The Books, TV Shows and Movies That I’m Looking Forward To in 2023

To start this year, I shared my favorite moments in photos from last year. Then I shared the 20 songs I had on repeat last year. Two weekends ago, I shared our favorite TV shows and movies that my wife Kim and I watched last year. Then last weekend, I shared my favorite books read in 2022.

This weekend I’m sharing the books, TV shows, movies and music I’m looking forward to this year, with the caveat that not all are being released this year:

Books

Continuing to read:

The Serge Storms series by Tim Dorsey
The Inspector Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri

Reading for the first time:

Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters by Cassie Holmes Ph. D. (as heard on the podcast LifeKit)

The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When The World Overwhelms You by Elaine N. Aron Ph. D. (as recommended by a friend years ago)
South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry (as heard on Fresh Air)

TV

Continuing to watch and/or finishing, with Kim and on HBO Max unless otherwise noted:

Doom Patrol (by myself)
Eastbound and Down
Ghosts (the British version)
Hacks
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Hulu)
Shrinking (Apple+)
Stath Lets Flats
Starstruck
Trying (Apple+)

Movies

Creed 3
John Wick 4 (by myself)
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part One – the seventh in the series
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (by myself)
Oscar nominees including The Banshees of Inisherin, Tar, and Aftersun, to name a few.
Catch up with some one-word movies on Hulu: Flee, Prey, Parasite, the latter by myself, as Kim has zero interest.

Music

boygenius – The Record
Lana Del Rey – Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd
The National – First Two Pages of Frankenstein
U.S. Girls – Bless This Mess
Yaeji – With a Hammer

Kim probably will be more interested in the Lana Del Rey albums than the others.

So, what about y’all? What are you looking forward to in books, TV shows, movies, and music this year?

Starting 2022 Thankfully Reading Weekend Early

That’s what I am doing today. Officially the event, hosted by Jenn of the blog Jenn’s Bookshelves, begins on Wednesday and runs through next Sunday.

Click on the image to be taken to the sign-up post for this year’s event.

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m off for “9 Days, 17 hours, 30 minutes”. I have a list of possibilities of what I want to read, watch, and listen to. This morning, I’ve already started to listen to Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, written and read by Bono, which is on the list. Also on my list are Paul Newman’s autobiography, The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man and the Serge Storms series by Tim Dorsey, of which I’m on the 14th: When Elves Attack. Apropos or not, the latter is a Christmas tale of sorts.

Even as I’m writing this, I’m listening to Bono’s memoir. I just fell into it and now I don’t know when today I will be able to get out of listening to Bono’s ~~tenor~~ baritone voice accompanied by his, and his band’s, music, some “reimagined” just for this recording. I’ll leave you with a sample:

Interrupting the doing

It’s a little bit before noon Saturday as I begin to write this. I’m in the midst of listening to two parts of a talk by Tara Brach titled “Beyond the Controlling Self” that she gave in 2019.

In the first part, she asks, “What can we do if caught in overdoing/overcontrolling?” with the answer to be mindful and “choose to stop the doing” and “to interrupt the doing.”

She talks about how it is important in our day to take pauses that invite us to beingness. I also am a strong believer in taking those pauses, that pause, in our week. It is what I am doing today and this weekend as I don’t have to work either today or tomorrow.

Initially, or at least as of yesterday, this was not the plan for today as I signed up for Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon, which is happening today, at the last moment. But I realized that I have my phone set up to block Instagram, where I was planning to post updates, for the weekend. While I could have changed the settings, I also realized that I didn’t want to do that and after another week at work, I needed to “interrupt the doing” and pause.

So here I am, interrupting the doing. Namaste.

Holding on, loosely, not letting go

It’s been over a month since my last blog post so I thought I’d give you all an update on what I’ve been up to.

5-foot, 7-inches still. Ha.

But really, still the same…in a holding pattern (with work mostly, but also some personal), holding on – loosely? Like REO Speedwagon. Yeah. Sure, let’s go with that.

This morning I finished my first book in forever with The Silent Speaker, the 11th in the Nero Wolfe series, by Rex Stout. I’m now starting the 12th, Too Many Women. I’ve read most of them over the years, but a year or two (or three or more, I don’t know) ago, I decided to start over and read all of them eventually. I’ve been reading them via Libby at the Free Library of Philadelphia.