CSI (no spoilers)

(expounding from suricattus's comments)

That episode was brilliant. As far as I'm concerned, that was the best written and thematically most interesting episode they've ever done, head and shoulders above blatant ratings grabs like the perversion of the week or "Let's Put Nicky in a Box."

It had everything that makes original CSI great IMO:

- A case that wasn't, however respectfully, based on "look at the wierdos." I don't blame CSI for casting their net far into fringe cultures to keep the plotlines moving, and on the whole I think that the scripts treat the members of that fringe with tact and dignity... but still, it became a crutch over the last few seasons.

- A case that allowed the cast to emote without it Really Being All About Them. In the long run, I profoundly don't care about Sarah's relationship issues or Catherine's problems being a working mother or Warrick's impulse marriage or Ecklie's machinations. If I wanted to watch the internal struggles of characters, I'd be watching some gak on the Lifetime channel. We hit the right balance last night; we knew what the characters felt and hoped for in a moment or two, and then we moved on to the case instead of dwelling on their feelings. Feelings scenes all too often have "For Your Emmy Consideration" written all over them. Feh.

- Moments of humanity at the workplace. Although I stick by what I said above, I also miss scenes where the CSIs acted like real people in a real job. That's the crucial element so baldly missing in the spinoffs, and IMO the reason why the spinoffs can never catch up to the original. In previous seasons we've seen side bets, mild bickering, working meals, teasing... all the things that make the characters break from two heroic dimensions into three realistic ones.

- And finally, dancing to the edge of spoilers without tipping over, I really appreciated who they used for their narrator and how they used that character within the plot. That totally worked for me.

Bite-sized Books

For those who never find the time to read, menikoff has found bigcomfychair, which posts a chapter of a famous (noncopyrighted) novel once a week. They're currently closing up The Count of Monte Cristo.

That community was inspired in turn by Classic Novels in 5 Minutes, which is a listserv which will send you an installment of a book you've chosen out of their collection at regular intervals. (For Shakespeare's sonnets, it's one a day, while Dickens is done in monthly chunks.)

There's already an LJ feed for the site that's reprinting Pepys at pepysdiary. There's also an LJ community that's reprinting Dracula on the dates mentioned in the letters and journal entries in the book - ie, if something in Dracula was dated August 20, then on August 20 that chapter goes up. (I'd put the link in, but scary things happen when you search on dracula as an interest, and I can't find it.)

For those who prefer a hard copy, Stanford has yet to announce what (or if) they're doing for the next Dickens project. However, Barnes and Noble has the most adorable little hardbacks for $6... you'll find them lurking near the checkout or on their website under "Collector's Library" - a little over 50 titles in miniature hardback editions (roughly 3 x 5) that are well priced and well-made... and just the perfect size to drop in a purse or a bag. I'm fighting to not (re)buy the entire works of Austen just because they're so gosh-darn cute. If you've got a literate kid who you want to start on something with more heft to it than most kid's books, The Secret Garden, Wind in the Willows, Alice In Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass, and Jungle Book are all titles in the series - the right size for a kid, the right price for a parent. For students who already carry a lot of texts, there's a Huck Finn, Moby Dick, Silas Marner and Uncle Tom's Cabin that won't break the bank. For fannish purposes, there are sturdy, reasonably priced copies of Dracula and Phantom of the Opera. There's also nonfiction, including a Descartes and Darwin's Origin of the Species.

Barnes and Noble appear to be getting into publishing in a big way. They also have two John Bellairs omnibus editions out for Halloween.

If you don't mind dialing the quality (and the price) way down, there's Dover Publications, which has a hit-or-miss collection of Thrift Editions of classics averaging $2 a book. (A combination of Collector's Library and Dover is how I've been picking up the texts for the "classes" I'm doing.) They're paperbacks on newsprint, but if you want a crap copy of something, especially for a single use, better to start there. Why pay extra?