After a few months of walking to television shows, ChickieNob and I returned to first-person walking videos (on mute) coupled with audiobooks. The first-person walking videos make me feel like we’re going somewhere. Television does not.

We listened to Lesley Manville read the first Thursday Murder Club book. We both read it years ago but had no memory of the mystery solution. I mean, I remembered one tiny part, but everything else slipped out of my head in the intervening years.

I got to experience the book practically for the first time again. But I reacted differently to the parts I remembered. I’m a different person now, which comes into play when reading a book a second (or third or fourth) time.

Afterward, we were going to go on to the second book in the series, but we opted to play The Magicians instead. It’s our comfort read (or, in this case, our comfort listen), and we immediately settled into reciting our favourite lines from the story as we figuratively walked through Mykonos. Again, we’re both different people each time we read or hear it, but it was like getting coffee with a good friend and realizing how much you both still feel connected to one another.

Thank you, books.

A local vegan restaurant sent out a newsletter featuring vegan colcannon and stew. I am debating throwing all dinner plans out the window so we can partake before it’s gone with St. Patrick’s Day.

Kottke.org is 25 years old. He writes, “Kottke.org is older than Google. 25 years is more than half of my life, spanning four decades (the 90s, 00s, 10s, and 20s) and around 40,000 posts — almost cartoonishly long for a medium optimized for impermanence.” It’s a remarkable feat.

I got myself a paid Zoom account because I wanted one. Just for me. I kind of love it hardcore. It’s silly that I waited this long or used a work one when I wanted to hold a longer chat. Instead of “buy yourself flowers,” I show myself that I care about myself by buying access to digital accounts. It’s kind of like flowers, only not flowers.

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Stop procrastinating. Go make your backups. Don’t have regrets.

Seriously. Stop what you’re doing for a moment. It will take you fifteen minutes, tops. But you will have peace of mind for days and days. It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second, helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. To read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

No Kidding in NZ  has a post that taught me that Allison Janney is in a television show I didn’t know about. That wasn’t the main takeaway, BUT I really love this message from the show: “Overall, it reinforces that women have worth just because they are here, because they exist, because they are trying to be better. It emphasises that women deserve to be happy and respected. All of us. We are worthy.” We are. Full sentence.

Lastly, I love this story from Scientist on the Roof. I will tempt you with this: “Those secret Matzos – they made their way across the country, from Riga, where Baba Tanya ended up after the war, all the way to the Far East. Because our family mailed a package of Matzos to us. My parents did not do any religious stuff, but those Matzos – they were pretty special.” You need to go over and read the whole thing.

The roundup to the Roundup: A bunch of thoughts. Your weekly backup nudge. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between March 10 – March 17) and not the blog’s main URL. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week. Read the original open thread post here.

As I say every month, I’m shamelessly stealing this idea from Jessica Lahey. She has a recurring monthly date where she reviews all the books she reads that month. Book reviews are important for authors, and I want to get better at doing this.

So. I’m going to review them here and also online, but I’m going to do it a little differently. I’m only going to review the stuff I really liked. I don’t see a reason to spend my time writing about something I didn’t love; it’s just using up more of my energy. So only positive reviews.

These are the books I liked (or mostly liked) from February.

Nine Liars (Maureen Johnson): The first three books in the series were perfection. The fourth one was fine, but this series ended well with book three and didn’t need book four. It picked up again with book five until the very end of the book. I loved the setting and characters. I didn’t care that I guessed the killer 40% of the way through. I’m focusing on how happy I was for the first 90% of the story vs. the last 10%.

Tell Me an Ending (Jo Harkin): This was such a cool set-up, and the way the stories came together was brilliant. The writing was beautiful, and the questions asked in the book were compelling. As I read it, I talked about this book a lot with people — the mark of a really good story.

The Stranger Diaries (Elly Griffiths): Despite owning several of her books, this is the first one I read. And it was fantastic. I am so happy I have her books lined up and ready to go on my shelves or e-reader. I was genuinely surprised by the ending, and every chapter was delightfully creepy.

Nick and Charlie (Alice Oseman): A novella (as opposed to a graphic novel) takes Nick and Charlie into the days before Nick leaves for college. Am I facing down the twins going? Yes. That may have played into how much I loved this. But it’s still a super sweet story about lovely characters that you want to succeed — a good way to spend an afternoon.

What did you read last month?

I always say that the only safe people to get behind are Tom Hanks, Barack Obama, and Mr. Rogers. Tom Hanks is always called the nicest guy in Hollywood, and the challenge to push back against that is too tempting for trolls. So if they haven’t been able to steer the narrative in another direction, he’s a safe bet.

Barack Obama is in the same situation. I’m sure his detractors have been searching for dirt for years. If they could find anything, they would have used it. He is probably as good as he seems.

And lastly, Mr. Rogers. He’s no longer around to mess up, and we’ve been through all of the movies and articles about him after his death. If there were something to uncover, it would have been found. It’s safe to put your trust in Mr. Rogers.

Everyone else is fallible. Put a story about them in your memoir, and it could bite you in the ass later. It’s the JK Rowling effect. When she was just about her books, we had no clue that the Quidditch league would rename their game to distance themselves from her. Social media gave us a whole new side of JK Rowling to not enjoy.

This is why I found this idea of a comfort person where you cannot meet or interact with the person behind the words/images interesting. She writes:

A comfort-person relationship is a feeling of friendship and warmness that can only ever go one way. It’s a relationship that does not, and I’d argue, cannot, exist in real life.

That person isn’t really a person but a projection of what we think of them as a person. So we’re comforted by our own imagination.

I clicked over with little faith that I would actually see an impossible colour, but the article delivered. If you let your eyes relax, you see a colour that’s not there. Keep reading down the page for the explanation.

Even cooler was the exercise close to the bottom where you see the blue dot inside the black square.

I’m a sucker for optical illusions.