Unofficial What are you Reading Thread?

[LMNO]

Well, the new Pratchett is out in the states.  Should I pause The King In Yellow for now to go for something breezier?

[Faust]

Well, the new Pratchett is out in the states.  Should I pause The King In Yellow for now to go for something breezier?

Maybe I'm a philistine but I think The King in yellow isn't breezy. I'm not enjoying it very much, I only really liked the marble story so far, It's not really as timelessly gripping as lovecrafts writing

[LMNO]

Exactly. Pratchett would be the breezier.

I put aside the rather-dated-timeless-horror-of-the-19th-century for now.

[LMNO]

True Detective punked out on that angle, anyway.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Well, the new Pratchett is out in the states.  Should I pause The King In Yellow for now to go for something breezier?

Maybe I'm a philistine but I think The King in yellow isn't breezy. I'm not enjoying it very much, I only really liked the marble story so far, It's not really as timelessly gripping as lovecrafts writing

The King in Yellow sucked a metric ton of ass, in my opinion. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Finishing up "The Psychopath Whisperer", debating whether to start on "The Undiscovered Mind" or "Without Conscience" next.

I wish someone would write a really good overview of personality disorders and the current state of research. I'm thinking more and more that what I'd like to get into is the neurobiology of personality disorders.

[Faust]

True Detective punked out on that angle, anyway.

Without derailing too much, I mentioned on crams thread, I disagree, I believe they showed everything they could have without blatantly confirming the existence of supernatural forces. It's just subtle enough that it doesn't take away from the actual horror of the show, which is that of child abuse and murder for absurd or nihilistic reasons. Rusts whole thing is he lost everything in a meaningless tragedy.

Anything more than that and I would have lost interest instantaneously.

All of the references are to Carcosa are to being in a state of mind. They even make light of it by talking about a man with green ears and tentacles for his chin. It would have killed it for me.

They may expand on that in subsequent seasons and confirm it considering the blurb for the next season is along the lines of a pair of female detectives investigate occult links in the United states transport system.

[Cain]

Yeah.  The killer at the end went down way too hard...that wasn't natural strength, resilience or speed.

And yes, why are people struggling with Carcosa?  That's why I made that post on FB last week, before I even saw the finale.

[LMNO]

We'll probably go in the same circle on this one as we did last time, but i'm guessing that in the end, it was just another buddy-cop police procedural... and the casual misogyny in the scriptwriting that people were trying to defend as a statement piece turned out to be... simply casual misogyny.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

We'll probably go in the same circle on this one as we did last time, but i'm guessing that in the end, it was just another buddy-cop police procedural... and the casual misogyny in the scriptwriting that people were trying to defend as a statement piece turned out to be... simply casual misogyny.

Maybe, just MAYBE, the real King in Yellow writes this drek, to numb our minds and prepare us for whatever horrible food processing the Old Ones prefer.

I'd like a Stars are Right Hotdog™ please!

[LMNO]

 

[Cain]

We'll probably go in the same circle on this one as we did last time, but i'm guessing that in the end, it was just another buddy-cop police procedural... and the casual misogyny in the scriptwriting that people were trying to defend as a statement piece turned out to be... simply casual misogyny.

Well yes.  It was definitely middlebrow entertainment, with some flaws, that people built up into the Best Thing Ever.

But given this, or another series of, lets say, The Mentalist...well, I'd still prefer this.

[LMNO]

"Better than Network TV" just doesn't cut it anymore.

Especially after Orange is the New Black.

[Cain]

I disagree.  For the genre, it definitely does.  Cop procedural is by far the laziest, painting-by-numbers cliche-ridden mess type of television program in existence currently.

True Detective is certainly not immune to that.  Rust's new-found belief in the power of good and pretty stars was butt-clenchingly horrible, as was the complete lack of explanation as to what was in fact going on with regards to the aristocratic conspiracy and how it interacted with the killer himself, and it reeks of X Files/Lost-esque attempts to keep the viewer engaged by an ever increasing number of unresolvable mysteries.

That said.

Go back to the first three episodes and watch them again.  The cinematography, the dialogue, the character studies of Rust and Hart.  There is definitely something in that which was worthwhile, even if the rest of the series couldn't decide what it wanted to be or how to resolve its outstanding issues (or to engage in them at all).

It's also worth noting that Pizzolatto is still fairly early into a screenwriting career.  This is the first show he wrote by himself, despite his former success as an academic and fiction writer.  Meaning there is definitely room for him to refine and improve what he can offer.  Season One definitely fell short of the hype, but I'm willing to see if he can step up his game, or if he's willing to just sit on his laurels and not bother to do any more for the second season.

[Faust]

Yeah, same. I'll try not to fanboy kneejerk, but I really liked it.

I wouldn't call it a procedural. It is a buddy cop show but it's long timespan, focussed case and branching family life made each episode quite unexpected to me, it didn't follow the procedure or follow the awful formula of cop shows (or when it did it, it did so in weird ways).

There are only three cop programs I have ever liked. The wire, Twin peaks and this.

It's uneasy tension and pacing and utterly unlikable protagonists made it stand out as very unusual in my mind.

The women are mysoginistic portrayals, they are cheating or vindictive, that's basically all they do. Otherwise they are brutalised or consumed (sexually by the main characters, murdered by the villains).

I'm not sure how much of it is genuine misogyny or pulpy dark themes (there are no nice characters in this and certainly no good people). But if you are going to portray people at their worst why associate women with nothing more than nagging, capricious or vindictive.

It's over hyped, but