Haben wir wieder ein Jahr Karneval überstanden, wobei es dieses Jahr wohl nicht so schlimm war wie die Jahre davor. Der März hat sich angefühlt als ob er 100 Jahre lang wäre und wenn ich so in meinen Kalender gucke, waren das auch viel zu viele Dinge, die mit Arbeit zu tun hatten. Und nebenbei habe ich noch einen Husten entwickelt, der sich sehr lange hält, noch bis heute ein bisschen. Aber es gab auch einige nette Sachen, wie sehr viele Spieltermine mit Freundinnen, die Reparatur der Terrassentür, die seit Februar kaputt war, und ein überstandenes Kopf MRT, wo die 20min erstaunlich schnell herum waren. Außerdem Konzert Nr.2 diesen Jahres mit God is an Astronaut. Es war ganz nett, aber ich habe mir mal wieder sehnlichst einen Sitzplatz gewünscht.

Spiele:
Sehr viele! Ein paar Clevers, ein paar schöne Runden Hitster Filmmusik, weiter gekommen bei Pandemic Legacy Zero, Noch mal! kennengelernt, außerdem drei Varianten von Azul gespielt, Dorfromantik Sakura und das neu hinzugekommene Crash Octopus. Ein sehr guter Spielemonat.

Filme:
Nicht viel, aber beide haben mir außerordentlich gut gefallen: der matrix’eske Anime Paprika und der Film Zone of Interest über die Familie Höss, die direkt an den Mauern des KZs Ausschwitz lebte, wo Rudolf Höss Kommandant und „Wirtschafter“ war. Unglaublich gut gemacht, was vielleicht auch daran lag, dass das kein deutscher Film war (allerdings mit deutschen Schauspieler:innen).

Serien:
März war Apple-Monat. Wir sind mit Mythic Quest durch, ich finde die Serie zwar ganz gut, aber sie hat doch ein paar Abstriche und könnte besser sein. Die zweite Staffel von Shrinking war solide. Highlight war natürlich die zweite Staffel von Severance mit einem sehr spannenden Staffelfinale. Dann bin ich noch durch die zweite Staffel von Pachinko, die mir direkt Lust machte nochmal das Buch zu lesen. Und Korea und Japan zu besuchen. Der Monat ging dann über in eine Netflix-Era, wo ich dann als erstes mit der neunten Staffel Queer Eye begann, die mir deutlich besser gefiel als die vorherigen. Flop des Monats war Wolf Hall, eine Serie über Thomas Cromwell/Tudor Era. Der Cast ist echt toll mit Damien Lewis und Claire Foy, aber die Serie ist einfach nur unglaublich langweilig, erklärt nichts und wirkt sehr altbekannten, obwohl sie jünger ist (2016) als The Tudors von 2007…

Bücher:
Ich bin durch mit dem Opus! Ende Dezember habe ich angefangen und im März hatte ich die 1400 Seiten vom fünften Band von den Stormlight Archives geschafft. Das Ende hat mich dann sehr mitgenommen und es hat sich gelohnt die vielen Seiten zu lesen, aber zwischendurch war der Weg etwas holprig. Umso schneller war ich mit Hörbuchern: Divergent fand ich sehr mittelmäßig, Insurgent wurde nicht besser. Für Fans von ostasiatischen weird novels wie Das Seidenraupenzimmer kann ich Chlorine von Jade Song ans Herz legen. Sehr spannend fand ich die Erzählung von Traudl Junge, Hitlers Sekretärin, die fast bis zum Ende dabei war. The River Has Roots von Amal El-Mohtar war zwar irgendwie schön anzuhören, aber ich hatte stellenweise Schwierigkeiten mit dem Stil. The Yellow Wallpaper von Charlotte Perkins Gilman war eine sehr tolle Kurzgeschichte. Heaven von Mieko Kawakami fand ich eher durchschnittlich, genauso Thornhedge von T.Kingfisher.

Can’t believe that we are already in March now. February was exhausting. My calendar looks empty but there were just too many task simultaneously going on in my mind. One was the broken door to our garden, which meant that the dogs could not go there for their business as they are used to. I was so tired of walking the dogs all the time and it took a whole month for our door getting repaired. Well, at least I visited my first concert this year! Snow Patrol in my old home town/home venue in Düsseldorf. I saw them there like 15 years ago? Time flies. The concert was really nice, the songs were great, the venue had all the food I want and my friends and I had a nice place to sit.

