Pop Culture Calendar

This is described as "corporate samurai...in space." If you need more than that, I don't know what to tell ya!

I can't remember where I once heard someone refer to this genre as "good for her" but it applies to any book where a woman goes around killing people or getting revenge and she's been treated so badly, or you're so fed up with the system, that you just think "good for her." A PhD student gets a taste for muder. (So many evil professor books this year - is dark academia transitioning away from fantasy into regular literaure because universities have become that bad?)

Do you know the story of Charles Dickens and Hans Christian Andersen? I feel like it circulates online once a year (there is even a game). Andersen was a stan who became the worst houseguest ever while Dickens was going through it in his professional and personal lives. This book is the story of that visit.

A ballet dancer leaves her company to join an enclosed convent where she can have no contact with the rest of the world; her sister suspects it's her husband's fault and tries to find out why.

An American actress goes to Northern Ireland to shoot a TV show about the Troubles and disappears. O'Reilly had a very well-reviewed comic memoir that I did not read and a very famous series of tweets about accidentally being on ketamine while bartending for the Irish prime minister that I did.

new Murderbot!

Genre

scifi

Status

NEW

Watch

Netflix

Scifi set in a retirement community by the Duffer Brothers of Stranger Things fame.

A woman falls in love with her friend from college when she spends the summer with him and sees how he's changed. This looks like good summer romance vibes.

A Chinese-American family moves to the Bay Area suburbs and end up feuding with the neighbors in a "funny, heartfelt" novel. I loved A River of Stars but haven't read any of Hua's other books.

This is on the list purely for the title. Hard to think of a better one for a scifi book about AI.

New Ann Leckie!! Set in the Ancillary world.

Hur has a wonderful historical mystery set in 1700s Korea and she's returning to that era with this new book, a Pride and Prejudice-inspired love story.

A second chance romance about a screenwriter and composer working on a Harlem Renaissance biopic from one of our best contemporary romance novelists.

Burns went from the Booker Prize-winning Milkman, literary fiction set during the Troubles, to this novella about an elderly superhero?? What a pivot! (Side note: It always annoys me when people get hung up on books that don't use quotation marks. I get having trouble following at times but some people just categorically hate it in a way that feels personal. The entire story ruined for you by a punctuation mark?? I loved Milkman btw. )

Rozakis has been turning out consistently good lighthearted fantasy. Her newest is about a junior saleswoman who gets stuck working with the demon her boss summoned before he died.

A Spanish vampire moves to the New World (1840s Mexico) to find love and have a baby in a story that hops from 1099 southeast Asia to 1400s Spain to futuristic New York.

Genre

dark comedy

Status

NEW

Watch

Apple TV

It stars Tatiana Maslany and Jake Johnson, which is all I need to know, but it's a dark comedy about "a newly divorced mom who falls down a dangerous rabbit hole of blackmail, murder, and youth soccer."

Genre

talk show

Status

Watch

CBS/Paramount

The final episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

A teen in Colombia is introduced to the underground queer scene and learns about her father's past.

The long-awaited final (?) book in MacLean's Hell's Belles series has a release date.

Spiritualism and sister con artists are two tropes that have me reading a book, and this book has both!

Viel's new book is "a haunting reimagining of Linda Taylor--known as the original Welfare Queen—pursued, scrutinized, celebrated and vilified, and the impact her image has had for generations."" Viel's debut was really impressive, almost too unrelenting for me. This seems like a great subject for her newest.

Genre

noir / comic book

Status

NEW

Watch

Amazon Prime+

This is about a 1930s PI superhero played by Nicolas Cage, who also voiced the character in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. This is live action though and a noir. Hard to have a comic book noir detective from this era without reminding me of Dick Tracy. Don't be confused if you see this is premiering on MGM+. It's coming to Prime like a month later.