Black Knight

I haven't read You yet, and I've only seen the first episode of the TV series so far, but I think I've gathered enough to be able to recommend Raphael Montes's Perfect Days to people who liked You. It's very disturbing and has stuck with me since I read it two years ago.

That was me. I read the unnecessary sequels once and never again, and it's very rare for me to have only read a Pike once (I think the only other ones I've never read again are the later Last Vampire books - that series just went on and on and felt so repetitive. I'm not sure how I feel about the very end of it. I have a nagging suspicion that if I hadn't just been so relieved that the series was finally over, I might have hated the ending more). Also, Witch is one of my most-read Pikes, and I still cry every damn time when Julia's aunt explains things to Amy and Scott, and then when Julia is reunited with her mother. I don't reread The Midnight Club quite as much, but I always cry when Ilonka is talking to Anya's ex-boyfriend near the end.

I like Elizabeth von Arnim's The Enchanted April for cold/rainy days - some women escape the grey London weather by going to Italy for a month. (No snow where I live.) The book's in the public domain, so you can even download it for free. It was made into a wonderful 1991 movie, too.

I just finished John Carreyrou's Bad Blood, about the fall of Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos. It actually reads rather like a thriller, in that you keep wondering when exactly she's finally going to get caught. She managed to avoid it for many years despite close calls along the way. (And I just read on Wikipedia that the book is being adapted into a movie with Jennifer Lawrence in the role. Hmmm.)

There had actually been official spoilers in the soap opera magazines about John's turn to the "dark" Alamain side and how it was going to upset Isabella. We saw the set-up of that future story onscreen, when John began work at Alamain - there was stuff with him and Lawrence arguing for different things at board meetings, with John taking the idealistic/principled position - but with Greason's decision to leave the writers dropped the corporate storyline before the gradual turn to the dark side could begin. We hardly even saw John at Alamain again. I actually think it's quite the reverse - it's only because Sami was SORAS'd that fans even think that John should be the one she really thinks of as her father. That's because Sami's SORAS happened not too long after Wayne's return as Roman. But I remember that whole storyline, and Sami (and Eric) were still extremely young children when Roman returned. I'm not sure what their precise age was supposed to be back then, but I have a particularly specific memory of the scene in which the twins were told that John wasn't their father, Roman was. John asked if he could put the twins to bed and Roman and Marlena agreed, and John picked up both twins - one in each arm - and carried them upstairs. They were that young and small. (Also so young and small that when Roman was first introduced to them, so they could get to know him first before the whole "he's your father" reveal was made, he went by a silly nickname, the sort of dumb nickname that no child over 7 would tolerate using. It was Mr. Puddles or something like that.) SORASing confused the issue because Sami went from that age to 15-16 overnight, but leaving aside that it happened due to SORASing, it means that she spent the majority of her childhood with Roman as her father, and most of her time with John was at that very early age that people tend not to have many memories of. It's very different with Carrie, who did most of her growing up with John and only had Roman return when she had just become an adult.

Absolutely, but that reaction made sense, because Marlena knew that the revelation of the pregnancy had just resolved the entire quadrangle without her or John ever actually making a choice about who they really wanted to be with. John had been torn between Marlena and Isabella while having romantic moments with both of them, and then Roman turned up and Marlena was torn between him and John. But Isabella's pregnancy meant she got John by default, and Roman got Marlena by default. John and Marlena were both too decent of people back then to think of choosing to be together under those circumstances, especially when John did truly love Isabella and Marlena did truly love Roman. I remember the very sweet and moving scene in which Marlena and John, post-pregnancy-reveal, admitted that they loved each other but knew this was how it had to be. Isabella and Roman were still great loves of John and Marlena and so the whole thing went on well enough, with John and Marlena burying their feelings for each other under friendship while devoting themselves to their spouses, until Isabella died. One story I know got rewritten was the effect on John of being an Alamain. Originally he was supposed to start going darker, getting corrupted, and Isabella was going to be upset about the changes in him. But then Greason decided to leave, so that was all dropped and replaced by the cancer storyline, with John/Isabella remaining a solid couple to her death.

John wasn't serious about Rebecca, though. He got involved with her as a casual rebound after the twin upsets of Isabella's death and Marlena not leaving Roman. He met and fell for Kristen while still involved with Rebecca, and Rebecca realized that Kristen was the one he had real feelings for, so she ended the fling.

The BSC specials! My favorite was the one where Dawn, Claudia and some of the kids get shipwrecked on an island while everyone else worries and looks for them. I particularly remember the scene where some of the searchers find the wreckage of Dawn's boat bobbing in the water. A lot more serious angst than usual.

I do think she's attractive (though I preferred her with the darker hair color she had for OUAT), but that's subjective anyway. But her (at least so far - maybe she just doesn't reveal much early on) relatively unexciting personality would actually be most of the attraction for him anyway. He's looking for someone he can mold to his tastes, and she comes across as somewhat unformed and malleable, which makes her perfect for him. He would never go for someone like Peach, who has a strong, distinctive personality that would make it very difficult for him to project fantasies onto her or think that he can get her to start being exactly the person he wants her to be. He's not obsessed with Beck the actual woman. He's obsessed with an idea he has of her, and even that idea is not so much about how he views her presently as it is about how he can change pretty much everything about her. One of his monologues about that was really chilling - he's even planning to change what she eats...

