Forgive me for my absence, Reader, for I have forsaken you. It has been three weeks since my last blog post.
(I did tell you up front that this back-to-blogging thing might not be terribly consistent for a bit, didn’t I?)
Reading, ‘Riting…and Not a Lot of Either
I’m still working my way through Big Little Lies in print. When I get a block 
of time to spend with it I move right along, but those blocks of time are (still) tough to come by. I still think I’d get through it this way faster than I would the TV series, though.
I’m in between audiobooks right now and have been commuting with podcasts for the last week or so. I had a bit of book hangover from my last audiobook, Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. Suburban family drama is one of my kryptonite genres, and Ng was good at it with her first novel, Everything I Never Told You. I thought she did it even better in this one, and I wasn’t ready to jump straight into another book after finishing it.
I Heard It Through the Car Stereo
For the last few days, I’ve been binge-listening at the intersection of TV, podcasts, and audiobooks. Previously.TV recently launched a return to its roots in the TV-recap site Television Without Pity (of blessed memory, RIP). It’s posting Epic Old-School Recaps of a select group of shows, written by some of the original site’s original writers. But because it’s harder these days to make time to read online epics, the recaps are also read aloud and recorded. I’ve barely started Season 2 of The Crown, but I’m almost finished with it in recap form…and I’m loving it.
When I get to the end of The Crown, I have the latest episode of Hit Parade next in my podcast queue. During my middle- and high-school years I was mildly obsessive (is that a thing?) about the music charts. I listened to “American Top 40” every weekend and recorded each week’s countdown in a series of spiral notebooks. The notebooks are long lost, but their contents are still lodged in my head. Thanks to them, I have a freakish ability to correctly identify songs from the mid-1970s through the following decade and place them the correct year. This once-a-month music podcast totally understands that obsession. Bonus: almost every episode reminds me of an old favorite song that’s been missing from my library.
…And the Rest
February is the shortest month on the calendar, and it will be an even shorter one for work for me. I have a five-day weekend coming up while my son spends a few days with us on his return trip from Australia. (One more thing I’ve been reading–his Facebook updates from Down Under.) Two weeks after that, it’s another five-day weekend, hanging with fellow Whovians at Gallifrey One. It will probably be one more month that’s short on reading, though.
I thought the Crown was really well done and am sad that it is ending after only two seasons.
But it’s NOT ending! They’re changing the cast and moving forward in time for season 3.
You just made my day!
There is a local radio station here that plays old Weekly Top 40 broadcasts all weekend long. Jim and I always try to figure out what year it is by the banter Rick Dees and Casey Kaseem make between songs. It is all sorts of awesome!