And the first month of the year is over already! Here is what read, listened to and watched…
– Activation Degradation ★★★★☆, audio, SF, not Murderbot, just ignore that. Different take on robots/cyborgs/AI.
– Cursed ★★★★½, Alex Verus #2, ebook, UF, wizards in London battle it out, good fun.
– Black Powder War ★★★☆☆, Temeraire #3, ebook, Fantasy, the way back from China to Europe over land, with stopovers in Istanbul and Prussia, set in 1806.
– Fruiting Bodies ★★★★★, short story, SF Horror, a little creepy.
– Life on Earth ★★★★☆, audio, TBR pile, David Attenborough narrates his book, natural history.
– The Sweet Rowan ★★★★¼, ebook, TBR, sweet Regency romance, set in Scotland, with a wee bit of magic.
– Saga #55 ★★★★☆, eComic, SF, finally back after three years of waiting.
– The Marrow Thieves ★★★☆☆, ebook, TBR, dystopian YA set in Canada. People have lost the power to dream, except for indigenous people, who are hunted for a cure.
– Tietjen auf Tour: Warum Camping mich glücklich macht, paper, DNF after 84 pages reading and skimming to 150 pages / 55%. Travel anecdotes, nice enough, but very repetitive.
Still reading, carry over into February:
– Fire and Ice: The Volcanoes of the Solar System, audio. Fascinating!
Specfic Movies & TV watched:
– The Expanse, S6, Ep. 3-6 ★★★★☆ Season finished. They went off script quite a bit. Not sure yet how much I liked this.
– Foundation, S1, Ep. 4-10 ★★★★★ Season finished. Excellent!
– Venom ★★★¾☆ Entertaining and a little too silly.
– Kingdom, S1, Ep. 1-3 ★★★☆☆ Korean zombie series in a historical setting. Unintentionally funny at times. Different. The people in this have the survival instincts of gnats.
Some StoryGraph statistics:
(yes, the last and first page counts are different, I updates something in between screen shooting the stats… 😝)
Cathy's Reading Bonanza 
Looks like January was a good reading month overall! I had to laugh at the “not Murderbot, just ignore that” comment. So much of my response to AI these days is to put it in terms of “how like Murderbot is it?”
According to The StoryGraph, most of my reading is “adventurous” in mood also. I guess I just really need the escapism right now.
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Yes, I agree about the escapism!
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Kingdom gets better as we reach the later episodes, they go into the history of how the zombie-hood started and spread… so I hope you don’t give up too soon. “The people in this have the survival instincts of gnats” – yes indeed, though for the historical period this relates to, there was also so much rampant superstition and ignorance and political scheming that it’s kind of accurate there.
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I actually stopped already. But I am still tempted by that extra episode, set before the series. That‘s the one explaining how the zombies started, correct?
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