2025 Soundtrack

This is a tradition. Previous year’s soundtracks are in the archives.

I converted our family to Tidal this year. In addition to feeling nice that Tidal pays artists slightly more than our previous streaming overlords at Amazon, the sound quality is better. I also like that when I search for something in Tidal, it will only show music in the results - no podcasts, no audiobooks. 

The kids were given phones this year, and I lied about their age so they could create profiles and listen with the app. My son has a single playlist and has said it's four hours worth of songs now. He'll listen while he plays Fortnite, while he showers, while he's on a long car ride with me and doesn't want to listen to my music or enjoy my pleasant conversation. I'm not as informed about my daughter's choices. I know she had some songs saved that got removed due to Disney copyright violations. That wasn't easy to explain. 

For some of these songs, I don't have anything exciting to say about them except, "The algorithm served this to me after I listened to something else," so I will be using those spaces to write about whatever I choose.

This year’s soundtrack is available on YouTube. Apple. Spotify. And Tidal.

1. George Jones - The Grand Tour

I was driving my mom to an appointment, so I tried to play something we'd both enjoy hearing. I must have generated a playlist based on Willie Nelson. This song started and I didn't know it but it's easy to identify George Jones' voice. As soon as he started singing I told mom, "Oh boy, this guy never has any good news to share," and the lyrics of The Grand Tour proved me right. 

(Wikipedia references a theory that this song may not be about a lady who took her kid and walked out on her husband, but rather died due to complications of childbirth. I do not agree. What kind of a freak would save the news of that tragedy for last? "There's the bed. Man, we used to go at it in that bed. Same with the chair. Oh yeah and over here is the nursery where my now-deceased child would have slept.")

Did you know that George Jones was called "Possum" because he had an unfortunate-looking face? I know that because I watched Ken Burns' Country Music this year. I loved seeing how nearly every country artist profiled had a dreadful childhood. With the exception of Kris Kristofferson and Reba McEntire, they all had difficult origins. You hear that Peter Coyote narrator voice over the most faded black and white photo you've ever seen, "She grew up in Gas Leak, Kentucky, the daughter of a mine accident foreman. Her crippled mother earned an extra dime a week by allowing the local sheriff to use her legs as target practice. Every month, her grandfather would come by the house drunk, chiding the small child for allowing her hair to be curly, and hitting her with the family fiddle."

I decided to watch Country Music because the podcast Blank Check was covering all of the films of the Coen brothers this year, and after rewatching O Brother, Where Art Thou? I thought Country Music would be a perfect add-on. And bam, 16 hours later I had a perfect understanding of the origins and rich history of Country.

2. This is Lorelai - Dancing in the Club (MJ Lenderman version)

I believe author/journalist Liz Pelly recommended the This is Lorelai album on BlueSky. It didn't grab me but I do love this cover. 

3. Sinead O’Connor - Mandinka

Wasn't previously familiar with this one. Why isn't this the most played song in the world?

4. Joan Baez - No Expectations

We took at trip to New York City (get a rope) in January, during the same weekend when Timothee Chalamet was hosting Saturday Night Live, performing some Bob Dylan songs no normal person recognized. A Complete Unknown was okay, and I liked the part where Joan Baez gave Bob the finger so I took her greatest hits for a spin. This Rolling Stones cover is my favorite. 

I don't post much on social media or this blog, so when I take pictures like this at the Natural History Museum, who is it for? 

5. Yo-Yo feat. Ice Cube - You Can’t Play with My Yo-Yo

Corinne asked for great running songs by female artists that she could put on a playlist for a marathon. My idea was Afro Puffs by The Lady of Rage, which I knew from hearing Death Row's Greatest Hits complication in car CD players throughout high school. The app played this afterward, based on songs similar. Ice Cube can say the stupidest shit and it still sounds cool.

6. Wet Leg - mangetout

I was excited for a number of albums this year, but the Wet Leg album was the one that really satisfied me. Somewhat disappointed with Ben Kweller, Samia, Japanese Breakfast, Black Country New Road, Beach Bunny, Car Seat Headrest, Arcade Fire, Sprints, and Neko Case. 

7. Phantastic Ferniture - Change My Mind

I was pleased to learn Julia Jacklin has this side project.

Maybe I should start using this space to cover which injuries I suffered over the course of the year. 

