2018 50/50 Challenge - 50 Books & 50 Movies in One Year

[Stardog Champion]

Books 6/50
Sing Unburied Sing - Jesmyn Ward
And The Mountains Echoed - Khaled Hosseini
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
Women And Power - Mary Beard
Tales Of Ordinary Madness - Charles Bukowski
Mystery Train: Images Of America In Rock N Roll Music - Greil Marcus

Movies 1/50
Hell Or High Water

[Monkey_Driven]

8/50 - Video Games
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (PS4)
Golf Story (Switch)
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (PS4)
Pyre (PS4)
What Remains of Edit Finch (PS4)
Celeste (Switch)
Horizon: Zero Dawn, Frozen Wilds (PS4)
Super Mario Odyssey (999 moons) (Switch)

4/50 - Movies
Logan
The Post
The Big Sick
Justice League

[bada]

Books 7/50:
01. The Cold Dish (Walt Longmire, #1)
02. Pastime (Spenser, #18)
03. Fletch's Fortune (Fletch, #3)
04. Pacific Vortex! (Dirk Pitt, #1
05. True Grit
06. Stardust
07. Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West

Movies: 1/50:
01. Safari (1956)
02. Ice Station Zebra (1968)
03. Knights of the Round Table (1953)
04. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
05. Black Panther (2018)

Video Game 1/50:
01. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune Remastered (PS4)
02. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Remastered (PS4)

[Stardog Champion]

Books 8/50
Sing Unburied Sing - Jesmyn Ward
And The Mountains Echoed - Khaled Hosseini
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
Women And Power - Mary Beard
Tales Of Ordinary Madness - Charles Bukowski
Mystery Train: Images Of America In Rock N Roll Music - Greil Marcus
Between The World And Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates
Wolf In White Van - John Darnielle

Movies 3/50
Hell Or High Water
Black Panther
Lego Ninjago

[bune]

09/50 Books

• Son of Retro Pulp Tales by Joe R. Lansdale
  Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
  The World of Lore: Monstrous Creatures by Aaron Mahnke
  A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel by Hope Larson
  Cassandra French's Finishing School for Boys: A Novel by Eric Garcia
  We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope by Ian Doescher
  A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
  Null States by Malka Ann Older

Man, I don't know if there's been a book that tormented me the way that one did. There's an assassination in the first few chapters and you're like, OK, we're off! And then the rest of the book is about describing food and locales and love lives and hey a bombing! but we don't care after a couple pages and then another assassination! but actually we don't care about that one either, even though it was carried out by the head of a rival government literally in front of people and cameras but lets not talk about that anymore, ok? And then you find out one of the characters is pregnant almost as an afterthought and the story is wrapped up (maybe?) in the last chapter or two and then it's over. I guess it's effective as a middle book in that the story moved forward only in the sense that it's really just setting up book three* but really it was just poorly done. I stopped knowing who was talking to whom after awhile and just went with it.

The biggest complaint: there's a fake disorder in the book that was approached as if you already knew all about it and how there's a prejudice against people with it because they could be faking it for attention. It wasn't until I was well and truly pissed off about it and did a Google search that I found out there's a 25-page short story written by the author that explains what it is and how it affects people. What? It's not even listed in the Goodreads section for the book series, it's just something I happened to find. Christ this whole thing made me so mad.

And here I am writing more than I've written about a book in ages.

*If I have this same problem with book three I'm just giving up. I can't re-read series every time a new book comes out, it just doesn't work that way.

10/50 Movies

• Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)
  The Dark Tower (2017)
  Kong: Skull Island (2017)
  Justice League (2017)
  Geostorm (2017)
  The Book of Henry (2017)
  Black Panther (2018)
  Being Canadian (2015)
  Willow (1988)
  Justice League Dark (2017)

I count Willow because it's almost literally been 30 years since I've seen it, I think it counts as a 'new' film at that point.

Also watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail with my son since we're reading Ready Player One and I'm trying to introduce him to the good parts of that book. Apparently I have never seen the beginning where there's a whole other movie that starts to play. I was in legit WTF mode and about to eject the disc when it switched over. He didn't laugh at a lot of the jokes but it's hard to catch them all on a first time.

JLD was pretty good, much better than the usual that DC Animated has been putting out for a few years now. I thought it interesting they killed so many characters, though not so much that only 1 of the 2 were given a send off. I mean, what happened to Swamp Thing? He turned into a spaghetti monster sans person and then everything disappeared. Kind of a bummer.

