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Everything that happened on the blog last week with a couple extras.Too much? Not enough? Let me know what you think.

Hi! You’re here! Thank you.

Hope you’re doing okay. This time of year can be rough. Boozy parties, surprise expenses and zero daylight, it can wear you down. Next week I have a few days of travel for work, and as much as I love it, I never sleep well. Compounding it, my dog’s internal alarm seems to be set to 5am every day. Lovely stuff.

Been a busy week behind the scenes. I made some major invisible changes to the website (learning on the fly means always redoing things). There are a couple new things: I’ve put up some pages for “essentials” (books and music) that I’m working on getting completed and pretty.  Have a look around and let me know what you think.

Here’s what I got up to this week:

There were some great short stories on Monday. The nonfiction one will stop your heart; the rest are also terrific.

The newest Knausgaard book is highly recommended, and you don’t need to read the 1,400 pages that came before it.

The latest translated memoir by Annie Ernaux (and Marc Marie) is a thought-provoking, insightful and steamy thing (I can’t believe I’m saying that! She was in her 60s!).

Junji Ito’s memoir is entirely inessential. Even my teenager agrees.

I also started compiling various year-end book lists, they’re always useful to kill time or find a gift for a nerd. Music lists have started coming out, once I see a handful I’ll start making one for those too.

I’m always looking for good writing and good music. If you have something to recommend, either your own stuff or something you’ve found, lay it on me.

If you’re a huge googly eyes fan like me, she posted a link on her Substack to three previously unreleased tracks.

Four features this week:

The playlist is king-sized this week, I’m worried this will be a continuing thing.

It features singles from previous faves Tlya X An, untitled (halo), green star, googly eyes, Annie-Dog, Better Joy, Rosewater Park, and Clothesline from Hell.

New discoveries from:

26 songs, 92 mintues. Hear it all on Apple Music or Spotify

Get the playlists

NEXT WEEK: I’ve got a collection of short stories by Lucia Berlin, an all-timer by James Baldwin and the latest by Nobel-winning Han Kang. Musically, we’ll see. I don’t have anything on the radar at the moment.

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