Musing

2023 made it easier to break out the tiers as I've done in the past.  I also need to close the loop on the ones I mentioned last year that I didn't get around to - nothing terribly special there.  There's one hold over that I didn't know had finally been released as it had been delayed a few times and that's the Fort Frances album below, but I learned about it this fall, so I've had time to think about it.  I didn't know about Half Moon Run's "Salt" until just a couple of days ago, so I'm not ready to weigh in on that yet.   Great albums:   The Veils, ...And Out of the Void Came Love Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, Council Skies City and Colour, The Love Still Held Me Near The National, First Two Pages of Frankenstein Andrew Bird, Outside Problems Fort Frances, Look At What Tomorrow Brought Us    Meh albums:   Bell X1, Merciful Hour Local Natives, Time Will Wait For No One   WTF? albums:   The National, Laugh Track Dave Matthews ...

Here is more than you ever wanted to know about the books, movies, and music that stood out for me in 2013. Website of the Year - alterslash.org Finally - something that waters down the firehose of information that is Slashdot. Very phone friendly as well. Book of the Year - The Last Dark by Stephen R. Donaldson Last year at this time I was assuming that the long-awaited conclusion to the Wheel of Time could not possibly fail to own everything else that would be released through 2013. This behemoth, which  closed 15 years of reading and waiting for me, was satisfying in many ways, but also suffered significantly more than the previous two volumes finished by Sanderson due to the choppy mix of voices (it was his intent to leave as much unaltered Jordan in the work as possible) and the [SPOILER] seemingly-last-minute-addition of some Sharan forces led by a much-anticipated bad guy [END SPOILER]. The short story that was published in the Unfettered anthology would ha...