So, I like audiobooks just fine, but I use them mostly to reread books I liked the first time around (I have a bad habit of skimming when I read – audiobooks force me to not skim). One of my favorite M/M authors turned me on to Chirp. Their regular prices are about par with audibles – that is, pricey and not-worth-it to me, mostly – but every day they send out an email with daily deals. So when suddenly they offer “Red, White and Royal Blue” for $2.99 or whatever, sure, I’ll grab that. And one day they offered “Starship Troopers”, so I was like, oo, absolutely. Turns out they had a bunch of Heinlein for cheap, so I bought several of them.
I’d just finished Andy Weir’s “Artemis”, and John Varley’s “Steel Beach” was my favorite SF novel for years, so clearly I have a thing for “moon colony” stories, but that was probably engendered by The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, one of my favorite Heinleins. And you better believe I grabbed that one when Chirp offered it for cheap. So it’s now my current audiobook, turned to usually after I finish some long podcast, and it’s awesome. The book is hella entertaining, and I’m realizing now that it was probably also somewhat responsible for my lifelong love of computers. The protagonist, Manny, who uses a lot of Russian slang, is given a Russian accent in the narration, and I thought it would be super-annoying, but actually, no, it works fine, particularly since the other main characters (Mike the computer, Wyoh) don’t have accents. Anyway, I’m enjoying the hell out of it. Not sure if I have a point, except getting the Chirp daily email is worth it for the opportunity to pick up entire audiobooks for real cheap, and that if you haven’t read “Moon” or “Steel Beach”, you absolutely should.
(side note: I was reminded recently of, and astonished all over again, that they made a movie of the Heinlein short story “All You Zombies…” called Predestination. It’s pretty good! Spoiler alert: through the magic of time travel, the protagonist is his own parents, creating a teeny little genealogical loop.)
My current print book is a history of the D’Oyly Carte company, which I’m enjoying reading in small slices. And on the Kindle, I’m still rotating through books like “Nomadland”, “Motherless Brooklyn”, and a reread of the Baroque Cycle (which I also picked up for cheap as an ebook, already having it in hardback and audiobook form). And I read a shit-ton of M/M books over the last two weeks, like one a day. It’s starting to feel like I need to cut down… not that it’s an expensive hobby, more a matter of time management.
My schedule is filling up! One thing I really need to do this weekend is update the calendar. People are coming into town, we’re doing the French Horn Nation thing in a few weeks, lots going on. Yeah, I need to switch from piano to horn for my practice slot of a few weeks – haven’t played since last June. It’s fine, I miss it, and I’m in a good spot to take a break from piano for a bit.
What else? TV-wise, we finished “DCI Banks” and am giving “The Good Doctor” a try while waiting for the complete season of “The Handmaid’s Tale” to finish dropping. We both really like Good Doctor, we haven’t watched a medical drama in a while. (I often have to hide my face when they show surgery or needle stuff.) And we finished season 4 of “Kim’s Convenience”, just a tad too early because season 5 doesn’t drop until next week. But season 2 of “Special” is now available so we’re doing that. Then we’ll finish KC (can I just remark again about how wonderful KC is? You should totally watch it.) and then I think finish what we haven’t seen from “The Kominsky Method”.
Hitting the start of summer with things being in basically a good place feels like some sort of milestone. I took myself out for a special lunch yesterday: went whole hawg with a glass of prosecco, a nice salad, penne a la vodka with shrimp, tiramisu and cappuccino. Yeah, it was a lot of money, but, you know, special, and I will have to remember to do that once or twice a year, it was really nice.
Of course, my hope is by Labor Day, which starts our cycle of once-a-month special events that are worth going out to nice restaurants to celebrate, things will be fully open and C will be moving well enough to not have to think about the logistics of it.
Happy summer!
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