Starter Villain by John Scalzi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Just like Scalzi’s previous book, The Kaiju Preservation Society, this one is a real popcorn book. It’s also got a pretty silly movie-inspired premise and I consider them to be in a meta series.

As the book blurb says, our protagonist inherits his Uncle’s villainy business (think Dr Evil and Scott in Austin Powers). Because Scalzi has good writing chops, this turns out to actually be a pretty neat story and not one overly long joke. Just like The Kaiju Preservation Society I feel like this story ends just as it’s really getting started. In a way, both of these books have the feel of a short story with the length of a novel. It’s the only real criticism I have and the biggest reason for just 4 stars.

Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

this is my second time reading the book. The rating remains 4/5 stars.

I didn’t remember liking this book so much given the fact that I’m not much of a fan of time loops, at least, not since I got use to the idea. (I remember thinking the Terminator/Terminator 2 time loop was pretty neat) But, as in the best of Pratchett’s books, this one only incidentally has the time loop to set the plot in motion. It’s really a character study about Samuel Vimes. By this point Pratchett has been building him up and getting the audience to really understand how he works. This book puts it all to the test by asking him to make some impossible choices.

Golden Age and Other Stories by Naomi Novik

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A neat collection of short stories that take place in the world of the Temeriare series. Some of them are simultaneous with the series and some take place afterwards. It’s a fun little reunion with our friends from the last 9 books.

Volley’s Cow: Almost microfiction length short story in which we find out a bit more about how the draconic parliamentary participation is going.

In my 2022 year-end blog post, I thought I was going to focus more on finishing up the narrative video games I started in the prior years. I definitely made some good progress on Disco Elysium, but not nearly as much as I wanted. I didn’t finish any of the narrative games. In January, I didn’t play any video games as I worked on my end of the year blog posts. In February I got re-obsessed with Monster Train and spent a good chunk of my free time trying to unlock all the boss characters.  In March and April I tried to get a little more consistent about my gaming and also started trying to take advantage of all the extra buttons in the gaming mouse that Dan got me for Christmas. In June we took a bunch of family vacations and so I got back into Gwent, which I could play on my phone and my non-gaming laptop. In July I was back to Monster Train. In August, as the advertising hype started picking up on Cities: Skylines II, I started spending a lot of time playing the original game. Once the game came out in October, I spent nearly all of the next two months playing it. Then, out of nowhere, I heard just enough about Against the Storm to buy it and it was all I could do, almost to the exclusion of all else.

I’m all-in on 8bitDo. Prior to getting on the 8bitDo train, I was mainly focused on PC gaming, so I would get Xbox controllers (whatever the latest was at the time). But with 8bitDo supporting PC, Switch, Android, and (I think) the Xbox and PS4/5 with addaptors - it’s a no-brainer to go with 8bitDo, especially since you can choose the form factor most comfy to you - PS/Switch Style with the Pro or Xbox style with the Ultimate.

League of Dragons by Naomi Novik

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A perfect ending to the Temeriare series. There’s finally an ending to the Napoleonic threat - I won’t say whether it follows the same trajectory as in our world. But, more importantly, we finally begin to see dragons finally understand their place in society. Novik intelligently began the series with Laurence the son of an abolitionist and made it clear that if the dragons were indeed sentient, that they had a parallel claim to recognition. Without spoiling what happens in this book, I’m delighted to have seen Perscitia’s role in things.

Mislaid in Parts Half-Known by Seanan McGuire

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Since this novella only just came out on Tuesday (a few days ago), I’m going to be very careful about any spoilers other than what can easily be inferred from the back of the book description.

McGuire has formed a main clique from the student body at Eleanor’s School For Wayward Children who have been the main characters since the first book (with a few exceptions). Once again we follow the clique as they disregard the No Quests rule. I think this book serves as a satisfying sequel to the main Antsy. It also reveals more about the backstories of Eleanor and Kade that seem to be setting up a final climax. I don’t know if McGuire has stated elsewhere if the series will end at 10 books, but if it does, I expect it will at least hinge on Eleanor’s story. If I had to make predictions, it would probably also involve resolving the story set up when we finally saw the inside of the Whitehorn Institute, but McGuire likes to keep things complex. If you look back over the series, not every protagonist has gotten a happy ending. And even some of the supposed happy endings may be “happiest possible” rather than simply happy - think of the Woolcott Twins.

Another year has ended and so it’s time to take a look at the music I listened to all year. First of all, it was yet another year in which I grew my personal music collection. I’ve seen more an more artists removed from places like Spotify, Apple Music, etc, so it’s still important to me to own my music.

• New albums
  • C. Tangana - El Madrileno.
  • Chill Hop Music - Essentials Winter 2022(?), Essentials Spring 2023, Essentials Summer 2023, Essentials Fall 2023, Winter essentials 2023
  • The Midnight - Monsters
  • Anberlin - Convinced
  • MxPx - Southbound to San Antonio, Find a Way Home
  • Thundercat - It is What It Is
  • Seeming - The Birdwatcher’s Guide to Atrocity
  • Lzls - discography - mostly vaporwave covers of Final Fantasy music
  • The Pirates of Drinax (part of a humble bundle)
  • Rifti Beats - Chocobo and Chill
  • Smooth McGroove - New Super Mario Bros Overworld Theme
  • The One-Ups - Secrets of the Forest (Solid Gold version)
  • Less Than Jake/ Kill Lincoln - Wavebreaker 1
  • Haircuts for men - sampler
  • Girl Ultra - Adios
  • Una Noche Con Ruben Blades
  • Submotion Orchestra - Kites
• Gifts
  • Orquesta Akokan - 16 Rayos (gifted)
  • Prince Welcome 2 America (gifted)
  • Herbie Hancock - 5 original albums (gifted)
  • Taylor Swift - Midnights (gifted)
  • Gorillaz - Cracker Island  (gifted)
  • Lana Del Rey - Did you know there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd?  (gifted)
  • Rosalia - MOTOMAMI  (gifted)
  • The Weeknd - Dawn FM  (gifted)
  • Chance the rapper - the big day  (gifted)
  • Childish Gambino - 3.15.20, summer singles  (gifted)
  • Marina - ancient dreams  (gifted)

A few other things happened in 2023 to affect the trends. Early in 2023 I asked Dan for suggestions for Spanish non-dance music and he gave me a couple suggestions. The one that I really liked a lot was C. Tangana and his album El Madrileno. It’s a great album and I listened to it a few times. Continuing with Spanish music, the Alt. Latino Podcast introduced me to the band called “Daniel, Me Estas Matando”. Their music reminds me a lot of the music the older generations used to listen to when I was a kid. Finally, Alt Latino also had an interview with Karol G and I listened to her on Spotify for a few days in a row.

Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is my second time reading this book. I left the rating at 3/5

I debated dropping the rating to 2 stars (“It was OK”), but Lu-Tze was enough to keep it at 3 stars. I am not sure if we learned his name back then, but I think we’re meant to associate him with the person who nudged Brutha in Small Gods. (Or maybe it was explicitly stated, but while reading a few books at once and stretching this one out over months, I’ve forgotten) He’s definitely in Night Watch, so Pratchett had fun with the character.

Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 112, September 2019 by John Joseph Adams

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Even though AI has been a constant subject in science fiction for nearly 100 years now, it’s interesting reading the two AI-related stories in the 2023, the year of ChatGPT. Although ChatGPT is still far away from general AI, the trope seems to be closer than ever to becoming a reality and so makes reading these stories feel a little different.