Reviews of this and that

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi: My entire connection to Scalzi, who has become one of my favorite and most fun authors, is through audiobooks. Many of them are read by Wil Wheaton, who in my opinion went from being the world’s worst actor (beats there a heart so cold as not to want to crush Wesley on sight?) to the world’s best reader thanks to Scalzi’s work. Old Man’s War is Scalzi’s first novel, and also the first of a series, and in fact was not read by Wheaton, but I loved it. It made me want my afternoon audiobook walks to go on forever. Given my history with Scalzi, I’ve decided to jump over and try to actually read him on (e-)paper, having just purchased book 2 in the series. We’ll see how that works out.

My actual reading reading, so to speak, has been of the air-out-the-brain variety since finishing Wolf Hall, which is major stuff. There was some Rumpole first, and then I’ve been coasting through some early Raymond Chandler in volume one of the Library of America collection, finding the plots hard to grok but enjoying them anyhow just for the pleasure of the words. Chandler can be like that. The big question is whether to go on with Mantel or go back to Caro’s LBJ, or to try something else altogether. I could finish off my Nance Mitford crush… We’ll see, but whatever it is, it’s coming up next.

One thing I do miss during the quarantine is my semi-weekly trip to the local artsy movie theater. I was just beginning to get up a nice cinematic head of steam, reinvigorating my longtime love of movies. I don’t watch that many at home, for some reason, because I’m pretty much too busy during the day and at night there’s too much good TV, not to mention reading reading. Going to the movies in the middle of the afternoon was an event, unlike sitting plopped in front of the TV in the middle of the afternoon. I am beginning to look at late evening as a possible movie time, since I do tend to stay up way later than the missus. Yet another “we’ll see.”

I’ve downloaded some games which I’ve begun playing online with likeminded folks, namely Carcassone, Ticket to Ride and Settlers of Catan. Well, I think I’ve mentioned before that I don’t really like Catan, but the others are quite entertaining, even though I suck bigtime at them. We spent Christmas in NOLA with a whole bunch o’ folks, and gaming was a big part of it. (So was eating, drinking, and, it being NOLA, sightseeing while eating and drinking.)

Finally, on the music front, I continue to work on my magnum rock playlist on Spotify, AKA Menick’s Tab Room (spotify:playlist:1CzrLTz52lXBVAGs4GNG1p). Additions over the last 7 days include 6 songs by the Blasters and 5 songs by Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper, all of which is rockabilly-based, 2 songs from Steve Miller’s Children of the Future, and 1 Ry Cooder from Boomer’s Story. If you have Spotify you should follow the playlist. It's enormous, and I guarantee that you will like most of it. It's especially helpful in keeping you dancing while being creative in the kitchen. At least, it's helpful to me.