My days and ways

Movies
Rental Family (February)
The Roses (March)
Everything Everywhere All at Once (June)

Television Shows/Special Series (month completed in parenthesis)
Taskmaster New Year Treat (January)
Big Fat Quiz of Telly (January)
Picnicface, season 1 (January)
I'm in Love With The Villainess (February)
Bridgerton (Season 4, Part 1) (February)
Bridgerton (Season 4, Part 2) (March)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (in progress)
Farscape (in progress)
Angel (in progress)
The Amazing Digital Circus (June)

Concerts/Live Performances
An Evening with Alton Brown (4/25/2026)

Video Games (month completed in parenthesis)
Witchy Life Story - PC (January)
Alba: a wildlife adventure - PC (February)
Assemble with Care - PC (February)
Danganronpa - Trigger Happy Havoc (May)

I'm also working my way through the Rolling Stone Top 500 Albums of All Time list, which you can see by following this tag.

Books

January
Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister (1/09/2026)
The List by Yomi Adegoke (1/17/2026)
Read Between the Lies by Jesse Sutanto (1/18/2026)
It's Not a Cult by Joey Batey (1/27/2026)

February
The Reformatory by Tananarive Due (2/13/2026)
Pylon by William Faulkner (2/23/2026)

March
Butter by Asako Yuzuki (3/1/2026)
Sing Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward (3/6/2026)
An Offer from a Gentleman by Julia Quinn & The 2nd Epilogue (3/22/2026)
If You're Seeing This, It's Meant for You by Leigh Stein (3/29/2026)

April
Little Bosses Everywhere by Bridget Read (4/06/2026)
Warbeck of Wolfstein, Vol. I by Margaret Holford (4/10/2026)
Warbeck of Wolfstein, Vol II by Margaret Holford (4/13/2026)
Warbeck of Wolfstein, Vol III by Margaret Holford (4/17/2026)

May
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe (5/2/2026)
The Original by Nell Stevens (5/12/2026)
There Never Was a Once Upon a Time by Carmen Naranjo (5/14/2026)
An Unlikely Coven by AM Kvita (5/27/2026)
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado (5/30/2026)

June
How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster by Muriel Leung (6/4/2026)
As Meal Loves Salt by Maria McCann (6/11/2026)
The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios by Yann Martel (6/14/2026)
The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore (6/19/2026)

Movies: None

Television/Streaming: Watching the latest season of Taskmaster.

Buffy season 4:
"Living Conditions," where Buffy contends with her bad roommate; even without all the other stuff going on, Kathy was annoying as hell. I remember so many horror stories my college friends told me that lived on campus, and it made me grateful I was able to be a commuter student and not have to deal with that bullshit.

"The Harsh Light of Day," where Spike returns to Sunnydale, looking for their version of the Holy Grail, the Gem of Amara. Spike is quickly becoming a favorite character for me. I felt sorry for Buffy dealing with Parker; I clocked him as this sort of guy when she met him in a previous episode and was very much hoping I was wrong, but . . . Ugh, fuck you, Parker.

Angel, Season 1:
"Lonely Heart," with that creature that invades bodies. I didn't particularly care for that, haha.

"In the Dark," which picks up from the Buffy episode "Harsh Light of Day" and has Oz traveling to LA to give the Gem to Angel for safekeeping. And Spike shows up, too. Marcus was perfectly creepy; literally made my skin crawl.

Farscape, Season 4:
Only briefly mentioned in the last media post, but up to now we've watched the first six episodes of this season. Aeryn is back and that wig is not great, but I do find it interesting that she is wearing her hair long and loose again. I'm sure this has been talked about elsewhere, but when we first see her, she has her hair tied back, very regimented, as is probably Peacekeeper requirement. Over time, as she gets closer to the other and especially John, the hairstyle becomes a bit more relaxed. After clone John dies, and she comes back to Moya, her hair is pulled back again, in a kind of echo to her closed-off attitude towards this John.

Aeryn's description of how Peacekeeper embryos can kind of stick around in a stasis for several years was an interesting point. I hope those crazy kids, her and John, can get themselves together again.

Listening to: two albums from the Rolling Stone Top 500 list.

Number 483 is the Muddy Waters Anthology. This was at 38 on the original list.

Rolling Stone blurb:

Muddy Waters started out playing acoustic Delta blues in Mississippi, but when he moved to Chicago in 1943, he needed an electric guitar to be heard over the tumult of South Side clubs. The sound he developed was the foundation of Chicago blues — and rock & roll; the thick, bleeding tones of his slide work anticipated rock-guitar distortion by nearly two decades. The 50 cuts on these two CDs run from guitar-and-stand-up-bass duets to full-band romps — and they still just scratch the surface of Waters’ legacy.

