williams_482's recent activity
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Comment on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S02E09 - "Subspace Rhapsody" Episode Discussion in ~tv
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Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
williams_482 Link ParentChristie I had heard of (who hasn't), but Sayers is a new name to me. I'll definitely check out their works.Christie I had heard of (who hasn't), but Sayers is a new name to me. I'll definitely check out their works.
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Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
williams_482 LinkI'm ~75% of the way through a collection of the original Sherlock Holmes stories (The Complete Sherlock Holmes, volumes I and II, compiled and annotated by Kyle Freeman) and have been loving them....I'm ~75% of the way through a collection of the original Sherlock Holmes stories (The Complete Sherlock Holmes, volumes I and II, compiled and annotated by Kyle Freeman) and have been loving them. Obviously Holmes mysteries are well regarded for the mysteries and for their eccentric protagonist, but I've found considerable joy in the simple fact that they are then-contemporary fiction from 150 years ago, complete with word choices and assumptions about what the audience would understand which would be largely lost on me without Freeman's helpful notations. There's also quite a bit of strikingly unapologetic casual racism, but that's to be expected for the time period. On some level, it highlights Conan Doyle's complete obliviousness to the perceptions of 21st century readers, and thus his willingness to include elements that modern writers of this time period would often shy away from.
I was drawn to Casablanca and The Twilight Zone for essentially the same reason: good stories, (mostly) set, written, and performed in a time closer to today, but still old enough that to me it seems foreign.
Can anyone recommend other examples of then-contemporary pop fiction from 100+ years ago, ideally not American, that are still compelling reads today? My knowledge of the classics is pretty limited, hence the question.
The bolded was surely an intentional, considered choice. It's a classic strategy to put whatever you think is your worst/most risky/etc episode in the second to last episode slot, where a dud is least likely to be remembered because it is immediately followed by the much more significant finale. As an example, that's where TNG hid their infamous clip show (and The Inner Light, which apparently the people in charge thought would be terrible). SNW S1 almost did that with The Elysian Kingdom, but put it 8th instead of 9th because Hemmer was present, and Hemmer had to die before the season finale.
Did you know this would be a musical episode coming in? I did, I had extremely low expectations (I am not a fan of musicals in general, and figured it was 50/50 that I'd bail halfway through), and found myself pleasantly surprised. Whatever else you want to say, this cast has some excellent musical talents, and they (the actors) apparently lobbied pretty hard to make this episode happen.