Ursula's Stories and Melodies in 2024, part 2

Hello everyone! I'm Ursula: 52, an American living in Germany (my 4th non-US country) since March 2023. My household consists of the 3 sweet airheads pictured above (Archie, the snuggliest of boys; Cleo, Archie's fussy but champion biscuit-making sister; and Rollo, Istanbul street cat turned man about the house) and my mathematician husband, Morgan who is 43.

In reading, I tend toward fiction and the grim, but grim isn't a requirement, it's just where I often end up I guess! In 2023 I hit the 75 mark for the first time in quite a while; we'll see if I manage it two years in a row. I also do a weekly roundup of what I'm listening to. I am usually working my way through a variety of "best of" lists - the big one is the 1001 Albums list, which goes chronologically and where I'm starting the year out with albums from 1977, but I also listen to quite a lot of new music. I'm an artist so you may see some of my drawings posted here occasionally. I do a fair amount of urban sketching/drawing on location, and I also like to draw animals (in the past year I've been working on a series of birds).

Info about my favorites of 2023 can be found on my last thread in this specific post.

And here are some stats about my 2023 reading and how it stacks up against previous years:



For no particular reason I focused a bit on reading books from Japan, so this was the first year that I've really had any satisfying variety in the color of the dots on my map (especially for anything other than England). Almost 23% of my authors were from Japan.



A little low for the amount of non-fiction I aim for (usually about 25% although I haven't made that for the last few years), more short stories than usual, and the genre stats are pretty typical.





The average year published is artificially pulled down by starting off the year with The Golden Ass. Hoping to continue the upswing in number of books read. And finally, as you can see, the supremacy of the ebook is complete.

Read in 2024

Januar ❄️🎂 (5)
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck
My Soul To Keep by Tananarive Due
Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki
The Club by Takis Würger
Wool by Hugh Howey

bonus: Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory by Martha Wells

Februar ❤️🍫 (5)
Dear Child by Romy Hausmann
The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya
The Short End of the Sonnenallee by Thomas Brussig
The Promise by Damon Galgut
Gaza by Norman Finkelstein

März 🌱☔️ (6)
The Doll Collection by Ellen Datlow
Network Effect by Martha Wells
Travelers by Helon Habila
Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval
The Premonition by Banana Yoshimoto
Battle Songs by Daša Drndić

April 🌸🪁 (4)
Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear by Mosab Abu Toha
60 Songs That Explain the '90s by Rob Harvilla
The Woman on the Stairs by Bernhard Schlink
An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Lie by Petra Hammesfahr

Mai 🌷🐥 (1)
Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

Year to date total: 22

Currently reading


Retrospective by Juan Gabriel Vásquez

Finished a book!



Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval

First line: There, and not there.

A young woman comes from Norway to a town in England to study. She moves into a strange apartment with not-quite-there walls with a roommate named Carrall. Things get weird. I've listened to Jenny Hval's music and "things get weird" also describes that pretty well so I probably should have guessed the same would be true here.

I feel like this is one of those books that just gives you a sense of unease and things happening (or not happening) mostly at the edges of your vision. Body horror, sure, but not very graphic and also maybe more nature/decay horror?

We just finished another puzzle; the next one up is there on the right.

Happy new one, Ursula. That puzzle is beautiful. The one on tap looks frustratingly difficult :)

>1 ursula: What a perfect clowder!

Happy new thread! Love your three loaves up top ❤️

Happy new thread!!!

>2 ursula: Loving the visual stats.

Happy new thread.

Happy New Thread and have fun with the new puzzle, it seems to be quite challenging...

>7 katiekrug: Thanks, Katie! The Montreal puzzle was one of those with the weird-shaped pieces so it was pretty tricky at times. The picture was a super fun one though! I seem to recall you maybe don't like a lot of greenery? We've done several city ones so we chose a nature one this time. Morgan picked it out, we'll see how it is!

>8 laytonwoman3rd: They were all on their best behavior for the seconds it took to take the photo! (I joke, they get along really well and are often all together like that.)

>9 curioussquared: Thanks! 30/30 loaves!

>10 Owltherian: Thank you!