I did enjoy what I heard of this anthology, but it's a lot of tracks and after a while, they started to blend together for me. I also don't think I found the whole album they're referencing here online to stream (I use NewPipe or YouTube to find the playlist and then listen that way if it's something I don't already own).

Number 482 is Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde by the Pharcyde. This was not on the original list.

Rolling Stone blurb:

These high school friends from L.A. were a little like a West Coast answer to De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, offering their own spin on alternative hip-hop in the Nineties and showing there was something going on in Southern California beyond G-funk. They rapped about innocent topics, like having a crush on a teacher in “Passin’ Me By,” which was a small hit, but also about dating a cute girl who turns out “to be a John Doe” and run-ins with the cops (the Public Enemy-homage “Officer”). It all came out as bright and refreshing as sorbet.

This is another one where I listened to it, but can't tell you much about it at all. There were some good hip-hop beats and some of the songs were light-hearted. I would have to spin it again to recall, as it was a few weeks ago now that I listened to this album.

Playing: I finished the first Danganronpa game, Trigger Happy Havoc. If you are not familiar, this is a visual novel style game with some murder mystery elements and courtroom drama puzzles like the Phoenix Wright/Ace Attorney games.

I had no idea what the difficulty levels were going in, so I picked middle-of-the-road, which turned out to make the trial battles a little more frustrating for me, as they kept adding elements in to complicate matters. But I did it. It was an interesting story and even though you're probably not supposed to, I do like Monokuma as a character.

The soundtrack was really good, as well. As I have finished the game, I've unlocked school mode, which I guess is more like a dating sim, and I'm curious how that looks here.

Books: The Original by Nell Stevens. This is next month's book club pick and I did not really gel with it. The publishing blurb begins, "In a grand English country house in 1899, an aspiring art forger must unravel whether the man claiming to be her long-lost cousin is an impostor." This was an intriguing premise; there are some queer characters in here, as well. Then I started reading it, and well, it didn't quite live up to its expectations. The central mystery here is wrapped up so very quickly in the final pages of the book, after drawing it out and complicating it with so much other unnecessary stuff. There are a bunch of potential plot points sprinkled in here and then sometimes they are never picked up again. The art descriptions were interesting, but overall, it wasn't for me. I'm interested to see what others in the group have to say about it.

There Never Was a Once Upon a Time by Carmen Naranjo. This was on my list from a "read around the world" project I had started a long time ago. It took me ages to get the list for A-C done (and then never finished it), as I wanted to find books that were written by authors from that country, and of course, translated into English if it's not an English-speaking country. The books still come up on my TBR from time to time, so I still am working my way through them, I guess, although I probably forgot to tag some or write anything much about them since then. I also came up with that list over a decade ago, so maybe there are other choices since then. (Or someone else did the work for me, haha).

Anyway, Carmen Naranjo was my selection from Costa Rica. This was pretty short, a collection of short stories told from the perspective of children on topics like death and growing up. It was middle-of-the-road for me, but it was translated in the 1980s and I don't know if some of the disconnect is because of the translation or it's just the stories themselves.

Movies: None.

Television/Streaming: There is a new season of Taskmaster out; they're a fun happy group so far and I'm enjoying them!

We're nearly done with Buffy season 3. Since last post, we've watched:

"Bad Girls," where Faith gets Buffy to be a little wild, but then Faith ends up killing the deputy mayor

"Consequences," where Buffy is haunted by the actions of the previous episode, but Faith is still pulling her tough-guy persona and claims she doesn't care

"Doppelgangland," where the alternate-universe Willow is brought into the current Sunnydale

"Enemies," where the Mayor and Faith conspire to rob Angel of his soul, so that he will hopefully destroy Buffy

"Earshot," where Buffy is touched by the mouthless demons and suddenly can hear everyone's thoughts

"Choices," where Buffy tries to shut down the Mayor's ascension and where the gang talk about their future plans after graduation

Faith irritates the hell out of me still; I understand she's had a rough life but the "tough-guy" try-hard stuff gets old. Again, this is a 40+ year old person commenting on teenagers' actions so take that how you will.

It also annoys me how Angel is just going along with Buffy's delusions of the fact that they can have a normal life together. The Mayor, as evil as he is, is right - Angel can never be truly happy as otherwise he will lose his soul (as we have previously seen) and he will never age whereas Buffy will, and that could definitely lead to resentment down the line. Plus, they have even discussed that he can't take her out during the day and what kind of life is that?

We also are nearly done with Season 3 of Farscape. Episodes watched:

"Revenging Angel," where D'Argo puts Crichton into a coma and he keeps going through these Looney Tunes-style scenarios. Very silly, but Farscape can do that quirkiness well.

