October was quite okay. I had a nice vacation with visits to the Oberhausen Gasometer, and old industrial building that now is used for cultural exhibitions. There was an exhibition about the Ocean, mostly showing beautiful photographs. It was quite ok but the hyped media display in the tower was really not that exiting. I also visited the Ramses exhibition in Cologne. It was well done and interesting to see this really old stuff. Then I had a couple of boardgame dates with friends and we also finished our roleplay campaign of Pathfinder Rusthenge. Still don’t like Pathfinder that much, DnD was easier for me to get, but I’ll play what I get to play. The next campaign is already in the planing. Work still annoys me very much, there are many processes dragging along like a snail and I am very annoyed by „political“ things.
Gaming:
I got Hitster from the library and my friends and I had so much fun, that my friend bought the game. I also tried a couple of new games: I really liked Tiny Woodys and would like to have that game in my collection. I also liked Pirates of Maracaibo, much more than Maracaibo. And we tried Orleans which was ok but not my kind of game, too boring artwork, too eurogame-y.
Books:
Had a little challenge with myself to read a lot of books, especially during my vacation. Well I finished 16 books, this is a record. A couple of shorter books, some short stories, but still 3100 pages which is like 3 thick fantasy books.
Short stories I liked: The Deep by Rivers Salomon and Recitatif by Toni Morrison. Totally different stories but both are about identity. I adored The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. Shit My Dad Says by Justin Halpern was a funny read. After reading Muss ich das gelesen haben? by Teresa Reichl, I read a couple of books that she would recommend for reading in school (currently, in German schools we mostly read the same old stuff by old white men): Jacob the Liar by Jurek Becker, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr and La Petite Dernière (The Last One/ Die Jüngste Tochter) by Fatima Daas. If you look for (German) inspirations, check out Reichl’s list.
I also read and like Fake Facts by Katharina Nocun and Pia Lamberty. What I especially didn’t like was Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. It won the Pulitzer price which is usually a sign for me that I won’t like a book. But I didn’t know that beforehand. The book was so boring, like listening to other peoples smalltalk and small-town-gossip.
Films:
Three movies this month. Dune Part Two was better than Part One but still very confusing and incoherent. The Last Voyage of the Demeter was okayish. I really liked Ocean’s Eight. I’m not a big fan of heist movies but the cast was superb. I also finally watched the Oasis documentary Supersonic. It’s a couple of years old but I didn’t watch it out of fear of it making me sad. I only saw a short bit of Liam talking about the abuse of his father towards his brothers and mother. So, now I watched the whole thing and it was really well done. I’m especially interested in the childhood and their mother Peggy’s story about coming from rural Ireland to Manchester to get a better life, so I was happy that Peggy was included into the documentary. The story ended quite early with Knebworth in 1996, which was the concert that really got me into Oasis (watched it 4 years later, I wasn’t there). Funnily, Liam’s solo Knebworth in 2022 got me into listening to his music again and since then I constantly listen to both Knebworths. (Yes, I am very much on the hype train, back in the old days when I was a teen I didn’t have so many stuff to hype over, a fan forum with mean men and the occasional bootleg I found at CD markets.)
TV Shows:
I finished The Bear, still like the show although I don’t get the hype. I loved the second season of Rings of Power. I also finished the last two seasons of Grey’s Anatomy and a couple of episodes of Gen V that were left to watch. I also watched the third season of Heartstopper which I found quite boring. We also watched a couple of missing episodes of Love, Death + Robots and the second season of Domina, where I had a really hard time to get who is who. Last but not least we started with What We Do in the Shadows which I quite like although it is sometimes a little bit too silly.