Blog

In which I briefly comment on the books I read each month, so a few years from now when I’m trying to remember one of them, I’ll be able to find it here. Since I’m a media omnivore, it also includes games, movies, and any other media of note that I engaged with.

Do we have similar tastes, or will you be questioning how we ever got connected? Let’s find out!

Books

Death in Trieste by Jason

It’s been a while since I’ve read any of Jason’s work, and although he’s one of my favorite cartoonists, I didn’t remember things being so… weird. Engaging and enjoyable as ever, but very weird. I think 2026’s TBR now needs to include a re-read of all his previous books!

No Good Men: A Warhammer Crime anthology (ebook)

Entertaining combo of noir, cyberpunk, and urban dystopia with varying degrees of 40k ingredients folded in for flavor. Some stories were better than others (“Exit Wound” by Darius Hinks; “The View from Olympus” by Gareth Hanrahan; “Impurities” by Graham McNeill), including a couple that could have been full novels, and only one complete dud in the bunch. It’s a solid journey through the “human” side of the grim dark future, and opened yet another sector of the 40K universe for me to explore.

{STAR} All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, Ryosuke Takeuchi, Takeshi Obata

When I realized Edge of Tomorrow was inspired by a light novel that also became a manga, it became an immediate must-read. Although I think I like the movie a little bit more (totally thanks to Cruise and Blunt), it absolutely holds its own as a comic, too, and now sits on my shelf among my favorite manga to-date. I have to watch the anime adaptation next to see where it falls on the list.

Words on the Move: Why English Won’t – and Can’t – Sit Still (Like, Literally) by John McWhorter

Fascinating at times, McWhorter weaves in between accessible and academic (sometimes in a single paragraph) to demonstrate how English has evolved over time, and makes a compelling case for embracing the fact that, like, it literally still is. Despite being an avid writer since 5th grade, I actually hated grammar rules and didn’t enjoy most of my English classes, so understanding how words have “moved” over time alleviated some of the impostor syndrome that occasionally creeps in when I’m editing my own work or someone else’s.

{STAR} Black Arms to Hold You Up: A History of Black Resistance by Ben Passmore

Part history lesson, part personal narrative — Passmore provocatively depicts pivotal moments in Black history from a different perspective, producing one of the best (and timeliest) works of graphic nonfiction I’ve ever read. You should read it, too. And “they” should give him all of the awards this year!

Games

Out of the Park Baseball 26 (Steam)

It is early August 2030 and the New Orleans Second Line, an expansion team that joined MLB in 2025, is the best team in the National League, leading the Central Division by 10 games, and on track for a second consecutive playoff appearance. After three seasons of incremental improvements on expansion mediocrity, the 2029 Second Line went from one of the worst teams in baseball to the top Wild Card seed, powered by a combo of savvy scouting, aggressive trades, and a 2025 first round draft pick having a breakthrough season. It’s Moneyball + Smallball, leveraging everything I learned about the game in my first save as the NY Mets, and many years of playing underdogs in Football Manager. Playing with an expansion team also gets OOTP closer to the kind of emergent narrative immersion that made FM the best RPG ever, and it’s resurfaced a passion for baseball minutiae that I haven’t had since the peak of my Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball days. It’s absolutely dominated my gaming AND reading time so far this year, and is my early frontrunner for GOTY, with the hope that 2027’s edition can only improve on that experience.

Movies & TV

The Phoenician Scheme (Streaming)

I’ve never considered myself a Wes Anderson fan, but after unexpectedly enjoying The Grand Budapest Hotel a couple of years ago, I decided to watch The Phoenician Scheme, primarily because of Benicio del Toro, and it was a delight. Watching it while reading Jason’s latest graphic novel (see above) made me realize there were some artistic similarities between them, and I’m more curious about some of his other movies now, primarily Fantastic Mr. Fox, since I also remember enjoying Isle of Dogs, but assumed it was an outlier in his work. I wonder how Anderson is familiar with Jason’s work, and how he might adapt one of his stories?

The Fantastic Four: First Steps (Streaming)

An impressively boring slog of a movie, and a disappointing waste of a talented cast and solid production design. While it wasn’t as bad as The Eternals, it definitely wasn’t a good movie by any metric, and it didn’t do anything to revive my faded interest in the MCU. Caveat: I was never a fan of the Fantastic Four in the comics at any point, but I think the movie failed to capture the family vibe they’re best known for, thanks to a flat script and a surprising lack of chemistry between the main cast.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (Theater)

28 Years Later was a surprise favorite last year, so I wanted to see the sequel in theaters, and I’m glad I did. It’s a great follow-up that seamlessly moves the story forward, while Nia DaCosta puts her own visual spin on things to bring a slightly different tone. Fiennes, Lewis-Parry, and O’Connell do some impressive work, and I was thrilled to see Kellyman playing a critical role, too. I really hope they get to make the third film in the “Years” story and close that loop, but in the meantime, I need to revisit the first two films and see if the potential was always there for this becoming one of my all-time favorite franchises.

His & Hers (Streaming)

Every now and then we watch something completely cold, and the trailer for this one suggested an entertaining story with two great leads. Instead, it was 5 episodes of increasingly annoying red herrings leading to one of the dumbest and most disappointing finales I’ve ever seen, complete with a ludicrous amount of exposition required to pull it all together. Six hours I’ll never get back, but you should avoid losing.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine S2 (Streaming)

Old school episodic TV seasons were always long, but the weekly cadence worked, and there weren’t any alternatives back then anyway beyond the occasional marathon. Working through Deep Space Nine‘s first two seasons, which by most accounts are its worst, has been a mostly entertaining experience, albeit with the heavy caveat that everything about it is dated AF. The second season was a mixed bag of one-offs that saw Jadzia Dax unexpectedly becoming my favorite character, while continuing to hope for Avery Brooks’ redemption in later seasons where his acting allegedly improves. Overall, I enjoyed the nuanced takes on different characters, races, and conflicts, with no absolute villains or heroes, including Sisko Sue himself. It’s not 40k grim darkness, but it’s also not the Pollyanna utopia Star Trek often unfairly gets criticized for.

Andor S2 (Streaming)

It took a long time to get through this one, mainly because I watched it with my son in three-episode sittings, and finding that time was always a challenge. It also didn’t help that its relevance became uncomfortably relevant, and I needed a long break after episodes 7-9. Rogue One was already vaguely in my top 5 of Star Wars movies before Andor S1 solidified its ranking, and S2 officially made it top 3 for me, even before I rewatch it again to see how well Gilroy actually closed the loop. If they ever release a collector’s edition combining the show and the movie, I will be buying it on Day One!

Your Notes?

If you’ve engaged with any of these, let me know what you thought. And if you have any related recommendations, drop ’em in the comments or on the socials! Some of you prefer email, which is cool, too. You do you!