"The Choice," where Aeryn goes to a planet with all the supernatural beings to deal with all her current losses

"Fractures," where Talyn once again reconnects with Moya and Aeryn has difficulty interacting with a not-dead, alternate Crichton.

Books: I read Little Bosses Everywhere, which is about MLMs. Informative and infuriating. I'm glad that the author pretty much reiterates how much these are a scam and folks don't make their money back. I had not idea that Herbalife was still so prevalent, and I knew that the likes of Amway meddled in politics, but I don't think I was fully aware of the extent of it.

I also read all three volumes of Warbeck of Wolfstein by Margaret Holford. This book came to my attention via a TikTok someone shared with me, and billed as an anti-Byron novel. There is not a lot about this book available online to get any sort of background on it other than that. I am not a Byron scholar but I know that he was very cruel to a lot of the women around him and abusive to his wife, and I think Holford was friends with Lady Byron, which is what probably prompted this book. I also did see in my internet wanderings that Byron did criticize some of Holford's work (she was a prolific poet, as well), so that probably had something to do with it, too.

Our titular character does not show up for several chapters, as the scene must be set by the fragile Baron Marchfeldt, returning home to his castle and beloved sister after suffering ill health during battle. The reader learns along with Louisa about the wonderful Casimir and the brutish Warbeck, and that the Baron loves Casimir like a brother and made him promise to marry his sister after he, the Baron, is dead. Louisa is hesitant because she wants to get to know the guy first, after all.

The Baron dies, and some time later, this handsome soldier shows up and claims to be Casimir. A series of events follows where Louisa falls in love with Casimir and they are pledged to marry, and at the 11th hour it is discovered that this gentleman is not Casimir at all, but Wolfstein! He leaves, the real Casimir shows up, but Louisa has heard some bullshit about him from other sources so she doesn't trust him at all.

There's some political intrigue with Casimir and his father, the Duke. Casimir is trying to get over Louisa, and it's all very melodramatic, as these old books tend to be. Wolfstein comes back sometime later, claiming to be penitent and supposedly had a religious conversion, so will Louisa forgive him? She does, over time, realizes she still loves this man, despite his lies from earlier, and they get married.

Of course, after marriage he becomes a tyrant and basically keeps her a prisoner in the castle. More political intrigue, Casimir's father keeps him prisoner, but not in his OWN castle, but in Wolfstein's, and neither of the star-crossed lovers knows about the existence of the other until the very last pages. Of course, it all winds up positively.

Overall, it was decently entertaining but a bit long in the tooth.

Listening to: I have only listened to one album from the Rolling Stone list recently, Lady Gaga's Born This Way, which is number 484 on the current list. It was not on the original list from 2012.

Rolling Stone blurb:

“Over-the-top” isn’t an insult in Gaga’s world; it’s a statement of purpose. Her second album is a work of blessed bombast, all arena-size sonics and Springsteenian romanticism, complete with a Clarence Clemons sax solo. There’s a thumping, half-in-Spanish song that proposes marriage to “a girl in east L.A.” (“Americano”), a synth-pop jam that includes a come-on on to John F. Kennedy (“Government Hooker”), and a touching ballad about a guy from Nebraska (“You and I”). Fittingly, the glam-slam title track became an LGBTQ anthem.

This is a good album, very danceable. I like the title track, "Marry the Night," and "Edge of Glory" the best.

Playing: the first Danganronpa game, Trigger Happy Havoc. After finishing the Zero Escape games, I had gone looking around Reddit and Steam forums for similar games. The main recommendations were AI: The Somnium Files and Paranormasight for the escape room elements. Others also recommended the Danganronpa games, which are less escape room, but definitely have the visual novel elements as well as murder mystery (and courtroom trials, a la the Ace Attorney games). I bought the first two on a Steam sale a while ago, and then the more recent Steam sale this year had a bundle of the first two Danganronpa games for pretty cheap, so I got them. After getting frustrated with Bendy and the Ink Machine, I turned to Trigger Happy Havoc.

I am enjoying it but a few of the game mechanics in the first game are a bit annoying. Such as the difficulty level, which I set to the middle/default, which I presumed wouldn't be "baby" level, but also not hellishly difficult. However, it doesn't really explain at the outset how that all works, so in the courtroom trials, it will occasionally throw more difficulties in and it's occasionally frustrating if you want to just work on the story. You cannot change the difficulty without restarting the game in the first volume, but apparently in the second game, you can change the difficulty before each new chapter if you want to. Hopefully it doesn't get too much harder past the Chapter 3 trial, which I just finished. But overall, I do like the game and am curious to see how it all ends.

