My Favorite Things with Janicu

They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, the weekly column where we grab someone in speculative circles to gab about the greatest in geek. This week we sit down with occasional book blogger and occasional Speculative Chic contributor Janicu. What does Janicu love when life isn’t demanding her attention? Spoiler alert: serialized comedies, funny superheroes, a childhood favorite brought to life, and hunting down ever-elusive books! Curious? Read on for more!

The Good Place: I wasn’t aware that this has been repeatedly recommended here on Speculative Chic, until I started this My Favorite Things. Anyway, too late, I’m doing it again.

A friend told me to watch this TV show with the argument that it’s comedy, but without the pitfall of a comedy series where it’s too easy to stop watching if you miss a couple of weeks of episodes. They said that because of the serialized element to it, The Good Place is great for people who like comedy, but also like a good mystery to analyze. I said, “Hmm, sounds promising,” and added it to my Netflix queue. Then one night I didn’t feel like I had enough time to watch a full movie, but a twenty-four minute episode was perfect, so I started watching, and I realized that my friend forgot to tell me that this shit is addictive. I watched maybe four episodes of it in a row until I was forced to go to sleep, even though I really wanted to keep staying up to watch.

The premise is this: Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) finds herself in a waiting room, from which she is called into an office by Michael (Ted Danson), who tells her she’s dead, but not to worry, all the extraordinary good deeds have earned her an afterlife in the Good Place. She is welcomed into a Utopian neighborhood full of other similarly exceptionally good people, including her soulmate, Chidi (William Jackson Harper). The problem is that they have the wrong Eleanor.

If you haven’t watched The Good Place, get on it. At work, my whole lunch table has successfully peer-pressured each other into watching it so we can talk about it without spoiling someone, and that’s seven people with no complaints. Many a lunch has had a “Janet is the best” conversation and a “What do you think that plot twist means?” conversation. And, if you have watched other Michael Schur series like The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, you’ll probably recognize the comedy with heart theme, where a cast of quirky likeable characters bring the funny, but also bring something much deeper to the viewing experience when you see them grow and change and enrich each other’s lives.

Thor: Ragnorak: After What We Do in the Shadows, I’ve become a fan of director/writer/actor Taika Waititi. That movie was hilarious, but more importantly it was FUN. Watching it, I believed that every single person on that set was having a great time.

I was really excited to have that translated into a superhero blockbuster. There’s been a lot of superhero movies in recent years that, sure, have humor, but that humor often balanced an angst-filled backstory. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love me a superhero movie and will watch all of them, but sometimes I want a little less of a reminder of the tragic cost of great power and instead, just want to straight-up have fun for a couple of hours. You know when you have high expectations for something, and that’s exactly what you get? It doesn’t happen often, but I KNEW it was going to happen for Thor: Ragnorak once I saw the Team Thor teasers on Youtube. Life and all its unpredictability kept me from seeing this on the screen, but I persisted and finally saw it in January, when it started to disappear and move into the cheap theaters. I’m so glad I insisted on it. This is the type of movie you want to go to a theater to experience so you can laugh in the dark with strangers.

Bonus: have you seen the James Cordon’s Late Late Show video, Thor 4D?

Revolting Rhymes: When I was a pre-teen, I was a pretty diehard Roald Dahl fan. I borrowed every book I could find at the school library, including the autobiographical stuff (Boy, Going Solo), and creepy short stories (Tales of the Unexpected). It’s been years and years since my “Dahl phase,” so when I found Revolting Rhymes on Netflix, I didn’t immediately recognize it. What initially drew me in was the promise of some twists to well known fairy tales and some great looking animation (I’m a sucker for fairy tale retellings and pretty imagery). Since I don’t have too much free time these days, the fact that it was two short 29 minute episodes helped too. When I watched it, I realized that each episode was a mix of two or more fairy tales. In Episode 1, it’s Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, and The Three Little Pigs cleverly interwoven, and Episode 2 continues their story while also bringing in Cinderella and Jack & the Beanstalk. The cleverness, dark twists, and lovely imagery would have done it for me on their own, but I also had the very pleasant experience of recognizing some of the rhymes in the story (particularly Cinderella’s realization of her Prince’s true character). I spent a very nice hour watching this and remembering one of the obsessions of my youth.

I recommend a watch, then reading the original rhymes online: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, The Three Little Pigs, Cinderella, and Jack and the Beanstalk.

Book Sale Finder and BookFinder: I’ve been feeling a bit guilty that there’s no books on this list of My Favorite Things. I just haven’t read enough lately! So let me speak of a couple of oldies but goodies that are book-related. Back in the day, when the Internet was younger, I didn’t know of many book blogs, and I spent a lot of time just reading Amazon’s listmanias (or were they called listopia, it’s been so long) for recommendations of books that I might like. I was in college and sans much spending money, but I really wanted to read Michelle Sagara’s out of print Books of the Sundered.  It was around then that I found BookFinder.com, a website much like Travelocity or Trivago, would search different bookstores and return a list of prices with their condition, print dates, and so on. This is where I STILL go when I can’t find a book anywhere else (hello, edition of Howl’s Moving Castle with the cover from my childhood that I’ve searched for my whole life). Recently I saw this site was bought up by Amazon (ugh, Bezos, must you own everything?), but it seems unchanged and just as great as ever — it does one job, and it does it well.

The other place I discovered in those early years was BookSaleFinder.com. I found this shortly after I discovered Library Book Sales. I had previously not known of these in my sheltered childhood, but after going to one, I was in love, but I feared I would never remember from year to year when my town’s yearly big awesome library sale was. Well, this site solves the problem. You just go there, click on your state and see all the sales ongoing and upcoming. And if you don’t want to do that, you can click on sale mail, put in your zip code, and how far you’d go for a sale, and it emails you of upcoming sales on a regular basis.

I hope this is useful for other book nerds… though maybe this gives you more problems, because now you’re going to need more space for those books.

Janicu is a book blogger (somewhat on hiatus) whose favorite genres are Speculative Fiction and Romance. She enjoys chatting with fellow readers about stories they have loved, and has trouble not buying extra copies of treasured books. When not reading, she writes code, drinks lots of caffeine, and obsesses over fountain pens and ink. She lives in New England with her husband and a bossy cat.