The "Taskmaster" Post

You may have noticed that I don't watch much in the category of game shows.  Don't get me wrong.  I've been a big fan of some of these programs in the past, particularly if they're food related.  It's always handy to be able to pull out a few episodes of "The Great British Bake Off" during the holidays, which are safe viewing for everyone.  However, when it comes to your traditional "Survivor" or "The Traitors" or "Masked Singer" style competition shows, I've lost all interest in following them regularly.   

And then I heard about "Taskmaster," which is a British competition show that doesn't have anything that annoys me about traditional competition shows.  Like the great "Whose Line is it Anyway?" the points don't really matter and the main objective is to make you laugh.  To that end, everyone who appears on the program is a comedian or minor celebrity.  Hosted by Greg Davies as the titular Taskmaster, with Alex Horne as his mild-mannered assistant, each series of the show has a cast of five contestants who return every week for the whole run, gradually building up rapport with each other as they accumulate points.  I watched the most recent season, which featured Fatiha El-Ghorri, Jason Mantzoukas, Mathew Baynton, Rosie Ramsey, and Stevie Martin.  Mantzoukas is one of the few Americans who has ever appeared on "Taskmaster," and seems to have decided that this requires him to be this season's agent of chaos.

As you might have guessed from the title, the competition revolves around accomplishing different tasks created by Davies and the team, most of them absurd.  They range from fairly simple things like eating as much watermelon as you can in sixty seconds, or golfing with potatoes, to convoluted, multi-part challenges with too many rules.  Some tasks require a lot of creativity, ingenuity, or just plain stubborn determination to complete.  Others just need pure dumb luck.  Many of the challenges are very physical, and are very funny to watch.  I really like the format, where the "live" portion of the show involves two of the tasks and all of the judging happening  in a studio in front of an audience.  The more complicated and time-consuming tasks are all filmed beforehand at the Taskmaster House location, and edited clips are screened for everyone, allowing the judges and contestants to discuss them.  These are some of the funniest parts of the show, where the contestants react to each other's efforts, try to explain their reasoning for certain outcomes, and just have a ball roasting each other.  

One of the issues I've always had with reality competition shows is that the cameras and the editing can be very misleading, creating all this manufactured drama and wildly skewing the audience's perceptions of the contestants.  On "Taskmaster," all of the contestants are entertainment professionals who have experience with being onscreen, and the show is completely transparent that their edits affect the narrative.  In one of the episodes I watched, they first played one clip of a contestant seemingly accomplishing a task very quickly - only to reveal that it was a misdirection, and rolled a second clip showing all the mistakes and wrong turns that they had cut out of the first one.  I like that the clips will group various attempts at tasks based on the contestants' tactics, often with the best or worst or wildest outlier used as the final punchline.  Also, the judging is very arbitrary, coming down to Greg Davies mostly sticking to a preset rubric, but often just indulging his own whims or rewarding whoever has a good argument.

A lot of the show also comes down to the chemistry of a particular group of contestants.  I specifically sought out series 19 of "Taskmaster" because I was already invested in Jason Mantzoukas's quest to be on the program, and I started hearing very good things about how the series was going about halfway through.  I ended up bingeing six episodes in a single sitting.  I don't think I've laughed so hard or so consistently at any television program in years.  "Taskmaster" is really good at putting funny people in funny situations and enabling their ability to be funny.  More importantly, this is the kind of humor that works for me - a mix of banter, absurdity, slapstick, and fairly malice-free one-upsmanship.  The contestants are weird, profane, and violent, but supportive of each other.  The hosts are officious, but lovably kooky weirdos too.         

I don't know if I'll watch more of "Taskmaster" after I finish this series, but it's kind of nice just to know that it's there if I need it.  

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"Ballerina" and "KPop Demon Hunters"

I wanted to say a little about the latest entry in the "John Wick" universe, "Ballerina," but I always find it difficult to write about these films because they're usually dealing in variations on the same set of well-worn action tropes, and I have trouble keeping the many different installments straight.  I enjoy watching them while I'm watching them, but often don't remember much about them afterwards.  "Ballerina" focuses on a new assassin character named Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), but all the usual hallmarks of a "John Wick" film are here, including John Wick himself.  He's figured prominently in the trailers and other marketing, so I don't think this is a spoiler.

