changes

Comfort bedtime reading with my son every other night or so.

Past Log Updates

DATE : 2025-01-01

Started reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with Will tonight. First two chapters, about 10%.

I kind of wanted us to try something new but this is good. A great read. Comfort read?

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Standalone post link: Reading Log: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

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Standalone post link: Reading Log: Hell Followed With Us

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Standalone post link: Reading Log: Poetry January/February 2025 - Young People's Poetry

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Standalone post link: Reading Log: Abandon Me

I don’t like how this is still showing as a ‘currently reading’ book on my website after all this time, so, though I am not finished with the overall shoegaze/dreampop/4AD/90s rock listening project (mission creep and distraction) I am marking this ‘completed’ as a book.

Past Log Updates

2024-12-16

This is more listening than reading, but it is formatted as an actual book with probably 40+ pages of liner notes and essays to go along with 5 compilation discs to listen to. Since I did sit down and read it like a book, I’m listing it as reading as well. I’m not marking it as completed yet because I haven’t finished listening to all of the songs, nor my various side quest deep dives into individual albums and artists associated with this compilation and era.

I happened upon this in the Salt Lake City Public Library catalog while I was searching for something else, and I’m so glad I did get the physical copy. Having all the essays and band biographies there at hand was so helpful, and I think this is much more thorough than some random “Shoegaze and Dream Pop” playlist one could get from the streaming platforms. Also, though this comp is offered on the streaming platforms, the physical version is much more generous, with more than double the tracks of the streaming version, including many from the most notable artists. No My Bloody Valentine though. (It’s okay, I already have their stuff.)

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Standalone post link: Reading Log: Still in a Dream - A Story of Shoegaze 1988-1995

Listening to every track by Big Thief on shuffle because I’ve wanted to see them for years but never could, and found out they are doing a Twilight Concert in Salt Lake in September for just $20 a ticket and I got a ticket and now I just need to figure out if or how I can convince anyone in my family to go to this concert with me. No worries if not, though, I will not hesitate to go by myself.

Plus, Big Thief are current-day 4AD artists so it kind of ties back to my somewhat neglected Still in a Dream extended listening project, right?

Past Log Updates

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Standalone post link: Listening Log: Big Thief Complete Discography on Shuffle

Continuing in re-reading the Chronicles of Narnia with my son.

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210 - 135
202-135
67/75

Standalone post link: Reading Log: The Horse and His Boy

This is a phenomenal book.

Gave me so much to think about with writing, learning, creativity, friendship and its failings, faith and doubt, war and peace, religion and mythology, just living life, relationships, human nature. And of course insights into the lives and works of these two authors who were so important to my own imaginative life as a child and tween.

The presentation is next-level - rather than graphic novel or narrative nonfiction it feels almost like a new thing unto itself. I never felt jarred by the transitions between print text blocks and illustrated spreads, between the fantastic and the realistic. Everything just flows, fully-integrated and inevitable, Hendrix fully in command of both writing and illustration to share all of this from many different angles at the same time, the fantastic and the realistic, logos and mythos.

Extra stars for the “portals” to mythology, fairy tales, fantasy fiction, etc. Such a great way to transform “appendices” into something fun and almost magical. And again so on-point calling back to Tolkein in particular, with his rich appendices.

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Standalone post link: Reading Log: The Mythmakers

Amazing images and atmospheres throughout this book. Among other things it made me want to take photographs, gave me new ways to think about photography. I like photography but I’m a dummy about it.

Maybe I have unfair expecations, but if I’m being honest, it feels very unfinished. Fragmentary. I gues that’s actually the point, since all we have are fragments of Stesichorus' original…

This is one of the original titles added to my Goodreads “Want-to-read” shelf, apparently clear back in August of 2008.

Not entirely clear to me why I finally sought this out and read it after 17 years¹, but I did…I guess it might be because I keep looking for novels in verse and this comes up in the library catalog and different places when I browse that genre heading, decided to put it on hold and finally read the thing before returning it to the library already overdue.

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Standalone post link: Reading Log: Autobiography of Red

Gotten into summer of the first year. Tempted to start over and try spring again now that I know a little better how things work…

My kids have been playing this on the Switch but I got the Steam MacOS version for my laptop since we have just the one Switch.

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Standalone post link: Playing Log: Stardew Valley