As with many of my posts, I don’t know if anyone reads this except me; as with many of my posts, I enjoy putting together this end-of-year recap even if I’m the only audience. I didn’t realize that it was only this year that I watched The Princess Bride with kiddo, and it’s fun to see the personal challenges I set for myself, like rereading all of Saga, finally listening to all the Terry Pratchett radio dramas I bought years ago, making my way through a bunch of IDW Star Trek comics of mixed quality, etc. I am kind of bummed that I didn’t finish my way through the Brief Theological Introductions to the Book of Mormon series before the end of the year, but I also confess that I’m having a mixed experience with the series, and trying to force my way through hasn’t been super helpful.

Sometimes, a comic book is dumb in all the right ways. This is one of them. It has an interesting premise (a wizard is sent from a magical realm to conquer Earth but ends uo setting up shop as its protector) that it doesn’t bother being pretentious about, instead leaning into fourth-wall breaking jokes about conventions in comics. It has a Ryan North feel to it, and I love that.

I enjoy a work of fiction that leans into its premise, especially if that premise is wild, with existential overtones. While it did feel slow at times, I appreciated how carefully and thoroughly Pluribus explored its central idea, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes from here.

Fun listen! It’s not any kind of deep book, but listening to how The Princess Bride was made is just about as much fun as watching the movie itself, and I enjoyed spening some time listening over the past week or so.

This isn’t what I want every day, but it’s an excellent combination of flavors.

I think this is my favorite tea of all time. It tastes just like an Andes mint and brings real joy to my morning.

This tea is tasty! The orange flavor is good, and I like the cinnamon more than I might have expected. I am not giving it full marks because I think I’d tire of it quickly, and even though that raises some inconsistencies in my rating system, I’m sticking with it.

One of my favorite herbals!

It’s not totally what I was hoping for (maybe I’m getting used to the oolong—the last licorice tea I had was just black), but it scratches the itch for a good licorice tea.

This was a delight, and I’m glad I read this series.

This series is getting even more interesting with time, which I honestly wasn’t expecting. I’m trying to remember if I’ve read the whole series before—I’d thought so, but I don’t remember these details. Looking forward to the conclusion!

I genuinely think I’ve hiccuped more this weekend than in the preceding decade. It sucks, and I’m starting to wonder what minor deity I’ve offended.

I haven’t yet mentioned how good Chiang’s art is. It’s good! This series continues to be better than I remembered it being.

Vaughan seems to like to be edgy in ways that I don’t always appreciate, but this series has hooked me in the way that Saga eventually did, so kudos.

Good but not mind blowing!

Starting to recognize the Vaughan stuff I like from Saga: Unapologetically weird but still holds together somehow. I’m enjoying rereading this series.

Funnily enough, there’s a paper TPB sitting on my bedside table from when I checked it out several months ago so that I could revisit this series.

That stalled out, but I am finding it easier to get through as a PDF on my phone. The series is better than I remember it being from whenever I reread it, but it’s still not so good that I feel like I get some of the hype.

I’ve been a Star Wars fan for long enough to recognize unnecessary expanded universe material when I hear it, but I’ve also been a Star Wars fan for long enough to know that some of it is actually pretty good.

I’ve known about this book for ages and always wanted to read it because the idea of the Kobayashi Maru is just fun. I was delighted to find an audiobook on the Internet Archive and enjoyed listening to it. James Doohan can only do so many voices (I had trouble telling his Chekov from his Scotty), but I appreciated what he brought to the role, the music and sound effects weren’t bad, and the premise paid off.

So is now a bad time to need to sell a 2020 RadCity 4?

I’ve been looking forward to this blend since the beginning of this advent calendar, and I’ve finally figured out how to follow these steeping instructions, and everything has paid off. I do miss some of the maltiness of blending it with Kenya tea, but this is good all by itself.

Okay, I think I figured out how to steep these “one bag per person” blends because this is really hitting the spot this morning! Plus, I reserved a bag instead of steeping both, so now I have more to enjoy later.

I’ve now read all the TPBs for this series that came in the Image Humble Bundle, and I can’t say I’m in any rush to learn what happens next. For such a wild start to a series, this got dull fast.

This series works best when it explores its basic premise, and for that premise to work, the characters have to kind of remain pastiches of better known Batman ones (though, to the author’s credit, they are much more interesting than superficial parodies). Yet, as the series goes on, Casey seems to want to explore worldbuilding rather than riff on the original premise of the book, and I just don’t find that interesting. Also don’t love AT ALL that he is riffing off of an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory for the name of his actual world-controlling conspiracy. Feels like a major faux pas.

This would be better except that I steeped it too long, so some of the underlying tea flavor is too strong. It is the kind of chai I like (more pepper and ginger than cinnamon), so I’m going to have to be more careful the next time.

This was pretty good, but I think it would be better if I’d steeped it differently. I don’t get the “one bag per person” instructions and how it differs from “one bag per cup.”