nbbkatherine

[nbbkatherine]

Come home, the kettle’s whistling

I Saw The TV Glow, 2024 Jane Schoenbrun movie. Our Wives Under the Sea novel by Julia Armfield; 1899 tv show; Piranesi novel by Susanna Clarke.

xxx

You have forgotten something very, very important. You are lost and you are loved, you have wandered far and don’t know the way back and somewhere someone begs: “come home.” This is a story arc that is extremely dear to me. 

Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow is an homage to classic horror rendered in gorgeous color, it’s a coming-of-age story about transformative media, it’s a harrowing allegory for the trans experience with a warning. It begins as Owen and Maddy, teenagers in a small town, tentatively become friends via their shared love for The Pink Opaque, a tv show about the supernatural. As the film progresses, it forces the audience to confront the absolute horror that is never becoming the person you were always meant to be. And when I say force, I mean this movie grabs you by the throat and makes you cry about it. I watched it in theaters twice in a week because I simply could not stop thinking about it.

Of the main character, I have this to say—she’s a coward, and she’s the bravest person I know.

xxx

You have wandered far, and in that wandering, you have changed. Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield is also queer horror, but this time centered around a married couple, Miri and Leah, switching between POVs and timelines in deliciously detailed and unsettling prose. Leah, a marine biologist, has finally returned after what should have been a three week deep sea dive stretches out for months; Miri is desperate for answers and wondering if Leah’s technical return to land is a return to home at all.

You are lost and you are loved and somewhere someone begs: “wake up.” While en route to New York City from Southampton, all the compasses on board steamship Kerberos break—and it just gets weirder from there. Netflix tv show 1899 features passengers and crew speaking a dazzling array of languages at each other, each with their own secrets, all trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Deeply ominous and meticulously plotted, this show will keep you guessing start to finish.

You have forgotten something very, very important, but the House is beautiful, and you are comforted. It is the Fifth Month in the Year the Albatross came to the South-Western Halls, and Piranesi wanders the Vestibules and Halls of the House, documents the Tides, and occasionally meets up with the Other to discuss Secret Knowledge. The story unfolds as you slowly start to realize just how Piranesi came to live in the House—strong contender for best book I’ve read this year, Piranesi by Susanna Clarke broke my heart.

[nbbkatherine]

Signed, sealed, delivered, I’m yours

Cyrano, 2021 Joe Wright film. The Phantom of the Opera, 2004 Joel Schumacher film and Gaston Leroux novel; I Am Easy to Find album by the National; Pride and Prejudice novel by Jane Austen and 2005 Joe Wright film.

Based on a stage musical, book by Erica Schmidt, itself an adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play, Cyrano stars Peter Dinklage as Cyrano de Bergerac, a soldier with dwarfism, in love with his childhood friend Roxanne. Unfortunately for him, Roxanne takes one look at Christian, a handsome but rather ineloquent new recruit to Cyrano’s company, and declares she has fallen in love. Afraid to confess his own feelings, Cyrano writes beautiful love letters to Roxanne on Christian’s behalf.

I watched Cyrano on a plane flying home from SFO this past weekend, knowing basically nothing going in—not even that it was a musical. Then all of a sudden Roxanne started singing, and it only got better from there—love it when you find something so thoroughly delightful practically by accident. In particular I adored how the choreography creates such a dreamy and romantic atmosphere (10/10 amazing job Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui) as backdrop for the excellent score; overall, it’s a gorgeous movie to watch.

The Half of It, 2020 Alice Wu movie featured in Baby if you love me, won’t you please just give me a smile?, is modern retelling of the Cyrano story.

For another filmed version of a stage musical about two men, one conventionally attractive, one not, both in love with the same woman, try The Phantom of the Opera. I don’t care what musical theater snobs say, it’ll always be special to me. But if musicals aren’t your thing, you may still like the Gaston Leroux Gothic romance/mystery novel it’s based on—it leans darker than the musical, we get more of the Phantom’s backstory and how he came to live deep underneath the Paris Opera House.

My favorite song from Cyrano is “Wherever I Fall - Pt. 1,” which absolutely stomped on my heart. Music and lyrics from the musical were written by Matt Berninger, Aaron Dessner, and Bryce Dessner of the National, along with Carin Besser, who also sometimes writes lyrics for the band. I like falling asleep listening to their album I Am Easy to Find; my favorites are the titular song, with its slow, repeating chorus, “Not in Kansas,” and “Light Years.”

If you’re a fan of the romantic pining and clever wit of Cyrano, like period drama, and daydream about exchanging handwritten letters, then Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is for you. Although there are many adaptations, I have to say my favorite is the 2005 movie, coincidentally by the same director as Cyrano, Joe Wright.

[nbbkatherine]

Aye aye, captain

Our Flag Means Death, tv show. Black Sails, tv show; Avenue Five tv show; The Princess Bride book by William Goldman and 1987 Rob Reiner movie.

xxx

I usually don’t love when reviews start off with a list of representation things, but it really does have to be said—multiple explicitly queer romances!! Including between the two main characters!!! Nonbinary character who uses they/them pronouns!!!!

In Our Flag Means Death, an HBO original, we meet Stede Bonnet, a wealthy landowner who bought himself a ship and is attempting to become a pirate. He’s got lots of ideas on piracy and a fabulous auxiliary wardrobe, but very little practical experience. Enter Blackbeard, the most fearsome pirate on the seas, who’s grown a bit bored lately with the raiding and fighting and whatnot.

It’s a lovely, funny show with an incredible supporting cast getting up to wacky adventures and surprisingly sweet, tender moments. It’s about going after the things you want and finding what makes you happy and learning what a snail fork is and how to get stabbed while missing all the important bits.

xxx

Black Sails walked so that Our Flag Means Death could run. Following queer pirates sailing around the Bahamas, Black Sails is technically a prequel to Treasure Island, but you don’t need to know anything about the Robert Louis Stevenson story to enjoy this show, currently on Hulu. Do give it a couple episodes to get going, I think the first few introduce too many characters at once and it’s hard to keep them all straight, but once past that I love the way just about each character gets a fully developed backstory and set of motivations that really drives the different plot lines and gets you invested in the conflict.

Another crew sailing around with totally unearned confidence in their abilities—but this time, it’s in space! Avenue Five, also on HBO, is set on a space tourist ship which has been knocked off course, adding three years onto their journey time. Okay, sure, no need to panic—except unfortunately the captain is a figurehead hired to wear a nice hat and smile at passengers and everything is totally out of control. Fun times!

