Brian Behrend’s microblog
Consistently creative and baffling in so many great ways. Not a huge fan of the just normal old shitty human storyline instead of more fun bizarre living planet that makes babies in you storylines, but didn’t take too much from the season as a whole. Binged all 10 episodes in 3 days including like 5 in a row to wrap it up.
Rating: 4.5 stars
Crossposted on Trakt
Watch Scavengers Reign on Max
What If…?: Season 2
Not quite as good as Season 1 and didn’t quite stick the landing after the great Kahorri and the 1602 episodes, but still a fun mix of stories with some good through lines. Looking forward to Marvel pulling Kahorri into some other MCU stories/movies.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Oh no… Spencer Strider has elbow ligament damage, MRI shows. Tommy John surgery presumably imminent. Sigh.
Loved this. Not the fastest pace show but loved every episode and binged all 10 episodes in 3 days. Even stayed up late two nights which is super rare for me these days. Enjoyed the world building, character development, and the story reveals as well. Looking forward to Season 2 and also added Foundation and a bunch of other Asimov to my Goodreads backlog as well.
Rating: 5 stars
Crossposted on Trakt
Watch Foundation: Season 1 on Apple TV+
A few of these seven LGBTQ fables were truly fantastic and overall the complete collection came together really well for me.
These aren’t just retellings of the same old fables but now with two princesses. Each story was generally thoughtful and subtle that did a great job of imparting a strong moral lesson in the end. Goose Girl and New Name were my faves.
Now I have to go bug my kiddo to see why she only gave it 3 stars.
Rating: 4.5 stars
Crossposted on Goodreads
Buy Other Ever Afters on Bookshop
Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)
Four extra stars just for King Herod’s Song being the absolute funniest thing me and the kids have seen in months. They were so baffled and delighted for much of this musical but that song sent them over the edge and onto the floor laughing.
Rating: 4 stars
Finished reading and wrote up a blog post on my thoughts on Cal Newport’s Deep Work. A book I’ve been wanting to read for a good bit and I ended up having a lot of takeaways including some notes on changes to my personal habits I’ve already made.
In Real Life
by Cory Doctorow & Jen Wang
Good art and message but definitely aimed at a younger audience. The in game stuff and parts about labor movements and about not making assumptions about people in other situations/cultures was solid despite its shallowness but the IRL parts of Anda’s life were the weakest.
Rating: 3 stars
The Atlantic published a list of The Great American Novels from the last 100 years and I’m eager to see if I can try to make my way through it. I have read very few of these and barely heard of even the ones from the last five years so will be nice challenge and education.
So do they ever explain why ivory is so valuable in the future?
Really enjoyed this animal conservation/climate change story and went along easily with the science fictiony parts, but was regularly distracted by the premise that in the near future ivory would become seemingly the most important substance on earth. One note about it being needed for future iPhones or something would have helped.
Between this and The Mountain in the Sea I’m now very interested in catching up to Nayler’s short stories and will definitely be excited for whatever he writes next. Great book covers too.
Rating: 4 stars
Crossposted on Goodreads
Buy The Tusks of Extinction on Bookshop