Books of 2023
So, I only read part of a single book released in the past year. However, I read – if briefly – more than one book this year, which is a christmas miracle after so many years of not reading much beyond astrology textbooks and whatever internet things.
I finished The Martian Chronicles. I’ve already written about that, and it was a positive experience. Definitely recommend if you like spooky sci-fi and quick, easy reads.
As for this year’s releases, the single book I began to read was the Britney Spears memoir. I got about halfway in. I probably could have finished it but it came out at the same time my mom died, so my follow-through wasn’t up to snuff. That said, I was really enjoying it in terms of astrological reference, both in general and the commonalities vs differences between my own and her chart. We have the same Ascendant and some of the things she said about her youth echoed how I noticed people treated me at around the same times. Her first video taking place in a school is wild with her Sun in 3rd, too. Among other things. I went total astro nerd. Perhaps I should read more biographies just for that reason.
I picked at others, but one other I got past a few paragraphs: Crossing Over by John Edward. That’s also a memoir style read, about a medium approaching the time of when his TV show began. I remember that show (Crossing Over) airing near early 2001 on Sci-Fi and being glued to the TV fascinated about how any of this was possible. My skepticism easily set it aside as a “whatever” but every so often I end up back on these sorts of thoughts. Semi-recent exploration of tarot has me back there, wondering about the creativity of the human mind to fill in blanks and make things fit even when they’re entirely made-up or random. But then comes thoughts of how the core human experience might be so simple and predictable that it follows that any of this works simply because it pretty much always will, irrelevant of audience or timing or source or method. Then I’m brought back to mediums who give better in terms of details and the shared opinions about what takes place post-death. I wonder if, instead of literals, perhaps there’s no post-death and what these people pick up is akin to general awareness of living human space, and it’s the human mind interpreting it as beyond life due to the idea being psychologically comforting. In any case, the fascination remains, despite all the questioning in the world. If nothing else, it’s an interesting story.
I have to assume more reading will be coming in the following year as I’m due to lose my access to near-24/7 internet and electricity. I hope that’s not the case, but being a realist, it’s probably best to assume I’m probably going to finish more than one book this next year.
TV of 2023
Is anyone going to be surprised if I say my favorite TV show experience this year was watching Three-Body Problem? I’m seriously considering rewatching it, but with the Netflix version of the same story coming soon enough (March?) I will probably hold out and see how I feel after. In any case, this was the first chinese TV show I’ve ever seen, and it was weird how fast I didn’t have to always look at the subtitles given my total lack of experience with the language. The show itself had an odd flow, starting in a weird depressive place (the main guy has an existential crisis), then going fucking bonkers with hard science terminology and concepts, and then taking a left turn into the past. The video game scenes were done well, and the specific computer science episode about broke my brain. I should know these things. For that reason, this would be an excellent show to introduce on a younger person getting into science who can handle a bit of dark, apocalyptic content. Should I read Silent Spring? Dehydrate!
My other favorite show of 2023 was Silo. It felt similar to other claustrophobic sci-fi I’ve seen, particularly whichever season of The 100 where some of the kids live underground for too long and Deep Space Nine. The world-building and depth of characters and acting and set design and everything about the show was perfect. I’m curious to see how another season will go given the ending opening up a fresh can of worms. heh.
I saw a few horror shows, and both The Last of Us and The Fall of the House of Usher did a fair job at keeping my brain occupied without making me feel like I wasted my time. The death scenes in Usher were rough on the soul, especially the first one. The Last of Us felt familiar to a thousand movies and episodes I’ve seen before but for some reason the mall episode continues to stick in mind and I’m curious to see where the show goes from here.
Yellowjackets was fun to catch up on and see. I’m not a big fan of being strung along from episode one for answers about what happened where, but the 5-star casting and occasional silliness works.
