#AmReading + #AmWatching - August 29th 2019 #Reviews

No two persons ever read the same book.
~Edmund Wilson

It's time to take a look at what I've been reading and watching during this past week.

If you want to know more about the book, or the author, click on whichever it is you want to learn more about, and it will take you to the appropriate page on Goodreads. Clicking on my rating should take you to my actual Goodreads review for the book in question. Please bear in mind that the format I've reviewed on Goodreads may not be the format I actually read.

Alternatively, if it's a movie or TV show you want to know more about, just click on the title to go to a page where you can find out more details about the movie or TV show in question; the title links will usually take you to a page on IMDB.

Don't forget: I read and watch things across multiple genres, as well as for different age ranges, so you should always check before reading or viewing, to make certain something is suitable for the intended audience, especially when children are involved.

OK...

Here's what I read this week:

UKD1 by Chris Harris
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a really tough one for me to pick a rating for. On the one hand, I love the idea behind the plot, especially the fact it takes place in the UK, which doesn't seem to happen much in these kinds of books. On the other hand, the plot dragged, especially in the early chapters. If it had some editing to improve the pacing, and fix some of the issues where the author tells us things rather than showing them, this could be a fantastic read. As it is, it's only a kind of good read. Such a shame, because it has so much potential.

UKD2 by Chris Harris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book was better than the first one in the series. I've seen people among its reviewers saying it was an amazing read. Well, I wouldn't go that far. I would, however, say this is a much more gripping read than the first in the series was, and that I enjoyed it more than I did the previous book.

UKD3 by Chris Harris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
My actual rating is 3.5 stars, but I rounded up. Anyway, this was a pretty good ending to the trilogy, though it did suffer from a few deus ex machina moments, where solutions seemed a bit too convenient. It also suffers as much as the previous two books with too much telling, and not enough showing. So, a really good ending to the trilogy, but not the amazing ending some people are calling it.

As for what I've been watching:

I watched some episodes of season one of The Shannara Chronicles on the weekend. There are three disks to it, and I watched one of them. I had planned to watch the other two as well, but didn't end up doing so. I saw this first season of The Shannara Chronicles when it aired on TV a couple of years ago, and still think the same now as I did when I saw it before: it's really good, but not as good as the books.

I also watched a few random episodes of The Simpsons that were on TV, including some I hadn't seen before. One of them was an episode where Lisa is trying to write, and calling herself a "real writer" while procrastinating more than writing. I wish I could say that was one of their less believable episodes, like the ones with blind characters have been - those bother me to this day, and I still had some sight when I saw those, which shows how long ago it was I watched them, since I've been totally blind now for more than a decade. As it happens though, all I could think while watching that writer episode was how much I understood that, and how I'd been there myself way too often. So many shiny distractions...