Movies: None. Really need to get on that AFI list!

Television/Streaming: the recent episodes of Taskmaster New Zealand. It's a fun group. Also a couple of episodes of Buffy, season 3: "Revelations" and "Lovers Walk." I'm not completely sold on Faith at this point; sometimes she annoys me. I'm happy Spike is back. Is he a dick? Yes. But I do enjoy him as a character.

Books: I read Sing Unburied Sing by Jessmyn Ward for our DEI book club at work. Ward has been on my list for a while, and I can see why her books have won awards. The writing was really good, and I thought the atmosphere of the place/time was well-done (rural Mississippi). There is a LOT to unpack here about family, and the impacts of racism, and poverty, and drugs, and there might be a little TOO much going on in the plot and that muddies things a bit. The book is told in mulitple points of view, and while that can be well-done, you have to make sure the voices are distinct enough. JoJo, the young boy in this story, sounds a lot like his mother, Leonie, and that was confusing. There were some good elements here, though, and I'm sure we'll have a lot to discuss at book club.

I did not finish The Sirens by Emilia Hart for my other book club. I got about 20% in before I could not read anymore. The motivations of the main character did not make any sense to me and she did not seem relatable at all. That doesn't always have to be the case, but also, if you are going to make some weird choices, you have to find a way to explain why the character would do those. (For example, the main character here is a journalism student and loves investigating things; yet, when confronted with a situation where asking some questions would absolutely be the thing to do, she just . . . doesn't. She stays put and cleans the apartment instead. The fuck)?

I'm currently reading An Offer from a Gentleman by Julia Quinn, as we just finished the Bridgerton season it's based on. They have changed some things and these books are ridiculous but I wanted a little bit of fluffy stuff in between other books.

Video Games: Playing Bendy and the Ink Machine. It's been occasionally frustrating when I get lost, haha. I love the art style, though. And the "cartoony horror" is not that bad, a few jumpscares of creepy things.

Listening to: Moving on with the Rolling Stone Top 500 albums, I listened to Black Flag's Damaged, number 487 on the list. This album was number 340 on the 2012 list. Rolling Stone blurb:

MCA refused to release this album, denouncing it as “immoral” and “anti-parent.” High praise, but Black Flag lived up to it, defining L.A. hardcore punk with Greg Ginn’s violent guitar and the pissed-off scream of Henry Rollins, especially on “TV Party” and “Rise Above,” which came with the timeless smash-the-glass salvo “We are tired of your abuse/Try to stop is but it’s no use.” Punks still listen to Damaged, and parents still hate it.

This is not really my style of music. Most of these songs blended into each other for me, but I did like "TV Party" and I can see why this album is a seminal work for this genre.

Movies: None

Television/Streaming: a couple of episodes of Buffy and Farscape.
Buffy:

"Faith, Hope & Trick" - first appearance of Faith (she's an interesting foil to Buffy)

"Beauty and the Beasts" - Angel comes back. Oz might have mauled some kids out in the wood when he escaped his cage.

"Homecoming" - Both Cordelia and Buffy are annoying as fuck in this one, but I am watching this through adult eyes and that's probably coloring my attitude with some of these episodes. (Use your words)!

"Band Candy" - this one had some pretty funny bits; especially Giles being an absolute fool. And Principal Snyder!

Farscape:

". . . Different Destinations" - they end up going back in time at the memorial and change the path of history.

"Eat me" - they come upon a damaged Leviathan and find all the Peacekeepers turned feral and cannibalistic. Also some of the Moya crew get split into two. Crichton's double makes it back on board ship with him. That would be freaky! It will be interesting to see what happens with the two of them.

Books: It has not been a great week for books! I had two books I stopped reading: T. Kingfisher's Hemlock and Silver and Ben Greenman's Emotional Rescue.

The Kingfisher book was a book club read for January that I never got in time. It just recently became available as I was finishing The Reformatory. I got about twenty percent or so in and I was just kind of annoyed at the book, so I stopped reading.

The Greenman book is essays on music. I thought it would be more like Rob Sheffield's Love is a Mix Tape or Talking to Girls About Duran Duran. No. Greenman's book was rather boring and also felt a bit misogynistic, so I had to quit reading that one, too.

I'm now reading Pylon by William Faulkner. It's a bit different than the other fare of his I've read, but I'm interested to see where it goes. It's set in a fictionalized New Orleans during an air show, so lots of talk of planes and pilots.

