
Saturday night. The world is so much bigger in not-winter…

Saturday night. The world is so much bigger in not-winter…
by Ted Kaufman & Bruce Hiland
When I was heavily into weaving school, I thought, I want to retire and do this intensively. The barriers were going to be the just-slightly-too-far distance, and the money. But I would do thought experiments on it – fully cognizant that when the time came to actually retire, my head would be in some other space and I wouldn’t want to do it anymore – but the point of thought experiments is to have fun. I came up with ways I could do it while driving less (buy a crappy car that I kept parked in Montpelier! buy a caravan to live in onsite at the school during sessions!). Now weaving school is moving and likely isn’t going to be in Marshfield anymore, if it continues to exist at all. And it’s being run by different people, naturally. And yes, my head’s moved on. Need new thought experiments.
by Lauren Oyler
This book was nearly insufferable. It starts out with a strong plot, and I was drawn into the documentary-level detail, but I didn’t foresee how off the rails it would go. After part 1, where heroine discovered her boyfriend is a secret conspiracy theorist, and part 2, which flashes back to their meet-cute, super plot twist comes along and twists the plot so severely there is no longer any plot. Then we get an absolutely interminable section where heroine just wanders around. At one point she decides to go on a series of 12 fake dates, during each of which she pretends to be a different stereotyped sign of the zodiac. I felt like I was reading some Japanese fiction where any random thing might happen next, and when things get like that, I just get like WHY!?!?!
And yes, you can totally convince me that I’m reading it on entirely the wrong level, and that all my complaints are “the point.” Nevertheless, complaints they are.

Xopher said I should post this. My doodling, my equipment, and my creation.
by Darrin Bell
I really enjoyed this book and did not expect to. I did not expect to because I’m a bad person who’s really tired of reading about racism. I also tend to think graphic novels are gimmicky. But this was wonderful, and I wished there was more of it.
by Carys Davies
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
I can’t review this short little novel without giving it all away. I was just so thrilled she pulled off a happy ending! Because I saw tragedy on every other page, until things started to escalate; then I saw tragedy in every paragraph. Thank you, thank you Carys Davies.
Not so long ago I asked my brother what he was drinking lately, what he was listening to lately, what he was reading lately. Since then, I’ve taken up dry Riesling, re-read the SILMARILLION, and added some lute music to my nano. I’m still not him.
Electric blanket, Ambien, oatmeal… the holy triumvirate of comfort, that carry me through the best 12 hours of my 24-hour day.
Happiness is also, for the other 12:
Brand spankin’ new Sunday papers.

Books
Meal planning, food shopping, cooking, eating, eating at restaurants
Programming, debugging, when something works, when something doesn’t work and you figure out how to make it better, when something doesn’t work and you’ve discovered something important that saves the US economy
Contrarian viewpoints, philosophy & ethics, deep human history, big picture thinking