In the spring, I went to Wichita for the weekend. The first night, I got into bed without the plastic nightguard for my teeth and thought, "What's the harm?" and went to sleep. The next day it felt like a bottom tooth shifted an inch, and my jaw was clenched so much over the next few months that I was taking nightly muscle relaxants and seriously considering Botox injections in those jaw muscles. 

The next night in Wichita, I laid down to sleep on my aunt's couch, and before I fell asleep I had a pinched nerve in my neck. That took several weeks of stretching to fix.

The second week of July, my left knee was swollen after my weekly Sunday basketball game, and a few weeks after that it became hard to walk up and down stairs. The knee doc said I didn't have anything serious inside my knee, but I had to go to weeks of physical therapy to strengthen it and the muscles around it. No doc or physical therapist was ever able to say exactly what the issue was. Right now it doesn't hurt, but it doesn't feel right, either.

8. The Beat - Don’t Wait Up for Me

The Beat are called The English Beat in the United States, and I think we should do that for all British bands. The English Rod Stewart. 

9. Son Volt - Tear Stained Eye

I liked Son Volt's Drown during high school, but I never followed them and hadn't heard this before. 

Here's the movies I saw in a theater this year:

The Minecraft Movie

Dog Man

The Bad Guys 2

The Naked Gun

Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning

One Battle After Another

I sat between my kids at The Minecraft Movie, and neither of them laughed for the entire movie. Afterwards I asked them to rank the movie out of 10. The boy said 9.5 and the only reason it wasn't a 10 is because of "Jack Black's terrible songs." The girl said 8. So, they did find it entertaining but not funny? Or they found it funny but don't laugh.

10. The Walker Brothers - The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore

This was on the soundtrack to a movie called Turn Me On (2024), which I heard about through the Blank Check podcast. Three stars for the movie, five stars for this song!

11. Japanese Breakfast - Picture Window

Me and my aching knee stood for hours to enjoy this concert at Liberty Hall. It hurt like a bastard but we were right in front of the soundboard, in the center, on a step above the rest of the crowd. 

She said this song was about being afraid of stuff all the time, compared to her husband who is not like that.

12. The Jesus and Mary Chain - April Skies

Never really explored these guys before this year, but always assumed they had some bangers beyond The Crow soundtrack. 

13. Samia - Bovine Excision

I don't like diet soda and I haven't read Raymond Carver! I grew up calling soda "pop". In the covid era I was talking over Zoom to a bunch of temp employees, which was like monologuing to a screen of black squares. I don't know how it came up but I remember I said I switched to calling it soda because I was, "ashamed of my rural upbringing" and one of the few people with their camera on laughed.

14. The Beths - Mosquitoes

One day I was in a mood, staring at nothing, looking down at my desk in my office, hearing "I'm only here to feed mosquitoes, only skin, only blood, and little less now than there was." There are songs I like better off this album -- the boy likes Roundabout so much he put it on his own playlist -- but if I'm going with what songs will remind me of 2025 I gotta stick with this one.

The Beths was the second of two concerts I saw this year. They were good! Their encore was only one song. Fair enough!

15. Chris Farren - Cause of Death

Chris Farren led off our 2023 soundtrack! I saw he put this song out this year and had listened a few times, but I didn't listen to the lyrics until I was in Wichita for a funeral. Two weeks after going to Wichita for Gav's dad's funeral, I was back for my friend's memorial gathering. Unfortunately, the lyrics are applicable - we don't know the cause of death. 

He has 42 tags on this blog! I reread all of them. I looked up old email correspondence. I'm glad we took the time to write emails and blogs, and that I recorded old texts before deleting them to regain the limited memory space on my old dumb phones. I'm glad that all exists. 

16. Buckingham Nicks - Don’t Let Me Down Again

Alright, let's get back to movies. According to my Letterboxd, I have watched 228 films this year! I only saw a handful in the theater. In reverse chronological order:

One Battle After Another
Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning
The Naked Gun
The Bad Guys 2
Dog Man
The Minecraft Movie

I rewatched every MI film leading up to the finale, and rewatched the Naked Guns before the reboot. 

17. Wolf Alice - Bloom Baby Bloom

As the year went on, I grew tired of this from repeat listenings. The album was okay, I like Passenger Seat. White Horses is so weird that sometimes I think it's good and most of the time I think it's bad.