>11 figsfromthistle: I love doing stats. :) More coming up next week, for the first quarter of this year!

>12 SirThomas: I think it will be a tough one! That's good though, we feel like we get our money's worth. ;)

Happy new thread, Ursula and great pictures of the fur babies. The finished puzzle is very pretty but that next one looks hard.

Weekly 5x5



The Great Twenty-Eight - Chuck Berry [rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
Exile in Guyville - Liz Phair [indie rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
Electric Ladyland - The Jimi Hendrix Experience [psychedelic rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥
Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables - Dead Kennedys [punk] (1001 Albums list)
Falling or Flying - Jorja Smith [R&B] (2023 lists)

Group Sex - Circle Jerks [punk] (1001 Albums list)
Canti di guerra, di lavoro e d’amore - Silvia Tarozzi & Deborah Walker [classical crossover] (2022 lists)
Songs the Lord Taught Us - The Cramps [psychobilly] (1001 Albums list) +
Peacock Pools - Pink Mountaintops [rock] (2022 lists)
Sound Affects - The Jam [new wave] (1001 Albums list) +

Infants Under the Bulb - Uranium Club [alternative] (2024 releases)
The Collective - Kim Gordon [alternative] (2024 releases)
Antiphony of the Trees - Laura Cannell [classical] (2022 lists)
More Specials - The Specials [ska] (1001 Albums list)
Llegó el Domi - Kiko El Crazy [urbano latino] (2022 lists)

ALMA - Nicki Nicole [latin] (2023 lists)
Good Living Is Coming for You - Sweeping Promises [indie rock] (2023 lists) ♥
Seventeen Seconds - The Cure [post-punk/gothic rock] (1001 Albums list) +
Underwater Moonlight - The Soft Boys [post-punk/neo-psychedelia] (1001 Albums list) +
Ferried Away - Stay Inside [rock] (2024 releases) +

The Parts I Dread - Pictoria Vark [indie] (2022 lists) ♥
Only Love From Now On - Carmen Villain [electronic] (2022 lists)
The Great Escape - Larry June & The Alchemist [hip hop] (2023 lists) / (partial album)
Station to Station - David Bowie [rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥
72 Seasons - Metallica [metal] (2023 lists) / (partial album)

----------------------------
******Notes on this week:

• Below the chart:
  Signs - Purelink (2023 lists) +
  Skipped for recency:
  Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)


• I'm now a full week behind, these were the albums for the week ending 15 March, which means I don't remember a lot of stuff terribly well. It also means that I'll be posting last week's list hopefully relatively shortly. Milestones: I was just ready to start the top 50 of the Rolling Stone list. I'm also past 450 on the 1001 list, if I haven't previously mentioned that one.


• A fair amount of stuff on this week's list that I knew of, or had heard a couple of songs from, but was no more familiar than that. In this category: Liz Phair, Circle Jerks, Dead Kennedys, (more of) The Jam. I'd never listened to this album by The Cure, but unsurprisingly I liked it. I didn't need to listen to more than 5 songs of the Metallica album, not that much has changed since their late 90s work. Of the new releases, I liked Stay Inside a lot, and will listen to Uranium Club again - it was definitely a weird one, and I think it was a good sort of weird but need to run through it again to decide.


• The worst thing I put in my earholes this week was Peacock Pools, which wasn't awful, I guess, but it sounded like a cover band trying to do a little bit of all the crowd pleasers.

+ = added to my library
♥ = already in my library

>15 Kristelh: Thanks! We have done some pretty hard puzzles in the past, so I think we're both looking forward to this challenge.

>13 ursula: Your welcome ursula!

Happy new thread!

>18 Owltherian: Thanks for visiting. :)

>19 drneutron: Thanks! It's been a slow start to the year in just about every way imaginable, but I'm hoping to be more present.

>20 ursula: I always love to visit new threads, just to say a quick hello, but it seems there are too many threads now for me to do that.

The Premonition by Banana Yoshimoto

First line: The old house was on a residential street, some distance from the train station.

