Hiya folks! Not a lot of things to update on this month… I’ve been reading again, working up to more substantial novels after the comics and light nonfiction I’ve been reading most of the year. It turns out there’s another mental step between being able to read more and getting back to writing a lot, so we’re still on mostly a weekly schedule here, but I’m pretty proud of the posts I’ve been able to write the past couple of months. I think they’re some of my more in-depth book talks, of books worth reading and talking about, so I’m quite satisfied.

I saw a couple of movies in August. The Meg was absolutely fantastic, amazing deep-sea and shark scares, funny parts, genuinely sad and touching parts, and a refreshing set of characters. I hope Jason Statham’s character is part of a trend toward non-toxically masculine action heroes, along with others like the Rock’s in Rampage. The female characters were also great, nothing reductive or objectifying. Just a super satisfying action movie with nothing to complain about and a lot of good things to say.

I also really enjoyed The Happytime Murders. I love puppets, so of course I wanted to see it, but I didn’t think the humor would be really my style. It turned out to have some very funny moments — the style of humor shown in the trailer is very accurate to the film as a whole, which I don’t really find that funny, but as long as you’re not offended by it I think you’ll also find other things to laugh at. More importantly, they chose not just to make a gimmick movie but to actually make a movie, with a pretty decent mystery plot and great character moments, so you leave satisfied. I’d love to get a sequel, or even better, more puppet movies for adults in a variety of styles.

What are you up to this month?