Babel-17 (1966) by Samuel Delaney. Reread. A galaxy-famous poet and linguist prodigy investigates a language intercepted from the other side of a war. This is peak space opera, and the whole first half or so is just flitting from one richly described bit of exotica to the next. If that's your jam, then this is a good time. The second half gets into plot and flirts a bit with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which is fun, and some philosophy of self stuff, which I found tedious. I also could have done without all the fatshaming.
Those quibbles aside, this is a colorful, entertaining bit of nonsense, and not very long. If you want a space opera romp, you could do much worse.
The Nice Guys (2016). After a porn star is murdered, a conniving PI (Ryan Gosling) and an enforcer for hire (Russell Crowe) end up working together to protect a powerful woman's daughter from being the next victim. Gosling's character is fun, if sometimes a bit too dumb for me to enjoy, and this is easily my favorite role I've ever seen Crowe in. His Serious Drama(tm) roles always bore me stiff; his stint here as mildly pathetic straight man is so much more appealing to me. They're fun together, too, although I have to say I did not find this nearly as shippy as the recs led me to expect.
The treatment of women is also about as advertised, given this has "murdered porn star" in the premise. There's a death about 2/3 of the way through that soured things a lot for me. The PI's cute and conniving 13-year-old daughter did not make up for it, although she's pretty fun in her own right.
Overall, this is a fun time without any ambitions of grandeur, and sometimes that's what you want. comments