Weakest season, so far.
The plot incredibly unbelievable.
Who approved this script?
Still, Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb, the head of Slough House, makes it worth watching.
For me it’s mostly a black comedy, an absurd workplace shambles.
But at times, it’s almost le Carré level espionage drama.
People still LOVE this show after 3 seasons.
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Weird, gripping non-fiction. ??
Or is it horror story, historic hallucination?
Fact or fantasy?
I don’t understand what this book is talking about.
An extraordinary ‘nonfiction novel’ weaves a web of associations between the founders of quantum mechanics and the evils of two world wars
The first section of Labatut’s book moves at a dizzying pace. He begins with a guided tour of a chamber of horrors in which we encounter some of the more diabolical inventions prompted by two world wars, and are introduced to a blur of real-life characters including the drug-raddled Hermann Göring, who crushed a cyanide capsule in his mouth to avoid the hangman’s rope …
The real villain here, however, is the chemist Fritz Haber (who died in 1934), who directed the programme of poison gas attacks that killed tens of thousands of soldiers in the first world war, an accomplishment that drove his disapproving wife to suicide. …
After this hair-raising opening we are launched into somewhat more tranquil regions of spacetime, where float more familiar characters such as Einstein and other 20th-century physicists and mathematicians …
The second half of Labatut’s book is largely taken up with the struggle for supremacy in modern physics between Erwin Schrödinger and Heisenberg. …
Labatut has written a dystopian nonfiction novel set not in the future but in the present.
Guardian review
Heisenberg and Schrödinger debate atomic particles. Einstein looks on in disgust, clinging to his worldview of Newtonian physics.
I often think of the Freakonomics podcast from 2011 …
… “Sunk cost” is about the past — it’s the time, or money, or sweat equity that you’ve put into something, which makes it hard to abandon.
“Opportunity cost” is about the future. It means that for every hour or dollar you spend on one thing, you’re giving up the opportunity to spend that hour or dollar on something else — something that might make your life better. If only you weren’t so worried about the sunk cost.
If only you could quit. …
Jim VandeHei, founder of Politico and then Axios:
In 2009, I was recruited for one of the most prestigious and cool appointments in American journalism: to serve a nine-year term on the Pulitzer Prize Board.
Three years later, I quit. …
So, how do we know when to quit? Looking back over my decades of best quits, here’s how you know. If the position is…
Housing is an increasingly urgent issue.
Canada’s population grew by 1.2 million in 2023, the highest ever annual increase. And there are not enough homes for those kind of numbers — even if they could afford them.
Multiple approaches are needed to increase housing supply, including turning unused office spaces into apartments and condos.
Short term ➙ easiest is to provide free, safe temporary accommodation for anyone.
Nobody wants people living illegally or legally in tents nearby. THEREFORE the goal should be to be to offer a better alternative, indoor or outdoor. I’d call it a municipal FREE CAMPGROUND.
Volunteer organizations could provide meals and medical advice. Help folks try to get out.
Long term ➙ we need more “Housing First” initiatives.
Rather than moving homeless individuals through different “levels” of housing, whereby each level moves them closer to “independent housing” (for example: from the streets to a public shelter, and from a public shelter to a transitional housing program, and from there to their own apartment or house in the community), Housing First moves the homeless individual or household immediately from the streets or homeless shelters into their own accommodation. …
… housing is a basic human right, and so should not be denied to anyone, even if they are abusing alcohol or other substances. The Housing First model, thus, is philosophically in contrast to models that require the homeless to abjure substance-abuse and seek treatment in exchange for housing.
Finland and Denmark are the only European Union countries where homelessness is currently falling. …
Since its launch in 2008, the number of homeless people in Finland has decreased by roughly 30%, and the number of long-term homeless people has fallen by more than 35%.
“Sleeping rough”, the practice of sleeping outside, has been largely eradicated in Helsinki, where only one 50-bed night shelter remains. …
Wikipedia
Providing housing first to people living on the street has worked surprisingly well where it’s been tried around the world.
Season 1 was great.
But season 2 was even better, IMHO.
YES it’s ultra violent. TRUE – dozens of bad guys die because they never seem to shoot straight. 😀
Too much Mission Impossible silliness, of course.
But Reacher is iconic. A true original.
In season 2, Reacher reunites with his U.S. Army Military Police unit, the Special Investigators, when one of their own is murdered under mysterious circumstances.
