I like movies that are so bad they are good but not movies that are bad but boring.

Totally agree - I would much rather watch a movie where the writer/director is trying to do something ambitious and fails spectacularly than a movie where by the end I still don't know why the creators wanted to make it.

I've been unable to finish many objectively good books recently because the part of my brain that knows how to read anything except category romance has been on sabbatical since June 2020. I can still do audiobooks but I'm incredibly picky about narrators so I have an ever-growing stack of will-get-back-to-after-the-pandemic.

Same here, Jess. Queer romances, not-too-dark mysteries, and children's books have been my mainstay during the pandemic. And fanfic (also largely queer romance). Can't focus on anything too taxing or depressing.

I know completionism is a thing for some people.

The Divergent trilogy may have broken me of that.

Y’all. I checked out the next to last outlander book to remind me what happened, since my hold on the latest one should be coming in soon. I’m like a third of the way in and remembering that this is BANANAS.

I just finished Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I came across a reference to it a while back that made me think I should read it as part of my whole detective fiction project but maybe after I had gotten through Agatha Christie (currently stuck at Mystery of Edwin Drood. I actually just tried starting that but the copy I had seemed very word-salad-y which I *hope* is because I was cheaping out and got the Kindle Unlimited edition. If anyone can recommend a good e-book version I would be grateful!) but also felt hesitant to read because something in whatever review I read made me wary of it although I don't remember what that might have been. Anyway, it went on sale so I went ahead and read it now. It's very meta, which I think I like, but I don't always agree with what it seems to be saying in its meta-commentary, if that makes sense. The actual mystery is pretty good, nicely clued and also good misdirects to keep you from really getting the clues any faster than the narrator does. I am still thinking about it and probably will for a while, so that's probably a bit of a recommendation. Considering reading the second book Moonflower Murders because I'm very curious about how there can even be a follow-up, but that one is not on sale so I probably won't get to it any time soon.

This was the first Horowitz I've read. I guess he created Foyle's War, which I loved, and Midsomer Murders, which I somehow have not watched at all. And is an official continuer of Holmes, which I have no interest in. So I don't think I have a general opinion on his stuff at this point.

I enjoyed the first few seasons of Foyle's War, but I think at some point it seemed to be less of what appealed to me. The local PBS station seems to be stuck showing two episodes from early in its over and over.

I did recently finish The Frangipani Tree Mystery - set in 1930s Singapore, the narrator/protagonist is Chinese, so it's a different viewpoint (I believe the author is also Singaporean Chinese). The mysteries involve the family of the British governor of Singapore, so you get the cultural differences.

ISTR that Foyle's War rushed to get to the end of the war when they were getting cancelled and then got reupped and had to do post-war stuff. I was not into that part, but I don't blame the show/creators/whatever. I think I had to watch Acorn to get all of it, but I did get a nice run on PBS to start me off.

The Frangipani Tree Mystery sounds intriguing - will give a sample of that a try...

I really enjoyed Foyle's War, although the post-war stuff was less interesting and I was a bit disappointed in Sam's eventual husband. He was a bit of a let-down after wassname the beautiful fighter-pilot.

My sister and I are currently on a slow watch of Grantchester, in which a hot redheaded Anglican priest solves mysteries with Robson Green. Set in the early 1950s, and everyone is suffering from war-related PTSD. Not bad, but I kind of wish we got less about the lead character's romantic woes.

There is a 3-book mystery series set in Mumbai in the 1920s, where the detective is a female Indian lawyer. It's got a ton of politics and social commentary in it, very interesting stuff.

I loved the PBS Grantchester series. Interestingly enough, they were running at nearly the same time the series Happy Valley, with the wonderful Sarah Lancashire, from Last Tango in Halifax, and Siobhan Finnernan from Downton Abbey. Coincidentally, James Norton, the title character in Grantchester, played the truly deliberately evil bad guy in Happy Valley. Oops, tv in the books thread--sorry!

Ooh, I haven’t seen Grantchester, maybe I should. Sorry for crossing threads!

Im listening to Leviathan Falls in a sporadic fashion and I just got to where the ship goes Dutchman and then doesn’t and I wanted to tell someone that that whole business reminds me of Childhood’s End and I want to say many other stories but mainly that one paragraph of Star Maker that Childhood’s End is kind of based on (I had to Google Olaf Stapledon to get the title Star Maker and he came up as “British philosopher” which I did not expect, but did give me the title) but framed as horror rather than ecstasy or enlightenment or whatever. I don’t really have anywhere to go with that thought but maybe if I put it out there for someone else to think about it won’t rattle around in my brain quite so loud.