I know I saw For All Mankind this year since it’s currently airing. This is another excellent sci-fi show with, now, enough modern realism to just about piss you off. Imagine a world where we kept going to the moon, actively exploring space tech, and trying to do fucking anything besides waste money on the war machine. 9/11 didn’t happen in this reality. But the war machine clearly exists in this world, too, and that’s where the current season is at when it’s not playing around with workers vs the rich concepts. It seems timely in a way the previous seasons didn’t, even though it’s talking about the early-mid 2000s, because of the current flavor of international politics. Assuming they jump ahead another full decade, the next season will be almost current day, probably with absurd tech attached.
I finally watched Over The Garden Wall. I did not expect a silly cartoon to work that well. It has an autumnal gothic style with a weird manic comedic energy and the episodes are perfectly short for both kids and not-into-cartoons people. Now I know why I keep seeing one episode’s pumpkin guy everywhere these days. If you haven’t seen it before, hold out for falling leaves & rainy nights times and binge it.
I barely remember the final season of Physical now, but for that reason, I think they ended it in a good place. The story didn’t feel 100% complete, but the given plot was wrapped up after what felt like a janky season by comparison to the previous two. I’d recommend the 1st season if you’re interested in an early 80s-era drama featuring bad mental health that’ll take every Californian alive then back in fuckin’ time.
And Just Like That went to the usual nonsense places it does, where people with money have people with money problems and we sprinkle in social and/or relationship issues to ponder on top. This franchise is brain candy. You already know how you feel about it by now.
Season one of Invasion was excellent. Two was too slow with too much going on so the story barely moved forward. I would hope that’s fixed in the third season, which has yet to air.
The Morning Show is doing similar things with reality vs fantasy that For All Mankind is, just compressed to very modern times and politics of the moment. Until this past season, most of the content was an obvious simile of the time period, covering very early covid and #metoo and the like. This past season seemed like it was going to talk about megarich people buying out companies they don’t have the credentials to run but it took a turn away from talking about Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and went somewhere I didn’t recognize as a metaphor for 2022 anymore. The lack of resolution for a lot of those things in real life probably contributes. The next season will meet modern times close enough that I wonder if they plan to switch things up more towards personal dramas and make-believe over addressing modern news issues. If they wait long enough, they can just talk about the 2024 election, but probably by 2025 when it airs we’ll all be sick of that shit.
I either wasn’t alive or wasn’t very conscious of the world for the time periods The Crown covered prior to its last season. The last one had a lot of awkward familiarity. I remember when Diana died and the world acted real fucking weird about it. I’m the same age as William, so that also echoed familiarity as he grew up in the show. I didn’t pay attention to what was going on overseas, didn’t find whatever these people were doing very relevant, so this show might as well be entirely made-up, but the sore spots it hits about people and life and sadness of one’s time and usefulness coming to a close worked. It probably could have gone for another season, but it remains to be seen how things will pan out for the current dude and his children.
I’m struggling to remember when I watched certain shows because I don’t keep a record of shows like I do movies. Did I watch House of the Dragon early this year or late last? Wednesday? Yellowstone? I do remember it took quite a while to catch up on Yellowstone, and that was a quality watch.
I tried the shows From, Archive 81, Servant, Ascension, Shining Vale, The Peripheral, Cabinet of Curiosities, Interview with the Vampire, Willow… Didn’t finish Willow, Interview with the Vampire is great horror brain candy, Cabinet was fun, The Peripheral just was, Shining Vale didn’t really hit, Ascension the same, Servant has its moments but something about it doesn’t work well, Archive 81 was fine, and From was good but I’m not caught up to see where it was going.
One more: The White Lotus‘s 2nd season. I waited to see it until I was in a better mood for comedy, and it was another decent job of keeping things interesting on planet rich lady vacation. If there’s a 3rd season, I’m curious to see if the lack of a certain character will matter to the tone of the show or if we’ve all but literally jumped the shark on this one.
This was a lot of words, hence why I started with my favorites, but the TLDR is that I highly recommend Three-Body Problem to those into hard science fiction, Silo for those into dramatic sci-fi, The Fall of the House of Usher for those into moody + gory horror, and Over The Garden Wall if you’ve got young kids but you need some light spoopy content.