This month was very intense with work stuff. I had two larger work gatherings that were every exhausting. But it was good that I attended them. There were a few positive developments at work, too. On the social side, September was very lonely. I had no playdates on the weekends, the only date was cancelled. Well, there was a session of roleplaying but this was not with close friends. But I had my electric guitar fixed by a friendly helper, my partner’s work colleague who builds his own guitars. I was right that my guitar was weird. He fixed the strings and the neck and now it the guitar smooth again. My fender is now 23 years old but still in good shape. Well, I only played it for 6 years but I want to get back to this hobby. I saw my old stuff from the guitar lessons back then. I never learned to do the „Wonderwall by campfire“ thing but I was actually really skilled at playing complex guitar solos and jazz. I was so impressed by my younger self.
One of the most cherished events of the month was the theater play of A Little Life. I watched it in the cinema and now I am still a bit angry at myself for not visiting the real play in London. It was so good. The book is very sad and hardcore, it contains a lot of traumatic stuff but is also about friendship and love. The play was excellent in catching these things. First I was a bit unhappy about James Norton playing Jude. He is too tall and broad, and looks a bit too „manly“. I always imagined Jude as fragile and more feminine looking (maybe like Elijah Wood). But James Norton is such a brilliant actor. And he even can sing. In German. It was so eerie, he sang a song by Mahler/Rückert Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen which suits so well to the character. The camera play was also awesome. They didn’t just film the play like you would see it as the audience but did close ups and other perspectives. It was also fascinating how they sometimes put the camera in such a perspective, that James Norton looked much smaller than Luke Thompson/Willem. I hope that they will release the play on Bluray. I would really like to watch it again. It didn’t even bother me that the play is about 3,5 hours (I usually hate films above 2hours).
So, not so many social events, but even more media consumption.
Boardgames:
Only four boardgames this month. Not good. I played Backgammon, a couple of solo games of Cascadia, Cartographer Heroes and the newest Clever 4Ever expansion. I hope October will be a better boardgame month.
Books:
I consumed six books/audio books this month, unfortunately there were some that were a bit too boring. I think my fav book was the comic Dark One by Brandon Sanderson. A big suprise was that I actually liked Das Kind in dir muss Heimat finden by Stefanie Stahl. I thought it was one of „those“ self-help books but actually it was quite good and (seemingly) science-orientated on what is actually done in psychotherapy. I also read How Long Til Black Future Month by N.K.Jemisin, a collection of her short stories. There were good ones, one a predecessor to her Broken Earth series but all in all I don’t like short stories that much.
Films:
We watched some of the old and the not so old Jurassic Park and Jurassic World films. They aged well and are still good, although I am not into dinosaurs. Okay, but now I am into raptors because they were like geese or ducks (okay, the birds don’t bother with killing humans nowadays). My fav film as The Matrix Resurrections. I think it was a really good sequel, better than the other two sequel Matrix films. And I also liked The Killing of a Sacred Deer, a suspenseful psychological horror film and so far my fav by Yorgos Lanthimos. I also watched Lanthimos‘ film Dogtooth this month. I don’t know whether I liked it or if it was too absurd.
TV Shows:
September was the month of brilliant tv shows! I loved The Afterparty (Apple+) and binge-watched the whole two seasons. It’s a murder mystery where every episode has a different genre. I also finished the 5th season of the Handmaid’s Tale (DVD from library) which I also liked very much. Another great tv show was Mask Girl (Netflix). It didn’t sound so good at all from its teaser, but turned out to be a captivating psychological horror drama. If you are not used to Korean horror (not to be confused with the Korean show Squid Game which was rather harmless and very „westernized“), you should check CNs. I finished Foundation (Apple+) season 2 as well, I think it was even better than the first season. I’m still a huge fan of Lee Pace and his performance of the variants of Empire Day. Next up was the 5th season of Virgin River (Netflix). It continues to be a cosy romance-drama with a beautiful landscape. Then a speed run through The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart (Amazon Prime) because I only had Prime for a week. Great female-centered miniseries with Sigourney Weaver as matriach of a flower farm. My fav of the month was Silo (Apple+), a dystopian mystery show where 10.000 people live in an underground Silo. I also watched some new episodes of The Morning Show (Apple+), Sex Education (Netflix) and then I started Killing Eve (Netflix) which is okay-ish but didn’t catch me so hard like other shows.
Yeah, a very good tv month indeed.