My media this week (10-16 May 2026)
📚 STUFF I READ 📚
😊👂Service with a Smile (Blandings Castle #9) (PG Wodehouse, author; Nigel Lambert, narrator) - Uncle Fred is back at Blandings, this time under his own name, but still spreading sweetness & light, tormenting Dukes and helping the course of young (& older) love run smooth thru a judicious application of lying and blackmail.
🥰👂 Mirage City (Evander Mills #4) (Lev AC Rosen, author; Vikas Adam, narrator) - excellent entry in the series (though I did have to have it vetted for me from a friend before I would try it 😆but these are NOIR so I gotta know beforehand if anyone important dies, etc! (they did not, all is well. (well, as well as can be in 1950s San Francisco)))
😍 Platform Decay (The Murderbot Diaries #8) (Martha Wells) - it was just so damn good, I had to reread in ebook form!
😑 The Road to Roswell (Connie Willis, author; Jesse Vilinsky, narrator) - audio increased annoying levels by at least 20%, so switched to text which helped slightly (text also helped because it just goes faster.) Overall, just engaging enough to plow though but I never lost that low level thrum of annoyance (and I'm at least 10% annoyed with myself for bothering to finish.) The bits I did like were just swamped by what I did not. Absolutely the biggest UGH was the whole 'here's a man and a woman of an equivalent age ergo romance!' despite there not really being any chemistry. I've got zero patience for that heteronormative nonsense (esp bc i've been reading virtually no cishet/mainstream stuff so my tolerance level for that bs is in the basement)
😍👂 [Podfic] when i die i’ll sacrifice (more than enough for the afterlife) (notcaycepollard, author; quietnight, narrator) - 41K, Natasha/Maria; reread (via podfic) of THEEE BEST post-EG fixit for Natasha.
💖💖 +204K of shorter fic so shout out to these I really loved 💖💖
shane hollander's guide to bottom prep & ilya rozanov's guide to supportive intimacy (bisexualbuckley) - HR/GC: Hollanov, 13K & 10K respectively - both fics are hot, intimate, tender
I Wanna Be Somebody To Someone (Someone To You) (stabthroughme) - HR/GC: Hollanov, 36K - Ilya gets traded to NY, he becomes Scott's annoying younger cousin basically - good AU, skillful interweaving canon events
None Family With Heart Beef, A Hollanov """Fake""" Marriage (dairaliz, DiabolicalWorldwriter, jennisaisquoi) - HR/GC: Hollanov, 1K - hilariously funny not!fic (would love to see more of this kind of things, where folks just throw their unformatted ramblings from the discord into ao3 to share) with extremely entertaining cold read podfic - love it when a cold reader loses it, another level of shared experience
The Ways We Enter Each Other (Vee (Vera_DragonMuse)) - HR/GC: Hollanov, 16K - win conditions #8 - another stellar fic in this series! Ilya gets his ears pierced on a whim, which leads to shane taking care of him in a myriad of ways
📺 STUFF I WATCHED 📺
Party Animals - LIVE: Party Animals Can WIN LAS VEGAS SERIES Against Loco Beach Coconuts In Nevada Rubber Match!
Home Town - s10, e1-4
Maine Cabin Masters - s12, e5-10
Mythical Kitchen | 100 Years of Disneyland Food
Ask Hank Anything - Are Billionaires Dropping Inventors in Volcanoes? (Siobhan Thompson)
Fireside Chat LIVE With Liam O'Brien & Sam Riegel
Parlor Room - s2, e5
Mythical Kitchen | Sam Reich Eats His Last Meal
D20: Adventuring Party - "Zaeth is a Guided Missile" (s24, e6)
D20: City Council of Darkness - "The Sunday Scoop and Spiteful Spirits" (s30, e6)
Taskmaster - s21, e6
🎧 PODCASTS 🎧
What Next: TBD - Does Anyone Like A.I.?
Pop Culture Happy Hour - What it’s like to watch movies and TV early as a critic (Pop Culture Happy Hour+)
Explain It to Me - Chems in your cosmetics
Short History Of… - The Golden Age of Railways
Re: Dracula - May 11: Pray for my Happiness
Pop Culture Happy Hour - The Sheep Detectives
No One Saw It Coming - Beware gifts from Soviet spies
What Went Wrong - Cabaret
⭐ 99% Invisible - Ask Your Doctor About
It's Been a Minute - Progressive women are fed up & fighting back (feat. IHIP News)
Throughline - Four voices from the Great Depression
Re: Dracula - May 12: What Manner of Man is This
⭐ The Allusionist - 227. Draculae part 1: Enter the Castle
Shedunnit - The Silent Passenger
Pop Culture Happy Hour - Fun movies we missed
The Unbelievable Truth - Series 33: 3. Words, Bears, The French and Mushrooms
Handsome - Mae Martin's Dad asks us a question… with puppets!
Unexplainable - A better Black Death story
⭐ Code Switch - What the Savannah Bananas have to do with race and baseball
⭐ Sidedoor - The People in the Pictures
Decoder Ring - Decoder Rings Back | Duck, Duck, Jeep
Song Exploder - Key Change: Emma Straub
Ologies - Special Episode: Wall to Wall Secrets, Sorry!
Today, Explained - Is it a bad book or is it AI?
Cannonball - The Devil Wears Prada, Workers Get Nada
The Dogs Were Good (Again) Podcast - The Best Dog Grooming Transformations We’ve Ever Seen!
Endless Thread - Manifesting an online rom-com existence
⭐ Twenty Thousand Hertz - Age of Audio: The Inside Story of Podcasting
Vibe Check - A Fountain of Regret
What Next - SchadenFriday: Ben Shapiro’s Short—as in Abrupt—Decline
Re: Dracula - May 15: Lizard Fashion
Welcome to Night Vale #288 - Doubles Anonymous
Broken Record - Wyclef Jean | Live from On Air Fest (with Sam Sanders)
Handsome - Pretty Little Episode #91
Hit Parade - Dancing With Himself Edition
Re: Dracula - May 16: This Man Belongs to Me
ICYMI - Right-Wing Creators Are In Their Flop Era
ICYMI - Bonus: The Influencer Caught Snarking On Herself
Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me! - We make Ken Jennings relive the worst moment of his life
Pop Culture Happy Hour - Obsession and What’s Making Us Happy
🎶 MUSIC 🎶
Billboard Top 40 March 19, 1988
Billboard Top 40 April 24, 1982
Billboard Top 40 August 15, 1987
Billboard Top 40 May 18, 1985
Billy Idol
