a stream

I am on screenpage 455 of 1034 of The Overstory, by Richard Powers, reading it on my phone.

Past notes and updates on the occasion of my reading The Overstory by Richard Powers:

• It turns out I actually love reading books on my phone, especially large books. (Recently read Jemisin’s whole Inheritance Trilogy on my phone. It’s a habit now.) [8/1/2021]

• This book is kind of the Moby Dick for trees. Meaning, this book is tree-obsessed in the way that Moby Dick is whale-obsessed. Not that I’ve ever read more than 33% of the way through Moby Dick - yet. I read enough to find that it was completely whale-obsessed. Kind of want to join one of those Moby Dick readathons some year. Actually, that is completely untrue - I don’t want to sit around listening to other people read Moby Dick, I want to do my own personal readathon of Moby Dick. [8/1/2021]

Standalone post link: ''readingtheoverstory''

I started reading The Inquisitor’s Tale by Adam Gidwitz with my kids tonight.

[Caption: The Inquisitor’s Tale on top of a book stack, surrounded by the Lego accretions of Will and Mia’s bedroom]

Will wanted to try this book but Mia was grumpy about it (“Can we just read a book with NO magic in it for once?” - valid request, actually) but she finally agreed that we could just try the first chapter tonight since we needed to read something. After we finished the first chapter, she started chanting “More! More!” and I had to read them half of the next chapter.

P.S. Posted this status on Goodreads because I guess I’m back onto compulsively noting all my reading updates on Goodreads again.

Standalone post link: ''reading with kids-theinquisitorstale''

I started reading Home Is Not a Country by Safia Elhillo

(A hardback “review copy” of Home Is Not a Country by Safia Elhillo rests on top of a couple of recent issues of Poetry Magazine, which I am also reading. Image uploaded to my CMS sideways and I decided to just leave it.)

Standalone post link: ''readinghomeisnotacountry''

I’m reading Everything Sad Is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri, and it is really good but it is taking a while because some nights I fall asleep while I’m reading it and then some nights I scroll through Facebook or web comics or websites about comic books instead of reading it. And then I feel bad, almost as if I, king-like, have killed Scheherazade by not continuing to listen.

That’s a metaphor like in the book. I should go to sleep now and the book will still be there tomorrow.

Just realized that violin motif from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade has been in my head tonight and maybe I should listen to that while I read this book tomorrow night. I’ve always been a weirdly big fan of Rimsky-Korsakov; it goes back to when I was a teenager. But that’s Russian music and maybe I should find some actual Persian music to listen to instead. Don’t know much of anything about Persian music. Hmmm.

(A couple of nice YouTube options above, and below, what I actually listened to. It was an excuse to listen to some old favorites more than it had anything to do with the book.)

Standalone post link: ''readingeverythingsad''

I suppose I could just fill up a notebook with random stuff all day.

I suppose I could just fill up the internet with random stuff all day.

Standalone post link: ''randomstuffallday''

So I have digital and physical notebooks and a phone and computer filled with photos and random things from the last year that I haven’t shared or done anything with, and I’m seriously considering just starting to go through and post backdated stuff on this website, and on the various social media channels. We will see if I have the guts to be that consistent and that obnoxious.

Standalone post link: ''backdated''

Coming out of social media retirement to tell you about the Tandoori Chicken Tin I had for lunch today from O’Falafel Etc. Wish I had taken a photo of this dish, because the picture on their website doesn’t do justice to the masterpiece of fresh take-out I received.

If I had taken a picture, what you would see is this yummy grilled chicken (just a little bit spicy) mixed with grilled onions and zucchini in a pink, creamy sauce (I think pink from paprika and maybe tomato), served over the most beautiful yellow long grain basmati-ish rice, with a fresh green salad, a cucumber-yogurt-salsa-type thing, a creamy green cilantro salad dressing, and an optional spicy salsa. I think it might be something like harissa but they just call it “the spicy sauce.” I like to just mix it all up together in the tin. One of the best lunches I’ve had in a long time, sitting alone in my car in the parking lot of Fairmont Park chowing it down.

Some meme I saw a local business share on Instagram one time said that one of the best things you can do for businesses (besides buying their stuff, of course) is post good things about them, so this is me trying to start doing that. I’ve liked O’Falafel for quite a while, but I’ve only ever tried three or four things from their extensive menu; those three things have been so good that I generally just want to get one of them again. My other favorites besides the tandoori tin are the falafel sandwich and the smothered chicken shawarma tin.

Standalone post link: ''ofalafeltandooritin''

Kicking myself because I just missed being able to buy/download this collection from Nyege Nyege (now it is 666 Euros to buy and it can’t be streamed.)

But I found a decent mixtape based on the collection on Soundcloud.

Only problems are:

1. I’m not really supporting the label or the artists by listening to it this way
2. I don’t really know which artist or track I’m hearing at any given time to go seek it out

It is certainly an electrifying listen, though. Think I’ll be digging through more of this label and related artists for the next while.

Standalone post link: Listening: L'Esprit de Nyege 2020

Started reading The Selected Works of Audre Lorde last night. Wow.

Think I’ll have more to share later once I have read more and thought through it more.

I’ve been wrestling with the words of a certain dead Mormon apostle in my head today, and for reasons not entirely clear to me yet I’m tempted to put him and Lorde in a dialogue with each other. If that goes anywhere I’ll share it here.

Standalone post link: Reading: The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

Making some little moves again on my website in prep to possibly come out of social media retirement.

Been like a year - remains to be seen whether I can finally dissuade myself from getting distracted, disheartened, disinterested, dispirited, or otherwise discouraged.

Maybe I need to disco for it.

Yeah, I did that.

Standalone post link: ''makingmoves-disco''