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Favorites of 2023: Books

Top 5 Book Faves 2023

According to Goodreads, I read 66 books in 2023 with an average length of 375 pages. The shortest book was 4 pages long and the longest was 908 pages. Unlike with my favorite movies list, all but one of the books I read last year was published before 2023 so these are some of my faves regardless of when they actually came out.

Favorite Books I Read in 2023

All science fiction and fantasy in this year’s daves, with four out of the five stories by female writers. In no particular order…

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler (2022)

A little unsatisfied with the main mysteries wrapped up and some details that were left unexplored, but overall really enjoyed this quite a bit. Thought the main character was great as well as the various AIs, and in particular really found the idea of the point-fives conceptually intriguing.

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse (2020)

Ahhhhh it ended right when all the threads were coming together. I loved this, especially the world building and character development. Gave it five stars despite feeling like it ended half an act early and now I’m even more anxious to start the next book in the series as soon as possible.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells (2017)

Great, quick read that I didn’t want to put down. Enjoyable humor and strong premise and character development of the titular Murderbot. I was disappointed at first by the very last couple pages but then I remembered there’s six-plus other books that it leads into and am a lot less critical of how it wrapped up.

Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (2014)

My favorite book about a character who used to be a sentient warfighting spaceship. Liked this even more than the first book and generally really jive with Leckie’s science fiction storytelling.

The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemison (2017)

The final book in Jemison’s Broken Earth trilogy was my favorite of the series. Was a good read in itself but also did a solid job of tying together the storylines from the earlier books without feeling overloaded. Jemison’s writing makes a complex narrative enjoyable and avoids many of the issues that often causes me to bounce off fantasy novels. Continue reading “Favorites of 2023: Books”

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Favorites of 2023: Movies

Top 5 Movie Faves 2023

Made it back to the theater for more movies this year than any year since before we had kids so I actually have a lot of opinions on 2023 movies in 2023. I logged 303 movies on Letterboxd this year, 45 of which were released this year.

Here’s my top 10 movies of the year:

1. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

I wish I had 1/100th of the creativity, imagination of the artists behind the visuals of this movie. Somehow manages to match the emotions of my favorite movie of 2018 with its increased focus on Gwen while still keeping Miles at the center as well. The chase scene is hilarious. Truly remarkable to see with the kids in the theater.

2. Oppenheimer

Finally watched this on New Year’s Eve and came really close to putting it up at number one, maybe I would have if I had gotten to see it in theaters. Or after a rewatch or two. Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. are fantastic. Nolan’s Interstellar has become a movie I watch over and over again sometimes just in the background while I work and I’d be surprised if Oppenheimer doesn’t also become something I rewatch often (though it is certainly heavier subject matter).

3. Barbie

I only cried twice during this not totally unrelated to my eldest being about to head into her teenage years and you know just the patriarchy in general. I liked it quite a bit but it wouldn’t have ended up this high without the great musical numbers in the last third.

4. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

I liked all the MCU movies this year well enough (and apparently way better than most people) but Guardians Vol. 3 was my favorite this year as they did a great job of wrapping up things particularly for Rocket. Never thought a CGI raccoon could create so many emotions in me. Bummer that James Gunn won’t be able to make more MCU movies with this humor and attitude.

5. The Boy and the Heron

Just now realizing Oppenheimer is the only movie in my top 5 that didn’t make me cry because of course I cried watching a Miyazaki movie with my daughters. Fantastically beautiful in both expected and unexpected ways. The animation in the fire scenes was remarkable and surprisingly evocative and scary. Not our favorite Miyazaki but the kids and I both really enjoyed it, though I wonder how much of it they followed in parts. Continue reading “Favorites of 2023: Movies”

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I wish the future had more buttons

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Carplay Porsche High Res 2048x1152

Apple shows off more of the next generation of CarPlay with Aston Martin and Porsche. I’m still not sure if it will ever actually release in any cars anyone actually owns, but Apple’s Next Generation CarPlay does look pretty cool and also looks like it could desperately use some physical controls.

Crossposted on Mastodon

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Anytype, the everything app

I’m in deep with Obsidian myself, but I found Anytype, “the everything app”, this week on Reddit and it’s super interesting looking. Attempting to be a local-first, open source Notion competitor. Definitely worth a look if you like Notion but don’t want to be locked into VC backed startup.

I personally like that Obsidian is just markdown files on your local machine, but that brings with it a bit of complexity and unfriendliness that some might find intimidating.

Crossposted on Mastodon

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Humane reveals the AI Pin

Humane’s AI Pin tech looks kinda interesting, but mostly pointless. And even worse, in their prerecorded demo they featured multiple factual AI errors. The fact that they didn’t fact check the AI responses and then released their big reveal video with errors in it, seems like a worse sign for the company than making the errors in the first place.

It just seems like all of this will be part of your smartphone well before the mass market is interested in a device like this.

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Zombie TiVo

It’s 2023 and I just got a marketing email from TiVo. Based off a search of my email, the last email I got from them was in 2007.

While I admit I often forget they’re still around, but it certainly can’t be a good sign for them if they’re resurrecting email lists from 16 years ago to try to drum up business. ?‍♂️

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Quick first impressions of the LG StanbyME briefcase TV

Thought I’d post some quick thoughts on the LG StanbyME after seeing The Verge has posted another story on LG’s suitcase TV that is still making the rounds of the tech trade shows. Despite the fact that it is still up for preorder on LG.com, I’ve actually had the TV (though that word doesn’t really seem to do it justice) for a couple of weeks and have used it several times.

My main use cases for this delightfully dumb idea for a TV when I ordered it were to use it out by the pool with the kids and next to my main 65″ 4K TV during college football Saturdays. I’ve already had a chance to do both and it worked pretty darn well both times. It’s only 1080p and not super bright but I knew that going in and at 27″ I personally don’t think those are big issues. We had a decent amount of shade so using it outside worked well and it worked even better for football. Watched an entire game and the battery was still above 70%.

As mentioned by The Verge, it is indeed heavy. Easy enough for me to carry around but too heavy for the kids (though I wouldn’t trust them with it anyways.) My 7-year old spent maybe an hour playing the games that came preinstalled and they were pretty shallow. Kind of like the sort of thing you’d get on the tablet restaurants were briefly putting onto every table.

My biggest complaint so far is there is no MLB.tv app on the LG WebOS store so hoping to find a way around that (other than just using Airplay.) Was it worth the money? Probably not, but in the end it’ll actually be cheaper than buying two TVs and hiring an electrician to wire up and mount one on the patio.