Some fans of his books like me wonder WHERE they can go in season 3?
A letdown is likely. Most of the Reacher books are like season 1 ➙ He wanders into a random town. Somehow gets involved in a big fight with a bad guy. Wins without car chases or gun fights.
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Different Seasons (1982) is a collection of four Stephen King novellas with a more dramatic bent, rather than the horror fiction for which King is famous.
Of course the first story was adapted into one of the greatest films of all time, Shawshank Redemption.
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The Body was adapted for Stand by Me (1986). Another of the greatest films of all time.
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I couldn’t really get into the novella, The Body, however.
Instead it was Apt Pupil that really got me.
It’s the story of the evolution of a mass shooter from age-13 to 17.
… student Todd Bowden discovers that his elderly neighbor, Arthur Denker, is Kurt Dussander—a former Nazi concentration camp commandant who is now a fugitive war criminal.
Todd, fascinated with Nazi atrocities perpetrated during World War II, blackmails Dussander, forcing him to share disturbing stories of what it was like working at Nazi extermination camps and how it felt to participate in genocide. …
I’ve not seen the film. 54% on Rotten Tomatoes. Ian McKellen stars as Dussander.
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Funny. Dumb. 😀
This 90min pilot went on to 4 seasons through 2022.
Agatha Raisin is a British comedy-drama television program, based on M. C. Beaton’s book series of the same name about a former PR agent who solves crime mysteries in the Cotswolds village of Carsely.
… broadcast as a pilot titled Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death 2014 …
… soon finds herself a suspect in a murder case when she enters the village’s annual quiche-making competition in an attempt to ingratiate herself with the community. She sets out to clear her name and solve the mystery of the quiche of death.
This is a case where the TV show is better than the source book – Quiche of Death (1992).
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Any author named Prose MUST be good. 😀
And her character “Molly Gray” is both likeable and entertaining.
Somewhere on the autism spectrum, Molly must be the best maid in the world.
This is the sequel to the 1st book in the series, The Maid.
Easy reading. Almost young adult. Definitely a cosy mystery.
For a while I suspected the murder mystery itself might be simplistic. I was wrong.
There are twists and turns enough to keep any reader guessing.
With her flair for cleaning and proper etiquette, she has risen through the ranks of the glorious five-star Regency Grand Hotel to become the esteemed Head Maid.
But just as her life reaches a pinnacle state of perfection, her world is turned upside down when J. D. Grimthorpe, the world-renowned mystery author, drops dead—very dead—on the hotel’s tearoom floor. …
As the high-profile death threatens the hotel’s pristine reputation, Molly knows that she alone holds the key to unlocking the killer’s identity. But that key is buried deep in her past: Long ago, she knew J. D. Grimthorpe. Molly begins to comb her memory for clues …
NitaProse.com
Reviews have been good.
Mystery Road – seasons 1 & 2 were excellent.
Mystery Road: Origin is season 3. A prequel. Good — but not as good as the first two.
The backstory of Mark Coles Smith as Jay Swan, a young detective in the Aussie outback 1999.
Later, in the other two seasons, Aaron Pedersen plays Jay Swan.
My favourite character, by far, is Grace Chow as Cindy Cheung, a young, enthusiastic, and positive police officer. She was truly the only one I could cheer for consistently.
The acting is very strong. Brave.
But the story line simply too hard to follow, for me. At the end of the series I had to search out explainers.
I probably won’t watch season 4.
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My fascination with Nora Roberts continues.
I wouldn’t call this her best book, but — as always — the story moves quickly. And she’s a master of presenting interesting, engaging characters.
Very readable. But definitely a cheesy romance, as well. 😀
Published Nov. 2023, the most recent of her more than 230 novels, this is the first in a planned trilogy.
A woman inherits a haunted seaside mansion in Maine from a long-lost relative.
Sonya MacTavish isn’t having the best year. After finding her fiancé in bed with another woman, she wonders why she ignored so many obvious red flags about him. …
… uncle left her a large, rambling mansion in a small coastal town in Maine, but his will stipulates that she must live in the house for three years in order to claim her inheritance. Sonya’s innate stubbornness and strong survival instinct come in handy after discovering the house is haunted by a bevy of ghosts, collectively known as the lost brides. …
Kirkus
I downloaded the second book in the series — The Mirror — but couldn’t get into it for some reason.
Rick McCharles 