Still fun! Just didn’t stand out as much as some of the other series.

I really enjoy metahumor, and Finnemore’s talent for it is on full display in this series—even to the extent of calling himself out on overreliance on it. Doesn’t bother me, though!

I have a bunch of small complaints about this movie, but I came away from it generally feeling like it was well done, so I’m erring on the side of a more positive rating. I don’t know if that makes me an uncritical movie watcher, but whatever.

For the most part, I liked the aesthetic choices! It bugged me that the spaceship was modeled after a space shuttle, because that doesn’t make a ton of sense, but I did appreciate that the film went with shorthand in terms of set design instead of trying to make it realistic or whatever.

I’ve been tempering my praise of this series through this relisten, but the time travel sketch in the finale is excellent, and there are other top notch examples of Finnemore’s humor scattered throughout.

What’s more, the recordings of this series on the Internet Archive are actual recordings and have bits of continuity announcer on either end of the episodes. I just love that, for reasons I can’t fully articulate, and I wish all the series were like that.

I miss the traditional “storyteller” sketches at the end of every episode, but I know they’ll be back in future series, and there were plenty of laugh out loud moments in this one.

This show continues to be fun, even if it wears off its genius on the third run. Some parts still make me laugh out loud, though!

The last few chapters of this book really captured me, but I was of more mixed feelings on the rest of it. It took me a couple tries to get through it, and as late as last week, I was ready to abandon it.

Spong is one of those writers who repeats arguments; having read another of his books, much of this one sounded familiar. Some of his arguments also felt simplistic, and I think a more nuanced look at the historical Jesus would stand in tension with his perspective (though this is based on my reading of other authors—this is clearly not an area of my expertise). In other cases, I would have liked to see more sources cited or despite his progressive commitments, a choice of words rubbed me the wrong way.

This is the third time I’ve listened to this series in the past five years, and I wonder if I’m rating it a bit low because of that. At any rate, I couldn’t help myself from trying it again after finishing Cabin Pressure. I might like this show even better—Finnemore has more freedom to show off his gift for words and his intricate plotting and callbacks.

An excellent history. I’ve read enough Mormon history that I don’t know if there was anything new for me in here, but Park does an excellent job of capturing 200 years in a constrained space and in accessible language, too. I highly recommend this to folks who want to learn more about Mormonism.

It’s been about a decade since I was introduced to this show, and I’m very glad to finally have experienced the whole thing. The last season was fun, the finale was a nice wrap-up, and I really do think the whole thing is a masterpiece.

This series feels like Finnemore kicking things up a notch. There are some interesting new character arcs in play, and it’s fun to see Finnemore playing with the fact that one of his actors is now taking on the role of Sherlock Holmes. He’s also clearly having fun subverting some audience expectations with stories and characters.

I hadn’t heard this series before, and it was fun to come back to it! I’m really excited for Series 4 and the finale episodes.

My journey through Cabin Pressure continues! I can’t remember how much of this series I’ve previously listened to—definitely not the Christmas special, but probably the rest of it. At any rate, it continues to have exceptional writing and lovely acting. Radio is underrated, and John Finnemore is perhaps the best example of that.

It’s been ages since I’ve listened to this, though I’ve listened to some of John Finnemore’s other work in the meantime. It’s such an excellent show: brilliantly written, well acted, and a real joy to listen to.

I’m confident I haven’t listened to all four series, though I can’t remember which bits I’ve missed. Looking forward to finding out!

I first picked this up through an Audible deal several years ago, with the idea that it would help with the move from Michigan to Kentucky (I can’t remember if I wasn’t yet anti-Audible or if it was just a good deal that I couldn’t pass up with the whole family living off my grad school fellowship). Anyway, the U-Haul didn’t have an aux jack or Bluetooth, so my brother-in-law and I cranked my phone as loud as it would go and tried to make out the jokes over the highway noise. Wasn’t an ideal listen, and I wasn’t super impressed. Not even sure we finished it.

I’ve read this a couple of times in the past, but I wanted to give it another read specifically as anarchist fiction. I’ve enjoyed other books with anarchist themes, so I wondered how this would read through that lens.

I can see why this book is considered a classic, but it just doesn’t really resonate with me. The art isn’t my favorite, and while some of the ideas are interesting, the execution sometimes feels clunky.

I struggled with what to rate this series. It’s great in a lot of ways, and it’s fun to watch a political show that is based in a country I don’t know very well (plus, explaining parliamentary coalitions and other election systems to my spouse made me feel smart).

That said, it’s also not as tight and polished as something like The West Wing, and while it might not be fair to compare the two, it’s inevitable. Some of the story arcs would land better with a bit more preparation, and some plot elements feel contrived for the sake of a specific episode.

This time, kiddo checked this out on hoopla, and I decided to read it, too. As I’ve said before, gag-a-day comics aren’t really my thing, and as delightful as Nancy is, I still can’t say that it’s my favorite.

This probably deserves a higher score: I don’t know that the New Testament is best read “cover to cover” (it’s not that kind of book), and I was listening to it via audiobook, which is even less ideal.

I really appreciate what Hart is up to, but I don’t feel like I got it reading it in this way. I’m sure I’ll come back to this translation when considering specific passages, though!

I was living outside the country and in my own little religious world when the 2008 financial crisis hit, and so my understanding of that moment in history has always been kind of flimsy. Despite being a weird near-future MMO-centric book, I kind of feel like reading this helped?

I read on Wikipedia that some critics weren’t a fan of the economics tangents, but I like Doctorow when he’s didactic, so even though I didn’t follow all the details, I enjoyed what he was going for (I just don’t have a head for economics or finance). Doctorow’s social concerns are also front and center here, in the same way they are in some of his more recent fiction, and I appreciate the way his narratives move me in a way that a philosophical argument wouldn’t.

The Dune universe is super weird, and I don’t know that it’s my favorite, but this is a really well done movie.

This movie looks great and was a lot of fun to watch. I have very vague movies of the book but liked this a lot better.

This is a fun book in many ways—Doctorow is great at super weird science fiction. However, there’s just not enough in there of what else makes Doctorow good. I’m glad I reread this, but it’s probably my least favorite of all the Doctorow novels I’ve tackled.

I came for the Ms. Marvel, and this delivered! She’s a great character, and it was fun to see her in this movie. There were also lots of weird-but-fun bits that I enjoyed.

There are plenty of things about the movie that didn’t work for me, but it’s no less dumb than most Marvel movies, and I have no interest in feeding what I understand is a bunch of hating on the movie. It’s not the best MCU film out there, but it was plenty fun, and I’d blame the growing unwieldiness of the universe as much as anything about this installment for the clunky bits.

Romance is not my usual genre, but this came recommended by my spouse, who rightly guessed I would enjoy just how bonkers weird this story gets. It was a fun read!

I recently came into some Amazon gift cards, so I bought this volume to complete my collection of Queen & Country. I think this is the first time I’ve owned an entire comics series? At least, one of this length.

I’m glad I own the whole series, but like the show its based on, I feel like it gets less interesting the longer it goes on. It’s fun to get some peeks into the backstories of the characters who come up in the first two volumes, but it’s just not as interesting as the early stories. I’m sure I’ll come back to the whole series at some point anyway.