I’ve noticed this throughout the reread, but this collection really got me thinking about the connections between Willis’s previous work and this reboot/remix. It’s also amazing to me just how long this series has been going on! I’m reading material that came out when I was just starting grad school.

Still enjoying this reread!

It wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t very engaged and kept waiting for it to be over.

I had been trying to read some of Willis’s other work, making it through the whole Shortpacked! archive and trying to go through Roomies!, etc., but ultimately I realized that what I really wanted was a Dumbing of Age reread, and so here I am. I enjoy this series much more in collected form than I do one strip at a time, and it was fun to start again at the beginning.

I like what this movie is trying to be, but it’s so committed to gags, a breakneck pace, and a certain amount of self-defeating essentialism that I don’t think it ever gets there.

Ce n’est pas souvent qu’on tombe sur un livre en français en visitant la bibliothèque ici au Kentucky, et j’ai donc du emprunter celui-ci. On l’a lu ensemble en famille. C’est une jolie idée avec du joli art.

Cette série continue à m’engager—et à me faire réfléchir. Il faut quand-même que je me rappelle que c’est un drame et non un documentaire, car j’ai tendance à trouver les détails historiques plus intéressants que les conflits interpersonnels.

I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about this series, but I like it so far! Interesting playing with hubris, imaginative story and art, and compelling characters (even if I have trouble remembering who’s who, but that’s my fault).

My one annoyance is that there are a lot of two-page splashes that do not work well for reading PDFs on my phone. I get that that’s on me, but it’s still a pain.

Cory Doctorow’s end of year recap of books he reviewed always puts a few titles on my list, and this was one of them. The history of energy is not inherently the most interesting topic ever, but once I got past the fact that I was reading in translation (which only bugs me with French, since I can read that pretty well) and trying to figure out how the translation was done (worried about AI, to be honest), I really enjoyed this book.

This has everything that annoyed me about the rest of the series but also some weird pro-monarchist vibes to it? Glad to be done with this series, and I hope the next one is better.

I didn’t grow up watching The Muppet Show, so I can’t say how it compares to the original, but it was a fun way to spend a “freak ice storm, school is cancelled” afternoon with kiddo. In fact, kiddo wants to start watching the original stuff, so maybe we’ll be comparing with the original after all!

Meh. I really don’t like the narration in this series, and even though I was a bit distracted while listening to this one, I’m not convinced I would have liked it much more if I had been giving it my full attention.

This story was more interesting, with some additional voice acting to make it feel more like a play than an audiobook. It was also bonkers science fiction in a very Doctor Who way that worked for me.

I gripe a lot about audio plays being dumb sometimes, but this “narrated story” approach is a lot less interesting than an audio play, and that annoyed me. Jacob Dudman does an excellent Eleventh Doctor, though, so it wasn’t terrible.

For about the first half of this book, I was convinced that it was better than the movie and that I had gravely sinned by not rereading it in the past decade.

I am glad that I reread it, but after finishing it, I’m a bit more reserved in my judgment. I can see the seams in the book, there are some comments that feel stuck in the early 2010s, and the scenes that the movie skipped aren’t as interesting as the beginning and end of the book.

This volume seemed to depart so drastically from the first that I had to make sure I hasn’t skipped something by accident. The stories are mostly recognizable as part of a shared universe, but the worldbuilding feels overly ambitious and underserved by the actual plot. The topless Galatea robots are unnecessary, and the lampshading of their luridness by attributing it to an in-universe pervert doesn’t help. I was willing to give the first volume in this series the benefit of the doubt, but I’m glad I don’t have any more of this to read.

See, this one I should have loved: I really want to like Paul McGann’s Doctor, and I do like the Vashta Nerada. This felt like excessive EU riffing, though, and I just couldn’t get excited about it.

I shouldn’t like this! It took a trip to YouTube to remember who the Carrionites even were, and there are so many Doctor-Who-dumb, audio-play-dumb, and just generally dumb elements to this play. Yet, it somehow came together into something that I enjoyed listening to during a stressful week.

The Racnoss struck me as dumb in their first appearance, and this play hasn’t done much to disabuse me of that impression. That said, this played enough with interesting Doctor Who themes of peace and conflict that it won me over anyway.

Interesting art, and some interesting ideas (like a foulmouthed human being transported to a land of animal wizards). I think there’s something here, even if I’m not totally hooked.

Ce tome n’est pas moins mignon que les précédents, et il y a des cases qui nous ont bien fait rire ! Pourtant, alors que les trois premiers tomes ont été une seule trilogie bien conçue, ce tome ressemble plutôt aux suites qui arrivent après un succès médiatique, qui sont peut-être bons mais qui n’ont pas forcément la même qualité ou plan organisateur.

The beginning of this book felt like a bit of a slog, which felt tragic because I knew the book had all the elements I like in sci-fi! It eventually won me over, though, and I’m glad I stuck with it.

The art is good, and there are elements of a rollicking time travel romp hidden in here, but the story ultimately comes down to tech bros doing what they want because they have the power to, and we’re lucky that they decided to have a conscience at the end. That is not the kind of story I want to read in 2026.

I’ve read this too many times in the past two decades for it to feel as innovative and interesting as it once did, but it remains good!

On commence à voir pourquoi Andor s’est inspiré de cette série ! Au bout de douze épisodes, je commence à mieux connaître les personnages et à choisir des préférés parmi eux. En avant !