The main character, Yayoi, is a young woman from a decent family, but she feels like there's something missing in her life. As in, she feels like she's forgotten some important aspects of her childhood. She goes on a journey of discovery and indeed, there are some things she has perhaps blocked out. How relationships develop from there is maybe surprising, maybe off-putting. I honestly don't know how I felt about those things, but overall I tend to find Yoshimoto's book quick, easy reads even if always a little off-kilter.

Quote: My aunt loved Friday the 13th movies, and that night, she was lying on the floor engrossed in watching whichever installments she'd checked out from the video rental place that week.

"What do you like so much about them?" I'd asked her.

After thinking for a minute, she said, "It's nice how the same person always comes back. So you don't feel lonely."

I made some deductions. Could she be talking about ... Jason? And was my aunt lonely?

>21 Owltherian: It's a big, talkative group so there are definitely always a lot of new threads out there!

>23 ursula: Yep, its a lot more active than a few other groups I'm in.

>23 ursula: I am pretty sure it's consistently the most active group on the site.

So in other news, this morning after Morgan went to work the internet just quit working here at home. I went through all the usual steps - rebooting, unplugging, replugging, wifi on devices on and off, etc. It then gave some error message and a page to check on it, which Morgan went to and then to a WhatsApp chat with their customer service. After 3 hours of waiting for a response, they said:

"There is currently a cable fault. This is expected to last until June 5, 2024. Our technicians are already working hard to fix the error."

Pardon me while I pass away.

They continued that because of the duration of the disruption, we can get a "home quick start" package for just €1, which is basically a SIM card that attaches to the router and does data. Great, but I'm still stuck on the 2 months part.

This is expected to last until June 5, 2024

What??? Are they... hoping it's actually faster, but attempting not to get your hopes up, or will it in fact take that long to fix? YIKES.

>26 ursula: - I am gob-smacked.

>27 bell7: I'll be honest, Germany doesn't seem to be a place with a lot of "set your expectations low so we can exceed them" thinking.

>28 katiekrug: Same.

Morgan mentioned it to a German friend (now living in China) and his reply was "oh yeah, welcome to slow German internet repairs."

I am a bit late but still within the week to wish you a happy new thread, Ursula.

Sometimes it goes faster, I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.
Hopefully your mobile phone connection is good.

>30 PaulCranswick: Thanks, Paul. You haven't missed anything. :)

>31 SirThomas: The cell attachment they gave us seems to be working fine. I'll get back to you in a month or so. ;)

Weekly 5x5



Aquemini - OutKast [hip hop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
The Blueprint - Jay-Z [hip hop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
Tuqoos - Julmud [experimental hip hop] (2022 lists) +
(watch my moves) - Kurt Vile [indie] (2022 lists)
Hypnotised - The Undertones [punk] (1001 Albums list)

Deeper Well - Kacey Musgraves [country] (2024 releases)
Red Moon in Venus - Kali Uchis [R&B] (2023 lists)
Signing Off - UB40 [reggae] (1001 Albums list)
Kilimanjaro - The Teardrop Explodes [post-punk] (1001 Albums list)
Time Ain’t Accidental - Jess Williamson [indie folk] (2023 lists)

After the Magic - Parannoul [emo] (2023 lists) ♥
I’d Say I’m Not Fine - Barely Civil [indie] (2024 releases) +
Mask - Bauhaus [post-punk] (1001 Albums list)
Illmatic - Nas [hip hop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
Heaven Is a Junkyard - Youth Lagoon [rock] (2023 lists) +

Heartattack and Vine - Tom Waits [rock] (1001 Albums list) +
Sun Arcs - Blue Lake [indie/instrumental] (2023 lists)
Perfect From Now On - Built to Spill [indie] (self pick) ♥
Collection Particulière - Omertà [indie pop] (2022 lists)
Being Funny in a Foreign Language - The 1975 [indie/pop rock] (self pick) / partial ♥

A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships - The 1975 [indie/pop rock] (self pick) / partial ♥
Growing Eyes Becoming String - The Telescopes [alternative] (2024 releases) +
We Jazz Reworks, Vol. 2 - Carl Stone [jazz] (2022 lists)
Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome - Parliament [funk] (Morgan’s pick)
Nocturnal Trance - Candelabrum [black metal] (2022 lists)

----------------------------
******Notes on this week:

• Skipped for recency:
  The Visitors - ABBA (1001 Albums list)
  Damaged - Black Flag (1001 Albums list)
  Exodus - Bob Marley & The Wailers (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
  Ramones - Ramones (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
  Graceland - Paul Simon (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥
  Sign O’ The Times - Prince (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)


• I had such good intentions to get this posted earlier in the week! Then there were a couple of difficult days and then you know, the internet issue wiped out another day. Sigh.


