Lit City Blues

So, I read this book for two primary reasons-- first, I devoured the podcast Tides of History and if a podcast is good enough and comes out with a book of some kind, I figure the least I can do is snag a copy of the book and actually pay for it, since I've usually consumed a considerable amount of the author's content for free over the years. Second, it's homework. I did three 'seasons' of a Serial challenge on one of my writing groups and in my last season, I decided to dabble in fantasy. What resulted was... okay, but not something that I'd let anyone see in real life at the moment, but what it revealed to me was that if I was going to be serious about cleaning it up and turning it into something, I was going to have to do some research. The Verge is the first book of several I'll be reading to hopefully get me a little more grounded in the time period and thus make my fantasy novella, short story, or whatever it ends up being, better. (At least better t...

Storytime, dear readers: Once upon a time when I was a young reader and lover of all things fantasy, I fell very deeply in love with The Wheel of Time , which ended up being fourteen books long and was building to what I'm sure was going to be a deeply satisfying finale to the series when it's author, Robert Jordan, died. Now, I bear no ill will for Mr. Jordan. It's not his fault he died and eventually, they found someone (a very good someone, Brandon Sanderson as it turned out) to finish the series and it ended very, very well. But at the time, I felt a bit chapped by it all, so when Game of Thrones became a thing in the cultural zeitgeist, I made a solemn vow: I would not watch the television show until the books were all the way done. Needless to say, I have broken that vow. I'm going to blame TikTok and their stupid trend of showing you bits and pieces of shows until finally you break down and watch the whole damn thing-- I had watched so much of House of the Dragon...

Does anyone remember the film Late Night starring Emma Thompson and Mindy Kaling? It showed up on Amazon Prime and I remember sitting down, watching it, and generally liking the movie, but it didn't really leave much of a lasting impression on me. The cast was excellent, the writing good, and everything worked to create an entertaining experience that I promptly forgot about as soon as it was over. That's kind of the same way I feel about Air . Don't get me wrong, a movie topic, it makes sense. The advent of Air Jordan changed the shoe business forever and launched a cultural juggernaut-- one could argue that things like the Magic/Bird rivalry and the rise of Michael Jordan and Air Jordans are really what put the E in ESPN and if you're super into sports history and love Air Jordans and are genuinely curious about where they came from, Air will tick all over those boxes. The cast is excellent. The performances are good. I genuinely liked a movie where everything worke...

Because a list of 40 wasn't ambitious enough, I'm adding 10 more! I broke it out by categories this time, just to make it a bit easier for me to handle, and some of them need some metrics developed to actually make them worthwhile and real goals, but for now, this is what I'm starting with. I'll post progress and any changes made on a yearly basis and we'll see how we do from there. So, without further ado: 50 Before 50 Self Improvement 1. Run a 5K 2. Ride the whole week of RAGBRAI 3. Lose 50 lbs and keep it off 4. Hike up a mountain (like a proper, 14er type of mountain, not Everest or anything crazy though.) 5. Learn how to manage money and save 6. Get back into Tai Chi 7. If the kiddos stick with it and I can make it work with my schedule, maybe Taekwondo? 8. Get more intentional with what I eat. I'm a lazy eater and make poor choices. 9. Make exercise (of some kind, any kind!) an integrated habit of my routine. 10. Get better at self-care or at least recogni...

The Final Results are in: I got seventeen out of forty things accomplished on this list, which puts me at a winning percentage of 42.5%, so I came tantalizingly close to getting half of it accomplished.  Some things left undone are being folded into the next list and some of them are there for the taking, I just need to knuckle under and do them.  Onto the next list! ~~~ 1. Publish my novel. 2. Get another tattoo 3. Finish all 4,532 pages and 12 volumes of Winston Churchill's 'The Second World War.' 4. Run a 5k 5. Visit Every State in The Lower 48 (Slightly more achievable before I turn 40 then all 50, but I still want to get to all 50.) 6. Lose 50 lbs and keep the weight off.  7. Pay off every single dime of my student loans. 8. Publish two more novels 9. Get the front deck replaced/ get the patio area in the back done the way we want it. 10. Go on a cruise/solo trip with the Missus 11. I would like COVID to be over. Like to the point you can get a yearly shot if you wan...

I went to the library a couple of weeks ago, not really intending to check out books, but somehow ended up with three books I had not planned on reading- one of which was Patrick O'Brian's The Far Side Of The World . This might be hard to believe, but I had never actually read any of the Aubrey-Maturin series and it had been years since I had seen the movie, but after a conversation with a co-worker lead me down the rabbit hole, I watched the movie. Then, that day in the library, I decided to check out the book to see what the book was like. Granted, the movie wasn't a straight adaptation of the book- elements were pulled from three other novels and the time period was tweaked-- instead of 1812 and an American whaling ship, the movie takes place in 1805 during the Napoleonic Wars- little did I know but that would be just the first and most basic difference between the book and the movie. The book is wild, y'all. I mean, don't get me wrong, I could write a whole pos...

The Terminal List: I know that this show is based on a series of books by Jack Carr and I have not read any of them. (I haven't read any of the Jack Reacher books either) so given that, I feel a little reluctant to judge The Terminal List too harshly. For all I know, it could be decent to the good adaptation of the books that's pretty faithful to the source material but again, I haven't read 'em so my initial impression of the show was, "Man, this has a lot of Jack Reacher vibes to it." And I think that judgment is somewhat unfair-- for a start, the main character, Lt. Commander James Reece (Chris Pratt) of the Navy SEALs comes across as just that- a Navy Seal. There's no- and again, I hesitate to use this word because I haven't read any of the books- savant-like behavior. This isn't, 'what if Sherlock Holmes was an MP with a dark past'-- no, Lt. Commander Reece goes on a mission, it goes, very, very badly, and in the aftermath, he figures ...