18. Shelly - Cross Your Mind

Some movies I watched this year that you probably haven't seen that I recommend (in no particular order):

Get Carter - Michael Caine is a mob enforcer who likes to fuck, and he's kicking ass and taking names to avenge his brother in Newcastle, England.

Light Sleeper - Willem Dafoe delivers drugs for Susan Sarandon in 80s gritty NYC. Does he like to fuck? This lady thinks so! 

(I watch movies on my TELEVISION so these screen captures are PHOTOS I take with my PHONE.)

White Sands - Willem Dafoe is a sheriff who finds a suitcase of money with a dead body, and goes undercover to solve the case.

Dressed to Kill - Brian De Palma directs this, so obviously some of these characters like to fuck. Dennis Franz is a NYC detective so obviously it's good.

Parallax View - Warren Beatty witnesses a political assassination. Does the conspiracy go all the way to the top? You bet your ass it does!

Get Over It - A perfectly silly movie about a high school play with stars in almost every role. Kirstin Dunst. Martin Short. Colin Hanks. Shane West. Ben Foster. Zoe Saldana. Mila Kunis. Ed Begley Jr. and Swoozie Kurtz. Sisqo was cast before Thong Song broke out! Vitamin C sings to camera during the opening AND closing credits!

Copycat - Watched some Holly Hunters I hadn't seen. In this one, she's a detective working with Sigourney Weaver to find a serial killer whose murders all resemble famous serial killer murders. A "copycat", if you will. Holly fires her sidearm sideways while doing some target practice and stole my heart. Why didn't her Incredibles character shoot pistols like this? 

 

19. Flamin’ Groovies - Shake Some Action

I didn't know that Cracker's song on the Clueless soundtrack was a cover. I did rewatch Clueless this year. Probably the best movie that has The Mighty Mighty Bosstones on screen.

20. BENEE - Off the Rails

Back to Michael Caine. In 2024 I watched a documentary he produced called My Generation, which had some nice footage of Swinging London but ultimately didn't have a point. Since then I've been throwing Caine movies on my watchlist when I see them on my paid or free apps. I watched 10 Caines this year - all of these were first-time watches:

Deathtrap
Alfie
Dressed to Kill
The Cider House Rules
The Prestige 
A Shock to the System 
Billion Dollar Brain
Flawless 
The Muppet Christmas Carol
Get Carter

21. Karen O and Danger Mouse - Super Breath

Books. Right. Well, just like Zuckerberg didn't get a million friends without making a few enemies, I didn't watch 228 movies without ignoring a few books. Let's see, the library borrowing history tells me I read one book this year: Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. I liked it. The library says I returned that book before I flew to Grand Rapids, so what did I read on the airplane? Oh right, I read Wild and Crazy Guys, a book about the rise of Steve Martin, Dan Ackroyd, Eddie Murphy, John Candy, et al making comedy movies in the '80s. My mom got it for me for Christmas years ago and I finally read it. Two books! 

22. Matt Pond PA and Anya Marina - Telepathy

Nick took me to the Ford Presidential Library in Grand Rapids! Last year I'd never been in a Presidential Library and now I've been to TWO! I gotta say, if you know about the Vietnam War and you know about Watergate, you do not have to read much in this museum. But you do learn that he had two would-be assassins.

23. Nenah Cherry - Buffalo Stance

See you next year.

2024 Soundtrack

In May I noticed that we had the family plan for Amazon Music without realizing it, so that’s when I fully became a streaming music app guy. I had used the app before when my better half was not using it, and I’d used Spotify with ads on our TV. I’m not a caveman. I just didn’t want to pay every month. I still don’t, but we have not cancelled the subscription.

One unbelievable thing about this Amazon Music experience is how the app did not already know my taste in music. I have purchased a decent amount of music from Amazon over the years, and my profile still has all of those mp3s. So you would think the algorithm already has my years of data to work with and would recommend songs based on that history. Nope! I think it has still, 7 months later, never played me a Neil Diamond song despite having purchased three Diamond greatest hits compilations, which are still in my Amazon Music library.