I won't bother describing much plot, because the script by Shay Hatten is terrible.  Let's just say that Eve, who was trained to be one of the Ruska Roma ballerina assassins by the Director (Angelica Huston), is out for revenge against a cult leader, the Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne).  This means fighting her way across Eastern Europe in search of the cult's base of operations, and meeting other colorful characters played by Norman Reedus and Catalina Sandino Moreno.  As with the other films in this series, the primary reason why we're all here is for the action scenes.  "Ballerina" has several good ones, and takes the approach of having Ana de Armas use realistic tactics and moves for someone of her size and build.  In the early training sequences, she's told to "fight like a girl" and look for ways to turn situations where she's physically outmatched to her advantage.  Her action scenes aren't as visceral as the ones in "John Wick," but they're often just as inventive.  Keep an eye out for when the flamethrowers show up.      

I've been rooting for Ana de Armas to become an action star since I saw her as Paloma in "No Time to Die."  She was a fantastic Bond girl - charismatic, stylish, and had a wonderful rapport with Daniel Craig.  In "Ballerina" she nails the action without any problems, but Eve Macarro is such a bland, boring character.  I understand why they downplayed her physical appearance, covering her in coats and jackets to make her look more substantial against her opponents.  However, Eve is also humorless, seems to have no personality beyond working toward her revenge, and doesn't get to really connect to anybody beyond brief teamups.  I don't remember her getting a single pithy action hero line or exchange with anybody.  She has to be dead serious all the time, and it's such a shame.  I'd be happy to see de Armas return to this universe in the future, but only if she gets to play Eve as an actual human being next time.   

  

On to "KPop Demon Hunters," a Netflix original animated movie from Sony Pictures Imageworks, directed by Chris Applehans, who did "Wish Dragon," and Maggie Kang.  This one was a fun surprise, a fantasy action film about a K-pop girl trio, Huntr/x (pronounced "Huntrix"), whose members also secretly hunt soul-sucking demons between performances.  Rumi (Arden Cho), Mira (May Hong) and Zoey (Ji-young Yoo) are super popular and successful.  However, some of the demons have wised up, and formed a rival boyband, the Saja Boys, led by the hunky Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop).  The ensuing battle of the bands involves a ton of K-pop earworms including a single, "Takedown" sung by members of the real girl group TWICE.  And because we must have some K-drama to go with the K-pop, it turns out that Rumi is half demon!  And she's got feelings for Jinu!

I have had very little exposure to K-pop, or even American boyband culture, so the many references and in-jokes went well over my head.  However, "KPop Demon Hunters" works just fine even if you're not into K-pop.  The action is energetic, the humor is silly, and the animation is bright and appealing.  There are a few instances of 2D/3D animated caricature being pushed to extremes in some of the comedic moments, but for the most part the visuals stay pretty polished and aren't trying too hard.  I thoroughly enjoyed the colorful character designs, the fun vocal performances, and the spectacle of magical girl pop stars putting on a show.  There's a little self-mockery to keep things approachable - the other members of the Saja Boys are named Mystery, Romance, Abs, and Baby - but for the most part "Kpop Demon Hunters" is a K-pop love fest.  New song drops and media appearances are plot points, and everything is "for the fans."  It's also nice to see a ton of Korean talent involved, including Daniel Dae Kim, Yunjin Kim, Lee Byung-hun, Ken Jeong, and Joel Kim Booster in minor roles.

The best thing that the movie has going for it, however, is taking the music seriously.  This is one of the few animated films I've seen lately where the speaking and singing voices of the major characters are different, a practice that used to be commonplace.  The singing voices of Huntr/x are Ejae, Audrey Nuna, and Rei Ami, with Andrew Choi for Jinu.  I'm not Korean and can't speak to the cultural bona fides of the portrayal of the Korean music industry or anything else Korean in the movie, but it's always a good sign when you can recognize those elements are there, and the Western audience isn't being obviously pandered to.  Will this work as a gateway for the curious to explore more K-pop music?  Hard to say, but this is easily the best animated musical I've seen since "Encanto," and its audience is going to want more.

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"Foundation," Year Three

Mild spoilers for the first two seasons ahead.

