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.