WHAT have you finished reading recently? After Christendom, Michael Warren Davis
WHAT are you reading now? Listening to Troy, prepared and read by Stephen Fry.
WHAT are you reading next? Probably The True Flag by Stephen Kinzer, focusing on Theodore Roosevelt and Mark Twain as opposing voices on the question of imperialism. And by “probably”, I mean “I’ve read a quarter of it already”. I say probably because I’ve had an idea for this year’s Blast from the Past, my annual warp back to my younger self’s reading.
Today’s prompt from Long and Short Reviews is, “reasons we’ve stopped reading or watching a series”. The number one reason, of course, would be sheer distraction.
(1) Dutton Ranch. (TV) I came for Morgan Wade. I don’t see any Morgan Wade. Someone give me timestamps, life is too short to watch an hour of a show just to spot her playing bartender in the background. Here’s some immediate MW gratification for the curious; her new release, “Love’s Insane”.
(2) Cobra Kai. (TV) Just got distracted. Planning on returning to it. Strike first! Strike hard! No mercy!
(3) Star Trek Strange New Worlds, season 3: (TV) Paramount Plus does not like my browser extensions that cripple information-harvesting, so it usually takes 4-5 tries to get it to start streaming. Also, season 3 is a little…odd. I will return.
(4) Rick Riordan’s Norse series. (YA books) At some point I went “Eh, I’m tired of reading about a trio of kids who are told to take a road trip to save Earth from a chaos monster before the Solstice/Equinox in three weeks”.
(5) Rick Riordan’s Roman series. (YA books) I literally just missed everything after The Mark of Athena. So, all of them. (Last read in 2012, oofdah.)
(6) Shrinking. An AppleTV series with Marshall from How I Met Your Mother and Harrison Ford from Witness, in which Marshall plays a therapist whose patients’ problems give him an emotional blue screen of death. I watched the first few episodes and enjoyed it, but I honestly can’t tell you the last time I watched an entire series through. Okay, it was late spring, when I re-watched 11.22.63. And before that it was Chernobyl. But except for those, I honestly can’t tell you.
(7) Star Trek Picard (season 3). The less said about season 1 and 2, the better. I liked season three, except for the weird smoking alien, but after they killed off my favorite surly Bajoran (no offense, Colonel Kira), I meh’d right out.
(8) Star Trek Discovery (season 2). I have started watching this 3-4 times. I must persevere, if only for Anson Mount and Ethan Peck. But man. Maybe the next time I’m hospitalized or something.
(9) Clan of the Cave Bear (the last novel). I read all but the last of the Jean M. Auel Cro-Magnon novels in which Ayla invents everything from equestrianism to sewing. Auel did a crazy amount of research, but the books got progressively more like a soap opera, and I just didn’t care enough to tackle the huge one.
(10) History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Winston Churchill. I enjoyed the ones my library had, but we didn’t have all of them. So, I technically haven’t finished it..
Reading Freely 
I really enjoyed Star Trek: Picard. Even the first two seasons 😂 but season three was definitely the standout. I’m a die hard Next Gen fan, and season three just felt like home and made me feel such nostalgia. Strange New Worls is also great. I’m looking forward to this season, but a bit disappointed that season five will only be a shortened run of six episodes. As far as Shrinking goes, I loved the first few I watched, but then I got busy and never went back to it. I will, though.
Six episodes? Good lord. To think we used to get 20+ in a season…
I know. With such a long ep count there was time for proper character development, in my opinion. DS9 would have died with 6 to 10 episodes.
And its ensemble cast would have NEVER happened. What DS9 did with minor characters like Rom, Garak, etc was amazing.
I agree. There would only be enough space to explore a handful of characters. It wouldn’t work.
My (admittedly small) stack of unread Sharpe novels keeps waving for my attention every time I pass it…. I *REALLY* must give them some TLC **soon**.
I don’t see how you resist!
FAR too much else to read! I have *hundreds* of unread books in my house.
Who is Morgan Wade?
I forget how short a season it’s been since we ‘met’ online! She is a country singer-songwriter (who now flirts with country-rock) who I was obsessed with back in 2022-2023. Like, multiple concerts, paying for a VIP ticket to meet her, that sort of thing.
Yeah, sometimes bloggers get so used to each other that they think the others have “always” been there. I’ve been guilty of that myself, hahahaha.
Wow. That’s obsessed 😉
Well, these days the tour poster shrine has been disassembled, so my fandom is at normal levels…
I enjoyed the first Clan of the Cave Bear book but lost interest after the second one and never finished the series. I loved the historical setting, though.
The most recent two episodes of Strange New Worlds have been good, but I get where you’re coming from. Thanks for stopping by.
So many great choices, Stephen. I really wanted to watch Star Trek: Picard, but never got there. After Star Trek: The Next Generation, I didn’t follow the many other series that came after it.
Thanks for sharing.
https://thebookconnectionccm.blogspot.com/2026/08/wednesday-weekly-blogging-challenge.html
I haven’t read the last Clan of the Cave Bear either. The quality very noticeably dropped with each book after Valley of Horses
The weirdest one had to be the….femi-Nazi? XD
I’m not sure I remember to think which one that was
I had to go through my reviews, but she shows up in PLAINS OF PASSAGE:
“This book actually introduces the closest thing I’ve seen to villains since Broud. The first and most interesting is a psychotic feminazi named Attaroa. She murders the leader of the camp she lives in (her husband) and shoves all of the males into a caveman concentration camp. She’s doing this because she thinks if only female spirits “mix”, then only females will be born. She manages to capture Jondolar and tie him to a wooden stake used for target practice.”
I remember that now. Yeah, that was weird
This Churchill series sounds fascinating.
Last #book I finished: Le Mystère de la maison aux trois ormes by #ValentinMusso #Amreading: The Billiard Room Mystery by #BrianFlynn
#Amlistening to: The Light Eaters (#nonfiction, on Plant Intelligence) by #ZoëSchlanger
#TBR Reading next: Stories of First Contact by #SinišaKomlen
Light Eaters was good!