What is keeping you entertained?

Hey everyone! I thought it might be nice to have a casual thread going where we can share any books, TV shows, movies, podcasts, videos, etc. that we are enjoying or have recently enjoyed. It doesn't have to be anything novel - just something that you don't mind sharing!

This topic is actually something I'd thought of making a few times in the past, but hadn't been sure if anyone would be interested. But after seeing pof Firouzeh's thoughtful thread about OOC community building, and with pof Otty's mention there of making something along the lines of book/cooking/etc clubs, I thought, maybe...? We'll see if this sticks! :)

I've been watching King of the Hill for quite a while now (there's a lot of it to watch! I'm nearly to the end), and really loving it. It absolutely bears the hallmarks and baggage of its era, and you can 100% tell it's early 2000s media because it very consciously refers to issues of the day regularly, but underneath it's so genuinely wholesome and timeless in its portrayal of interpersonal relationships. I love all of the characters, even if they make me cringe regularly. They're all just so real. They feel like people that you know in your own life, whether as part of your own family or community or through stories you've been told. They're all deeply flawed and they make a lot of mistakes, but it always comes back to the way that in the end they'll have each other's backs, in whatever odd form that might take.

As a side note, has anybody ever based a character off of a TV show character? Because I'm deeply tempted at times to craft my own ode to Dale...

Reading-wise, I've recently picked up the Murderbot Diaries and I'm really enjoying them so far, but I'm not far in. Any other Murderbot fans in the chat?

A friend gave me the first muderbot book and said "this sounded like you," but I did not care for her tone! She was right though. I haven't moved on but it was great and a quick read. You might enjoy Set My Heart To Five, which I loved very much - it's set in the near future and about an android who is on the run and determined to write the great american screenplay. It's not really hard futuristic scifi but it does have that exploration of like what it means to be artificial.

Right now I'm reading Roland Rogers Isn't Dead, which is about a dead movie star who can manifest as an orb of electricity who hires a ghostwriter to publish his memoir before anyone figures out he's dead. It's wild and I'm expecting the author and the orb of electricity will fall in love by the end? So far highly recommended. Before that was a reread of The Golem and the Jinni which is a very cool early 1900s New York story about a lady golem whose husband dies and a jinni who gets accidentally released - the author wrote a follow-up that I didn't love anywhere near as much, so instead I just reread the first one every now and then.

I sold books for 25 years before moving to my current profession so I could do this all day!

Ahhh! I loved The Golem and the Jinni! I also give this book a hearty +1 for anyone who is thinking of picking it up. :) I did see that Helene Wecker wrote a follow-up, but haven't felt a strong desire to read it, partly because I felt that The Golem and the Jinni worked so well as a standalone novel.

On my end, I am a latecomer to watching Ted Lasso, and absolutely loved the first season! So incredibly heartwarming! I'm most of the way through season two right now, and adore how endearing and very human all the characters are in their various ways. What a great ensemble cast. <3

Pof Otty, I can't say that I've ever based my own character deliberately off a TV show character, but I always felt like it would be so fun to see or make someone who channeled a similar energy to Chrisjen Avasarala from The Expanse series, whether inspired by the TV show version or book version of her! I'm not so great at being witty and excoriating on my feet, though, so any attempt by me would fall short, haha. But one can dream! :)

Pof Alun, your former career sounds amazing!

Loooooved the Golem and Djinni. You can probably see its not-so-subtle influence all throughout my backstory, lol. No prizes for guessing who my favourite character was. I didn't know there was a sequel! I might check it out. I really admire Wecker's ability to capture such a strong sense of time and place.

At the moment I'm revisiting a fantasy series I read and remember enjoying as an impressionable youth: the Legendsong Saga by Isobelle Carmody. Or what exists of it, as it's for now unfinished. She's an Aussie author whose other works I'm not familiar with, but a fun anecdote is that she actually visited my school to give a talk and promote one of her children's books back in the 90's. I sadly don't remember a single thing about the event apart from that I thought her hair was very pretty. Perpetual daydreamer; some things don't change.

Darkfall (first book in the saga) is pretty good so far. Some bits haven't aged too well but for the most part, it's a fun read. All the lore about the Song of Making just makes me think about Avaria now though, haha.

Well I suppose with all the endorsements here I know what goes on my reading list next... thanks for the rec guys! 😎 My latest finished read was Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland, which is highly entertaining, to say the least. Definitely recommended if you are after pure chaos muppet shenanigans, which I sometimes often am (who would have guessed?). Also making my way slowly through Moby Dick, just to be able to post on forums and brag to friends and flex that I'm in fact reading Moby Dick 😂 Honestly though it's pretty incredible so far, it just takes a lot more effort and attention to read than... well, Running Close to the Wind, for example >.>

In visual media... rewatching The Good Place, which always sparks joy. Such an incredible show, honestly, one of my all-time favourites.

Also on the recent list, The Kings of Tupelo miniseries on Netflix is wild, absolutely fascinating and hilarious, heaps of character inspiration there to file away for use someday! 🤣

"Well I suppose with all the endorsements here I know what goes on my reading list next... thanks for the rec guys! 😎"

Yay, join us! 🙌 🙌 😂

Speaking of long and somewhat intimidating classic books... I've never actually read The Count of Monte Cristo despite thinking about it every now and then, and now I'm inspired to try and fit it into my reading list. TY! :)

Thanks everyone for posting, I’ve added a bunch of these books to my reading list! Murderbot Diaries is definitely one of my favorite series, I love reading about Murderbot’s perspective on things. Recently I’ve been reading a bunch of Adrian Tchaikovsky books, and I’m on the third book in his Tyrant Philosophers series right now. The cast of characters is pretty varied and interesting, and the world-building is great!

One of his other series, The Children of Time, is also one of my favorites. Without getting too much into spoilers, there’s a lot of nonhuman perspectives that Adrian Tchaikovsky is great at writing. There are a lot of spiders though, fair warning.

The Southern Reach series is also really interesting, especially the first one. A lot of weird phenomenon in those books, which I love. The author, Jeff VanderMeer, was inspired by their hiking trip through a wildlife refuge in Florida, and there’s a really strong sense of place.

The Imperial Radch trilogy by Ann Leckie is a cool one, with the main character being a former space ship AI uploaded into a human body. The spin offs of the series, like Radiant Star and Translation State, really expand on the world. Her other novel The Raven Tower also has a cool take on gods in a fantasy setting.