by Nathaniel Ian Miller

I read this because I loved his second novel, RED DOG FARM. This is extremely different. I was hooked early on, but the hook lost me after 60 pages or so. Sven is an interesting character and goes off to the north to seek adventure, and makes a sympathetic friend. Then there’s a mining accident, and I lost the thread. He goes off further north to become a trapper. Eventually the story jumps the shark when his spunky niece shows up with her baby, yes in the wilds of the north, to stay with him. By the end I was actively disliking this meandering story. It didn’t seem to matter what happened, the story would just wander wherever it wanted.

edited by Benjamin Hedin

“They’re songs. They’re not written in stone. They’re plastic.” – Dylan, Songwriters on Songwriting, April 1991

“From the bottom of my heart, however, I want to thank Bob Dylan for his poetry, his music, his soul. He’s made life, sometimes a desperate crawl through a vicious universe, clearer, cleaner, and quieter for me, even when he was at his noisiest. I hope never to meet him. This meeting would involve very little. A handshake. he’s already shaken my hand. Good God, thank you, Bobby Zimmerman.” – Barry Hannah, written for this collection

by J. R. R. Tolkien

(re-read)

I really don’t like The Hobbit. I re-read it to brush up on things. But not only because it’s a kid’s book and it trivializes important things from the masterpiece LOTR… but because it bored me! I found the ending boring. I also thought Beorn was outlandish and didn’t fit into the LOTR world.

by J. R. R. Tolkien

Just wanted to immerse myself in more Tolkien escapism. I learned a lot.

37 was a re-read of Red Dog Farm for book club (my own pick).

38 is by my high school classmate JD Glass, originally in novel form and now in graphic novel form illustrated by her wife:

by JD Glass & Kris Dresen

I feel like in this format, the arc around “Attila the Nun” and the emergence of her softer side was not given its due. We didn’t see enough of her being a tyrant to begin with, only a page or two. And then not enough of her being the savior in the end. That was my favorite part of the original novel.