Friday, November 17, 2023: Recommendations
Daily Diary, Day 1172:
Brief check-in: Despite yesterday being such a busy day, doing other things but writing, I still got 481 new words written. And, today, while I have two phone calls and a zoom webinar on how to build your audience for substack newsletters, I do hope to accomplish at least that much new writing.
And now on to what I’ve been doing to entertain myself these past two weeks:
TV watching:
First of all, as I wrote this, I realized that I don’t have much to really recommend from the past 2 weeks of watching TV. I will still mention what we watched, because I know that when other people mention things, it often reminds me of shows I either watched years ago and would like to see again, or shows I had heard of and hadn’t tried yet. But I thought I would start with the one, new movie (for me) that I can honestly recommend with enthusiasm. It was a 2010 near future science fiction movie, called Monsters. It was low budget, but a great character study of two people, in one day, trying to get back up over the border to US (through a zone with alien monsters.)
Othewise, we did watch the first season of Morse, and one episode of the second season, but we have found ourselves reluctant to keep on, just not our cup of tea. The enjoyment of watching a young Lewis wasn’t enough to counter how morose Morse is. In fact, one night we got so desperate that we rewatched an old Midsomer Murder rather than another episode of Morse. Did make me appreciate Lewis even more.
In the evening we continued to watch Abbot Elementary, which held up well, and then we started rewatching old Frazier (spin off from Cheers), having been reminded of this show by the reboot that has started this year. So far, this is doing a good job of a gentle, short, humorous show to watch before we go to bed.
After giving up on Morse as the main attraction, we started looking for movies instead of tv shows to watch. That’s when we found Monsters, but everything else we watched, and enjoyed enough for me to recommend were old movies we had watched before.
We finished watching the last two Jesse Stone movies, with Tom Selleck, based on the Robert Parker novels. We also rewatched the spy/action film, Safe House, and finally last night we rewatched The Name of the Rose, an medieval historical mystery with Sean Connery and an impossibly young Christian Slater. I suspect we haven’t seen it since 1986 when it first came out!
Listening:
I feel like I am having better luck with the things I am listening to. Once again, I listen every day on my walks to the podcast, A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. I am now up to episode 156, which means I’ve been through Beatles up to Revolver, a whole slew of UK bands, and right now the podcaster going through some of the California acts like Mama’s and Papa’s, Loving Spoonful, and this one is about Buffalo Springfield, which really only had one bit hit. As for audiobooks, I finished listening to Georgette Heyer’s the Devil’s Cub, and thoroughly. And now I am about half-way through the audio book of Dick Francis’ second Sid Halley mystery. I read all of his books as they came out, and I am loving revisiting them. I primarily listen while cleaning, and chopping up stuff for my salads, which makes these daily tasks very pleasurable.
Reading:
I am now behind in my magazine reading, but I spent the last two weeks before bed re-reading the 2020 CJ Cherryh science fiction Foreigner series book, so that I could start the newest installment Defiance. Despite only getting about 10-20 minutes each night, I was able to finish and I started reading Defiance yesterday. If I haven’t finished it by Thanksgiving Day, I will take the time to do so as my way of celebrating the holiday.
As usual, I would love any suggestions from you all.
In case you aren’t sure how you got here, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. This is my newsletter reflecting on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully. If you aren’t already subscribed but are interested in doing so, you can subscribe by clicking the little button below. If you enjoyed this post, please do click on the little heart and/or share with your friends, and I always welcome comments!