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Bookshot #185: When The Apricots Bloom

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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...
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10 For 2025: Here We Go Again

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...
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Netflix & Chill #108: Yacht Rock A Dockumentary

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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...
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10 For 2024: The Final Tally

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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 ...
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Bookshot #184: The Scramble for Africa

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This big doorstopper of a book has been on my bookshelf since I don't know when. I'm pretty sure I inherited this one from my parents, so it probably sat on their bookshelf since I don't know when because I don't remember purchasing it despite the fact I have Pakenham's excellent book The Boer War (which I do remember purchasing.) And having made my way through all six hundred and eighty pages of it, I'm still not entirely sure what I think about this book. Let's start with the obvious: this was written in 1991 and it feels like it, too. I'm sure there have been more up-to-date assessments of the Scramble since then (at least I hope so) but when Pakenham pegs apartheid in South Africa as being the most poisonous legacy of the Scramble, it makes sense in the context of the immediate post-Cold War, pre-ending of Apartheid era in which he was writing. I, reading this in 2024, 33 years after Pakenham wrote the book would be more inclined to point the finge...
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Hopium & Copium: The Aftermath

Day One: That's the thing about life. It goes on. Day Two: I was only ever convinced of one thing: someone was going to be very, very wrong. I just didn't expect to be this wrong. There's no fluke here. No antiquated bullshit like the electoral college to hang your hat on. This was a comprehensive thumpin' and people voted for this. It's nice on the one hand, because living in Iowa I've genuinely thought that people had lost their damn minds in this state for a few years now and now it turns out we weren't crazy, we were just early . I hated the black despair of Tuesday night. It took me most of Wednesday to drag myself out of it, but I did. I don't think politics or elections should impact my mental health that much so I'm not going to let them do that anymore. This post will probably be my last piece of political commentary for the foreseeable future. I want to do other things with my brain. I want to read more books. Study more history. Write more...
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Bookshot #183: In The Spirit of Crazy Horse

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This book has been lurking on my shelves for years and I've taken a few runs at it now and again but I finally finished it. I've been thinking about this and I can't remember when I purchased this book, but if I could pinpoint a reason why, it was probably moving to Mankato for grad school. No, I didn't buy this for a class, but once I moved there, I decided to try and learn a little about my new place of residence and that's when I found out that the largest mass execution in US history took place in Mankato. That's when I found out about the Great Sioux Uprising that tore apart southern Minnesota in 1862 . I grew up, attended elementary school, high school, and four years of college about 200 miles away from where a lot of it happened and none of it ever came up in any history class I had ever taken, ever. For people of color in this country, that's probably not all that surprising- given how many people had to learn about the Greenwood Massacre thanks to...
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