Regeneration

All good things must come to an end, so the proverb goes.

The time has come to move away from the Positively Ellinwood Street blog -- home to so many of our online recommendations and musings for the past six years. This is the final post.

If you wish to wax nostalgic you can always revisit your favorite posts. The 5 most popular articles were:

• Navy SEALS in Fiction 
• Awake and Alive
• Edith Wharton vs. Henry James 
• Reuniting with Lost Loves at the Jewel and in the CD Section
• If Mitch Rapp and Jack Reacher got into a fistfight, who'd win? 

Another moment befitting the proverb happened on Christmas Day, 2013. The eleventh Doctor Who, played by Matt Smith, breathed his last in The Time of the Doctor. But of course, the Doctor did not die. He regenerated, changing from one form to another. And change is good; change is life.

The last words of the eleventh doctor reinforce that sense of continuity, rather than ending:

I will not forget one line of this. Not one day, I swear. I will always remember when the Doctor was me.

If you are feeling wistful, you can enjoy the exploits of the eleventh doctor with a visit to your local library. My personal top 5 episodes are:

• The Eleventh Hour
• The Doctor's Wife
• The Lodger
• Vincent and the Doctor
• The Day of the Doctor

This year series 8 will charge ahead with Peter Capaldi as the twelfth doctor. There will be new adventures and new companions, perhaps -- with the same Doctor underneath it all. I am looking forward to it.

Come see us at our new blog. It'll have a new look and a few new contributors, with the same great library at its heart. You won't be disappointed.

The Excellence of Television

People sometimes get a little cranky about TV. Either there's too much of something they don't like (reality TV, infomercials, doctors in love), or not enough of what they miss (whether it's the Beav or Buffy). And people don't want to admit they watch TV all that much, anyway. "Oh, I happened to catch five minutes of Oprah or American Idol or America's Next Top Model . . ."

Several years ago I realized that if I read 50 to 75 books a year, then I had enough credit built up to also watch as much TV as I wanted. What I realized, in this orgy of CRT love, was that TV . . . had gotten pretty darn wonderful. Great acting, fantastic stories, and the time to really explore characters and their worlds to an extent the multiplex will never match. Rome and Deadwood were as compelling as any documentary or drama I'd seen in the last ten years. I liked Dexter way better than the books. Supernatural was a delicious fill-in for Angel. True Blood was a little steamy for my taste, but In Treatment had me glued to my couch.

And you know what? I don't even have premium cable. I watched all of the above series courtesy of the library - and at no charge. I checked out each season of Deadwood (in order, of course) for 14 days and had my own little McShane Marathon.

So here's to the magnificence of the small screen! Whether it's a classic like The Far Pavilions or a gritty eye-opener like The Wire, you can enjoy it long after its run has ended. What's on your personal marathon list?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to put a reserve on Little Dorrit. Hey, it won all those Emmys, I should give it a chance.