[bada]

I should watch JLD.

[epilogue]

Books: 6/50:
1. Ernest Hemingway on Writing
2. The Secret History of Twin Peaks by Mark Frost
3. Raven Girl by Audrey Niffenegger
4. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
5. Pattern Recognition by Wiiliam Gibson
6. Ancient History - David Ives

Movies: 14/50:
1.The Last Jedi
2. The Force Awakens
3. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
4. What If
5. Logan
6. The Shape of Water
7. Call Me By Your Name
8. Phantom Thread
9. A Bad Moms Christmas
10. A Ghost Story
11. The Phantom Menace
12. A Futile and Stupid Gesture
13. Attack of the Clones
14. Black Panther

[bada]

Books:
01. The Cold Dish (Walt Longmire, #1)
02. Pastime (Spenser, #18)
03. Fletch's Fortune (Fletch, #3)
04. Pacific Vortex! (Dirk Pitt, #1)
05. True Grit
06. Stardust
07. Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West
08. Norse Mythology
09. The Bat (Harry Hole, #1)

Movies:
01. Safari (1956)
02. Ice Station Zebra (1968)
03. Knights of the Round Table (1953)
04. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
05. Black Panther (2018)

Video Game:
01. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune Remastered (PS4)
02. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Remastered (PS4)

[Monkey_Driven]

9/50 - Video Games
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (PS4)
Golf Story (Switch)
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (PS4)
Pyre (PS4)
What Remains of Edit Finch (PS4)
Celeste (Switch)
Horizon: Zero Dawn, Frozen Wilds (PS4)
Super Mario Odyssey (999 moons) (Switch)
Yoshi's Island (SNES Classic)

4/50 - Movies
Logan
The Post
The Big Sick
Justice League

[B]

I think I'll drop my list in at the end of every month, eh?

Movies
1. Bright (2017)
2. An Inconvenient Sequel (2017)
3. Alien: Covenant (2017)
4. Paddington 2 (2018)
5. Inside Man (2006)
6. Baby’s Day Out (1994)
7. Dave Made a Maze (2017)
8. Hidden Figures (2016)
9. Brad’s Status (2017)
10. The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)
11. Ingrid Goes West (2017)
12. North by Northwest (1959)
13. Primer (2004)
14. Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)
15. Boy (2010)
16. Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017)
17. Icarus (2017)
18. Eagle vs. Shark (2007)
19. 1922 (2017)
20. Black Panther (2018)

Books
Key: AB=Audiobook, TP=Trade Paperback, GN=Graphic Novel
1. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
2. What Unites Us by Dan Rather (AB)
3. Aphra (TP)
4. Endurance by Scott Kelly (AB)
5. The Silent Corner by Dean Koontz
6. The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavich (AB)
7. Hacks by Donna Brazile (AB)
8. Woman Rebel by Peter Bagge (GN)
9. Strange Weather by Joe Hill (AB)
10. Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff (AB)
11. Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About by Mil Millington (bailed at 230/394p)
12: Star Wars: Last Flight of the Harbinger (TP)
13. One Shot by Lee Child (AB)
14. March (Books 1-3) by John Lews (GN)
15. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (AB)

[bune]

I've been waiting for March Book 3, totally forgot it was coming out though. Thanks for the reminder.

[B]

I found that series a bit sloggy in parts. A lot of National Convention voting politics and tricks. Same thing that put me to sleep in House of Cards.

[bune]

I read the first two around the same time I watched Selma so it was kind of like a side-story to the movie.

[4/5]

Books (4/50)
1. Infinite Jest--David Foster Wallace
2. The Anti-Capitalistic Mindset--Ludwig von Mises
3. The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution 1783-1789--Joseph Ellis
4. Thoughts on Government--John Adams

Movies (7/50)
1. Braveheart
2. Baby Driver
3. Ocean's Eleven
4. Inside Llewyn Davis
5. Tinker Tailor Solider Spy
6. An Invisible Sign
7. Black Panther

[bune]

