Books
Finished Trail of Lightning. I’ll have something to say about it later in the week.
I need to get to work on my Classics Club Spin book, so this week I’m reading The Old English Baron by Clara Reeve. I also have two anthologies to work through: Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman (from the library) and Taaqtumi, an collection of arctic horror stories.
Movies
Watched two movies this week. The first was Midsommar (2019), Ari Aster’s follow up to Hereditary. It was okay. Visually, it’s fantastic. Plot-wise, it’s slow. That can be a good thing; Midsommar needed to be slow and I wasn’t bored by it. But I also have no strong feelings about it. Considering that it’s a horror movie, that kind of means it wasn’t entirely successful.
The second movie was Fast Color (2019, written and directed by Julia Hart). A few months ago I watched Brightburn, a movie that takes the Superman plot (an alien baby is brought up by rural folks) and skews it to be a supervillain origin story. Fast Color is pretty much the inverse of that movie. Instead of an alien boy willing to flex his powers against those who wrong him, Fast Color is about generations of women who have sequestered themselves to protect both themselves and others. Ruth even wonders if their powers are good for anything at all. But, instead of wanting to crush the world, perhaps the world can be renewed. The ending is maybe a little on the nose, but I enjoyed the experience of this movie.
The Writerly Reader 
The Neil Gaiman stories and the Taaqtumi anthology both have me interested. Interesting; I wonder if the latter is phonetically “talk to me”… And how many arctic stories are out there? 🙂
Their glossary has it as TAAQ-tu-mi, with a note that the double “a” is a long vowel sound. There are nine stories; I’m looking forward to what each author does with the theme.
The Old English Baron is new-to-me. It looks like it is an early gothic novel. I read that Samuel Richardson’s daughter edited it for the author, which sounds interesting, too. I hope you enjoy it.
Fast Color has a clever plot. I will look for it. I just watched The Two Popes and now I’m keen to talk about it.
Have a great week!
The Old English Baron is the earliest title I have on my Classics Club list, published in 1778. She begins in her introduction with giving Castle of Otranto the side-eye for being too unbelievable.
The Two Popes is on my husband’s “watch soon” list, so it’s in my future.
Taaqtumi looks awesome; I love a good ice-bound horror story!
I had sworn off review copies, and then I came upon Taaqtumi on NetGalley… 😉
Interesting reads and movies! Thanks for sharing 🙂 Have a great week.