2025-02-05 04:33:06
Spoilers
Nothing in detail but there are some plot points called out that may spoil a first read.
Some books allow you to be enveloped in them like a cuddle from a doughy grandmother. Others scream in your face obnoxiously like the shift manager at a McDonald's on a bank holiday weekend. This book is the latter.
The landscape is harsh, the science too. The format, letters to a niece, has been done before but it's a nice way to maintain a first person restricted narrative — particularly an unreliable one.
As is to be expected in a first person documentation of a man's descent into madness, parts of the book are kind of rambling nonsense that were too easy to skim over.
On the other hand, it was easy to fall into the world and suspend disbelief. Clues were peppered through the story but I didn't manage to solve the mystery before our protagonist.
Some of the book felt a bit silly; hokey monsters, art analogies, time travel, but the heart of the book lies in relationships; between the disparate team members — each at the top of their respective fields and struggling to work together, between father and sons, husband and wife, man and god.
A deep book. Perhaps not as deep as it wishes it was.
2025-02-04 18:10:23
I don't care about screentime anymore
Ava
Ava's main point here is that the context is important. What you use your phone for is as important as for how long. Two hours' doomscrolling is worse than four hours' with the map app open on a drive, for example.
It turns out that I, too, am a "phone person" in all the right ways.
My screen time is high from interacting with loved ones I don't see often enough because they don't live nearby, from calendar reminders and todo lists for housework, looking up recipes, playing music to entertain my family, and journalling to save myself on therapy bills.
2025-02-04 03:30:00
Via fLaMEd, we have another blogging challenge from Ava, "Music Questions Challenge". Let's go!
As a (mediocre) bassist, I'm a total sucker for a sick bassline.
Currently listening to insanely catchy earworm "HOT TO GO!" by Chappell Roan. Seriously though, a song that catchy should be illegal.
More and more these days. I tend to have the radio on while I'm driving because I totes cba with connecting my phone and dealing with playlists. Also, it's usually on in the kitchen while life happens around it. Much like Red Rose Gold bubbling away in the corner of my parents' kitchen when I was a child.
Daily. More often than not something is on while I'm working and, otherwise, the aforementioned radio or a YouTube Dance Party™ in the lounge.
I seek out new music all the time. I like watching DJ sets like My Analog Journal and noting the tracks that caught my ear. Otherwise, YouTube recommendations, Fediverse friends and musicians, NME reviews, occasionally Dazed, and once-in-a-blue-moon I'll hear something on Kerrang radio in the car that isn't from 2005.
I'm never sure of how popular a band is so I hope I don't look stupid by listing some chart topping legend 😬
"Burn Your Village" by Kiki Rockwell needs to be played so fucking much. I can't even describe the genre; some kind of gothic glitch pop German fairytale witch folk. There, I tried. Go and listen to it.
This is the hardest question in the world and the answer changes depending on the mood! If pressed, I'll usually say "Together We Will Live Forever" by Clint Mansell.
Definitely but also not at all.
I mostly listen to "rock" music, I guess. It's where I started and where I'll finish.
I first became aware of music listening to 1960s music in my parents' kitchen; Gary Puckett, The Beatles, Gene Pitney, and Dusty Springfield but that mostly petered out.
I never got heavily into, like, hair metal or that bluesy 70s rock. My teens were the 90's and that meant Britpop (but never Oasis), Grunge, and punk revival.
I had a big electronica and indietronica phase in the mid-noughties.
Scandinavian metal has featured heavily, as has pop punk, Bowie, some Goth, Emo, and Industrial.
All of this has kind of melted together. As I mentioned before, I seek out new music rather than wallow in nostalgia but the past definitely shapes the future; I don't stray wildly away from the "sort of music I like".
You!
I'd love to hear your answers to these questions. Send me a link to your article at the address below 👨🎤🧑🎤👩🎤
2025-02-03 00:02:26
Started the week off with a lovely email from Freya Vie asking about my review of The Snow Song. I sent her a few passages I'd highlighted and we are now mutuals. This is why I love the internet; people from around the world connecting over common interests.
Juggled three balls! Briefly, but I did it 🤹
This is an achievement as I have basically zero hand-eye-coordination!
Thursday Brew Crew met for a quick one at nearby Foundation. I stumped up £5 for a small (only size available) chai latte with oat milk. Happy to give me a takeaway cup. The place felt understaffed and a bit sad.
Related: learned how to "uncle up" my Chai Lattes from the good folks at Bundobust and am now waiting for the next cold snap to drop a shot of Disaronno in my tea.
Listened to the new Lord Huron song, "Who Laughs Last" featuring Kristen Stewart, and I like it! It reminds me a heck of a lot of Poe's "Hey Pretty" which features her brother, House of Leaves' Mark Z Danielewski, on (spoken) vocals and has a similar narrative setting.
"Disquiet" by Canadian black metal outfit Unreqvited is gorgeous. I usually think I'm not a fan of "Black Metal" but when it's like this I really very much am. A haunting, melodic, icy wall of noise to drown out the outside world and the voices in your head. Acqvaint yourself with their back catalogue ahead of next week's new release, A Pathway to the Moon.
Dax Riggs' Felt the darkness smile from new release "7 Songs for Spiders" is a bouncy bluesy bop around a buzzing bass line. Brilliant.
Because this is how the world ends: not in the falling incendiaries of an aerial attack, not in a storm of toy soldiers laying waste to the gods who brought them into being, but in the banal letters of a bank.
"The Toymakers" by Robert Dinsdale
2025-02-01 17:02:44
Happy February!
Here are a few photos from my phone from the last month with neither rhyme nor reason to the theme.
2025-02-01 13:55:38
We had a bit of snow fall here between Christmas and New Year. Usually the weather holds off until late January, sometimes early March but that's climate change, I guess.
I'm not the greatest fan of snow; it looks lovely falling and I love the feeling of being safe and warm inside while it's cold out there. But this time I pushed myself to go out and document the local area.
My wife bought me some Lomography Lady Grey 400 for Christmas so I stuck a roll in my trusty Minolta X-9, put on a warm jacket and set off for a short walk around town.
Town is dead. It's unlikely to ever be heaving at this time but it's noticeable how empty Market Square is.
Snow discourages activity in many ways; the roads are quieter, I see no dog walkers. The hills behind the village have children on them. They're trespassing with toboggans.