14/50 Books

• Son of Retro Pulp Tales by Joe R. Lansdale
  Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
  The World of Lore: Monstrous Creatures by Aaron Mahnke
  A Wrinkle in Time: The Graphic Novel by Hope Larson
  Cassandra French's Finishing School for Boys: A Novel by Eric Garcia
  We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope by Ian Doescher
  A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
  Null States by Malka Ann Older
  Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers (Red Dwarf #1) by Grant Naylor
  Better than Life (Red Dwarf #2) by Grant Naylor
  Backwards (Red Dwarf #4) by Rob Grant
  Last Human (Red Dwarf #3) by Doug Naylor
  Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories by Mike Birbiglia

I think I should have watched at least one episode of the show before reading that series. I read 4 before 3 because I saw a review that said it followed from book 2 a lot better and just sampling the intro to 3 I had to agree. Now that I've finished 3...yeah, I should have read these in order. I think Rob Grant had a much better grasp of the characters than Doug Naylor.

Mike's book is, if you've seen any of his stand-ups, basically that but you have to read it instead of watch it. There's some other stuff but it's basically the same. Still hilarious though. I read it with my son and we were laughing at some parts so hard we were crying. It was fun. Up next: Terry Pratchett! It'll be a first for both of us.

13/50 Movies

• Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)
  The Dark Tower (2017)
  Kong: Skull Island (2017)
  Justice League (2017)
  Geostorm (2017)
  The Book of Henry (2017)
  Black Panther (2018)
  Being Canadian (2015)
  Willow (1988)
  Justice League Dark (2017)
  Despicable Me 3 (2017)
  Journey Through the Past (1974)
  Coco (2017)

Coco was just OK until the end, I wasn't expecting that at all.

[epilogue]

Books: 6/50:
1. Ernest Hemingway on Writing
2. The Secret History of Twin Peaks by Mark Frost
3. Raven Girl by Audrey Niffenegger
4. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
5. Pattern Recognition by Wiiliam Gibson
6. Ancient History - David Ives

Movies: 15/50:
1.The Last Jedi
2. The Force Awakens
3. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
4. What If
5. Logan
6. The Shape of Water
7. Call Me By Your Name
8. Phantom Thread
9. A Bad Moms Christmas
10. A Ghost Story
11. The Phantom Menace
12. A Futile and Stupid Gesture
13. Attack of the Clones
14. Black Panther
15. David Bowie: The Last Five Years

[4/5]

Books (5/50)
1. Infinite Jest--David Foster Wallace
2. The Anti-Capitalistic Mindset--Ludwig von Mises
3. The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution 1783-1789--Joseph Ellis
4. Thoughts on Government--John Adams
5. The Three Languages of Politics--Arnold Kling

Movies (7/50)
1. Braveheart
2. Baby Driver
3. Ocean's Eleven
4. Inside Llewyn Davis
5. Tinker Tailor Solider Spy
6. An Invisible Sign
7. Black Panther

[bada]

Books:
01. The Cold Dish (Walt Longmire, #1)
02. Pastime (Spenser, #18)
03. Fletch's Fortune (Fletch, #3)
04. Pacific Vortex! (Dirk Pitt, #1)
05. True Grit
06. Stardust
07. Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West
08. Norse Mythology
09. The Bat (Harry Hole, #1)
10. Live and Let Die (James Bond, #2)

Movies:
01. Safari (1956)
02. Ice Station Zebra (1968)
03. Knights of the Round Table (1953)
04. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
05. Black Panther (2018)

Video Game:
01. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune Remastered (PS4)
02. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Remastered (PS4)

[Monkey_Driven]

9/50 - Video Games
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (PS4)
Golf Story (Switch)
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (PS4)
Pyre (PS4)
What Remains of Edit Finch (PS4)
Celeste (Switch)
Horizon: Zero Dawn, Frozen Wilds (PS4)
Super Mario Odyssey (999 moons) (Switch)
Yoshi's Island (SNES Classic)

5/50 - Movies
Logan
The Post
The Big Sick
Justice League
Get Out

[Stardog Champion]

Books 10/50
Sing Unburied Sing - Jesmyn Ward
And The Mountains Echoed - Khaled Hosseini
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
Women And Power - Mary Beard
Tales Of Ordinary Madness - Charles Bukowski
Mystery Train: Images Of America In Rock N Roll Music - Greil Marcus
Between The World And Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates
Wolf In White Van - John Darnielle
A Mercy - Toni Morrison
The Importance Of Being Earnest and Four Other Plays - Oscar Wilde

Movies 5/50
Hell Or High Water
Black Panther
Lego Ninjago
Bowie The Last Five Years
Baby Driver