I read constantly for work. Docs, changelogs, RFCs, the occasional postmortem at 11pm. By the time I get to pick something for fun, my brain wants the exact opposite of a spec sheet. That’s shaped my reading and podcast preferences when I’m off the clock for a lot of years now.

The rules

Two rules, really, and they explain almost everything else in this post.

  1. Sci-fi and fantasy over biographies. I’ll take the occasional historical narrative if it’s told well, but my shelf (digital or otherwise) skews hard toward made-up worlds. After a day of thinking about real systems, I want fake ones.
  2. If it’s a long series, I’m in. Give me a $0.99 Kindle series with seventeen books and questionable grammar and I will read every single one. Commitment matters more to me than polish. I want to live in a world for a while, not visit it for a weekend.

With that as the filter, here’s what’s actually in rotation.

Podcasts

I listen on runs, on drives, and doing chores around the house. Fiction podcasts scratch the same itch as a good series: long arcs, recurring characters, a world that keeps expanding.

  1. Old Gods of Appalachia, written and created by Steve Shell and Cam Collins, has some of the best story arcs I’ve come across in any medium, audio or otherwise. It’s cosmic horror set in Appalachia, and it treats the region and its folklore with real respect instead of using it as a punchline. The writing rewards patience: threads planted in season one pay off two seasons later.
  2. Hello From the Magic Tavern, created by Arnie Niekamp and built around a cast that also includes Adal Rifai and Matt Young, is the granddaddy of the genre for me. It’s long-form improv set in a fantasy world, and it’s been running for years without losing steam. I love improv, and I will never stop laughing at a well-placed butthole joke.
  3. The Rest Is History, hosted by Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, is two funny, slightly awkward British guys talking about history in 2 to 3 episode chunks. It’s the rare history podcast that’s genuinely fun to listen to instead of just informative. Sold, every time.
  4. The Martin Sheen Podcast, co-hosted and produced by his daughter Renee Estevez, isn’t really a podcast so much as it’s listening to Martin Sheen be inspirational. He talks about his career, reads poetry he loves, and it’s a nice change of pace from everything else on this list.

No longer in production, but worth your time

  1. Tanis, The Last Movie, Rabbits, and everything else Terry Miles has made are all connected in ways that reward listening to the whole catalog. The books are great too. I’m legitimately annoyed that Tanis never got a proper ending. Come on, Terry.
  2. The History of Rome, from Mike Duncan, is done and complete: thousands of years of history told by a guy who clearly loved every minute of researching it. Listening to him grow as a storyteller from the first episode to the last is a show in itself. He also did Revolutions as a follow-up, which apparently came back a couple years ago after a hiatus. I haven’t started the new stuff yet, but I’m looking forward to it.

The stage lit up in blue before an Old Gods of Appalachia live show

The stage before an Old Gods of Appalachia live show I caught in 2023. Worth going out of your way for if they come through your city.

Books

Currently reading

Most of my actual reading time goes to AI documentation and changelogs, if I’m honest. But for fun right now, I’m working through Backbeats: A History of Rock and Roll in Fifteen Drummers by John Lingan. It’s an outlier on this list since it’s neither sci-fi nor fiction, but drumming is one of the few non-technical things I’ll happily read a whole book about.

All-time favorites

  1. Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates by Tom Robbins. People of Zee World, relax. If you know, you know.
  2. The Hustler by Walter Tevis. Eddie Felson is one of the best character studies I’ve ever read, sci-fi or otherwise. Tevis also wrote The Queen’s Gambit, and the same eye for obsession and skill shows up here.
  3. The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. I read it in high school and I still think about it and quote it. Some books just stick.
  4. The DevOps Handbook by Gene Kim, Jez Humble, Patrick Debois, John Willis, and (in the second edition) Nicole Forsgren. I reread it, or listen to whatever the current edition is, every year. Every single time I find something new in it.
  5. Hyperion, and the rest of the Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons. My personal favorite sci-fi series, full stop. It’s structured like The Canterbury Tales in space, and every pilgrim’s story could stand on its own.

Cover of Hyperion by Dan Simmons

Why this mix works for me

None of this is prestige reading. It’s not supposed to be. My day job is dense enough that pleasure reading needs to be the opposite of work: long, immersive, low-stakes, and easy to pick back up after a week away. A seventeen-book series with rough edges does that better than a tightly edited literary novel ever could. Same with a fiction podcast that’s been building its world for six seasons.

If you’ve got recommendations that fit the pattern (long, weird, sci-fi or fantasy, ideally with a devoted fanbase), send them my way. I’ve got a commute to fill.