Hello, book nerds!

Summer is in full swing in my neck of the woods, with daily highs now nearing 100. I have to save any “outside time” for 8pm, and squeeze every ounce I can get out of that 30-45 minutes before the sun goes down.

Which means I’m doing a lot of indoor activities outside of work. Here’s all the books, movies/shows, music, and games I’ve consumed lately.

• FIVE BROKEN BLADES: Review coming this week! I enjoyed it, even though I had a few critiques.
• PEOPLE WE MEET ON VACATION: I stopped reading about 80-90 pages in because it was taking forever for the story to start, and some of the humor was pretty cringe. An actual quote: “That cheese board basically formed a cork in my butthole and everything’s just piling up behind it.” Need I say more?
• THE LIGHT PIRATE: This was a really interesting one. I recommend it if you liked Station Eleven.
• BUTCHER & BLACKBIRD: A serial killer romance. What a time to be alive.
• Full reviews are posted for the others:
  • Hell Bent
  • My Lady Jane
  • The Sky on Fire

• INSIDE OUT 2: I love, love, loved it. It was cute and relatable.
• BRIDGERTON (S3 PART 2): *sigh*. It could’ve been so much better. Why were there so many grand things this season? The hot air balloon, the butterflies, a…weird flower display everyone pretended to be impressed by. Feels like the show was starting to jump the shark. Also, everyone looked like they had the glam filter on.
• MY LADY JANE: I couldn’t even finish the first episode. I may have to do a whole blog post on it, because I loved the book and this show just…wasn’t it. It’s a YA book, and the show was so raunchy??? Who decided that? It felt so smug and self-satisfied in its delivery, too. Plus, they for some reason felt the need to turn the FMC into a girlboss. She’s supposed to be headstrong, compassionate, and extremely bookish, but you know what we didn’t see her do once in the first episode? READ. I couldn’t do it. The only thing I liked was Gifford’s actor.
• WARRIOR: If you like Bruce Lee kung fu movies and historical dramas, this is the show for you. I’m loving it.

• OCEAN ALLEY: They were great live. Their opener, The Grogans, were also pretty good. They signed our vinyls.
• NARROW HEAD: If you want a song that feels like it would be the closing credits of a 2000s movie, it’s this one.
• LOLA YOUNG: I really like her sound, and I recommend it if you like songs that feel like a cross between rock, pop, and indie music.

This game leaves all the discovery to you. You play around with it to figure out both the goal and how the game works. I enjoyed that aspect, as well as the artwork.