Listening to: only one Rolling Stone Top 500 album this week. Number 488 is The Stooges self-titled album from 1969. On the 2012 list, this album was at 185. Rolling Stone blurb:

Fueled by “a little marijuana and a lotta alienation,” Michigan’s Stooges gave the lie to hippie idealism, playing with a savagery that unsettled even the most blasé clubgoers. Ex-Velvet Underground member John Cale produced a primitive debut wherein, amid Ron Asheton’s wah-wah blurts, Iggy Stooge (né James Osterberg) snarled seminal punk classics such as “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” “No Fun,” and “1969,” bedrock examples of the weaponized boredom that would become a de rigueur punk posture.

This one is not really my cuppa, but I didn't outwardly hate it (like the Suicide album). It's a pretty short album, too. I can see the influences they had on other bands. Of the songs here, I like "I Wanna Be Your Dog," which I've also heard covered by several bands, as well.

Playing: I finished Assemble With Care; this is by the same studio that did Alba: a wildlife adventure. It's a visual novel with puzzles; you are Maria, who repairs electronics and such, and you've come to a little town for their festival. Various folks want your help, so you take apart and reassemble game systems, tape decks, watches, and more as you learn about issues in these folks' lives. It's a short but sweet game. The controls were occasionally a little frustrating (you can use your mouse on PC, but sometimes if I clicked too quickly, I'd put the piece I was working on to the side and then would have to hover over and pick it up again).

Movies: None

Television/Streaming: Watching my way through I'm in Love with the Villainess, which was originally a manga, I think. Anyway, the premise is that Rei, an office worker who is obsessed with this fantasy romance game, gets transported into said game as her character. The game mechanics are heteronormative (a choice of three princes to get with) but Rei is obsessed with Miss Claire, a noblewoman, and in her game reincarnation, takes every opportunity to tell her she loves her. There's also magic and other hijinks here. Rei is a little problematic because of how hard she goes, but it feels like there are other things at play here so I'm seeing where this ends up.

Books: Finished It's Not a Cult by Joey Batey. This is our February pick for my online book club. Batey is Jasker in The Witcher series (which I have not seen and did not know this until later) and this is his first book. The premise is a little no-name band that has a whole mythos behind their songs (minor gods called the Solkats) suddenly blows up online, and develops a rabid following: picking apart their lyrics for hidden meanings, and then following the "orders" they claim to get getting from the songs. Of course, some of them start turning to violent behavior and the band has to figure out what to do.

Overall, it was an interesting premise. I really liked the Solkat angle (with names like Scran, Solkat of Bar Tabs, Reckonings, and Squander; or Hockle, the Antecedent, Solkat of Spit and Nervous Moments), but it wasn't explored as in depth as I thought it could have been. This book has a lot to say about fandom and obsession. I felt it could have been tightened a bit more (it seems a little overlong) and some different details could have been highlighted. I'm sure we'll have a lot to say at book club.

Listening to: I got back to the Rolling Stone Top 500 Albums project this week, finally, and got through two albums.

#492 Nick of Time, Bonnie Raitt (1989). This album was on the original 2012 list at #231. Blurb from Rolling Stone:

After being dumped by her previous label, blues rocker Bonnie Raitt exacted revenge with this multiplatinum Grammy-award winner, led by an on-fire version of John Hiatt’s “Thing Called Love” and the brilliant title track, a study in midlife crisis told from a woman’s perspective. Producer Don Was helped her sharpen the songs without sacrificing any of her slide-guitar fire. And as Raitt herself pointed out, her 10th try was “my first sober album.”

I only remembered "Have a Heart" from this album, which got some radio airplay. However, I did really like this album overall. Good bluesy guitar, and some great lines like "I ain't no porcupine/Take off your kid gloves" from the chorus of "Thing Called Love." You can also hear the tail-end-of-the-80s influence on some of the songs here, as well, which is not a detriment. Tracks I really liked: "Nick of Time, "Thing Called Love," "Have a Heart," "Love Letter"

#491 Harry's House, Harry Styles (2022). Obviously, given the release year, this was not on the original 2012 list. Rolling Stone sez:

Harry Styles achieved pop greatness with One Direction, but he got even deeper on his own. In Harry’s House, his third solo album, he stakes his claim as one of his generation’s most savagely imaginative musical minds. It’s a vibrant, playful, vividly emotional song cycle about searching for different kinds of home. He zips from Tokyo-style city pop (“Music for a Sushi Restaraunt”) to disco flash (“Satellite”) to delicate guitar ballads (“Matilda”). “As It Was” has Harry at his most intimate and personal, yet blew up into a universal hit—it spent 15 weeks at Number One.

This one is fun. I do like his music post One Direction, and a few of my favorites are on this album, "As It Was" and "Late Night Talking" among them. Good album for driving around town or just dancing barefoot in your own house.

Movies: None this week.

