottom.) I would just fastforward through Jack’s “emotional” scenes and anything with his daughter. Ugh.

That Olivia Munn interview is gross. Gross about her, what she said about her ex, grossly written. Just everything is gross. There have been rumors about Aaron Rodgers being gay or bisexual for a long time, long before Olivia. And it’s fine. If he’s bi, that’s fine. If he’s gay, that’s fine. If he’s straight, that’s fine. Maybe if we all just shrug about it and be like, “yeah, lots of people are gay/bi, it ain’t no big thing that Aaron Rodgers is,” then we’d go further towards normalizing and accepting individual sexuality. There are certainly closeted NFL players, and I wish they’d feel comfortable just being who they are and not having to hide it. At the same time, it’s their business and they can handle it in whatever way makes them most comfortable.

Sure, but even at that age, it’s another film promoting the idea that the value of women is in how they are presented to and later serve men. The message is there, on full display, for children to absorb, even if they don’t understand exactly what’s going on. Again, I’m not for banning it. Not even a little. But I can understand why people find it offensive. Hells, I find it offensive. Being offensive isn’t a reason to ban something. Promoting a terrible message isn’t a reason to ban something. If a church organization wants to put it on a list of, “Films that have a terrible moral message that we condemn,” it absolutely makes sense. I’d like there to be fewer films that promote the role of “woman as prostitute/woman’s only value is to please a man,” especially if that film is promoted as a romance.

Exactly. Let’s take a young girl and make her the best prostitute ever! The whole premise of that film is disgusting. I’m not for banning it, but I wouldn’t encourage anyone to view it as some sort of romance.

Or maybe because Gigi is about training a young girl to be a prostitute.