what Dave thinks about movies, books and everything
{5/5} “If we can refrain from overestimating our likelihood of failure, then neither must we underestimate our capacity for success.” The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here by Hope Jahren, published in 2020 Jahren uses her birth year of 1969 as a marker to compare how […]
{5/5} “You wouldn’t actually marry one of these men, would you?” Little Women, released in 2019 Meg March wants to wear pretty dresses, go dancing, and get married. Her sister Jo wants to be a writer, but will dance if the occasion permits. Amy wants to go to Paris and become an artist. Beth, a […]
{5/5} “It’s going to be ours, Rose, yours and mine. A secret place where we can be together, just the two of us, just as we imagined when we were younger. Four walls, locked gates, our very own paradise. Even when you’re unwell you can come here, Rose. The walls keep it protected from the […]
{5/5} “I’m a regular carbon-based employee made entirely of organic matter, much like yourself, Norm.” WandaVision, aired in 2021 What’s really going on in this show is a spoiler for the 1st 3 episodes. Spoiler alert The FBI comes to Westview and finds a town that no one can get in — it has an […]
{4.5/5} “Some writers chafed at Gene’s vision of a better future where there was no conflict… I liked the dramatic constraints it put on me as a writer… I had to find new ways to tell stories.” — Brannon Braga Chaos on the Bridge, released in 2014 When Paramount decided they were going to create […]
{5/5} “Two crews, Maquis and Starfleet, are going to become one, and they’ll make as big a mark on the Delta Quadrant as it’ll make on them, by protecting people like the Ocampans, curing diseases, encouraging peace. Children like Naomi and Icheb are going to grow up on this ship and call it home. And […]
Here’s an update to this list. The Original Series I don’t read all of these but I do pick up the ones that are written by authors I know or look particularly interesting. I’ve also reread a few of the best older ones. The Entropy Effect by Vonda N. McIntyre 1981 -> 4.5/5 Yesterday’s Son […]
{5/5} “There were places you did not go casually that could transform you or vanish you away. There were valleys where monsters might brush your elbow, from the other side of a divide incomprehensible to the human mind. There were clawed tracks that led off in directions they had no name for, into impossible distances […]
{4/5} “What’s happened, happened.” Tenet, released in 2020 A man wakes up and finds he no longer works for the CIA, as he’s been declared dead. He’s needed for the most important of important tasks — stop World War III. When he meets the first person who explains any of it to him, he finds […]
The Republican Party used to care about policies — they were generally bad policies, but they were policies. Then for a while they pretended to care about policies but really didn’t. Now they’re not even pretending. Here’s David Pakman on this development: Trump’s Republican Party is Just Performative Outrage