Streaming Mania

Things are getting out of hand, streaming-wise. We watch pieces of various shows at night in bed--after our reading is done. About an hour of TV--an hour sliced like bread: ten minutes of this, cut, ten minutes of that, cut, ten minutes of ...

Right now, here's what we're slice-watching each night:

• Wire in the Blood--a British show about a psychologist who's a consultant to the cops. Right now, he's dealing with a brain tumor--his own--and what it bodes for his future (if he has any).
• The Inspector Lynley Mysteries--a British-cop-who's-also-an-aristocrat + his working-class partner, a woman (some class and gender tension flare now and then); for some reason, we are watching the series backwards: We watched the final season first, then the previous one; we're now in Season 1.
• Vera--a woman DCI (an eccentric and brilliant woman) and her motley crew solving crimes in Northumberland; we're watching the newest episodes, recently released.
• Fargo: the FX series about odd goings-on in North Dakota, a solve-the-crime(s) show based on the eponymous Coen Bros. film. We're watching Season 2 right now.
• a new Netflix stand-up special with Ray Romano--his first in quite a few years--at the Comedy Cellar, where he began his career.

Now, here's the problem, especially watching the four cop shows, especially since both of us can, now and then, uh, nod off during the hour we're watching: sometimes we can't remember what's going on--we mix up the plots of the shows--we forget who characters are--and where we are. Etc.

Oddly, this slice-and-dice approach is the same one I use with my pre-streaming reading-in-bed: Right now I'm reading a half-dozen titles--10 pp/night (or so) in each:

• Wilkie Collins: Law and the Lady (a novel about a woman trying to clear the name of her husband, accused of murdering his first wife) (1875)
• Rob Dunn's Never Home Alone (a science book about the critters--microscopic and otherwise--that share our homes) (2018)
• John McPhee's The Patch (his latest collection of non-fiction) (2018)
• Haruki Murakami's Killing Commendatore (a Gatsbyesque novel about an artist and his rich, eccentric neighbor) (2018)
• Ken Bruen's latest Jack Taylor novel, In the Galway Silence (Taylor--beaten, bruised, not humbled--is once again solving some bizarre murders) (2018)
• Michael Connelly's latest, Dark Sacred Night (a novel featuring--and alternating the pov of--LA cops Harry Bosch and Renée Ballard, who are working together on a cold case) (2018)

Oddly, I don't confuse these stories and have no trouble entering their worlds each evening. Maybe I'm just a Word Guy? Or maybe I have to be awake when I'm reading? The pages don't turn by themselves--unlike a TV show, which keeps going whether I'm asleep or not!