I had to avoid reading true crime fiction after I started a book that was about the murder/murderer of a girl I knew in college.

I will check out covers of books on Metro, but don't usually judge and never comment , but I'm more comfortable with a non-obvious book

Every time there's a post somewhere extolling the virtues of the classic 70s-80s painted bodice ripper covers and they need to make a return, at least a few of The Kids Today freak out because ewwww, imagine someone looking at you reading a book like that! And then The Old Ones explain about book wrappers you can slip your book into. The Kids Today remain baffled.

I once read a book in which a woman - an FBI agent - said that she carried one of those bodice-ripper books in case she was surveiling someone and needed to make sure no one looked at her. She'd whip it out, open it, and NO ONE would look at her.

While I did enjoy some of the old covers, sometimes the sheer ridiculousness of them bothered me (as in a "highlander" standing on a windy crag wearing a mini-kilt and no shirt).

Listening to Fugitive Telemetry as I copy-paste from excel to google sheets, thinking about MurderBot watching 7 minutes of an episode while waiting for something terrible to happen (or something to be ready to deploy, I forget exactly what was going on)

Random observation - this time, every time Murderbot mentions it's "normal human face" or the like (I don't think it actually does that very often, but really after hearing that once every mention of "human skin" or even organic parts did it) I immediately thought of Jackie Daytona. Having those two characters in my head at the same time is weird.

My brain is broken, trying to imagine Murderbot and Jackie Daytona in the same space.

It doesn't feel right in my brain

So, when I started reading the sample chapter of System Collapse whenever that came out I decided pretty fast I needed to reread Network Effect, and it was a short step from there to rereading all of Murderbot in chronological order (not very different from publication order, but worth it to me). I didn’t time it quite right to be ready for System Collapse when it was first available, but now that I’m current I am pretty happy with my choices.

I love these characters so much, and each story/novella/novel is excellent but I am just more and more impressed as it goes on at how good the series is as a series.

I just had that angst about the most recent short story taking place chronologically before Network Effect. How do I number it? I kind of want to read it chronologically, but am I brave enough to just change the number? That's the kind of shit they pulled with the Chronicles of Narnia, and I do not appreciate that.

Yeah, I hear you. I support changing the number. Maybe number the short stories and novellas separately from the novels? They’re all part of the same story, but dividing them up seems to make the ordering more manageable. For now, anyway.

Hmm, I’m on the hold list at the library but probably need to re-read the earlier ones. Some I’ve read many times but I think the last one or two I’ve only read once?