I don't mean to nitpick, Tom, but is this really your plan?

I’ve been rereading Stephen King for comfort reasons, and I have a couple of observations. First, The Dead Zone—which posits political assassination as an actual solution to a potential presidential madman—hits a bit different these days. Second (and not unrelatedly), while I am happy enough to get the expanded version of The Stand, it was a huge mistake for King to try to change the setting from 1980 to 1990; random updated pop culture references can’t disguise the fact that America changed substantially in that decade, such that characters and settings that made sense in 1980 were no longer plausible in 1990. The teenaged, white Nick Andros would almost certainly not have used the word “Negro” to describe an old woman in 1990. The singer Larry Underwood would have different beliefs about music from the 70s, when he was a young child rather than a teen/early adult. From attitudes towards single mothers to how racism was expressed to the dumping practices of fabric mills, the revised version still reads like 1980, but with a mention of rap on the radio, and it’s not good.

Yes, IWTV is great! While waiting for the next season, might you consider Evil? The show follows a hot Catholic priest-in-training, the hot atheist shrink to whom he is desperately attracted, and their hot lapsed Muslim tech guy as they investigate and try to prove/disprove demonic possessions. It is incredibly, delightfully unhinged. Part of it is that the show started on network TV, then moved to streaming in its second season, leading to the absolute best evolution where characters who were reasonably well-behaved start spouting "fuck" at the drop of a hat in S2, including a delightful nearly silent episode that was actually filmed while they still thought they'd be on network, so after filming they replaced the "thought dialogue" onscreen that the actor thought he was filming with a stream of "fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck," to hilarious effect. There's body horror, Catholic guilt, an amazingly toxic mother (Christine Lahti, having the time of her life), four kids who have clearly been instructed to just yammer every time they are on screen together--making them more realistic than 80% of TV kids from the get-go--examination of misogyny and anti-Blackness, critiques of modern internet culture, and the occasional Wallace Shawn. Also, the tech guy is Aasif Mandvi and the hot priest is Mike Colter (Jessica Jones/Luke Cage). And the bad guy is Michael Emerson (Harold Finch), chewing scenery like he only gets paid by how much debris is left when he’s done.

Shorter rec: What if Hannibal and The X-Files had a deeply online baby? My one caveat is that this is a cynical show, which feels a little like watching Cabaret: It's a sick culture and the show is not interested in fixing it, only in displaying it pinned open on a table so we can poke at the nastiest parts.

Chuck Tingle, Bury Your Gays: ( queer joy/horror )
R. A. Sinn, A Second Chance for Yesterday: ( time travel romance )
Joy Demorra, Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites: Fluff and Fangs Edition: ( werewolf/vampire romance )
Stephen King, You Like It Darker: Stories: ( because they can )
Austin Grossman, Fight Me: ( cynical former supervillains )

Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Oracle: ( horror and spycraft )

Sorry I've been gone so long. I'm not sure I even posted my Yuletide pitch hit story, a Severance fic focusing on Helly.

Hernan Diaz, Trust: ( it's a pun )
Ann Leckie, Translation State: ( back to the universe of the Radchhai )
P.B. Rainey, Why Don’t You Love Me?: ( Graphic novel with sad parents )
M.A. Carrick, The Liar’s Knot: ( good palace intrigue )
Sequoia Nagamatsu, How High We Go in the Dark: ( Pandemic sf )
Sarah Monette, Somewhere Beneath Those Waves: ( short stories )
John Scalzi, Travel by Bullet: ( More Dispatcher )
Ben H. Winters, Self Help: ( Winters goes for AI horror )
R.B. Lemberg, The Four Profound Weaves:( trans fantasy )
Everina Maxwell, Ocean’s Echo: ( mind meld sf; not super tropey )
Leigh Bardugo, Hell Bent: ( Alex Stern continues at Yale )
Adrian Tchaikovsky, Cage of Souls: ( a dying city on a dying world )
Lawrence Block, John Ferris, & Stephen King, Transgressions: Terror's Echo: Three Novellas: ( not so good )
Karin Tidbeck, Amatka: ( communist SF! )
A. K. Larkwood, The Thousand Eyes:( fantasy palace intrigue, always a pleasure )

Laura Sebastian, Castles in Their Bones: ( you had me at the title )
Tade Thompson, Far from the Light of Heaven: ( locked room spaceship mystery )
Tochi Onyebuchi, Riot Baby: ( powers of the oppressed )
T. Kingfisher, Paladin's Strength (The Saint of Steel Book 2): ( bear shifter! )
Alex Lubertozzi, Any Other World Will Do: ( no better worlds )
Olivia Atwater, Half a Soul: Regency Faerie Tales, #1: ( neuroatypical because of fairies )
Harlan Ellison, Ellison Wonderland: ( sigh )
Waubgeshig Rice, Moon of the Crusted Snow: ( the apocalypse continues )
Stephen King, Billy Summers:( writer for hire )
Rachel Neumeier, ( Death's Lady gets a psychiatrist )

Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth: ( space opera with palace politics )
C.S. Pacat, Dark Rise: ( Chosen One ... maybe? )
Charles Stross, Glasshouse: ( stuffed with ideas; don't throw stones )
Rainbow Rowell, Any Way the Wind Blows: ( Simon Snow's arc concludes )
Claire O’Dell, A Study in Honor: A Novel (The Janet Watson Chronicles): ( Holmes/Watson with cyborg arms and the Second Civil War )

Julie Czernada, The Gossamer Mage: ( language fantasy )

Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, Jonathan Snipes, and William Hutson, The Deep: ( not as positive a review as I wanted to leave )

Stephen King, The Institute: ( you'll like it if you like this kind of thing )

Django Wexler, Ship of Smoke and Steel: ( worldbuilding, shipbuilding )

Best of British SF 2018, ed. Donna Scott: ( the future is fantastic )

Ginn Hale, Master of Restless Shadows: ( palace politics )

Margaret Owen, The Merciful Crow: ( life and death fantasy )

Max Gladstone, Empress of Forever: ( future shock )

Mishell Baker, Impostor Syndrome: ( is she going to run out of diagnoses? )
Maggie Shen King, An Excess Male: ( fascinating debut )

Compostela: Tesseracts Twenty, ed. Spider Robinson & James Alan Gardner: ( Canadian sf/spec fic/poetry )
Kim Stanley Robinson, 2140: ( future imperfect )
Tracy Townsend, The Nine: ( Epic fantasy, nice debut )

Have you been reading Strong Female Protagonist? Today’s panel has a great one-liner about superpowers that highlights just how much handwaving we usually do for them, even accepting their existence. But start from the beginning!  It's really good.

( Holmes and con games )

John G. Sprankling, Property Law Simulations: What it says on the tin—short explanations of various bits of property law, plus problems to work through, usually in the context of a negotiation. Interesting scenarios!

Ben Horowitz, The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Advice about how to run a successful business from a venture capitalist. Kind of interesting just to get his worldview, which includes a fair amount of advice about transitioning from small to big, and occasionally about firing the people who worked well for a smaller firm and not so well for a bigger firm. He’s a big proponent of committing to a strategy, even if it means a complete reorientation and getting rid of people who did a lot for the old version of the firm.

( Rabin's assassination, Montgomery bus boycott, history of Rome )