This is probably the best season of "Foundation" because it's the one with the clearest, simplest storylines, and when a lot of long-germinating ideas finally pay off.  Chief among these is the arrival of the Mule (Pilou Asbaek), a man with such strong mental powers, he can take over the minds of whole populations and capture planets with hardly any effort.  He poses a threat to both the Empire and the Foundation, which has grown in size to become a major force in the galaxy.  This heralds the beginning of the Third Crisis, which may require the cooperation of Foundation, Empire, and other forces to defeat.

It's now another 152 years into the future, where the Empire has become significantly diminished, Foundation has become more bureaucratized, and there are several new characters to keep straight.  It helps that some of these are played by familiar faces.  Cherry Jones as Foundation ambassador Felice Quent is part of this season's Empire storyline.  Alexander Siddig is Dr. Ebling Mis, a psychohistorian holding down the fort in New Terminus.  However, the ones we really need to keep an eye on are the dashing Captain Han Pritcher (Brandon P. Bell), and the Trader newlyweds Toran Mallow (Cody Fern) and Bayta (Synnove Karlsen), who get swept up in the chaos caused by the Mule's takeover of the pleasure planet Kalgon.  

Gaal gets plenty to do this year trying to combat the Mule, but as usual the really juicy stuff is happening on Trantor.  Our newest version of Day is a hedonist who has fallen in love with his consort, Song (Yootha Wong-Loi-Sing).  He's largely abandoned his responsibilities to Dawn, who is about to ascend to the Middle Throne, while Dusk is facing his imminent demise.  Everyone has their own agendas, and on top of it all Demerzel is growing increasingly uncertain about her role in preserving the Empire at all costs.  Lee Pace and Laura Birn do excellent work - and Lee Pace getting his Lebowski on is delightful - but the real acting powerhouse this season is Terrence Mann.  Here's a Dusk who is struggling to accept the end of his life and secure his legacy, while everything around him seems to be falling apart.       

The other storylines are very plot and exposition driven, sometimes to the point of being borderline incoherent, and the rest of the cast feels like they're just hanging on for dear life.  Lou Llobell is improving, but still tends to get overshadowed by all her scene partners.  The newcomers are all pretty solid, but there aren't any standouts.  We get very little of Jared Harris this year, but honestly we don't need him when the show's momentum has hit such breakneck speeds.  The last few episodes this season are especially gratifying to watch if you've been waiting for some of these developments since the beginning of the series the way that I have.  There isn't a lot of action in this season, but there is a lot of destruction, and what we do see is precisely deployed to suggest much bigger conflicts and upheavals.  

In short "Foundation" is in classic space opera territory now, and it's quite a thing to behold.  Worlds are clashing, civilizations are falling, and I really want to make an "Attack of the Clones" joke, but there are just too many spoilers involved.  I will caution that "Foundation" is not likely to win over any new viewers with this season if they weren't already on board with the show.  The storytelling remains information dense, and it's prone to ridiculous dei ex machina.  I lost track of several important characters who I didn't remember from previous seasons, and had to look up a few references.  "Foundation" makes no apologies about appealing to a certain kind of science-fiction fan, and that's what I've always enjoyed the most about it.  

Yes, the "Foundation" television series is dumbed down Isaac Asimov, but it's still recognizably Isaac Asimov's work, and thanks to Apple and David Goyer, it's looking more and more likely that we'll be able to see it all the way through to the end.

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2025 Summer Movie Wrap Up

Is it over?  Good grief, what a bloodbath this summer has been.

Here's the domestic box office rankings for this summer:

1. Lilo & Stitch

2. Superman

3. Jurassic World: Rebirth

4. The Fantastic Four: First Steps

5. How to Train Your Dragon

6. Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

7. Thunderbolts*

8. F1: The Movie

9. Final Destination: Bloodlines

10. Weapons 

Here's what I predicted back in April:

1. Superman (7 points)

2. Lilo & Stitch (7 points)

3. The Fantastic Four: First Steps (7 points)

4. Thunderbolts* (3 points)

5. Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (7 points)