Television/Streaming: Watched the first two episodes of Season 3 of Farscape: "Season of Death" and "Suns and Lovers." Season 2 ended on a cliffhanger, with Crichton laying helpless on a table with his brain exposed. I was glad that Aeryn was saved, even if it weakened Zhaan. I didn't think that Aeryn was gone for good, considering the credits. Same with Scorpius, who is a villain I love to hate. And when D'Argo finds out that Chiana is hooking up with Jothee . . .man, I felt for him so much.

Books: The List by Yomi Adegoke is a book club adjacent book; it's not our official book club but it's a discussion in our other Meetup group. In our standard Nerd book club, we generally read sci-fi/dystopia/fantasy/etc. and this is very much a contemporary novel. Adegoke is a journalist and this is her first fiction book. The premise is: what if you discover, less than a month from your wedding, that your future spouse has been named on an anonymous list exposing men for various misconduct, from harassment to assault? The story is told in alternating chapters from the POVs of the main characters, Ola and Michael.

So, this book has a lot to say and think on about #MeToo, and "cancel culture," and online pile-ons, etc. But I also found both main characters rather insufferable, and the ending did not seem to make it better. So it was a decent read, overall, but it took a while for me to get into it.

Read Between the Lies by Jesse Sutanto is one of the Amazon Kindle First reads for January 2026. I generally download this and then don't get to them for a while, but I was in-between books for book club and I just picked it. Coming on the heels of The List, this was another book that touches on cancel culture and online bullying (as well as in-person bullying in the past), but in the publishing world. The publishing world bits were more interessting to me, honestly. The main character, Fern, is very naive and reads extremely immature for what is supposed to be a grown-ass woman. In fact, the book is not billed as YA, but it kind of reads that way at times. I spent quite a bit of time hate-reading this book today, as it just got more and more ridiculous. And also, I was very annoyed at an anachronism early in the book, where the main character, Fern, describes her bully, Haven, as like "that robot girl in Squid Game." This part of the book takes place in 2018 or 2019, but that show did not start streaming until 2021. I feel an editor should maybe have caught that? A small thing, but it bugged me.

Movies
Guts (short film) (February)
My Neighbor Totoro (May)
Sinners (July)
KPop Demon Hunters (September)
The Suicide Squad (October)
Dodgeball (November)
Wake Up Dead Man (December)
The Four Seasons - 1981 version (December)
The Family Man (December)

Television Shows/Special Series (month completed in parenthesis)
The Big Fat Quiz of Everything 2025 (January)
Squid Game (season 2) (January)
Excel Saga (February)
Cunk on Life (February)
Harley Quinn, season 5 (March)
Severance (Season 2) (March)
A.P. Bio (April)
Squid Game (season 2 part 2) (July)
Taskmaster (series 19) (July)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (season 1) (August)
Farscape (season 1) (September)
Mitchell & Webb Are Not Helping (September)
Upstart Crow (season 1) (September) - rewatch
Peacemaker (season 2) (October)
Ludwig (October)
The Big Nailed It! Baking Challenge (October)
Taskmaster (series 20) (November)
Taskmaster: Champion of Champions (December)
The Big Fat Quiz of the Year (December)

Concerts/Live Performances
The Lion King - Straz Center (April)

Video Games (month completed in parenthesis)
Virtue's Last Reward - 3DS version (July)
Zero Time Dilemma - on Steam (November)

I'm also working my way through the Rolling Stone Top 500 Albums of All Time list, which you can see by following this tag.

Books

January
Carnival - Compton Mackenzie (1/05/2025)
Pattern Recognition - William Gibson (1/10/2025)
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley (1/15/2025)
The Kids in the Hall: One Dumb Guy - Paul Myers (1/16/2025)
Scandals of Classic Hollywood: Sex, Deviance, and Drama from the Golden Age of American Cinema - Anne Helen Petersen (1/21/2025)
The Magpie Lord - KJ Charles (1/23/2025)

February
Within a Budding Grove - Marcel Proust (2/3/2025)
Parable of the Sower - Octavia Butler (2/5/2025)
Round About a Pound a Week - Maud Pember Reeves (2/8/2025)
Cloud Cuckoo Land - Anthony Doerr (2/12/2025)
Fierce Attachments: a Memoir - Vivian Gornick (2/14/2025)
The Last Days of Jack Sparks - Jason Arnopp (2/18/2025)
Deliberate Cruelty: Truman Capote, the Millionaire's Wife, and the Murder of the Century - Roseanne Montillo (2/20/2025)

