Listened to a lot of audiobooks while driving hither and yon, and now I have opinions. I did not quite like Slayers as much as I wanted to - it's not wrong and bad, but I just couldn't get on board with Anya and Anyanka being separate entities, and Tara having what amounted to two personalities which is really too bad because the basic premise of an alternate universe where we can follow characters who died on Buffy is a good one! Definitely nice to listen to the actors again.

I did like Third Eye, a Felicia Day thing playing around with the Chosen One idea. There's something particularly enjoyable about Neil Gaiman reading Felicia Day's words in the first person.

And I was utterly charmed by Starter Villain. I haven't read much Scalzi - for quite a while I would come across one of his essays or the like on the interwebs and think I should read him but then perusing the titles and synopses that were available I somehow never did. There was an Audible series that I gave a chance to and enjoyed well enough, but not enough to make me start following him seriously. Audible has been pushing me to listen to Starter Villain, though, and there's a cat on the cover, so I was willing and this one I like very much.

And I gave the full-cast version of All Systems Red a listen. I don't think I like it as much as the straight audiobook? It's shorter, for one thing, which is weird. I had a feeling that the dramatization aspect would take away from the sense of being so much in Murderbot's head, but I don't think it was actually a problem. Kinda want to listen to the book while it's fresh in my head and figure out how I feel about both of them

-t, I want to read Starter Villain (the cat alone would tempt me). If you haven't, I can recommend The Kaiju Preservation Society.

Thanks, I’ll look for that!

I'm going to Audible Starter Villain. Cool.

Kaiju Preservation Society

Wil Wheaton's narration in this one made me really dislike the main character, FWIW, but it's a fun listen if you can get past how obnoxiously bro-y he is.

Good to know, I will brace myself for that

I was able to forgive a lot knowing that KPS was Scalzi's 2020 "I can't make any progress on this serious work I started before the pandemic, here is some lighthearted bullshit I wrote over a long weekend" novel. It's bonkers and over the top, but in a fun pandemic-catharsis way.

(I wonder how many authors have books in this extremely niche genre. I know Scalzi has this one, and KJ Charles has Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting, but I'm sure they weren't the only ones to break through pandemic writer's block by just giving up and writing a completely different book that year!)

Scalzi's Redshirts was a lot of fun.

However, his version of Little Fuzzy made me angry. That series was a favorite of mine as a young teen, and he changed the protagonist from someone I wanted on my side, or on who's team I wanted to be, to someone I wouldn't want to be on the same planet with, while hoping he might never even learn I existed. It was different, and clever, and well-written, and I didn't like it at all.

I don't like audio books, so the characters and narration sound like I want them to. It may make some hard copy books more palatable.

David Duchovny wrote a pandemic novella, too,