We are watching season 2 of the UK version of the show The Traitors, and I don’t know if I should recommend this show to you or not. I felt as if I had already seen allllll the reality television I ever wanted to see with Real World and Big Brother and The Swan in the ‘90s/00’s, but Paul talked me into trying it by saying he’d watched most of the first season and that it was MESMERIZING to see all the wrong ways people THINK: the way they use bad logic while being CERTAIN they are using good logic. He further argued that British people are more pleasant to watch than United States people. Plus I was on 0pi0ids at the time, and not very mobile, so if someone put something on the TV I would sit and watch it.

Anyway we watched the first season, and it was indeed mesmerizing, and I found it a nice DISTRACTION as well: I can think about those dynamics, and about the most recent twist/cliffhanger, and about what will happen on tonight’s episode, instead of about Other Things, such as the way an unelected asshole billionaire is illegally and unconstitutionally dismantling our crucial governmental institutions. I will say, however, that in the final couple of episodes of season one I was WEEPING and saying “This is a BAD GAME.” Nevertheless, I agreed to start a second season, which should be informative, especially since I am no longer on opioids. William and Henry have found it riveting as well, and we keep having to pause it to talk about developments and what they mean, and after each episode we sit around for like half an hour talking about it, and it is a lot of fun to do that with kids who normally flee the scene right after dinner.

I also have two books to mention.

(image from Target.com)

One is Asunder, by Kerstin Hall (Target link; Amazon link). It is the kind of book I think I’ll like when I read the flap and see the blurb by one of my top favorites Ann Leckie, and then I start reading it and think I don’t like it, and then I end up loving it. It’s set in a different reality where small gods are real, and there are unfamiliar racial/political divides and prejudices, and people do spells for real. But when you start reading it, everything is super confusing and people are referring to things you don’t know anything about so it makes no sense, and I got kind of bogged down, and kept realizing I was skimming and missing things and had to go back and re-read. But anyway I persisted and now I really really really really want a sequel: now that I understand this world, I want MORE FROM THIS WORLD.

(image from Target.com)

The other is Beautyland, by Marie-Helene Bertino (Target link; Amazon link). I was put off by both the cover and the title, and read it only because it was recommended by someone whose reading tastes overlap strongly with mine (I was going to link here to Nicole ((HI NICOLE)) but then I went to her site to get a link to her post about Beautyland and couldn’t find it, which leads me to the potential conclusion that I read a book because I IMAGINED/DREAMED Nicole had recommended it???)—and even so, I kept letting it slide down the library pile. This is the kind of book I think I won’t like, and then I start reading it and I love it and want to recommend it to everyone, and then I get to the end and am not sure what I thought. I enjoyed the entire experience of reading it, but I like More Ending. I don’t like to feel as if I’m not entirely sure what was going on or what eventually happened. I still hugely enjoyed reading it and would read it again.