🎙️📖📺 Recs: A Beet Salad
A recommendations post from Mind the Beet
👋 It’s Adam here and this week’s post is what we call a Beet Salad - an eclectic set of recommendations that we’ve discovered recently. Hear about what we are listening to, watching, and reading.
🎙️ Kid’s Podcast: Greeking Out
Greeking Out is the car ride podcast of choice in our family (kids aged 6 and 10). Each episode tells one Greek myth, and the kids-oriented storytelling is superb with the right mix of humor and suspense. As a word of caution, themes of death, betrayal, murder, and monsters are present, but the host does a respectable job to kid-ify the concepts.
We have one Percy Jackson fan and one kid who hasn’t read them yet - and both enjoy the podcast.
Subscribe via Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.
📖 The Bone Ships by RJ Barker
This is the best book I’ve read in 2024 so far, and one of the more unique I’ve read in a while. Imagine a Tolkien-era fantasy world without trees, so without wood, so without wooden ships. Instead, slaying large sea monsters provides bones that float and can be made into ships, which go on to power the entire economy of a few neighboring islands.
The timeline for The Bone Ships takes place years after the last sea monster has been caught - so no new ships can be built. I’m a major fan of the “technology from our ancestors which we have lost the understanding of but still use” trope and the Bone Ships delivers on that. Mix in a bit of fantasy magic, a swashbuckling and awe-inducing female sea captain pirate as the mentor, and a brains-over-brawn main character (very Horatio Hornblower) and the whole package is put together well.
The Bone Ships is part one of a three-part trilogy - and the world’s unique language (mostly related to ship building) can be a bit intimidating at first. Book 2 is just as good, but I thought Book 3 in the trilogy wasn’t as strong.
📺 The Three Body Problem
I read The Three Body Problem shortly after it was translated from Mandarin ten years ago. It’s an epic work of hard science fiction and I was curious how Netflix would create a more approachable TV show, especially as the showrunners here also did Game of Thrones.
The show version is more centered on people than science - and I found it a fast-paced mystery adventure with the right amount of suspense, plot twists, and world building. While not as imaginative or exploratory as the books (which does leave viewers confused at times), the show did an excellent job of condensing a lot of material into a single season. It had me hooked.
Wrapping Up
Speaking of recommendations, check out these from our archives if you are looking for some of our top posts:
📚 Information Diet: Recommendations for news outlets, analysis, podcasts, and newsletter subscriptions from an information junkie.
🤝 Building strong relationships at work: Helen’s story through multiple careers.
🏖️ Adam's Field Guide to Happiness: The Secret to Amazing Paid Time Off
👨👩👧👧 Brave Parenting. It’s OK to not be perfect. It’s OK to be scared as a parent - even in the everyday moments.
👨🍼 My First Year of Fatherhood: Adam’s polished memories from that crazy, sleep-deprived first year.
💭 Finding Purpose in Tech Careers: Adam’s journey to becoming a purpose maximizer.
⌛ How does a product leader manage their time? Thoughts on time & task management and what’s worked for Adam