If you liked the humor of Our Flag Means Death but were looking for something a touch more magical, try The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, The “Good Parts” Version by William Goldman. The story of a farm boy, a beautiful young woman, a criminal genius, a master swordsman, a wrestler, a prince, a man with six fingers, presented as an abridgment of a longer story that was once read to the author as a child. The Princess Bride was also adapted into a wonderful 1987 movie, both versions are excellent.

[nbbkatherine]

and poems exist; poems, days, death

The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander. Alphabet by Inger Christensen, translated by Susanna Nied; The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi; art by Evan M Cohen.

How do you leave a message for the future, when the future is almost unimaginably far away? How do you craft a warning that can last for 10,000 years? How do you tell a people who may remember nothing of today’s world—from its languages to its writing systems to maybe even the fact that we ever existed at all—that this place is not safe, that there is something dangerous here? These are the questions at the heart of nuclear semiotics—how to communicate long term nuclear waste warnings. In The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander, a story about memory and radium girls, scientists propose a possible answer: elephants.

Tying together a cast of characters, each with their own unique voice, I love the way this novella builds a story of scale. One girl, mostly powerless against a system that was only ever built to use her up, never protect her; one scientist, trying to build a movement that can last millennia; a heartbreaking last stand, raging against injustice.

If you enjoyed the whimsical writing of The Only Harmless Great Thing, try Alphabet by Inger Christensen, a poem about the beauty of the world and the horror of the things that can destroy it. Following a rigid structure, each section focuses on a letter of the alphabet and contains a number of lines following the Fibonacci sequence. Gorgeously translated into English by Susanna Nied, it begins simply, delicately, like this: “apricot trees exist, apricot trees exist” and then “bracken exists; and blackberries, blackberries;/bromine exists; and hydrogen, hydrogen”.

Capitalism will kill you if it can. In The Only Harmless Great Thing, and also in real life in the 1920s, factory workers drew numbers on clocks with radium paint, with terrible consequences to their health. Among other things, The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi is also a story of worker exploitation, but this time set in futuristic Thailand, when most of the world’s agricultural industry is held hostage by calorie companies, who sell sterile, genetically modified seeds.

@evanmcohen is one of my favorite artists right now—I adore the way he uses simple and beautiful prose, halftone dot texture, limited color palettes, and careful composition to create sequential art. In particular check out his Life series; as one panel morphs into the next, figures dissolve into water, hands become flowers, a sun rises and sets and transforms into a bird. “When is the next time I will see you?” asks one work. “I can’t wait to finally see you again,” says another.

[nbbkatherine]

Jewel Beetle

The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Collage artwork by Maya Land; The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern; 2020 Autumn de Wilde Emma. film.

With a flight pushed back by an hour due to weather, I recently had some time to kill at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. Luckily for me, ORD has several locations of Barbara’s Bookstore, a surprisingly well-curated chain. I picked up The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and didn’t even mind my delay.

Rotating between three points of view, we first meet Hector Auvray, a telekinetic performer who can manipulate decks of cards or spin mirrors in dizzying patterns on stage with his mind. He’s back in town after years away, eager to met with the beautiful and sophisticated Valérie Beaulieu, who has married rich and married well. But first, he bumps into Valérie’s husband’s cousin Nina, who like him also possesses a talent for telekinesis and knows much more about beetles than Valérie would consider appropriate for a young lady of her station.

Deliciously dramatic—secrets, dreams, and fears are revealed as these three lives intertwine. I couldn’t put it down, it was such a delight to read.

I think Nina would love the artwork of Maya Land. Surrealist collage, with carefully hand-cut vintage magazine images, I think she’d appreciate how Maya layers together fancy, formal architecture with flora and fauna out of place. As Nina herself often feels out of place in the parties of Loisail, when she’d much rather be out looking for bug specimens in the country at Oldhouse. Check out Maya’s website or Etsy for more, these are some of my favorites.

The Beautiful Ones features gorgeous, lush, descriptive writing and also an ambitious magician love interest. If you’re into that, also try The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. I first read this book sometime around 2014 and it was so good it felt life changing. I didn’t reread it for the longest time, scared it wouldn’t be all that I remembered—but when I finally did last year—it was just as wonderful as the first time. A magical story about a magical circus and the performers and visitors that wander amongst its black and white tents.

Beneath the magic of The Beautiful Ones, it’s at heart a novel of manners, beginning as Nina makes her debut in Loisail’s Grand Season. Other classic examples of this genre include works by Jane Austen; I highly recommend the 2020 Autumn de Wilde film adaptation Emma. The costuming is not only beautiful but, according to fashion historians, quite accurate to the time period as well. Plus, it stars Anya Taylor-Joy as the titular busybody.

[nbbkatherine]

The Update Edition

Sheldon webcomic by Dave Kellett; Fermat’s Last Enigma by Simon Singh; WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? by Billie Eilish; Ultralife by Oh Wonder; The Breakfast Club 1985 John Hughes movie; Murder on the Orient Express book by Agatha Christie and 2017 Kenneth Branagh movie; 20020: The Future of College Football by Jon Bois; Wake Up Calls by Cosmo Sheldrake; Serenity 2005 Joss Whedon movie; For the Win by Cory Doctorow; AI Weirdness blog by Janelle Shane; SATURATION III by BROCKHAMPTON; total serene by Gang of Youths; Gone Now by the Bleachers; Crash Course YouTube channel; xkcd webcomic by Randall Munroe; Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo.

I found Drive by Dave Kellett, featured in my first post Really Big Worms, via his other webcomic Sheldon, which has wildly different subject matter—tales of a boy genius, his grandfather, and his pet duck—but still has that distinctive art style and sense of humor. It’s just a very wholesome and nerdy strip, read it when you’re looking for a smile or a justification to just go ahead and eat that cookie.

In On Computability I recommend The Code Book by Simon Singh; also by him is Fermat’s Enigma, on the search for the proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem—a problem that’s easy to explain, but ended up taking over four hundred years to solve. Focused more on the history of the theorem than the math involved, don’t worry, you don’t need any advanced math experience to read this book.

Billie Eilish’s EP dont smile at me was featured in Non je ne regrette rien and since publishing that blog post she’s also released her first album WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? Several great songs on there, but my favorite is probably “bury a friend,” which has a beautifully creepy music video.