Gaming: It was a good gaming month. We played Ark Nova, Forest Shuffle and Dorfromantik Sakura. Thanks to the library I could check out Krakel-Orakel, Sky Team and Captain Flip. And then Finspan arrived, the Wingspan sister game but with fish and slightly different game play. I very much like the game.

Books: I am still with Brandon Sanderson’s Wind and Truth. But I finished another long book, Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros. It was so boring and could have been cut by half. It’s a pity because I still kind of like the idea and the plot, but so much talking and talking and not enought action. And I listened to another couple of short stories, most from the Forward Collection. I liked: Summer Frost by Blake Crouch, Emergency Skin by N.K. Jemisin and Ark by Veronica Roth.

Films:
Not that many. I watched Macbeth in cinema. It was the theatre play with David Tennant and Cush Jumbo. I very much enjoyed it but I’m glad I wasn’t live at the venue because the theatre was quite small and there was a weird bit with viewer interaction.
A nice bit of entertainment was The Gorge. Nice idea, nice horror stuff and kind of funny romance. I also saw Civil War which was a bit surreal because it was filmed before the USA turned to fascism but seemed like a direct allusion to the current events.

January was 8 weeks long but still managed to seem very short Schroedinger’s Month. Work was quite exhausting due to new structures but at least we had a nice late Christmas party with everybody. Other than that not that much happenend but I got some doctor’s appointments behind me.

Gaming: We started with Dorfromantik Sakura which is as cute and nice as the previous Dorfromantik boardgame. And I also started to play it on the Switch again. We also tried Captain Flip, quite a nice game but not a must-have. And still going on is my game of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. I have the impression that it is longer than the original game which annoys me a bit. I hate those big open worlds.

Books: Well, I got 18 books on my stats for January. A lot of short stories, but still all of my reads combine to almost 2000 pages.
What I liked:
Far Reaches – a short story collection by a couple of awesome scifi authors.
The Seventh Bride – by T.Kingfisher. If you like her stuff, you’ll probably also like this dark fantasy (no smut) rendition of the fairy tale Bluebeard.
And I finished some biographies.
Freiheit – the memoirs by our last and 16-year lasting chancellor Angela Merkel. Very interesting, a bit dry, but authentic.
Brothers – by Paul Gallagher. I made a playlist out of this book because Paul mentioned so many bands, not only the famous one with his brothers in it. And I hope Paul did some therapy, his childhood with this psychopathic father sounds horrible.
The House of my mother – by Shari Franke. She was raised by a narcisstic mother who played happy youtube family while abusing her children. Disturbing, I wonder how many of these books we will get from all the social media children that grew up now.
I’ll Never Call Him Dad Again – by Caroline Darian, daugther of Gisèle Pelicot. The story is worse (as in: more horrible) than I thought it would be. But it’s good that both women are telling it.

What I didn’t like: Before the Coffee Gets Cold (boring), Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (nothing new to the genre), Hey guten Morgen, wie geht’s es dir (pretentious and boring), Ab Vom Schuss (pretentious and boring, and yes, many German books are pretentious.)

Films:
I was three times in the cinema, must be a new record. I watched Mufasa and Nosferatu, both were okayish but could have been better. Better was Better Man (haha), I didn’t expect to be that entertainend by a movie with a CGI Monkey Robbie Williams. Then I watched a movie about Robbie’s acquaintance Liam Gallagher, my rock star hero since 2000. I kinda broke up with him in 2014 after a shitty Beady Eye concert, his voice’s continuing decline, the band’s break-up and him going totally mental on Twitter. Couple of years later, I got newsletters about his new album but didn’t care because him alone could be no good. 2022, I got a newsletter about his Knebworth gig and I was shocked how this had happened. My crazy fangirl module was re-actived the moment I saw that he wore a similar white parka in Knebworth 2022 as the one in Knebworth 1996, it felt like a sign, like watching a resurrected Jesus. Well, there is a documentary about those years between 2014 and 2022, I watched it to catch up with his rise from zero (Beady Eye were playing very small venues) to rock star, again. Nice one, and I am happy that he is back on track, hope it lasts a couple of years. I need some good stuff in this world.

TV Shows: I finished Only Murderers in the Building. True Crime Podcasts are not my cup of tea but the show was nevertheless entertaining and had some nice guest actors like Paul Rudd, Jane Lynch, Eva Longoria and Meryl Streep.