viewAn Alpine Holiday, Hallmark Channel 2025 (2.5/5 Hot Chocolates)
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Two aspects differentiate An Alpine Holiday: authentic French Alps sets (no fake snow!) and a story that focuses more on sibling relationships than romantic entanglements.
A last wish sends two sisters on a quest to retrace their grandparents' alpine love story. Ashley Williams, a Christmas movie regular with quirky comic timing, plays one of the sisters. Their tension drives the plot, each carrying a sleigh full of grievances and regrets to unwrap.
The rest? Weak romance cider. One gets a limp French tour guide, and Williams has a nonsensical marriage epiphany about her dweeb back home.
Only for Hallmark Heads.
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viewPluribus Episode 5: Got Milk
See 100 Word reviews of previous episodes here
Being yourself is lonely. After Carol's interrogation of Zosia backfired, making the whole world hive-mind cry, the Others are giving her the silent treatment. They convoy out of Albuquerque and rely solely on recorded updates and drone interactions. Her only social outlet is video messages to the other twelve soloists.
Sparked by moments of action and levity with her co-opted police car, Carol's solitude, with help from a pack of canines, lets her grieve Helen.
Carol becomes Agatha Christie as a series of clues eventually leads to an abandoned dog food factory and a classic episodic TV cliffhanger.
Watch it.
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viewPluribus Episode 4: Please Carol
See 100 Word reviews of previous episodes here
Carol can’t help herself as she amps up her war on the Uni-Consciousness. Fun with chemistry turns disastrous as she concocts new ways to hurt Zosia et al.
Watching television crafted by Vince Gilligan is like being in the hands of an artisan who makes beautiful things. As much as the Big Ideas of Pluribus are a philosophy class, the small moments like Carol setting up her camera (has a memory card ever been so cinematic?) or the Paraguayan’s existence in his bunker, communicate vividly.
Some might view Pluribus as a bold defense of individualism; I am not so sure.
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viewOathbreakers: The War of Brothers That Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe by David M. Perry, Matthew Gabriele (2025)
Warnings from the Carolingian Empire about our current era. To be familiar with 2025, we get Brinkmanship, bloody battles, and family infighting deconstructed and reexamined. Charlemagne’s offspring did not honor him.
Perry and Gabriele are dynamic public historians, deploying a lively narrative and sharp scholarship. The use of poetry and participant reflections builds empathy for players in this epic soap opera.
I appreciate the reminder that egos, power-mad schemers, and an endless supply of nepobabies are centuries-old tropes. The authors spare no one as they posit elites can be the stupidest of us, then and now.
Place a library hold.
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viewThe Uncool: A Memoir, Cameron Crowe, Audiobook Read by author (2025)
Note: This is part of a series on memoirs read by their authors. #AudioMemoir
Previously in this series: Neko Case
Coming soon: Wayne Kramer, Evan Dando, Larry Charles
Listening to Crowe’s warm narration as he mines his teen music journalism years for laughs and tears, it felt like Almost Famous: Writer's Cut.
A love letter to the 1970s, with Rock Stars galore, from Lou Reed to Dicky Betts. Tales of long tours, late nights, and chance encounters. All guided by mentor Lester Bangs.
Light on movie career, but has choice Fast Times stories. Even winning an Oscar is quick business.
Not the box set of his life, rather a double album. But in the end, it is a story about a family in San Diego.
Listen to it.
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viewKurt Vile/Luke Roberts Classic Love (ep), Verve 2025
I am a Kurt Vile-O'phile. Classic Love is quintessential Vile. Warm. Weird. Funny.
A collaboration with Luke Roberts centers the EP. They team up on a version of Roberts's title tune, and KV takes a solo pass on another version of the song. Two versions? Both work.
They co-wrote “Hit of the High Life,” which sounds like a lost song off Neil Young's On The Beach LP. It's confessional, raw, and angsty about the world, macro and micro.
Mix in a Beach House cover, an updated catalog song, and you’ve entered the creative playground Vile calls home.
Stream/Buy it.
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viewPluribus, Episode 3: Grenade
See review of the first two episodes here
In the aftermath of almost 100% of humanity entering the singularity, our cranky protagonist, Carol, is refusing to deal. But when even a grocery run to Sprouts typifies the emptiness of having every need met, avoidance is futile.
Gilligan humanizes AI slop through Carol's keeper, Zosia. She is a hive mind Amelia Bedelia, glitches at emotion, and one sip of vodka is enough to chat out random Wikipedia entries.
By Grenade's end, Carol understands the crowd-sourced charm offensive she's experiencing and the power both she and they hold. Carol now enters a race to protect her individualism.
Keep watching it.
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viewDeath of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (2025)
In January, I wrote, “I feel bad for the rest of the books I will read this year.” As we wind down 2025, my statement holds.
No spoilers, but multiple stories power this novel. Advanced bio-prosthetics, driverless cars, and battle bots all feature in the plots. The narrative is American, African, and Galactic, expanding by the powers of ten.
Okorafor gives a soul and voice to what is artificial. Through that alchemy, she quilts together a complex, creative, and cautionary story about our collective walk into AI Evolution with intimacy and scale.
A novel for the Neo-Neolithic age.
Read it.
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viewRed Sonja: Consumed by Gail Simone (2024)
Helming Robert E. Howard's Red Sonja, author Gail Simone demonstrates a bard's touch for the Sword & Sorcery genre.
Simone celebrates the character's excesses and writes her lively action sequences, on the battlefield and in the bedroom. At times, overburdened by side quests, but the epic boss battles thrill with clear emotional stakes.
Chapters opening with historical documents, folklore, and societal analysis ground the narrative in a larger world but in inventive ways.
The Falcon's “Blood Man” is a devastating character study of violent male fragility. His POV chapters are like reading the manifesto of a real-world incel terrorist.
Read it.
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viewThe Blacktongue Thief – Christopher Buehlman (2021)
Branded deadbeat by his thieves guild, rare of coin, but still a romantic optimist (when he's feeling lucky), protagonist Kinch Na Shannack colorfully narrates us along his macabre adventures.
What unfolds is a rollicking low fantasy adventure—more taverns and flophouses than courtly castles. Kinch picks up a motley crew, including a red wine-obsessed knight who stores giant fighting birds in her tattoos, a paraplegic witch who enchants recently deceased torsos to walk, and an assassin cat.
Magic systems and world-building are inventive but subtle, opting to start small and grow.
Ever the trickster, Kinch is a riot. Read it.
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