If you liked Oh Wonder by Oh Wonder (Next!), also check out their second album Ultralife. Similar vibes to the first, my favorite off this one is “Heavy,” which gets stuck in my head so easily. The music video is very cute, with Anthony and Josephine Vander West, drunk on whiskey, captured dancing around in 2665 photographs.

John Hughes, director of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off from A Year in Review, is of course the king of 80s teen movies. See also The Breakfast Club, such a classic, starring of course in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions: the brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess, and the criminal.

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, featured in Just you, and me, and this gun, is just one out of over 60 mystery novels written by the Queen of Crime. I also loved Murder on the Orient Express, which was adapted into a decent and star studded 2017 Kenneth Branagh movie.

17776: What Football Will Look Like in the Future by Jon Bois (And So On) is truly one of my favorite works of fiction and works well as a stand-alone, so imagine my surprise and delight when he published a sequel, 20020: The Future of College Football, which is just as good if not even better. Nick Navarro and Manny Baez are iconic as San Diego State football players.

If your favorite song off The Much Much How How and I by Cosmo Sheldrake (Strange and Yet Familiar) was “Pliocene,” whose beat is composed of noises from various endangered animals, try his album Wake Up Calls, where each song samples recordings of different endangered British birds. Truly he’s one of the most unique composers and producers I’ve ever heard, my favorite from this album is “Cuckoo.”

Firefly, a tv show featured in The Family We Made Along the Way, was famously and disappointingly canceled after only fourteen episodes, but did get a follow-up movie in 2005—Serenity. Watch to see what the crew of the titular spaceship get up to after the tv show’s timeline ends.

In Connecting the Dots I recommend Homeland by Cory Doctorow as a novel that teaches you something while you’re reading. All his books are like that—try For the Win for a tale of video games, economics, and labor rights, available to download for free, like all his books, from his website. A topical read considering the union rights protests and the rise of NFTs right now, even though this book was originally published in 2010. 

My introduction to Janelle Shane, who wrote You Look Like a Thing and I Love You, was through her blog AI Weirdness. Read for fun experiments where Janelle trains a model on different kinds of text and sees what it come up with—the title of her book came from one of these, when she had a neural network look at pick up lines.

As I mention in Connecting the Dots, I’ve seen BROCKHAMPTON in concert twice—once for their album GINGER, recommended in that post, but first when they were on their Love Your Parents tour, after they released SATURATION III. They are incredible live, go listen to “BOOGIE” and tell me that doesn’t make you want to dance.

Why yes, I am still obsessed with Gang of Youths—their Go Farther in Lightness was recommended in Let’s dance, off the beat. Recently they came out with a new EP of three songs, true serene. Hard to pick, but I think my favorite has to be “unison,” which samples 70s recordings of Maori music.

If you liked Strange Desire by the Bleachers, try Jack Antonoff’s next album Gone Now. I love how the songs in this album fit together beautifully—snippets of lyrics from one song show up in another as you make your way through from “Mickey Mantle” and “Goodmorning” to “Goodbye” and my top pick and final song, “Foreign Girls.”

SciShow YouTube channel from Neverbeboredology was created by Hank Green. With author John Green, the two brothers also started educational channel Crash Course, which uploads mini courses on subjects ranging from world history to physics. I never had the time to take a class on the subject, so I really enjoyed the channel’s sixteen episode series on linguistics hosted by Taylor Behnke. 

Randall Munroe of What If? is also the creator behind xkcd, a piece of media that holds a very special place in my heart; I’ve been reading this webcomic since probably sometime around 2010. My dad and I will quote the archives to each other, and scrolling through our texts you’d find tons of xkcd references in our conversations—some recent messages link to Clinical Trials, Hell, and I Am Not Good with Boomerangs.

Finally, in This Place Hates You I recommend Dark by Leigh Bardugo, magical horror set in New Haven, Connecticut. For something a bit different, check out her excellent fantasy heist story Six of Crows, starring a thief, a spy, a merchant’s son, a witchhunter, a witch (sort of), and a sharpshooter. I do love a book where the characters spend all this time and energy to work out a rather ingenious plan that just immediately goes to hell.

[nbbkatherine]

This Place Hates You

Ninth House book by Leigh Bardugo. Dark tv show; Lovecraft Country tv show; Reservation Dogs tv show.

This place has secrets, this place has monsters, and this place hates you. Too bad you can’t just leave.

There’s some old magic in New Haven, Connecticut that makes it the perfect spot for the secret societies of Yale to play their dangerous games. In Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, Alex Stern arrives on campus as a very unusual member of the new freshmen class (coincidentally, I did a summer program at Yale one summer in high school, and going off descriptions, I’m pretty sure there’s like a 50/50 chance I lived in the exact same room Alex does in this book). Haunted by her past and also by ghosts, she is the newest member of Lethe, who oversee the other eight houses’ arcane activities.

Bardugo’s worldbuilding is incredible, with a thousand tiny, gorgeous details woven in, and the writing style will keep you hooked. It’s just something about this place, you know? None else like it. You can love it, or you can stay forever, but it won’t love you back.

From the outside, Winden might seem like just a small German town where nothing ever happens—but things have happened, are happening, will happen. In Winden, the question isn’t where—it’s when? German language Netflix original Dark is a masterpiece with impeccable casting. In 2019, a child goes missing; in 1986, a woman is starts her new job at the nuclear power plant; in 1953, a strange man arrives in town. I do recommend taking notes or drawing out the family tree as you watch, this show will melt your brain, and I mean that in the best possible way.

For African Americans in the 1950s, much of the US is a dangerous place to be. Lovecraft Country, streaming on HBO, follows Atticus Freeman, his friend Leti Lewis, and his uncle George Freeman—who writes a guide for Black travelers, recommending friendly places and warning against sundown towns. Inspired by monsters from the work of H. P. Lovecraft, I found the horror stories intertwining the lives of the characters to be absolutely terrifying, check it out for good writing and scary times.

Okay, so this place doesn’t hate you, but you definitely have a love/hate relationship with this place. Reservation Dogs on Hulu, a tv show written and directed by an all Indigenous team, tells the stories of Elora, Bear, Cheese, and Willie Jack, four teenagers on a reservation in Oklahoma who dream of leaving their problems and griefs behind and moving away to California. The best show I’ve watched in a while, it’s an excellently written comedy drawing on Native myths and the creator Sterlin Harjo’s childhood experiences as a member of the Seminole Nation.

