Musing

Honestly I expected more of 2020.  I thought that a year when everyone is expected to stay home would see a whole host of projects released for consumption by all of those bored, quarantined consumers, whether it was a music album or a book or anything else.  I heard a variety of reasons tossed around as to why it didn't happen that way, although they didn't all hold water. So in large part, it meant I continued working hard on the TBR pile of books in SF/F and assessing the music collection where it stands.  I was able to purge quite a few of the 62 books I was able to finish this year, but the CDs are about as trimmed as they can get.  The reading focus moves to general fiction and the philosophy/theology bookcase this year.  Though those collections are smaller, there are books that have been there since college that I've meant to read but just haven't bothered with yet.  The rule here is the same - every book I don't need to take across the country to ...

Travis' Where You Stand Editor's Note: This is the 1st in a quasi-weekly series of reviews marking my favorite ten albums of 2013. The 10th edition is wrapped into the larger year-end post I call "The Ho Media Awards", which will be published just after the new year. Stay tuned! It's really, really good to hear these guys back away from the sound of the last album. I was not a fan and I made that clear with the release of Ode To J. Smith . This is a decidedly more relaxed affair in which you can actually hear music instead of distortion. It's a little more lighthearted than I'd normally prefer; 12 Memories is one of my favorite albums of all time for its combination of the outright depressing and the negative-ironically-dressed-in-positive-shtuff. But it's hard to deny a song in any vein that comes with a video this awesome: Album Highlights: Mother; Moving; New Shoes