On the first day, I listened to an REM greatest hits album (from their IRS Records years), the new St Vincent album, and the The Last Dinner Party album before trying the “My Soundtrack” feature to see what the algorithm offered me. It played me THREE Smiths songs and one Morrissey song despite me never searching for those artists, never owning anything by them, and never clicking the thumbs up for their songs.

This year’s soundtrack is available on YouTube. Spotify. And Amazon Music.

Previous year’s soundtracks are in the archives.

1. IDLES - Gift Horse

I had a work trip to Minneapolis while I was finalizing the content and order of this playlist. On the first day, I had a nice walk through downtown to my old neighborhood, a quick look at the Spoonbridge and Cherry, a short ride on my old #6 bus, some meandering through skyways as the sprinkles turned to rain. This playlist will remind me of that day, and two nights later. Happy hour ended, local friends and peers excused themselves, and I readied myself for the walk back to the hotel in the cold with a wintry mix of precipitation. I had my winter coat, but I forgot my gloves and warm hat back at home. The only thing to keep my ears warm were my wired in-ear headphones. I hustled and made it to the hotel by track 6, even after stopping to take a picture.

2. George Harrison - Wah Wah

In my writeup last year, I wrote, “Who are you to want new music? Are you too good to go dig up the great works of the past?” That was my inspiration to listen to All Things Must Pass in January. 

3. Suki Waterhouse - Blackout Drunk

Amazon Music made me aware of Suki Waterhouse, possibly because I listen to the “Fresh Indie” playlist at times. I had no idea who she was, but the algorithm served me two singles, Supersad and My Fun, and I liked them both. Memoir of a Sparklemuffin was one of my favorite albums of the year. This song is my favorite – I love the quirky vocal melody – but check out the rest, too. 

4. Sprints - Literary Mind

This album is great. I heard about this band through a detailed Stereogum feature article, but that article could have read “This is a good Irish punk band” and it would have been enough for me to check them out. 

5. Lorde - Take Me to the River (Talking Heads cover)

From a Talking Heads cover album to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Stop Making Sense. Did you know this song is originally by Al Green? So it’s technically an Al Green cover. My daughter and I drove together for several hours on Thanksgiving, so I made a long playlist, no special theme, some different decades and genres. I included Genius of Love by Talking Heads spinoff Tom Tom Club and she recognized it and mentioned it was still in her head the next day. A timeless groove. 

6. The Smile - Friend of a Friend

New Radiohead put out two albums this year. Good for them! It’s nice to see old people staying active. Calling themselves The Smile did trick my brain enough to accept this style of music as it is, rather than some lesser version of stuff I loved 30 years ago.

7. Clairo - Sexy to Someone

A really great song on an album that otherwise makes me sleepy. We’re getting to the time in the soundtrack where I don’t have a lot to say about the songs, so I’m going to talk about things that happened this year. I went to DC for a conference in January, brr very cold, and stayed at the Omni Shoreham. That hotel is famous for hosting the “funny” political humor piano music of Mark Russell (my family watched his PBS specials), and presidential inauguration balls. It’s a filming location of the 1987 political thriller No Way Out, which I watched a few months after my stay, wherein Kevin Costner attends the ball, quickly seduces Sean Young, and they leave together and bang in the back of a limo. That happens in the first 10 minutes! Four stars!

8. Alice Phoebe Lou - Halo

In March, Janet and I drove to Abilene to visit the Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum & Boyhood Home. We did not pay to go inside his small boyhood home because I value my hard-earned money. That thrifty instinct paid off big time when we watched a free short film in the library that showed us the interior of the home. Thanks, suckers! A highlight for me was the old water fountain in the library - call me Bobby Boucher (aka The Waterboy) because that was some high quality H2O. When we left the museum to drive to the world’s biggest belt buckle and grab a late lunch, Janet asked what she was hearing on the radio. It’s THE AGRIBUSINESS REPORT, Janet! How else are we gonna know the price of hogs or wheat futures at the Chicago Board of Trade if the agribusiness reporter doesn’t update us over the airwaves several times every day?

9. St Vincent - Violent Times

Later that same March, I was in Oklahoma City with the boyz to watch the Thunder take on the Jazz. I enjoyed many earthly delights, like steak for breakfast, playing HORSE in a driveway, and one of those days when you realize you have not drank any water all day because you have been constantly sipping from beer cans. I ate the biggest and best pancake I’ve ever had.