[nbbkatherine]

A Touch of Whimsy

The Mysterious Benedict Society books by Trenton Lee Stewart and tv show. Los Espookys tv show; Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency tv show; A Series of Unfortunate Events books by Lemony Snicket.

Okay, this one’s based off ~vibes~. Think pastel sweater vests, over-the-top grandiose plans, and whimsical turns of phrase, with a hint of magic realism. First up we have The Mysterious Benedict Society, a book series I adored in middle school. A peculiar ad in the newspaper, a trio of puzzling tests, and a maze in the dark. Four bright, resourceful, curious children team up to go on a dangerous mission to Save the World! Follow along with Reynie, Kate, Sticky, and Constance on their adventures as they learn to work together and trust each other.

The first book in this series was just adapted into season one of a new Disney+ tv show, and recently got renewed for season two! Although there were a few changes from the books, I think they were mostly good choices, as a few characters got more fleshed out backstories and some extra plot lines. Plus, with fun and colorful costume and set design, it’s a very cute show to binge.

Next up, Los Espookys tv show! Tragically, there’s only six half hour episodes so far, but they’re all streaming on HBO, and what a wonderful six episodes they are. Need a little horror in your life? Hire Los Espookys to create a sea monster for your town’s tourist attraction, run a haunted house, or play at being aliens. Special shoutout to my fav, Julio Torres, who is both a writer for this show and one of the brilliant cast’s co-stars, playing the eccentric heir to a chocolate empire. 

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency tv show was also mentioned in This Might as Well Happen but I feel like it fits so well here, too. I just know Kate Wetherall from The Mysterious Benedict Society would immediately want to be friends with Dirk, and I think he’d love that she carries around a red bucket everywhere she goes. Anyway, check out this sci-fi comedy mystery show on Hulu for a wild time.

Another children’s book series to round off this list—if you liked The Mysterious Benedict Society, then you might like A Series of Unfortunate Events—I think the Benedict Society and this series’s main characters, the Baudelaire siblings, would get along famously. Over the course of thirteen books, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny get in and out of some sticky situations, as narrated by Lemony Snicket, both a character in the story and the pen name of the author, Daniel Handler.

[nbbkatherine]

You Can Do It

Ted Lasso tv show. Check, Please! webcomic by Ngozi Ukazu; The Good Place tv show; Welcome to Buteaupia Michelle Buteau comedy special.

Honestly, I did not expect to really enjoy Ted Lasso, but it was actually so unexpectedly wholesome and funny that I loved it start to finish. The titular Ted Lasso is an eternally optimistic American college football coach, who is brought in to be the new coach for the English Premier League team AFC Richmond, despite barely knowing the rules for the sport he would call ��soccer.’ Which, naturally, doesn’t endear him to his team, who would much rather win games than deal with Ted’s interesting style of coaching.

This comedy, steaming on Apple TV+, has an incredible cast of personalities (my favs are Rebecca, AFC Richmond’s fabulous owner, and Roy Kent, the team’s captain), but what really made me love the series is how characters are inspired to be better both on the field and off. Characters who make mistakes are called out, but apologize and are given room to learn. Respect and trust is earned and relationships are built stronger. Growth is celebrated. You love to see it.

Enough of football, let’s talk hockey. If you liked Ted Lasso’s team-as-family dynamic, you’ll love Check, Please! by Ngozi Ukazu, one of my all-time favorite webcomics. This lovely story follows Eric “Bitty” Bittle, pie baker extraordinaire, through his four years on Samwell University’s hockey team. Building confidence in yourself, epic bromance and also fluffy romance, excellent art, all served a la mode with a heaping of college nostalgia. 10/10, would (and have!) reread again and again.

If you liked how Ted Lasso is a comedy about friends genuinely trying to become better people, check out The Good Place, about a moral philosophy professor, a socialite and philanthropist, a Buddhist monk, and also Eleanor Shellstrop, who upon dying end up in the Good Place. A tricky situation for Eleanor, who quickly realizes that there’s been some kind of mistake and that she isn’t supposed to be there at all. Watch this show, currently on Netflix, for D’Arcy Carden’s amazing performance as Janet and for the best season one finale cliffhanger plot twist I’ve ever seen.

In Ted Lesso, an American finds humor in feeling a bit culturally lost in England. Some of my favorite bits from Netflix comedy special Welcome to Buteaupia were when New Jerseyan Michelle Buteau talked about her adventures with her husband’s family in the Netherlands. Watch for her thoughts on the struggle of becoming new parents, meeting J Lo, and some delightful life advice.

[nbbkatherine]

Watch the Master Work

Cracking the Cryptic. Ancient Greek Geometry by Nico Disseldorp; Geoguessr with Wilbur Soot; Never Too Small.

Sudoku! Nine 3x3 boxes in a square such that each row, column, and box contains the numbers 1 to 9 exactly once. At some point in your life, you’ve probably started one, gotten bored, and given up. So you’d think watching someone else do a sudoku probably wouldn’t be very interesting, right?

Counterpoint: watching Simon Anthony on Cracking the Cryptic is an excellent way to spend a few hours. I especially love the videos on non-standard sudokus with additional rules, like when two squares separated by a knight’s move in chess can’t have the same number or the ones where certain groups of squares’ digits have to add up to particular sums. Viewer’s choice on whether you want to follow along and see if you can solve the puzzle yourself, or you just want to watch the master work. The first video I watched from this channel begins with Simon staring in confusion at a grid starting with only two placed numbers, gradually discovering that the puzzle is, in fact, solvable, and contains the beautiful line “this is like the universe is singing to us.”

For another elegant logic puzzle, try Ancient Greek Geometry by Nico Disseldorp—a game that challenges you to create shapes like an octagon or seven circles nestled inside a larger one. Starting with two dots on a blank canvas, you can draw a straight line between any two points or draw a circle centered at one point and whose circumference lies on another point. That’s it—a digital straightedge and compass, but no ruler, protractor, or triangle. Good luck!

There’s something so lovely about watching someone who’s really good at something have fun doing it—that’s what I like about the Cracking the Cryptic videos. I haven’t played a ton of Geoguessr, a game in which you’re shown a street level view of a random location and have to guess where in the world you might be, but I do love watching other people play it. Wilbur Soot streams it sometimes on Twitch, or you can watch one of his videos on YouTube.

