Lit City Blues

I heard good things about Slow Horses on Apple TV, so started it was hooked by the end of the first episode and promptly devoured it. (I even finished up the latest season thanks to Apple TV's free weekend over New Year's.) The show is incredible. Gary Oldman will, at some point, add to his already large collection of awards for his portrayal of Jackson Lamb and if she hasn't been nominated for anything for her role as Diana Tavener, Kristin Scott Thomas is overdue and will get there eventually. All of that being said: I had never read any of the books, so I decided to change that. I picked up the latest in the series, not because I am opposed to starting at the beginning, but because I figured Apple TV was going to do an excellent job of adapting these things and I wanted to see what a book in the series that had yet to be adapted was like and Slough House fit the bill. (So far the show has adapted Slow Horses , Dead Lions , Real Tigers , and Spook Street .) Slough House ...

A long time ago, in a blog that's far, far away now, I decided I was going to listen to 100 Albums. It occurred to me at the time that with music becoming so digital then (and even more so now) we were drifting further and further away from the concept of the album. People weren't listening to music that way anymore and I wanted to explore and in some weird way, fight the power that was sweeping us all into digital subscription-based services and away from physical media. That was fifteen years ago and here is the post that started it all. (And here is the complete list of the original run -- which took me far longer than my original plan of one year.) What's changed since then?  In fifteen more years, this might seem like a delightfully quaint notion, but I am starting to wonder if physical media might be making a comeback? Vinyl never quite went away but now seems to be making a comeback. There are people who steadfastly refuse to read anything on a Kindle (I can go eith...

The Missus' book club read this months ago- possibly even last year at this point and it's been sitting on my bedside table this entire time until I finally picked it up and read it. When The Apricots Bloom is set in the waning years of Saddam Hussein's rule in Iraq, when the country was virtually sealed off from the outside world. The lives of three very different women intersect as they try and protect their secrets and navigate the parlous and perilous world of Baghdad under Saddam's rule. Huda is a secretary at the Australian Embassy-- one of the rare, well-paying jobs that are available, her salary causes tension with her husband at home, who has also been laid off from her job, but when the new Deputy Ambassador arrives with a wife, Ally, she is visited by the secret police, the mukhabarat who order her to watch and listen for any scrap of useful information that can benefit the regime. Ally, for her part, is somewhat unusual. Not many wives accompany their husba...

1. Look, I've been saying it for years now, but this has to be the year of Book 4. It's grinding away, little by little but at minimum , I'm going to get this damn thing into a workable draft format this year. If I'm very lucky and write very well, I might be into revisions by the end of the year and beating into shape for a final draft and a release. I have no idea why this is taking so long. I have no excuses to offer. I just really, really want to get this- at a minimum - closer to the finish line this year.  2. Let's Get Some Vinyl: I finally got another tattoo and will probably get another at some point this year, but I really want this year to be the year I expand and actually use/listen to our vinyl collection more. We need more storage for it and I'd like to make purchases from our local store and find some place other than Amazon to snag more records for our collection. 3. Social Connection: I want to work on being more present when I'm not at work...

Am I a yacht rock superfan? Not really. I know the music and when the mood takes me, I'll throw on a playlist on Spotify and jam out a little, but little more than that. Did I know where the term came from? No. Did I know how it developed when it did? No. But the new documentary on MAX, Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary gave me all the answers to my questions and then some. I'll be honest: I watched this more out of curiosity than anything else. I'm glad I did. Yacht Rock developed from a web series that started around 2005 or so and basically, a bunch of friends would raid the $1 bins at the local record store and found themselves listening to a lot of the artists that came to make up the 'yacht rock' genre and dubbed it that because it sounds like 'music that makes you feel like you were on a yacht.' (The super crazy aspect of all this: this is a web series that predates YouTube. It's now on YouTube of course , but if you want to talk about a 'deep cut...

THE FINAL TALLY IS HERE: I'm going to call this an okay year. Made progress on a lot of things, succeeded at some, failed at others. I think next year I'm going to have to be more concrete in my goals that way they're not so vague and hard to quantify the way some of these are. But in general, a final record of 4.5-2-3 on the year isn't... terrible. But not my best work either. On to 2025! 1. Book 4: Get this book into draft form (close to, if not ready to launch-- fingers crossed!) by the end of the year. I have some other writing goals as well, but this is going to be my big, main focus for the year. Book 4 is still grinding and nowhere near draft form. FAIL. 2. Get Another Tattoo: I might get really crazy and get two! (But for real: no reason why it can't happen this year. Money is being accumulated. The date just needs to be set to do the deed.) Behold, a SUCCESS. 3. The Health Thing: Okay, so I'm going to get away from numbers on scales this year. It's ...