10. Fontaines DC - Starburster

It’s tough to pick one song from Romance, but I went with Starburster. The song I enjoyed most when seeing them live in October was A Hero’s Death, which I did not expect. This year I also attended concerts for Neko Case, Alvvays, and Mates of State. Ben Folds was playing a free open-air concert in downtown Pittsburgh while I was there for work. I was eating some great Thai food al fresco, and could hear him playing and tried to catch which songs were bouncing off the buildings into my ears. My coworkers and I walked the few blocks over to the show after dinner, and took in several songs before continuing to walk across the fine bridges of the Steel City. Ben Folds playing solo doesn’t appeal to me anymore, the man needs a band.

11. Mary Timony - Untame the Tiger

My movie theater app won’t show me my past purchases, so I have to look up the 2024 box office data to see which films I watched at the cinema. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. My son wanted to see them fight each other, and they definitely did. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. I saw this with the same dad movie friend that I watched Mad Max: Fury Road and the John Wick movies with. And that’s it! Two visits to our town’s Regal Theater for me this year, which means I have saved my family hundreds of dollars by not joining them for viewings of The Garfield Movie, Inside Out 2, Moana 2, The Wild Robot, etc etc.

12. Haircut 100 - Lemon Firebrigade

The Amazon algorithm played this song for me. Sometimes I give it one new wave era song to play and then let the automatic shuffle based on that song play out. This is a good song to break up the playlist, right? Now we’re all set for the home stretch. 

13. The Last Dinner Party - Burn Alive

I probably heard about this band from Stereogum. I remember going to Bandcamp to give them a try, and seeing their “About” page:

We are an art-pop five-piece that drawn (draws?) on maximalism and theatricality. We like to dress up and be free with everything within our music. So imagine my surprise when I liked these guys, and listened to this album quite a bit.

14. Blondshell feat. Bully - Docket

This rocks. The app suggested a Blondshell cover of Sheryl Crow’s If It Makes You Happy and I listened to that plenty as well. A lot of the early part of this year was yelling at alipete that her ignorance of Sheryl Crow’s catalog is unacceptable. 

15. Cobrah - Brand New Bitch

This is the song that Emma Stone’s character dances to in the 3rd part of the Yorgos Lanthimos triptych fable Kinds of Kindness. You don’t have to watch it, but if you do, you have my permission not to watch all three parts of the movie in one sitting. Break it up, it’s fine. You know what I love? I love hitting my couch at 9:45 pm and turning on the TV and trying to remember if I am halfway through a movie or not. If I am not, great! I get to pick out a new movie. If I am, awesome! I already know what I’m going to watch and I’ve only got a little bit left before I’m done!

16. Laura Veirs - Drink Deep

I heard this song in the movie Hello, I Must Be Going, where Melanie Lynskey has a romance with a younger man. Three stars! It’s one of many, many movies I watched after returning from Pittsburgh with covid, and the 3rd movie in that covid watching period that featured relationships among people of different ages – The Idea of You (also three stars!), Miller’s Girl, (one star, what the hell is this neo southern gothic sexual spin on Whiplash?). All of these star ratings are taken from my Letterboxd diary. I decided I needed to track my movie history when I was searching for something fun and stupid, with nudity, to watch for me and Floyd’s joint birthday Zoom movie party. Blame It On Rio where Michael Caine has sex with his friend’s daughter, have I seen that before? I gotta start tracking this stuff. So, check me out on Letterboxd. If it’s 2.5 stars it’s meh, if it’s above that it’s worth watching, if it’s below that it’s not. Do I sometimes make little jokes about the movie in my review? I do, here’s examples:

We watched Hot Dog…The Movie for the birthday bash and while it is an important cultural document of 1984, I cannot recommend it, 1.5 stars. 

17. Fontaines DC - Favourite

It’s tough to pick one song from Romance, but I went with Starburster AND Favourite. Two songs from one artist and album on the same playlist? It’s unheard of, it’s a breakdown of norms in America. I will not go back and research, but I know I’ve had back to back songs from the same artist, and perhaps I’ve bookended a playlist with the same artist, but not this. Never this. 