6. Jurassic World Rebirth (3 points)

7. How to Train Your Dragon (5 points)

8. Elio 

9. The Bad Guys 2 

10. 28 Years Later

Wild Cards: M3GAN 2.0, The Conjuring: Last Rites, and Ballerina

I did worse than last year (40 points), but I managed to get a few things right, like the successes of  "Superman" and "Lilo & Stitch."  Some bad decisions were repeated, like underestimating the "Jurassic Park" franchise yet again.  I have no idea how those dinosaurs keep getting audiences into seats for mediocre movie after mediocre movie, but you'd think I'd have caught on by now.  I always have a few major titles in my blind spots, and this year I had three: "Weapons," "F1: the Movie" and "Final Destination: Bloodline."  I probably should have seen "F1" appealing to the adult crowd that usually goes to Christopher Nolan movies, but the "Final Destination" revival really came out of nowhere, posting the franchise's best numbers by an impressive amount.  And "Weapons" had a fantastic marketing campaign and late summer run that completely torpedoed my score in August, when it beat "Elio" for tenth place

The real story this summer, however, is the further downward slide of the MCU.  I already put "Fantastic Four" and "Thunderbolts*" in what I thought were pretty low spots, but it turns out that this wasn't low enough.  "Thunderbolts*" in particular was a heartbreaker because it's easily the best MCU film since "Avengers: Endgame," but nobody seemed to be interested.  "Fantastic Four," despite the massive marketing campaign, underperformed significantly.  "Superman" did okay, well enough that it shouldn't impact the plans for the rebooted DC films, but not as well as comic book fans were hoping.  

There were a lot of films that briefly looked like they could be breakout hits, but only ended up appealing to niche audiences.  These included the "M3GAN" sequel, the "Naked Gun" reboot, "Ballerina," "Karate Kid: Legends," "28 Years Later," and pretty much all of the animated films.  There was a lot of fuss about PIXAR's "Elio" underperforming, but so did "The Bad Guys 2" and the latest attempt at a "Smurfs" movie.  The "KPop Demon Hunters" soundtrack is dominating Spotify, but the movie was a Netflix streaming release.   

While I didn't hit any bullseyes this year, I'm proud of myself for a couple of close ones, including audiences remaining tepid on the newest "Mission: Impossible" movie and embracing the "How to Train Your Dragon" live action remake.  Conversely, I vastly underestimated most of the horror titles, and did a poor job with the few I did pick.  I don't know how "The Conjuring: Last Rites" ended up in my wild cards list despite being a September release, but I'm playing fair and sticking to the original picks.  My alternate pick would have been something equally disastrous like "The Life of Chuck" anyway.

Finally, the chart here is only for domestic box office totals, and doesn't reflect the significant decrease in international box office numbers this year.  "Lilo & Stitch" is our only summer blockbuster to break a billion dollars, while none of the superhero movies have managed to garner much overseas interest.  Live action remakes of animated films, however, continue to do well.  Audiences remain risk averse and continue to place value on titles that they already have some familiarity with, so you can expect next year's "Moana" remake to do well.  

 

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Seeing "Smoke"

"Smoke" is a twisty new nine-episode miniseries created by Dennis Lehane, loosely based on the crimes of arsonist John Leonard Orr.  It offers some very stylish, entertaining examinations of multiple arsonists and investigators, to the point where "Smoke" is as much psychological drama as it is a crime thriller.  However, don't be fooled by the sterling cast list, the Thom Yorke song over the opening credits, or the fancy fire effects provided by ILM.  It may have designs on being prestige television, but there's a lot of sensationalism and sleaze in this show where you might not expect it, and some of the plot turns are pure fantasy.

Arson investigator Dave Gudsen (Taron Egerton) is trying to catch two serial arsonists in the Pacific Northwest, while working on his first novel.  A police detective, Michelle Calderone (Jurnee Smollett) is assigned to be his partner on the investigations.  Rafe Spall and Greg Kinnear play their superiors, and Hannah Emily Anderson plays Dave's wife Ashley.  However, I expect that the most well-remembered performance of the show will be Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine's.  He's playing an unsettling fast food worker named Freddy Fasano, one of the arson suspects.  John Leguizamo and Anna Chlumsky also show up later in the series in roles that I will not spoil.

I like the structure and the storytelling aims of "Smoke," which seems determined to take the usual tropes of a crime story, with its clearly delineated good guys and bad guys, and undermine them at every turn.  Every single character we could view as a hero turns out to have some kind of dark side, and the most clear cut baddie is one of the most sympathetic figures in the show.  The show also plays with unreliable narrators, constantly calling into question whether the events we're shown can be trusted, since we're seeing them from the POVs of untrustworthy characters.  You could definitely make the case that some of the wilder events in the show's last few episodes don't actually play out the way that we see them.

