Finished reading: Starter Villain by John Scalzi is a fun, easy vacation read 📚
🎵 no name is distilled Jack White
Finished reading: Provenance by Ann Leckie is an entertaining political thriller in space. Nice to learn more about the universe beyond the Radchaai 📚
🏃♂️ All runs here are hill training
🏊♂️ The dogs are vigilant lifeguards while I swim
Finished reading: A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith is an entertaining and informative exploration of what is actually required to colonize space. A good counterbalance to all the sci-fi I’ve been reading 📚
Chose a run over leisure
Finished reading: The Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowal is a good entry in the Lady Astronaut series. I enjoy these alternate histories of space exploration books📚
🏊♂️ The easing in continues
🏃♂️ Easing back into a routine
Finished reading: Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky is a surprisingly amusing story about the robot apocalypse 📚
🎧 Given the rewrite of Overcast, I’m switching back from Apple Podcasts to try it out (yes, right on time). Although the audio engine is better and there are some other, nice refinements, I think my favourite feature of Overcast is that it just shows me a clean list of the podcasts I’ve actually chosen as subscriptions. Apple Podcasts pushes discovery too hard for me.
Finished reading: Adam Frank cleverly uses interest in UFOs to get at the science of extraterrestrial life in The Little Book of Aliens 📚
Finished reading: Slow Productivity by Cal Newport has some interesting concepts for how to manage pseudo productivity. Almost makes me want to have the type of job that would allow me to really apply the advice 📚
Finished reading: Black Hole Survival Guide by Janna Levin is a short, fascinating, and entertaining book all about black holes 📚
📺 Thoughts on recent television shows
Some short notes on recent seasons of shows that I’ve watched:
- Outer Range Season 2: Still nicely strange, though not as good as Season 1
- Night Sky: A slow build with a sci-fi mystery. Sissy Spacek and JK Simmons are great. Clearly a second season was planned, but it ends okay for a one season show
- Dark Matter: A decent multiverse show. Really picks up in the last couple of episodes
- Sugar: A fun crossover of detective and sci-fi
- Mr and Mrs Smith: An entertaining show, modelled after the movie, though the last episode was disappointing
- Shogun: A great historical drama with compelling characters and fine attention to detail
- Unchained Season 2: Really makes the Tour de France understandable and exciting. Such an epic event
- The Acolyte: Just fine, though uneven. I didn’t like the ending
Adding The Peripheral to the list with Outer Range and Night Sky makes me reluctant to watch sci-fi shows on Amazon Prime. I enjoyed each of these well made and smart shows, only to have them all cancelled.
Finished reading: I enjoyed A Darker Shade of Magic by V. E. Schwab. Moves briskly with an interesting plot, good characters, and intriguing magic system 📚
Finished reading: Blood Meridian, Or, The Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy is bleak, nihilistic, and compelling 📚