I think very few (if any?) of the sudokus Simon solves are computer generated—they’re designed by highly talented puzzle makers to be solvable in elegant ways. Plus his videos are relaxing to listen to, very zen. If you like those two elements, you might also enjoy the channel Never Too Small, in which various architects and designers walk through homes with extremely limited square footage and talk about how they’ve created beautiful and functional spaces despite their size limitations. Two of my favorites are this “tree house” apartment in Hong Kong and this flat in Melbourne.

[nbbkatherine]

Space Dust

Space Sweepers, 2021 Jo Sung-hee film. Typeset in the Future book and essays by Dave Addey; The Mandalorian tv show; Scott Listfield art.

If you’re looking for a fun sci-fi action movie, give Space Sweepers, on Netflix, a try. This Korean movie follows the crew of the Victory, a junk collector ship, as they try and make some money gathering tons of the space trash in orbit around a dying Earth. Meanwhile, the CEO of a company building bubble ecosystems—paradise in space, for only the very wealthy, of course—plans to expansions to Mars. A news broadcast warns the public of a bomb called “Dorothy” that looks like a young child.

I think the Netflix trailer makes it seem like a more serious and dramatic movie than it is, so maybe don’t watch it first and just go into Space Sweepers with an open mind. Really it’s a wonderful way to spend a Friday night, with some takeout on the sofa. If you like sassy androids, found family stories, and beautiful CGI, this one’s for you.

Small, adorable being, possibly dangerous, hunted for money, is found by badass fighters with sad backstories, who immediately go “baby!” and adopt it as their own. This is a description for both Space Sweepers and The Mandalorian, streaming on Disney+. If you like space operas, you may like this Star Wars spinoff show about a stoic bounty hunter who finds a tiny child and, somewhat against his better judgement, decides to keep it. (If you’ve never seen Star Wars, no worries, you don’t really have to know anything about the films to keep up with this tv series.)

One of my favorite tropes in sci-fi is when a character speaks in one language, and another responds in a different one, and they both understand each other because they have fancy translator headsets or whatever. In Space Sweepers, characters speak Korean, Arabic, Spanish, French, English at each other, and it all just flows—implying a multicultural setting where nearly anyone can speak and be understood. Another way language can be used in sci-fi worldbuilding is through text design—in Typeset in the Future, a series of essays also adapted into a book, Dave Addey explores how using the right typography in movies helps create the setting (short-cut tip, if you want your title cards to look futuristic, just write them in Eurostile).

In Space Sweepers, we don’t get to see much of Earth, which is undergoing a climate crisis and becoming unfit for habitation. But if we had, maybe it would have looked something like the beautiful artwork of Scott Listfield, who paints astronauts exploring the ruins of today’s world—a broken McDonald’s sign half buried in sand, a rusted and tireless car abandoned in the desert, statues covered in graffiti.

[nbbkatherine]

Neverbeboredology

Connected: The Hidden Science of Everything, documentary show. SciShow YouTube channel; Ologies podcast by Alie Ward; What If? book and webserial by Randall Munroe.

This blog is about connections between media—if you like this song off this album, try this webcomic; if you like the aesthetics of this movie, you might enjoy this tv show; if you love this podcast, you can learn more from this book. Connected: The Hidden Science of Everything is a Netflix documentary show hosted by Latif Nasser that explores connections between science and technology.

This series goes around the world—exploring dating app algorithms in France, fish health in Sweden, rainfall in South Africa, art forgery investigations in the US. It’s the kind of show that makes you amazed at how wonderful and weird our world is, how much we’ve learned about it, the things we do while living in it, how much we still don’t know. This show got me emotional learning about how ancient fish fossil dust from the Sahara gets blown over the Atlantic and is a major player in Amazon rain forrest ecology.

There’s so much out there to know! There are so many people who have studied so many things, and there’s still so many interesting questions left to answer. How wonderful!

For short n sweet science videos that will teach you something, try SciShow on YouTube. Started by Hank Green, this channel has over two thousand videos on all kinds of topics, from astronomy to zoology to breaking science news and science history. There’s something for everyone here, no matter what you’re interested in. And one thing SciShow does really well is explaining why the subject of the video is important—not just handing you some cool facts, but also talking about why scientists care about studying that subject in the first place.

If you appreciated Latif Nasser looking wide eyed in wonder at a scientist explaining some natural phenomenon and then just cracking a dad joke, then you might like the Ologies podcast, whose tagline is “ask smart people stupid questions.” In each episode, Alie Ward interviews an expert in a field—like volcanology, or paleontology, or horology—and gets them talking about how they got started, what they’re working on, what they’re most passionate about, and if their work ever causes them existential dread.

Sometimes questions aren’t possible to answer via real-world experimentation. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be answered at all! In What If?, Randall Munroe uses existing research and mathematical modeling to try and figure out what would happen if you drained the oceans, or took a swim in a spent nuclear fuel pool, or replaced the Moon with a black hole of the same mass. What If? was originally published online and was later turned into an excellent book.

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Everywhere except where you’re supposed to be

Selah and the Spades, 2019 Tayarisha Poe film. Deadly Class tv show; Thoroughbreds, 2017 Cory Finley film; Looking for Alaska, book by John Green and tv show.

There are lots of good reasons to watch Selah and the Spades. In this 2019 Tayarisha Poe film, Selah Summers runs the Spades, the most powerful faction at a fancy boarding school, selling drugs and alcohol with her best friend Maxxie to the other students at Haldwell—which also hosts the Skins, the Bobbys, the Prefects, and the Sea. The problem is that it’s senior year, and Selah hasn’t yet decided who’s going to continue her legacy after she graduates. And then, she meets Paloma.

Watch this movie, streaming on Amazon Prime, for a brilliant and diverse cast. Watch it for gorgeous aesthetics, including an incredible senior prank scene shot like something out of some high-concept art film. Watch it for the line: “Not everyone has a type. I don’t do that… I never wanted to.” And watch it for the excellent end credits song, “Infinince or Infinity” by Terence Etc., which shows up briefly in the film when Selah, seeing Paloma listening to an iPod shuffle, asks—“Doesn’t it drive you crazy that you can’t pick what song plays next?” “Not really,” says Paloma. “I mean, the right song always plays.”

Take the factions of Haldwell several levels more lethal and camp, and you’ll get the gangs of King’s Dominion in Deadly Class, a tv show based on a comic book. At this school for assassins in the 80s, the children of the Soto Vatos, the Kuroki Syndicate, Russian KGB agents, and other fun families learn the “deadly arts.” Although definitely a Bit Much at times with the gritty and the gore, this show is still a entertaining choice for fans of over-the-top dramatics.