I'm currently reading Rainbow Rowell's revival of The Runaways. This run of hers is making me so happy. The series was cancelled at its nadir - poor writing and continuity, seemingly being too scared to tackle major events like finally bringing Gert back or finally putting Nico/Karolina together. Rowell is obviously a huge fan of the series and has restored it to its original heights, continuing the trademark humor while more seriously addressing some of the angst of the characters that the original comics tended to gloss over. And Kris Anka's artwork is terrific.

It's definitely not better, morally speaking. I don't think it's worse, either, just different. However, in terms of pragmatism, it's better for those they target. Let me put it this way: Imagine you're being led to a wall to be executed and you have a choice between the mercenary for hire or a true believer. You have a chance of paying the mercenary for hire off. The true believer is going to shoot you no matter what. There is no way to sway a true believer and that ultimately makes a true believer more dangerous to the people they target.

It's simply glorious that Ann Coulter happened to be booked for tonight's show. Maher's bookers must've been pinching themselves in glee. All the politically-minded people in my office, who usually avoid anything Coulter like the plague, were looking forward all day to tuning in to enjoy her frustration over Trump.

Stephanie really should be on, especially now that Abigail is leaving. Shelley Hennig does well enough getting work outside daytime that she probably won't ever return, but they could recast.

Seriously? I'm pretty sure that would be a guaranteed way to get slapped into next week by grieving parents. They tend to have this idea that their baby isn't just replaceable or interchangeable. I know Taylor's dumb these days, but even she isn't that dumb.

Heh. You may have a future lawyer on your hands. I do think Chamber of Secrets qualifies as a mystery. Is that the one she tried to use? But yes, I agree she has to follow the rules of her assignments. My "let her read what she wants" only applies to her free reading, not her reading for school. It's nice that the reading assignments have pretty broad requirements, but still, she's got to follow them. I thought from what you wrote before that you were talking about her free reading.

I just finished An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green, brother of John. It was a good read with an interesting mystery (strange sculptures appear simultaneously in places all over the world), so I tore through it pretty fast - unfortunately, it turns out to be the start of a series, so I didn't get all the answers I'd hoped for. Lev Grossman is quoted on the back cover as saying April May is someone you're immediately going to want to be best friends with, and all I can think is that either he has very strange ideas of what people usually want in a best friend, or he didn't bother to read the book and wrote this quote as a favor to one of the Green brothers, assuming that the female protagonist would have been written as likable. Given Grossman's quote, I'm putting this right here for people: This is not a book for readers who need the protagonist to be likable. The protagonist is narcissistic and awful, and because she's the narrator, you're in her head. When she said on page 113 that she hoped readers wouldn't hate her in a couple more pages, I immediately thought, "Well, I started disliking you in the opening pages, and actively hated you by page 58, so..." (There are other characters in the book who are quite likable, for those who can live without the protagonist being likable but need someone to like. However, they're pretty flat, which is not surprising since the book is narrated by April and, being a narcissist, she's not actually interested in anyone else except for how they can be useful to her.)

I think you should let her read what she wants. All you're going to accomplish is turning non-HP books into "homework" and turning her off them, possibly for good. She's already got forced reading for school - textbooks, whatever. You don't want to kill her passion and I don't think that at 9 years old you need to be concerned yet about how widely read she is. She will eventually want a break from HP and will turn on her own to some of the many unread books she has in her pile. And I'm assuming that as a 9-year-old her to-read pile doesn't consist of nothing but thick door-stoppers, so once she does switch to reading other things she'll get through a good number of those books in no time.

I think these events are unlikely to be connected since the two couples are of totally different generations. Jack/Jen would not be viewed as a couple that would fill Chabby's space; that's for couples like Ben/Ciara and JJ/Haley. If Jack/Jen have been brought in to fill space for a departed couple, it'd be for Stayla.

What state is Salem in? Because Iowa and Kentucky are the only states with lifetime bans on voting for convicted felons. A couple states allow voting while in prison, more allow voting once their incarceration has ended, and the remainder allow voting once they have completed any probation/parole period they have. Sheila is obviously not in jail; is she still on any kind of parole or probation? I agree a story can be done without it being too political since it's really not a partisan issue anymore - Florida voting overwhelmingly to reinstate voting rights for convicted felons this past November shows that.

It says more about the pathetic state of the rest of the soaps...

Yes, Devil Wears Prada is the rare exception where the film is better - and not just because the film has Meryl Streep. It's really the script, which fleshed out characters, got rid of that tiresome, creaky subplot with Andy's best friend, etc.

Dave Cullen’s Columbine is fascinating, and more relevant than ever. I see he’s written a follow-up, about Parkland, and I’ll need to check that out.

All these years later, I barely remember anything about that series - I actually don’t think I read beyond the first book - but I remember thinking even in the first book that Reeve was an asshole.

I have no love for snakes, but... so all reptiles and animals and fish that are carnivorous should starve to death, then? Birdie seems more naive to me than anything. I understand her being bothered, but this is a reality of nature. Many species don’t have the option of being vegetarians.

Yeah, Colman is being made up differently for The Crown, and of course the two queens are quite different personalities and their health situations are so opposite. It’s really interesting to see the effect.