March
Practicing New Worlds: Abolition and Emergent Strategies - Andrea J. Ritchie (3/2/2025)
Ninth Ward Blues - Janelle Smith Toussant (3/4/2025)
North to Paradise - Ousman Umar (3/6/2025)
I'm Glad My Mom Died - Jennette McCurdy (3/10/2025)
My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World - Julian Dibbell (3/14/2025)
Things I Have Withheld - Kei Miller (3/18/2025)
84, Charing Cross Road - Helene Hanff (3/18/2025)
Swindled: From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee—The Dark History of the Food Cheats - Bee Wilson (3/24/2025)
The Measure - Nikki Erlick (3/26/2025)

April
East Lynne - Ellen Wood (4/4/2025)
Philip Roth: the biography - Blake Bailey (4/22/2025)
Luster: a novel - Raven Leilani (4/25/2025)
'No One Helped:' Kitty Genovese, New York City, and the Myth of Urban Apathy - Marcia M. Gallo (4/28/2025)

May
Klara and the Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro (5/03/2025)
We Oughta Know: How Céline, Shania, Alanis, and Sarah Ruled the ’90s and Changed Music - Andrea Warner (5/05/2025)
The Chronology of Water - Lidia Yuknavitch (5/7/2025)
The One That Got Away - Mike Gayle (5/7/2025)
Parties - Carl Van Vechten (5/11/2025)
Idlewild - James Frankie Thomas (5/16/2025)
The Tin Drum - Günter Grass (5/28/2025)

June
Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues - Jonathan Kennedy (6/03/2025)
Summer Fun - Jeanne Thornton (6/10/2025)
Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F. (6/15/2025)
Persuasion - Jane Austen (6/19/2025)
Eve's Hollywood - Eve Babitz (6/24/2025)
North American Lake Monsters - Nathan Ballingrud (6/28/2025)

July
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag - Alan Bradley (7/02/2025)
The Women Could Fly - Megan Giddings (7/09/2025)
A Touch of Jen - Beth Morgan (7/14/2025)
The Operating System: An Anarchist Theory of the Modern State - Eric Laursen (7/19/2025)
A Master of Djinn - P. Djèlí Clark (7/26/2025)
Life of Black Hawk, or Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak - Black Hawk (7/29/2025)
Faces in the Water - Janet Frame (7/30/2025)

August
Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language - Adam Aleksik (8/04/2025)
Nexus - Henry Miller (8/10/2025)
The Shores of Light: A Literary Chronicle of the Twenties and Thirties - Edmund Wilson (8/20/2025)
The Night Watchman - Louise Erdrich (8/27/2025)

September
Ten Restaurants that Changed America - Paul Freedman (9/06/2025)
The Altar Girl - Orest Stelmach (9/26/2025)

October
She Is a Haunting - Trang Thanh Tran (10/02/2025)
The Painted Bird - Jerzy Kosinski (10/13/2025)
Death Row - Freida McFadden (10/13/2025)
Hard Cash - Charles Reade (10/22/2025)
Fundamentally - Nussaibah Younis (10/27/2025)

November
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet - Becky Chambers (11/03/2025)
The Nameless Restaurant - Tao Wong (11/04/2025)
The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime that Scandalized a City and Sparked the Tabloid Wars - Paul Collins (11/11/2025)
Rose in Bloom - Louisa May Alcott (11/23/2025)

December
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism - Sarah Wynn-Williams (12/2/2025)
Daisy Jones & The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid (12/7/2025)
All Systems Red - Martha Wells (12/12/2025)
Lord of the Butterflies - Andrea Gibson (12/15/2025)
The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper (12/25/2025)

Movies: I watched about half of The Sound of Music while visiting the in-laws. Also watched The Family Man, the early-00s movie with Nicolas Cage. I know that it's supposed to be a send-up of movies like It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol, but this movie annoyed me so much.

If you've never seen it, Cage's character plays a workaholic named Jack, who years prior to the movie, chose career over his girlfriend (Tea Leoni). An intervention on Christmas Eve at a convenience store holdup leads the gunman (an angel, presumably, played by Don Cheadle) to show Jack a "glimpse" of life for the man who has everything he wants (this is what he says to the angel when Jack is asked this).

Jack goes to sleep in his New York apartment and wakes up the next morning as a suburban dad, living in New Jersey with wife and two kids. The wife is Leoni's character; in this "glimpse," Cage never left her and instead of a high-powered executive, he's a car tire salesman for his father-in-law's business. Of course, he has trouble navigating this new life, but then he learns to love it in time.

And once he does, he goes to sleep again and wakes up in his old life.

So, I hate this movie because this "glimpse" is really torture . . . both ways. A "glimpse" of the life that wasn't would be a one night thing, like Scrooge sees when he is visited by the ghosts. In this movie, the vision of what might have been takes WEEKS of real life time. He can't get anyone to understand what's going on with me, which, admittedly, would be unbelievable.

