Last week's Open Thread was pretty heavy, as it needed to be. Thanks to everyone who contributed. Reading your replies was cathartic, bracing, and inspiring—sometimes all at once.
So this week, let's downshift to a less fraught topic, eh? What are you reading? What are you watching? What are you listening to? And (as a non-gamer, I always forget this one) what are you playing?
I'll start. As always, I'm deep into too many books at once—I've resigned myself to the fact that when it comes to reading, I graze. Gary Indiana's death has been my excuse to finally try his AIDS-era love/lust novel Horse Crazy. I'll be wading for quite a while through Joe Boyd's mammoth, somewhat scattered but very informative survey of international music And the Roots of Rhythm Remain. Same for Du Bois's Black Reconstruction (just a little light reading for the winter, lol).
I rewatched Secrets and Lies last week and, as always happens after a Mike Leigh movie, wondered why I'm not constantly rewatching Mike Leigh movies. (Not sure when his latest, Hard Truths, is getting here, but along with Mati Diop's Dahomey it's atop my most anticipated list.) Last night I saw Soundtrack to a Coup D'Etat with beloved local poster Norm Charlatan and here are just a few of my thoughts. And with a new season of Somebody Somewhere underway, I'm finally checking out the other Duplass bros production, Penelope.
It's getting time for me to revisit my favorite music of the year, and you'll hear more about that from me before the end of 2024. I'm way behind in updating this year's playlists, but that's most of the new stuff I've been listening to.
OK, your turn!
As always, feel free to ignore this prompt and talk about whatever you want. This is your Open Thread, after all.
P.S. Quit Twitter and join us on Bluesky—we're already up over 2/3 of our Twitter followers.