If you liked the elite private school meets ruthless pursuit of goals vibes of Selah and the Spades, try the movie Thoroughbreds, also recommended in Non je ne regrette rien. Anya Taylor-Joy and Olivia Cooke star as Lily and Amanda, once close friends who drifted apart, now reconnecting over Lily’s hatred of her stepfather and Olivia’s suggestion of murder as a possible solution.

If your favorite part of Selah and the Spades was the senior prank scene, you might like Looking for Alaska, a story set at a boarding school in Alabama. I first read the book by John Green, which is great, but—and I never thought I’d write this—the tv show might actually be better. Both book and Hulu adaptation follow transfer student Miles Halter, collector of famous people’s last words, and his new group of friends, including one larger-than-life Alaska Young.

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Let’s dance, off the beat

Go Farther in Lightness by Gang of Youths. On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden; The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ & Amal by E. K. Weaver; Strange Desire by the Bleachers.

The latest album I’ve been listening to on repeat is Go Farther in Lightness by Australian indie rock band Gang of Youths. It’s a wild, wonderful album whose songs range from rock anthems to orchestral interludes, and from grief and loss to love and hope. I’ve watched a couple of their concerts on YouTube and they’re excellent live—check out this clip from a performance of “Let Me Down Easy” to watch singer and main songwriter Dave Le’aupepe moving and grooving and dancing across a stage.

It’s an excellent album beginning to end, worth listening to all in order. But if I had to pick just one for someone to start out with, I’d say “Keep Me In the Open” is the archetype of a Gang of Youths song—beautiful lyrics touching on struggles with faith and relationships before ending with a repeating line: “I deserve better than this.”

If your favorite song off this album was the title track “Go Farther In Lightness,” you might like Tillie Walden’s sci-fi On a Sunbeam. The song, with its poetic lyrics and slow piano, and the graphic novel, with delicate line work and a limited color palette, both create a bittersweet mood of searching for peace while feeling a little bit lost. On a Sunbeam follows a young woman named Mia—chapters alternate between her present, living on a spaceship and working construction restoring crumbling architecture, and her past, falling in love as a student at a small private school.

If you love the story of Achilles and Patroclus, your favorite song off this album was probably “Achilles Come Down.” You might also like The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ & Amal by E. K. Weaver, a webcomic which begins as Amal’s seemingly perfect life implodes and he ends up going on a cross-country road trip. Particularly at the beginning, it’s got that same self-destructive energy as “Achilles Come Down” but it ends in a beautiful place of healing and possibility.

I also recommend Strange Desire by the Bleachers, and not just because both it and Go Farther in Lightness have album covers featuring a black and white photo of a person sitting on a bed against a white wall. If your favorite song, like me, from the Gang of Youths album was “The Heart Is a Muscle,” try “I Wanna Get Better” from Strange Desire. Both have this straightforwardly optimistic energy, of being at a low point but still determinedly looking up—“It won’t hurt this way forever, it ain’t worth the overtime,” promises Dave Le’aupepe; “I’m standing on the overpass screaming at the cars hey, I wanna get better!” sings Jack Antonoff.

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Connecting the Dots

Homeland by Cory Doctorow; Charlie’s Angels, 2019 Elizabeth Banks film; Numb3rs tv show; You Look Like a Thing and I Love You by Janelle Shane; Parasite, 2019 Bong Joon-ho film; the chilliad by Molly Of Geography webserial; Westworld tv show; Future Friends album by Superfruit; Dickinson tv show; after-words bookstore in Chicago, IL; webcomic name by Alex Norris; American Gods by Neil Gaiman; GINGER by BROCKHAMPTON; Russian Doll tv show.

Woohoo it’s been two years of Never Be Bored! This blog is all about relating different types of media together, and in the twenty-five posts so far, I’ve written about over one hundred books, movies, tv shows, and more. We could plot out each of these posts on a graph—nodes for individual recommendations and edges connecting recs in the same post. So buckle up folks, today we’re going to connect those dots so that we get one, big, beautiful connected graph.

Already some of the work is done. Too Like the Lightning is featured in Really Big Worms and The R Smith Edition. Worm is featured in The R Smith Edition, All Superheroes Need Therapy, and It’s the End of the World as We Know It and I Feel Fine. The first twelve posts all got a bonus recommendation from A Year In Review. Kurt Vonnegut wrote both Slaughterhouse Five from Nonlinearity and Galápagos in And So On. Elsewhere University from Strange and Yet Familiar got a shoutout in A+ in Applied Magics.

Let’s start off easy, making connections with what we’ve already got.

Do you hear that? Arrival, from Nonlinearity, and The Vast of Night, featured in Something in the sky, are two sci-fi movies about listening to aliens. For a modern take, with lots of scenes about trying to figure out xenolinguistics, go for Arrival, but if you’d rather something creepy and retro with dramatic monologues, give The Vast of Night a try.

Takeshi Kovacs is one bad ass mother fucker who is just over this shit, but still somehow gets roped into flashy fight scenes. If you liked that character in Altered Carbon, from To Whom Am I Speaking?, you’ll like the story of Duncan Vizla, aka the Black Kaiser, an almost-retired hitman in Polar, a Year in Review bonus rec to Floor It.

Bright Star (featured in The Northwestern Edition) and Hadestown (featured in It’s an old song) are both blues/jazz/folk musicals about a double love story. Bright Star is loosely based on a Missouri folk tale, Hadetown is inspired by Greek mythology. Both are excellent.

Cosmo Sheldrake (The How How Much Much and I from Strange and Yet Familiar) and Hozier (Hozier and Wasteland, Baby! from Daisies & Death) both create music that makes you imagine old fairy magic in the forest. Cosmo Sheldrake’s “Hocking” is like what I’d envision playing at a fae celebration of summer solstice, while Hozier’s “Wasteland, Baby!” is the sad love song from after the party’s over.

And now, let’s add entirely new nodes to our graph with new recommendations to connect posts.

Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer (Really Big Worms, The R Smith Edition) is a very idea-forward book, and (one of) the catalysts that kicks off the story is a stolen newspaper article draft. Ada Palmer is a professor who researches intellectual history, and it absolutely shows in her writing as her books explore the implications of a society based on certain ideas. Cory Doctorow is another favorite author of mine who also writes idea-forward fiction—if you liked Too Like the Lightning, try his Homeland, in which Marcus Yallow is entrusted with an archive documenting government and corporate crime, and has to figure out how to publish it without getting arrested. I would also highly recommend this book, available to download for free from Doctorow’s website, if you liked The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick (Something in the sky). Although Homeland is fictional, as you read you’ll learn things too—about information security, the darkweb, evading surveillance, and protesting tips.

I want more action movies starring women, because I love a good fight sequence and watching things go boom, but I’m tired of watching men with big guns in movies with, like, one named woman character. Kingsman: The Secret Service (A Year in Review bonus rec to Non je ne regrette rien) just barely passes the Bechdel test, but I will give it a bonus point for having two badass women main characters who aren’t love interests (ugh, the bar is so low). And if you liked the aesthetic of Kingmen’s gentlemen spies, then you might like Elizabeth Bank’s 2019 reboot movie Charlie’s Angels. Naomi Scott, Ella Balinska and Kristen Stweart all kicking ass on screen? Yes, please! Continuing in that vein, see also Ocean’s 8 (Floor It) for an all-women heist crew, set on stealing diamonds from the Met Gala.

My favorite episodes of Hannibal (Daisies & Death) are the one-off monster-of-the-week type episodes, where the FBI is investigating a murder and Will Graham, profiler extraordinaire, is called in for help. If you’re into crime shows like that, try Numb3rs, streaming on Hulu, a tv show about two brothers—one, Alan, an FBI agent and the other, Charlie, a mathematician. Together they solve crimes, using fluid dynamics, disease spread modeling, wavelet analysis, and many more areas of applied math. (I learned a little about sabermetrics, the statistical analysis of baseball, from one episode, so I dropped that term in conversation with a sports-obsessed acquaintance freshman year in college. We became good friends, and I’m pretty sure that conversation was part of why.) For more on applications of mathematics to real world problems, read The Code Book by Simon Singh, featured in On Computability, which details the math theory behind creating and cracking encryption over the centuries.

The Imitation Game, a Year in Review bonus rec to On Computability, is named for an artificial intelligence thought experiment proposed by Alan Turing in 1950, before anything resembling modern computers even existed. In Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson, robots across the globe gain sentience and begin to turn against their human makers—hilariously in retrospect, I recommended this book in It’s the End of the World as We Know It and I Feel Fine back in March. Anyway, between those two extremes, where is the field of artificial intelligence today? To learn more, try You Look Like a Thing and I Love You by Janelle Shane, a truly delightful book that will both show you how far research has come and will reassure you that the robot uprising won’t be happening anytime soon.

Bad Times at the El Royale (Just you, and me, and this gun) unsurprisingly takes place at the El Royale hotel. For reasons that would be spoilers to name, the setting is essential to the plot of the film—the story could not have unfolded in the way that it did anywhere else. This is also true of Parasite, 2019 Bong Joon-ho film currently streaming on Hulu, where many scenes take place in a rich family’s house—which was actually designed and built in pieces for the movie. An absolutely incredible dark comedy/thriller, Parasite explores the things a person might just do to get ahead. For another thriller with characters willing to go to extreme lengths for their own personal reasons, try Thoroughbreds, from Non je ne regrette rien.

Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe, featured in It’s an old song, retells the story of Persephone and Hades but in a vaguely modern setting—where the two first meet in a crowded bar. For more modernized Greek myths, check out the chilliad by Molly Of Geography, a wildly funny adaptation of the Illiad. Follow along with Homer Bard, undeclared freshman Alpha Sigma Phi pledge, as he recounts the story of the epic prank war against the Trojan House. If your favorite characters from this ongoing webserial are Achilles “AC” Myrmidon and Pedro Klaus “PK” Liebling but were looking for something a little more traditional, then you might like Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles, a retelling of Illiad from the point of view of Patroclus, recommended in Is it better to speak or die?.

Firefly (The Family We Made Along the Way) is a tv show with an interesting blend of aesthetics—some people wear dusty cowboy hats and some people live in floating mansions and there’s a scene where the crew get a job to transport cattle from between planets. If you’re into that, try the tv show Westworld, streaming on HBO, about a Western-themed amusement park, populated by android hosts—who talk and dress and live as if it’s the 1800s, looking exactly like humans, with no idea that their entire world is a vacation destination for the wealthy. As the series continues and secrets are revealed, plot twists will keep you glued to the screen. See also Sense8 (To Whom Am I Speaking?), which likewise features lots of action and a cast of characters who keep secrets and deals with the question—what makes us different from each other?

In The Northwestern Edition I wrote about the different a cappella groups on campus; if you like that style of music then you might have heard of the group Pentatonix, the first a cappella group to win the Grammy for Best Instrumental Arrangement. Two members of the group, Mitch Grassi and Scott Hoying, also make up the duo Superfruit, and I adore their (synth-pop, not a cappella) album Future Friends. “Imaginary Parties” (which has an excellent music video) and “Bad 4 Us” are my song recs for Freckle and Caleb respectively, characters from The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo, the five-episode series from Baby if you love me, won’t you please just give me a smile?.

If you’re interested in queer art history, consider following Dan Vo on Instagram, one of the tour guides of the V&A’s LGBTQ tours, recommended in The Eye of the Beholder. You might also like Dickinson, an Apple TV show about Emily Dickinson growing up, writing poetry, getting into trouble with her parents, and falling in love with her friend Susan. Although it’s set in 19th century Massachusetts, the dialogue and music are thoroughly modern, which makes for a fun juxtaposition—in the first episode, Emily imagines going on a carriage ride with Death while “bury a friend” by Billie Eilish plays in the background. For more stories about the life of a queer poet, try Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde, featured in Looking Forward, Looking Back, about her experiences growing up, writing poetry, getting into trouble with her parents, and falling in love with lots of people, in 1940s and 50s New York City. 

Here’s how you spend one perfect day in Chicago: you wake up late one November Saturday. Down in the Loop, you visit the beautiful Chicago Athletic Association, which despite the name is actually a hotel, for Chicago Art Book Fair (A Year in Review bonus rec to The Northwestern Edition). You browse brightly colored lithographs and maybe pick up a zine or two. Then you take a walk north, across the river, to E Illinois and Wabash, to after-words bookstore. Down in the basement, you look through the new and used books in search of something interesting. Take your time in River North, find something good to eat, because you have plenty of time before taking the Red Line up to Argyle, to catch a performance of the The Infinite Wrench by the Neo-Futurists, featured in Next!. 

