One of Those Periodic Grab Bags I Do

Some Recommendations for You

Ireland processing their Eurovision elimination in real time.

Last week, I wrote about Traveling Alone to Spain. One upside I forgot to mention was all the free time to read and watch movies and TV, on the plane and off. Here’s all the content I consumed while I was away.

Books

So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell: I have no idea what compelled me to pick up this book. Maybe because it has a moody cover, maybe because it’s short. The books it evokes for me: A Day No Pigs Would Die, In Cold Blood, and, strangely, Cold Comfort Farm, but maybe that’s because I just read that book. In brief, the narrator recalls a murder that happened at a neighbor’s house when he was young, and unspools the relationships that went awry, including one with a childhood friend, before and after the murder. This is about male friendship and the way violence interferes with it. Highly recommend.

This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone: Very hard to describe this book. It took a little patience to get into, and I’m not sure I would have gotten very far if the back cover copy didn’t provide the context for the story. It says:

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandment finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.

Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, becomes something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Trust me, that’s way more clarity than you get from reading the story itself. BUT it’s beautifully written and very compelling, and I would recommend it to people who like sci-fi and poetry and want to see what it looks like blended together.

Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan: I got almost 100 pages into this Pulitzer Prize winning memoir and it still felt like he was in 8th grade. It was mostly about surfing and how wild and carefree kids were in the 60s. It was well-written but like the work of a lot of beloved writers, needed more editing. If you like surfing, you will love this book. I like surfing less than I thought I did, because I stopped reading it.

Movies

I watched two movies on the plane: Yacht Rock, a dockumentary (har har) and A Complete Unknown. I now feel pretty caught up on some music genres I hadn’t paid much attention to. I recommend them on an airplane? That’s a good place to see them. Or if you are otherwise a captive audience needing to fill 2 hours.

Just kidding. They were both good. Yacht Rock draws a lot of connections among musicians and bands that will surprise you. Michael MacDonald was a red hot fox back in the day. It’s not as good as Bee Gees: How Do You Mend A Broken Heart, but it’s a good companion movie if you like that one. After I watched Yacht Rock, I listened to Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys and Aja by Steely Dan and a Spotify playlist of Thundercat. Of the three, I will probably only listen to Thundercat again. I know that sounds insane, and my music friends will think I am being an apostate, but Beach Boys and Steely Dan are overexposed and I’ve had enough of them in my lifetime.

As for A Complete Unknown, Timothee is pretty convincing as the young Bob Dylan and I better understand the appeal of both of them now. This didn’t turn me into a fan of either but I get it. As for Edward Norton’s Pete Seeger, I really wished Norton would wipe the bemused smirk off his face. And who know Alan Lomax was the villain?

TV

After A Complete Unknown was over, I still had seven hours of flight time, so I watched three episodes of House Hunters: Amazing Waterfronts and the whole first season of 30 Rock. 30 Rock holds up pretty well. There are a few jokes that wouldn’t be aired now but more jokes come so quickly that they’re easy to ignore. What’s interesting is how quickly 30 Rock got its groove. The second episode is just as funny as the pilot.

While I was in Spain, I was legally obligated to watch FC Barcelona (they won La Liga while I was there!) and Eurovision. I’d never watched Eurovision before and I now understand that my life was empty before and now it isn’t. Also, the idea of attaching shame to corniness must be an American thing. I assume Eurovision translates to “unabashed corniness” in Esperanto.

Two Last Things

I have discovered another two games: Unzoomed and Unzoomed US. By the way, I get most of my game recommendations from Lev Parikian’s Six Things newsletter, which I recommend. It has lots of cool facts and videos and distractions that are worth the time spent in each rabbit hole.

Finally, I used a lot of my time in Barcelona to work on revising the first draft of my new novel, The Last Departure. Yesterday, I finished the revisions and sent it to a couple of beta readers for feedback. The whole book isn’t ready for prime time, but as a special gift, I am going to send the first chapter of my novel to subscribers only. If you’ve been meaning to subscribe, you can get a subscription for 20% off. Just click this link!