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A Literary Palate Cleanser: Do You Have One?
Yesterday on NPR’s All Songs Considered podcast, hosts Stephen Thompson and Nate Chinen discussed some new albums released. It’s a great podcast and one I look forward to listening to every week. At one point, the pair are discussing Marshall Allen’s new debut album—the guy is 100!—and Thompson talks about how approachable Allen’s new album is, comparing it to the music of Juan Garcia Esquivel, which he describes as having a ‘hi-fi, cocktail jazz” feel. Thompson then mentions that Esquivel is music he dips into when he needs a palate cleanser. That got me to thinking: do I have a palate cleanser for reading? The short answer is no, and…
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Listen to Audiobooks at Any Speed You Want
A couple of weeks ago on NPR, I ran across an article entitled “Is there a right way – or wrong way – to listen to an audio book?” and I gave it a read. The article spotlights a TikTok video from Audible where various celebrities discuss their preferred speed of listening to content. What surprised me was the number of folks who think 1x (i.e., normal) speed is the only preferred method. One person even commented “I think people who go real fast are – I don’t want to say psychopath, but…” I have to admit it irritated me. I am an avid listener of audiobooks and podcasts. Of…
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The JFK Conspiracy Few Know About is a Riveting Thriller
As a trained historian, I pride myself on having in-depth knowledge on certain topics of history and a general sense of a wide range of other topics. This book showcased an event I never knew about. When I saw the title of Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch’s new book, The JFK Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Kennedy―and Why It Failed, I’ll admit it threw me. Was this a heretofore unknown account of that horrible day in 1963? Not at all. This is a retelling of another attempt on JFK’s life, this time in the weeks right after Election Day 1960. What? How did I miss this story in all…
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What “Saturday Night Live” Can Teach Writers About Failure
Failure sucks, but failure isn’t all bad. After rehearsal on Thursday night, I came back home to find my wife watching a new four-part documentary on the history of Saturday Night Live. I missed the first episode and most of the second, but I ended up watching the last two. The third episode is an entire deep dive on the Cowbell sketch. That was fun. The fourth, however, was brand-new to me. Entitled, “Season 11: The Weird Year,” it details the new-to-me saga of that year. And there was a lot I didn’t know. Randy Quaid was a cast member?! Full disclosure: I didn’t start watching SNL regularly until my…
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Give Yourself the Grace to (Re)Start Your New Year’s Resolutions
How are your New Year’s Resolutions coming along? Today is Quitter’s Day 2025. It’s the day when a shocking 80% or more people who made New Year’s resolutions have tapped out. These are the same folks who made decisions so fervently at midnight on 1 January. I’m one of those folks who always uses a new year (or month or week or day) to reset myself and my habits. Because that’s what resolutions really are, habits. Some of these habits have become embedded in my internal hard drive. I no longer need to keep track of my daily flossing because, years ago, I created the habit. Ditto for my daily…
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My Favorite Books from 2024
The year 2024 turned out to be one of my best reading years in quite awhile. Granted, I kept pace via audiobooks, but since that is my go-to, I don’t even count it. The Stats Overall, I got through 34 books in 2024, and I was 45 minutes (2 chapters) from finishing a 35th on New Year’s Eve. My science fiction book club (now entering its sixteenth year!) can account for at least eight books most years. Yeah, I don’t finish a book I don’t like. Long ago I realized it is better to pull the ripcord on a bad book and read something I enjoy versus slogging through a…
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Are you scared to put your side hustle on LinkedIn?
Do you have a side hustle? A passion project you do in addition to a day job? The kind of activity that, given a perfect set of circumstances you’d happily make your main vocation? Is it on LinkedIn? Why not? Now, I admit, up until recently, my side hustle was not on LinkedIn either. In fact, when my current boss at the day job interviewed me two years ago this month, he actually brought up my author business. It was the first time anything like that had happened. It surprised me, but it also should have served as all the incentive I needed to update my LinkedIn profile. Yet I…
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A Compelling Book That Will Make You Assess Your Life: The Night We Lost Him by Laura Dave
Know how, as soon as you finish watching The Sixth Sense, you watch the movie again, knowing the truth, and it all lines up? That’s how the prologue is in The Night We Lost Him by Laura Dave. Hat tip to The University of Texas at Austin, Apple TV, and Houston’s Blue Willow Bookshop for introducing me to the work of Laura Dave. How do those things connect? Well, my wife watched the adaptation of Dave’s The Last Thing He Told Me on Apple TV and some of those episodes took place in Austin, Texas, and, specifically, the University of Texas football stadium. I stopped, watched those episodes, and then…
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The Batman Sequel 35 Years in the Making: Batman Resurrection
Who knew that one of the best sequels of the year would be a novel to a thirty-five-year-old movie? Batman is my favorite hero. I consider the day the first Tim Burton film with Michael Keaton as Batman/Bruce Wayne debuted—23 June 1989–to be the real Batman Day. No matter what kind of Batman movie has been made in the years since, the ‘89 Batman was special. So when I heard John Jackson Miller was writing a direct sequel to that film, I was thrilled. And boy did Miller deliver. A Direct Sequel Batman: Resurrection starts in Gotham City right as the Joker is flooding downtown with Smilex gas. That would…
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New Book Preview: Have Yourself a Merry Christmas Murder
It may be a week shy of Halloween, but Christmas is just around the corner. And so is my new book. It’s called Have Yourself a Merry Christmas Murder and it will be available next month. But today, I’d like to share a little background to the story and Chapter 1. Hallmark Christmas Movies I love the Hallmark movies even though nearly every one of them is predictable. You know the structure. City Girl returns home to her small town. We meet her family, including the quirky BFF from high school who never left town. There’s the ex-boyfriend/Cute New Guy who now works as a [Small Town Job] and volunteers…