However, this works for some parts of the series better than others.  "Smoke" is good about creating opportunities for the smaller roles to leave big impressions.  Everyone gets their moments, whether it's Dave's teenage stepson or a hostile police captain who only shows up in the very last episode. The Freddy Fasano storyline is deeply engrossing and compelling, presenting the sad, limited life of a disadvantaged man in search of some way out of his unhappiness.  Mwine's performance is fantastic, despite him having barely any dialogue in most of his scenes.  It also benefits from being unhampered by any of the metatextual trickery used in the rest of the show.  The other storylines involving the other suspects and investigators are significantly less interesting, especially since it's clear from pretty early on where the creators' sympathies lie.  

The performance I had the most trouble with was Taron Edgerton's.  I like him as an actor, he's got plenty of chemistry with Jussie Smollett, and I admire the willingness to tackle tough material, but his portrayal of Dave Gudson doesn't ring true.  He's clearly putting in a lot of effort, but it feels like he was a last minute replacement for another, more seasoned actor who had to drop out unexpectedly.  Smollett also doesn't quite seem to fit the walking car crash that is Officer Michelle Calderone, but she generally comes off better.  The incongruity of the casting might have been on purpose, given the tricksy nature of the plotting, but it's more distracting than anything else.

Still  I found "Smoke" an easy watch, with plenty to recommend in it.  There are some good mysteries, novel character dynamics, and shiny production values to enjoy.  Solid character actors like Greg Kinnear and John Leguizamo deliver the goods. I wish the writing had leaned into the pulpiness instead of trying to be too clever, but I expect that the narrative sleights-of-hand will work fine for other viewers.  As detective shows go, this is not one of the better ones I've seen this year, but it had me invested all the way to the end, and that's no small feat.

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The State of the Movie Critic, 2025

If you haven't heard, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun Times have eliminated their film critic positions, which unfortunately means that Michael Phillips and  Richard Roeper are out of work.  More ominously, this means that the film world has lost two more high profile platforms for film criticism with long histories.  Film fans might recall that the Tribune and the Sun Times were the employers of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, the frequently feuding hosts of the long-running movie review show, "At the Movies."  There have also been a string of buyouts and reassignments at other outlets, and Richard Brody's defense of the "traditional review" in The New Yorker.

However, this says less about the health of film criticism than it does about the health of the media ecosystem.  There's been a lot of change very quickly, and it's no surprise that the culture and media critics are feeling some of the brunt.  There has been a lot of discussion about the death of the movie critic specifically since at least 2009, when Gerald Peary's documentary about film criticism, "For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism" was released.  And while the old guard of the print medium have quietly retired or moved on to other venues, film criticism has not gone away.  There are plenty of Youtube critics hacking away at the algorithm, and plenty of podcast critics juggling twenty other roles along with being reviewers.  It's common knowledge that most culture reviewers can't just be reviewers anymore if they want to make a living, but also entertainment reporters, interviewers, reactors, presenters, lecturers, discussion leaders, and social media personalities.  

When I started this blog, a very long time ago, I won't deny I had aspirations of someday landing a review column at one of the major newspapers, but it wasn't a dream of mine for very long.  The only critic I read regularly back then was Roger Ebert, and I read his reviews and columns and Q&As online.  These days I read a few more critics, but I listen to more of them on podcasts.  I know it's ironic, because I write reviews for this blog regularly, but I don't really expect anyone else to read them.  Maybe that's why I don't view the traditional print movie critic as a real job in and of itself anymore.  I mean, even back in the 90s, I knew Siskel and Ebert because they had a television show.  I knew Leonard Maltin because he had his movie guides.  I certainly appreciate the art of film review writing - I even took a course in it once - but reviews often aren't as fun for me to read as other kinds of film writing - film histories, academic film analysis, and profiles of filmmakers.  The reviewers I enjoy most are often also educators, academics, and historians.  

