Lazy Sundays: Father’s Day

Today I was lucky enough to spend the whole day with my dad.  We had a great time together and although we planned to go out and do something ended up spending most of the afternoon on the couch binge-watching Game of Thrones (because my family has never been conventional).  I also presented him with a surprise I cooked up for Father’s Day:

Father's Day 002

It’s an old fashioned beehive skep carved out of a single log.  The artist who does the carvings goes all over Saskatchewan peddling his wares but he always seems to spend the most time in my tiny little town because his sculptures are the thing to have around here.  He does great work and he’s really good with special commissions so I asked him to make the sculpture above.  I took it home, bought some stain from work (I work at a hardware store) and stained it this colour.  Then I took a nice thick varnish and used it to seal both the base of it and the actual sculpture.  That way it won’t crack and become damaged by the weather over time.  I may have to apply a few new coats in the future but it will last for a lot longer than it would have had I just used stain.

Discussion: Books into TV Series

I may be in the minority for book readers, but I almost like the Game of Thrones show more than the books in some ways.  I like how the show took out some of the more rambling storylines that happen in the fourth and fifth books; they did a really good job paring it down for a TV audience.  At the same time, I really didn’t like the timeline shift that led to Jaime raping Cersei in the show and I didn’t like the entire Dorne storyline, which felt like it was going nowhere.  But I’d still say that the Game of Thrones TV show has stayed true to the spirit of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series.

One of the TV adaptations I was really impressed with was the adaptation of Philippa Gregory’s The White Queen.  I officially finished the first four episodes in a huge binge-watching session last night and was really happy with the way the books translated onto the screen.  The actors and actresses are all very talented and the TV show stayed very true not only to the feel of Gregory’s series on the War of the Roses but also to a lot of the main plot events.  You have Jacquetta working her magic, Elizabeth growing more and more ruthless toward Edward’s enemies and the poor Neville girls admiring the queen and yet being forced to become her rivals for power.  It’s actually a very satisfying adaptation and on the whole I like it more overall than the Game of Thrones adaptation because it stays very true to the source material and the writing is consistently excellent.

So what I want to know now is this: Do you have any particular books that you’d like to see adapted into a TV series?  Or, how has your experience been with seeing your favourite books adapted into TV shows?  Was it good or bad?  Why?

I Will be Moving to WordPress.org (But Not Right Now)

After some more research and some great feedback from you guys, my readers I have officially decided that I will be moving The Mad Reviewer over to WordPress.org.  This change will, as the title hints at, not happen right away because there is too much to organize for me right now.  However, in December when I have a two week Christmas break I will work on the process of moving things over.  For now I’ll probably download the free WordPress.org software so I can become familiar with the interface but the actual move will not happen until December and in December I’ll be announcing a firm date for the official switch over.

So what does this mean for you guys, my readers?

Actually, not much.  I’m likely going to pay for a guided transfer, which means my subscriber list as well as everything else I need will be moved over to my new .com site.  And if you have this page bookmarked, don’t worry!  I’m also going to pay for a redirect so that anyone stumbling across this address will be automatically redirected to the new site.  I’ll probably pay for the redirect for one or two years so you should have plenty of time to become accustomed to the switch.  I know it will take a lot of getting used to for myself but hopefully things will go smoothly.  Even if they don’t, at the end of the day I’ll finally own the blog I’ve put three years of work into and not have the threat of arbitrary suspension hanging over my head.