Rambling About The Rook, Westworld, And Learning About March

The Rook

Things continue to be interesting in this book. Myfanwy now has a hint of who she was before she lost her memory and the story is getting more like a cross between Total Recall and The Bourne Identity – lose the memory that you were a kick-ass secret agent. The major difference is that she’s got some type of magical powers and worked for a supernatural government agency. In any case, its exciting so far. Most of what she’s learning about herself is coming from letters that ‘she’ wrote to herself before she forgot everything. It’s a pretty interesting method for revealing the story and so far it works for me.

Westworld

We rewatched Westworld episode 8 (Trace Decay) last night and I am really liking this show. We already watched the entire season and enjoyed it, but wanted to go back a few episodes to see more of the final reveals for the season. I think I’m gonna go back to the beginning at some point and rewatch the whole thing – I enjoyed it that much. It really has a Lost feel to it – actually a cross between Lost and almost anything from Philip K. Dick. There’s a real sense of questioning what is real, who is real, and what/who is a robot or is artificial. And what is it that makes a person a real conscious guest rather than a robotic host?

March (Book 1)

Finally, I started reading this graphic novel for another book club today and it’s been pretty engrossing so far. Actually, I tend to read comics as I’m doing my daily 10k steps out and about throughout the day, but I found myself reading this book during smaller breaks and before bed, it was so good.

The book is a non-fiction semi-biographical comic about John Lewis who participated in the Civil Rights Movement and later became a congressman. So far, I’m learning about his childhood and how his father was a tenant farmer who saved up $300 to buy 110 acres of farmland in Alabama. I found it interesting because I had no idea that sharecropper farming was still being practiced in the US up to and beyond WWII. I learned about sharecropper farming back in high school, but I always associated it with ‘a long time ago’, not mid-way though the last century. Apparently while it became a popular way of life after the Civil War, it continues even to this day, though it’s mostly faded in the US as technology has reduced it’s viability. I just don’t think of the 1940s as a time when people were still bartering for services and a place to live but I guess I need to reframe my point of view.

So far this book has provided a fun and learning experience and I’m looking forward to gaining more knowledge.