But lest you think that I don't consider the critics important, consider this.  Over Labor Day weekend this year, I stumbled into a Reddit group for Academy Awards enthusiasts that were tracking all the reactions to movies that were premiering at the Venice and Telluride film festivals.  Not only were they compiling social media reactions and review scores, but I noticed that some were even posting movies' Letterboxd "rating curves" - that little bar chart that measures the frequency of star ratings given to a movie.  A few of the titles had clearly been review-bombed in advance.  I don't know why I found this display of rampant nerdery so touching, but here was a group of people paying very close attention to what individual movie critics were saying, even if it was in the context of trying to get a leg up on awards season prognostications.              

I think it served as a good reminder that movie critics are still our tastemakers in the film world.  No matter how the studios might try to replace them with influencers, or how every blockbuster-dominated summer seems to bring out the doomsayers proclaiming that nobody listens to critics anymore, soon enough it's Oscar time again, and every studio is hoping for good reviews from David Ehrich and Peter Debruge to help launch their fall prestige pictures.  No amount of AI generated malarky is going to create the kind of buzz "Hamnet" and "No Other Choice" got from the critics after their premieres, instantly making them frontrunners in the 2026 awards race.  

And you'll still find certain movie enthusiasts who want to wait until the reviews come out to decide whether to see a movie - even if they never read any of them.  

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The Book Project Update

So, six months into my attempt to start reading for fun again, this is what I've read: 

15 prose novels

5 anthologies of short stories 

4 novellas (including the first three "Murderbot" stories)

1 essay collection

1 graphic novel memoir

1 prose memoir

1 nonfiction

The longest book I've read so far has been Michael Chabon's The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, at over 600 pages.   The oldest, not counting some of the short stories in the anthologies, was Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, first published as a novel in 1973.  I'd attempted to read it in high school but decided that I wasn't old enough for it.  Now, almost thirty years later, I still don't think I'm old enough for it, but I get more of the references.  

One of my goals was to expose myself to more authors that I wasn't familiar with, and I've managed about an even split between male and female authors.  However, I did check in on a few old favorites, including Stephen King.  I read two of his anthologies, If it Bleeds and You Like it Darker, and I'll probably be checking out more of his Holly Gibney books soon.  In my ongoing quest to find more funny science-fiction books, I was very happy to come across Martha Wells and her Murderbot series.  I'll be reviewing the Apple TV+ adaptation in a few days.

Speaking of adaptations, I sought out several books that I knew were going to become movies or television shows in the near future, including Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary, and Victor LaVelle's The Devil in Silver.  One of the King anthologies included "The Life of Chuck." I also read several books that were slated for adaptations at some point, but they fell through.  It seems like every popular book gets optioned, an adaptation is announced, and then they end up in limbo.  It's been a lot of fun deep-diving these projects.  Some, like the unmade The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay movie, even have development artwork still floating around online.  Right now I'm rooting for Madeline Miller's Circe and R.F. Kuang's Yellowface to get adaptations, just because I'm super curious how these would translate to screen.  I find I'm less interested in tracking down the source material for projects I've already watched.  One exception was INT. Chinatown, which is very different from the resulting Hulu series.  I prefer the series, because it's funnier.  

I don't have much of a budget for reading material, so I've been relying on Libby, the local library, and whatever I can pull out of the local Little Free Libraries.  I'm currently on multiple wait lists to borrow more books, including the next installment of Murderbot.  I compiled a list of titles to look out for at the beginning of the year, but can't find most of the nonfiction ones.  The memoirs of various Hollywood figures have been particularly difficult to get a hold of.  I remain an incurable film nerd, remember.  I managed to find Penny Marshall's "My Mother Was Nuts" on the Internet Archive, at least.  Alas, Barry Sonnenfeld's multiple tell-alls have been elusive.  I'm wary of spending too much time on books about filmmaking or the creation of television shows, however, because I don't know if these are really helping me learn to enjoy books again as their own artform.  The nonfiction book listed above was only included for accuracy - it's a glossy coffee-table book about "Black Mirror" that had enough substantive text in it that I was willing to count it as a proper book, but at the same time an awful lot of the content was nice photo spreads.    

In any case, things are looking good going forward.  I haven't had any issues finding more books to read or coming up with new titles I'm interested in.  There hasn't been a single book I've regretted reading, though there were definitely some I liked better than others.  I don't feel stressed out or obsessed about finishing books, and I've had no trouble taking breaks and setting a good pace for myself.  I think I'm ready to take on more challenging novels, but I currently have enough books that I'm looking forward to for casual reading that I can wait a few more months.

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