18. Elastica - See That Animal

It’s never a bad time to listen to Elastica’s stunning debut album. Here’s a list of significant health care issues this year. Boy had his first broken bone, a broken arm with no complications, and he healed in time for his first summer baseball game. Total out of pocket cost for one broken arm? About one thousand dollars. From the same Sunday pickup basketball games that previously gave me a sprained ankle and a broken thumb, I got 6 staples in the top of my skull from falling backwards into the basketball pole. Then I had a pinched nerve in my neck that persisted for about 8 weeks.

19. mxmtoon - the situation

I don’t know anything about this band, but thank you algorithm for this offering. What did I read this year? I read three nonfiction books that I will not discuss. I read Station Eleven, and then watched the HBO Series based on that book. I read It Never Ends, Tom Sharpling’s memoir, because I listen to his podcast sometimes. I purchased and read Hate To Fake It To You and Blood Sisters because I know those authors personally; since I publish this very popular and successful blog I think of them as my writing peers. 

20. Oso Oso - stoke

A Stereogum recommendation, thank you website. 

21. Gus Dapperton - Everything She Wants (Wham! cover)

Didn’t realize this was a Wham! song, thank you Wham!

22. Vampire Weekend - Mary Boone

I didn’t make it to this concert because I would have had to drive to Kansas City twice in a week. Can you imagine? I am tired of this album now but we had some good times together in 2024.

23. Waxahatchee - 365

The lead single, Right Back To It, was in my head for five consecutive days and that took all the momentum away from this album for me. Then I finally picked it back up and the sound quality bothered me. At times, the vocals max out into the red. Old golden ears over here with my tinnitus, complaining about the finer aspects of sound mixing.

24. Wang Chung - City of the Angels 

This is from the soundtrack to the film To Live and Die in L.A. Wang Chung did all the music. Willem Dafoe is good at counterfeiting money, can William Peterson and Paul Reiser’s friend on Mad About You bring him to justice? I also enjoyed William Peterson in Manhunter and The Contender this year. 4 stars, 4 stars, and 3.5 stars!

25. Gene Krupa & His Orchestra - Drum Boogie

I elected not to watch any election coverage on election night. I watched Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper in Ball of Fire, where she plays a nightclub singer and sings (lip synchs) this song with Gene Krupa. A screwball comedy from Howard Hawks and Billy Wilder, looks like the whole dang movie is free to watch on YouTube right now. Four stars! Then I spent the following morning only listening to big band music. The app has never recommended another big band song to me, the algorithm has dismissed that day as a moment of weakness or a mental breakdown.

Light Reading

So yeah, I kinda gave up on reading.

Until last week’s business trip, I hadn’t read a novel or short story since Red Harvest, which I bought at a Barnes and Noble a few Christmases back only because I refused to pay $17.99 for one of their CDs, even if I was using a gift card.

The last contemporary book I read was The Art of Fielding. That book was not good. A college baseball player gets the yips, and his gay roommate has a sexual relationship with the college president, and his teammate bones the president’s daughter, and so does he. Uh, great? Good job, everybody. You’re all creeps.

So you have that feeling of “Oops, I spent a lot of time reading this thing that I ended up hating,” which leads to, “Maybe I’ll only read critically acclaimed or famous texts,” which leads to, “Screw it, I’ve only got 15 minutes to spare, I’ll just read Twitter instead.” And honestly, I have no regrets.

From The Onion, duh.

And when I don’t want to run down my phone battery, I always have this Anthology of American Literature, Volume II, 8th Edition that I took from Mlada a few years ago and still haven’t returned. I hauled this heavy thing in my carry-on, and finally cracked it on my return flight. I read a Henry James story, Daisy Miller, mostly because I think he’s mentioned as a favorite of Hugh Grant’s character in Notting Hill.

It was okay! Nineteenth century well-to-do social circles, Europeans and Americans, and so forth. And I learned that malaria was called “Roman Fever” back then, in Rome at least.

Was it better than reading Twitter, or my Feedly queue, or the articles linked within those platforms? It was certainly better than having a dead smartphone battery when I arrived back at my airport of origin. OF THAT I AM CERTAIN.

Read What I Read

The next day, Eunice and I took the Long Island Rail Road to Westbury, Long Island, to meet the Abramovs. The love I felt for her on that train ride had a capital and provinces, parishes and a Vatican, an orange planet and many sullen moons --- it was systemic and it was complete.
 
--- Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story

*  *  *

Since A Hologram for the King was a new release, the library insisted I return it within 2 weeks instead of the normal 4. I hate having such deadlines for reading, but Dave Eggers is always a fast read for me, and I happened to finish it within 2 days, and I returned it to the library this morning since I had a dental appointment. Getting that novel back on the shelf in such a quick turnaround is practically charity work, and when the time comes to remember me at the funeral wake or in the New York Times obituary, this fine deed should be told as an example of my selflessness.

Read What I Read

All that work for nothing. And if we happened to cast back, in search of edification, to days past and jobs completed --- oh, what a bad idea, for what had all that amounted to? And anticipating future work just made the present moment even more miserable. There was so much unpleasantness in the workaday world. The last thing you ever wanted to do at night was go home and do the dishes. And just the idea that part of the weekend had to be dedicated to getting the oil changed and doing the laundry was enough to make those of us still full from lunch want to lie down in the hallway and force anyone dumb enough to remain committed to walk around us.

Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End

I've read THREE books so far this year, which already makes me a better person than last year, when I read two. Right?

2012 Recap - Printed Words

I didn’t read a ton of books this year. I had cancer.

I was diagnosed in late July, and I didn’t crack a book until June. So for the first half of the year, I was simply lazy slash busy getting married slash I wasn’t really all that busy but that’s what grooms say even when brides do all the planning although there were various outings and meetings I did go to but not so many that it’s really an excuse not to read. I guess I was resting my eyes.


Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America

So I finally kicked off my 2011 reading adventure at the airport, waiting for our first flight of our honeymoon. Nothing says, “Let’s start off this union with an adventure,” like the details of America’s first serial killer and his spree surrounding the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. You probably know this is a fine book, because normal people read it closer to its publication date in 2004, while some of us waited until they could borrow a coffee-stained copy from their friends’ bookshelf. If you’re unfamiliar, you should certainly read it. It’s a great example of what a nightmare life used to be, even moreso than the current nightmare in which we now reside. I mean, this guy faked his doctor credentials, failed to pay for most of his purchases - including work people did to build his huge house/business/murder castle, dispatched handfuls up fresh-faced young women, and it was pretty easy! You could do that sort of thing back then, just ride the rails from city to city and make shit up and be awful and it didn’t matter, because there was always another city that didn’t know you and policework was a joke. Yikes! The other half of the book, how the World’s Fair was organized and built, is understandingly less captivating than the guy who collected and murdered his prey, but it’s still pretty cool. And sad, considering the great buildings they describe didn’t survive (save for the Museum of Science and Industry), and I’m pretty sure much of the old fairgrounds are part of the scenery you experience on the world’s saddest bus ride from Hyde Park to Midway Airport.



Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Among the piles and piles of books I was given to occupy my cancer time, I only read one. New diagnosis, same laziness, I guess. I chose to read this one because two of my friends considered it among their favorite books EVER. Now, you may recall this idea I had a few years back, where I decide to poll my friends and read their favorite books - an idea that was permanently derailed after spending a few weeks with Adrienne’s pick, “The Brothers Karamazov”. It’s a prank that gets funnier and funnier with each passing year. Touche, Adrienne! You’ve made wormsmeat of me.

So in any case, here I was, nearing the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and reading a 9/11 novel. The film version of the book would be released soon, starring Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock.* A perfect storm of circumstances, right?

Again, I feel silly telling you about this book you read eight years ago, but this boy’s dad dies in 9/11, and then he finds a key in his dad’s closet that has a note attached to it - it says “Black”. The boy decides Black is the last name of the person who the key belongs to, and starts meet everyone in the phone book with that surname. And it turns out that it really was the last name of the person the key belonged to. I’m not sure if I groaned louder when the kid started his ill-conceived journey, or when his plan turned out to be precisely conceived. I may have actually started a groan that didn’t end until I completed the novel.

*Uh, and if you’re casting this movie, how do you pick out Hanks and Bullock as the parents? Nothing screams New York Jews like those two. Seesh. Who would you cast instead? Is Harvey Keitel too old? How about Ben Stiller? How about Adrien Brody? Julianna Margulies? Jennifer Connelly? I could maybe think of better actors but I don't want to do any work beyond googling "imdb jewish actors".