But then he does come to love his wife and kids, and by happenstance, he meets the CEO of the company he worked for in his old life, and due to his prior knowledge, he's able to talk himself into a job. Things are looking up for him, and then, he sees the angel again and BOOM, he's back in his old life - no wife, no kids, just loneliness and a bachelor apartment.

This is incredibly cruel! The movie does end on a hopeful note, but I still did not like this at all. I don't understand why people like this movie. Or why you would want to watch it more than once!

Television/Streaming:
We finished season 2 of Farscape and Buffy before we left for the holiday. Aeryn's dead, Crichton has completely lost his mind, and after the chip gets excised, he can't speak - and a cliffhanger here, too. Buffy's mom finding out that she's a vampire slayer, having to team up with Spike, and then Buffy's mom telling her not to come back. Oof. I don't like Joyce very much right now at all. You can't say something like that to kids and not have them take it literally.

Books:
I chose Lord of the Butterflies by Andrea Gibson for the last book to read for DEI book club this year, as it's the holidays and I thought a book of poetry would be an easier choice. Everyone agreed. Which is not to say these poems are light; they're about gender and politics and fraught familial relationships, but I found some ideas in them quite relatable. It's a shame I was not familiar with Gibson until this year, after they died from cancer earlier this year.

I also finished The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, which I have now read three times. My online book club chose to read it as an optional read over the holidays, as that is when the events in the book take place. This is a fantasy series, but it can be read as a standalone. On my third read this time, I think I enjoyed the family and celebrations bits more than the fantasy bits, but still quite good overall.

Movies: None.

Television/Streaming
Farscape:

"Look at the Princess" episodes 1-3 - where the crew goes to a planet where Crichton is a "match" for the princess and is forced into a marriage with her (then made into a statue!). I thought this was a pretty good story arc, and the bit at the end, where he interacts with a future hologram of his child, was moving.

"Beware of Dog" - where Moya has parasite problems. This one was a bit gross, haha. And Crichton is really starting to lose it.

Buffy:

"Surprise" - the one where Drusilla and Spike reassemble the Judge. And also, where Angel and Buffy get together finally, and that destroys his soul. What a metaphor, hah.

"Innocence" - where we learn Ms. Calendar's backstory (her family are tasked with watching Angel) and Willow discovers that Xander and Cordelia are together.

"Phases" - the werewolf one, where Oz discovers his true self. Can you imagine living in this town? So much weird shit happens and everyone just kind of rolls with it.

"Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" - where Xander has Amy (the girl with the witch mom from Season 1, who is herself a student of such arts) cast a spell to make Cordelia obsessed with him, but it backfires mightily. I love how Giles is mad at him, CORRECTLY, I might add. Also cringy that Ms. Calendar is coming on to him.

Books:
In between Murder of the Century and Rose in Bloom, I finished The Nameless Restaurant by Tao Wong. This had characters from the author's other series, and is a slice-of-life kind of adventure set in the same world. I enjoyed that the restaurant was magical and had magical elements, and the food, but there was some repetition that was annoying and it could have done with better editing.

Finished Rose in Bloom. This is the sequel to Alcott's Eight Cousins, which I read some years ago and forgot a good chunk of, haha. Rose is an interesting character; wants to make a name for herself with philanthropy, which was really one of the only ways she could do this, but also a bit preachy, such as being scandalized where her cousin, Charlie, gets a bit too drunk on New Year's or Christmas (I forget which) and stayed out too late. It makes her love him a bit less.

Also finished Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams was interesting, but also infuriating. So, Wynn-Williams was Director of Public Policy at Facebook, basically begged them to give her a job back in the day because she recognized the impact that the social media platform would have on the world. Very starry-eyed and naive, and this continues for quite a while, even when she is regaling us with horrific stories of what Facebook is doing in countries such as Myanmar. (They even send her to Myanmar at some point to get a meeting with the military junta, ALONE, with no safety briefings and no knowledge of Burmese).

And I get it: she was pregnant a couple of times, and was concerned about health insurance; she's also from New Zealand so immigration issues were a consideration. HOWEVER, there were plenty of times when she could have gotten out before the shit publicly hit the fan; she used to work for the United Nations so I'm sure her C.V. would have been good enough to get a high-powered job elsewhere.

I am a grunt, essentially, but if my firm was responsible for fucking WAR crimes, I would find a way to get out.

So, yes, Facebook is terrible; has been for a long time; not much of this was surprising; but Wynn-Williams doesn't cover herself in glory here, either.

Current reading: Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I know this came out a LONG time ago, but I'm just getting around to it.