In My Favorite Shapes (This Might As Well Happen), we get to hear Julio Torres talk about, for example, an oval looking at his reflection in a pond and wishing he were a circle. Some of my favorite shapes are the pink blobs from Alex Norris’s webcomic name, three-panel comics with a repeated punchline—an excellent of example of how sometimes you don’t need a lot of fancy detail to convey emotion. For another webcomic about the absurdities of life, check out Poorly Drawn Lines by Reza Farazmand (And So On).

Forgotten gods and old magic tied to old places. In Digger (webcomic featured in The Family We Made Along the Way), a perfectly respectable wombat finds herself traveling strange lands and meeting a couple of gods (well, sort of). For another story of an ordinary person who gets caught up in the affairs of gods, try American Gods by Neil Gaiman, about an ex-convict who meets Mr. Wednesday, an American incarnation of the Norse deity Odin the All-Father. The things we are allowed to forget shape us—at one time, Odin had power because many people knew that he was real, but in this book, Mr. Wednesday is weakened because so many people have forgotten him. One of my favorite moments—in just about any written work I’ve ever read— is the line of dialogue in The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin (A+ in Applied Magics) that Revealed a Thing Forgotten. You’ll know it when you see it, and any further description would be a major spoiler.

On the scale of how much singing is involved in rap albums, on one side you have something like neo-soul Overgrown (Looking Forward, Looking Back), where Ivy Sole shows off her vocals, and on the other you have R.A.P. Ferreira’s purple moonlight pages (Something in the sky), which has more of a jazz-rap feel. Somewhere in between is GINGER by BROCKHAMPTON, which has both catchy sung hooks and rapid-fire bars; two of my favorite songs off this album are “SUGAR” and “IF YOU PRAY RIGHT.” I’ve seen them in concert twice and I look forward to being able to again, someday.

Lastly, if you liked Palm Springs, from This Might As Well Happen, a rom-com in which Nyles and Sarah fall asleep and wake up on the day of Sarah’s sister’s wedding over and over again, but were looking for something a bit darker, then you might like Russian Doll, a black comedy tv series that begins when two people keep dying and reliving the same night. For another duo of characters with great dialogue bumbling through life and death together, try Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard, featured in It’s an old song. 

Here’s a visualization of this blog, with and without labels:

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Baby if you love me, won’t you please just give me a smile?

Straight Up, 2019 James Sweeney film. The Miseducation of Cameron Post, 2018 Desiree Akhavan film; The Half of It, 2020 Alice Wu film; The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo video series

James Sweeney once sent a friend a statistical monologue he had written about why he was still single. James went on to write, direct, and star in Straight Up, where his character Todd talks about how you could calculate a binomial distribution and integrate the probability mass to calculate the chance of randomly meeting a person who fits all your requirements for someone to fall in love with. This movie, currently streaming on Netflix, is easily one of the best movies I’ve seen this year, and not just because of how much I loved that scene.

Straight Up is all about relationships—what they mean to us, how we look for them, how we value them. At the beginning of the movie, Todd tells his friends that he might not be gay, and that he wants to start dating women to improve his love life. He soon meets Rory, an aspiring actress who is smart and funny and likes the same tv shows he does.

It’s beautifully shot, excellently written LA love story, but without the typical “falling in love.” When asked in an interview about its message, James simply says that “regardless of where you’re at in your life, you are deserving of love at every stage of your life.”

For another movie about people seeking friendship and acceptance of themselves and their sexuality, try The Miseducation of Cameron Post. In 1993, Cameron is sent to a Christian conversion camp after she was caught kissing another girl. Although this 2018 movie is set nearly thirty years ago now, it’s a powerful reminder of the harm conversion “therapy” causes—and it’s still not illegal in over half of US states. 

For a cute coming-of-age film, check out The Half of It on Netflix. In small town Squahamish, Ellie and Paul become unlikely friends even though they both have a crush on the same girl. The relationship between the two grows as they learn about and support the other person—like Straight Up, this movie celebrates more types of relationships than just romantic, physical ones. 

For more queer friends hanging around LA with truly impeccable dialogue, watch The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo—you can stream all five episodes on YouTube. It’s absolutely hilarious, a wonderful portrait of this group of friends as they juggle relationships and careers. I watched the series after seeing someone post this clip, which includes one of the most iconic lines of the show.

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The Family We Made Along the Way

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman and tv show; Digger by Ursula Vernon; Firefly tv show.

Maybe the real journey was the family we made along the way. Or something like that. Anyway, sometimes a family is one Aandrisk, one Grum, a Sinat Pair, an AI, and five humans. In The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, Rosemary Harper joins the crew of the Wayfarer as they set off for a long, long trip. 

It’s more character-driven, rather than plot-driven, which gives a nice change from, like, action laser fight scenes in space. I especially love how this sci-fi novel incorporates non-human beings—no “fun alien sidekicks” here. In this world, humans certainly aren’t the most powerful people around and they aren’t the default even though humans happen to make up half the crew of the Wayfarer. 

For a book about traveling across the galaxy to build wormholes, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet still creates a lovely sense of home that feels so familiar. If you’re looking for sci-fi that’ll make you smile, give this novel a shot. 

If you prefer fantasy over sci-fi, try the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. Lyra Balacqua and her daemon Pantalaimon leave their home to go north, and on the way befriend witches, an armored bear, Gyptains, and an aeronaut. As the series continues, they travel even further from home—straight out of this world. (There’s a decent HBO tv adaptation, too, but I like the books better. The 2007 movie adaptation of the first book, however, is trash.)

Sometimes a family is a wombat who doesn’t have time for magic, a disgraced hyena, and a… what even is that thing? Digger-of-Unnecessarily-Convoluted-Tunnels, or just Digger, for short, bumps into a pocket of old magic while underground and finds herself lost and far from home when she unexpectedly burrows up through the floor of a temple. Graphic story Digger by Ursula Vernon is a beautiful, hilarious, epic read—give it a try!

If your favorite character in The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet was Kizzy Shao, mech tech extraordinaire of the Wayfarer, you’ll love Kaylee Frye, Serenity’s mechanic in the tv show Firefly. Join this crew of misfits in the outer edges of the system as they search for work as a mostly legitimate cargo ship and occasionally do some crime.