• Okay so, music! This was a pretty okay week. Listened to a couple of classic rap albums - Jay Z and Nas. Jay had great beats, the lyrics weren't as terrible as other albums of his I've listened to but still not great. Nas was great, honestly. I would have to ignore most of those lyrics too in order to listen again, but it was such a fun album. Julmud is experimental rap from Palestine and was really interesting - lots of distortion in the music and I just generally wasn't sure what direction it was going to go on any song. I'd never heard of The Teardrop Explodes, and never listened to Bauhaus before. No real opinions there.


• Although I have enjoyed a couple of Kacey Musgraves albums, this one didn't do it for me on a first listen. I'm sure I'll check it out again to solidify my opinions though. The worst thing I put in my ears this week was - honestly nothing was awful but I'll say Jess Williamson, I didn't enjoy it at all.

+ = added to my library
♥ = already in my library

>2 ursula: The average year published is artificially pulled down by starting off the year with The Golden Ass- yes, it must drag that average down severely! Maybe you could switch to the median year instead?

>33 ursula: I can't say I even recognise any of those album covers! I like the bottom left one though...understated and my year of birth.

Belated happy new thread, Ursula!

Love the pictures of the cats, the puzzles, and the stats.
Sorry about your internet woes. June 5, 2024 sounds like a long time to fix it.

>34 LovingLit: I mean, I don't have a problem with the stat being pulled down that way, that's just the way some years go. The median would have been 2020, which seems excessively in the other direction. Pulling out The Golden Ass and averaging gives me 2008, which is I suppose most representative.

There's a mix of decades in that chart, although there are a good number from the last few years.

>35 FAMeulstee: Thanks! Yeah, it sounds like a long time to us, too.

Update on the internet situation: We ran through the 60 GB they gave us in 4 days. When Morgan called to see if they could make it unlimited, they said they couldn't do that and gave us another 60 GB. They said to just keep calling back (every 4 days apparently) and they would add to it again. Efficiency!

Here are my stats so far this year (kind of a slow start to the year, I definitely won't make 75 at this rate):





I'm pleased with the limited number of Americans, although I'm sure that will grow as the year goes on.

Battle Songs by Daša Drndić

First line: Jadranka said: Don't go.

This novel is narrated by a woman who left Yugoslavia (Croatia) for Canada during the war for Croatian independence. She came with her daughter, and some of the book is about the immigrant experience, hers and that of others. But it's also about the past - her mother, who was denounced by someone (could that someone have been the mother of a fellow immigrant she meets in Canada?), her grandparents who independent from each other wrote letters to Tito. And the past not directly tied to her family, particularly war criminals who left the former Yugoslavia and settled elsewhere, often Canada. And the process of adopting a cat from a shelter. It's also about digressions about pigs of various varieties.

Yep. Pigs. (Thus the cover I suppose!)

I'm not familiar with many of the real people mentioned, or the events, so I googled some and just let some of it pass me by with the information in the multitude of footnotes. There's often a sly, dark humor in the narrator's voice, though it also turns on a dime to be a sharp commentary on humanity.

I enjoyed this, although in googling it doesn't seem to be considered one of her best. The library has others so I'll probably check those out as well.

Quote: But Canada is a land of thrifty people. Although food, for instance, is thrown away in huge quantities, despite the fact that there are many cookbooks especially devised for recycling everything left over from a meal (because Canada is among the top countries in the world when it comes to recycling), paper is kept (so it can be recycled.) Cookbooks for recycling edible leftovers are so luxuriously produced that they are more expensive than a Dostoyevsky, for instance, but among other things that’s because Dostoyevsky is old and the cookbooks are new. The cookbooks are bought by an elite, although not the ones for preparing meals from leftovers, because the elite don’t eat leftovers but rather French cuisine. The poor, black, yellow, and white, local and immigrant cannot afford such cookbooks. A lot of food is thrown away here. But paper is kept.

Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear by Mosab Abu Toha

Poetry is not my thing! But this is the second book of poetry I've read from Palestine (the first was Rifqa by Mohammed El-Kurd)

The book opens with an alphabetical section.

A

An apple that fell from the table on a dark evening when man-made lightning flashed through the kitchen, the streets, and the sky, rattling the cupboards and breaking the dishes.

"Am" is the linking verb that follows "I" in the present tense when I am no longer present, when I'm shattered.

B

A book that doesn't mention my language or my country, and has maps of every place except for my birthplace, as if I were an illegitimate child on Mother Earth.

Borders are those invented lines drawn with ash on maps and sewn into the ground with bullets.

---------

Here's another:

ON A STARLESS NIGHT

On a starless night,
I toss and turn.
The earth shakes, and
I fall out of bed.
I look out my window. The house
next door no longer
stands. It's lying like an old carpet
on the floor of the earth,
trampled by missiles, fat slippers
flying off legless feet.
I never knew my neighbors still had that small TV,
that the old painting still hung on their walls,
that their cat had kittens.

--------

A good part of the book is taken up with the author interview at the end, which is also extremely worthwhile.

Weekly 5x5



My Life in the Bush of Ghosts - Brian Eno & David Byrne [experimental rock] (1001 Albums list)
Kollaps - Einstürzende Neubauten [industrial/experimental] (1001 Albums list)
The Chronic - Dr. Dre [hip hop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
The Low End Theory - A Tribe Called Quest [hip hop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
Blonde on Blonde - Bob Dylan [folk rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥

My Life in Subtitles - Carpool [emo] (2024 releases) +
Tigers Blood - Waxahatchee [indie] (2024 releases) +
Fish Bowl - Kate Davis [alternative] (2023 lists)
No Sleep ’Til Hammersmith - Motörhead [metal] (1001 Albums list)
OK Computer - Radiohead [indie] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)

Back to Black - Amy Winehouse [soul] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) +
Mask - Bauhaus [post-punk] (1001 Albums list)
Oh Me Oh My - Lonnie Holley [experimental] (2023 lists) +
Illmatic - Nas [hip hop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
WAR & WAR - Weak Signal [rock] (2022 lists) +

I’d Say I’m Not Fine - Barely Civil [indie] (2024 releases) ♥
Decomposed - Blind Eye [punk] (2022 lists)
Yard - Slow Pulp [rock] (2023 lists) +
Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret - Soft Cell [synth pop] (1001 Albums list)
Tomorrow’s Fire - Squirrel Flower [indie folk] (2023 lists) +

Syphon - Wojciech Rusin [electronic] (2022 lists)
Heaven Is a Junkyard - Youth Lagoon [rock] (2023 lists)
Penthouse and Pavement - Heaven 17 [synth pop] (1001 Albums list)
The Poet - Bobby Womack [r&b] (1001 Albums list)
We Jazz Reworks, Vol. 2 [jazz] (2022 lists)

----------------------------
******Notes on this week:

• Below the chart:
  I do not wish to be known as a Vandal - Sam Slater (2022 lists)
  
  Skipped for recency:
  Moving Pictures - Rush (1001 Albums list)
  Let It Bleed - The Rolling Stones (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
  The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars - David Bowie (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥
  Remain in Light - Talking Heads (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥
  Off the Wall - Michael Jackson (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
  Rubber Soul - The Beatles (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥
  Innervisions - Stevie Wonder (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
  


• I think I posted the wrong chart last week - I do a chart that runs Monday-Sunday to post somewhere else (this one runs Saturday-Friday), so it means there was a little overlap on this week's chart. I just used strike through to remove those albums from this week's list, so to speak. Okay, onward!


• My first experience with Einstürzende Neubauten, in spite of them being popular with a certain subset of people I went to college with. They're not for me! Another live album, this time by Motörhead. It was fine. The most interesting thing about it to me is that this is where the Beastie Boys got "No Sleep till Brooklyn". The Slow Pulp album almost made it to Morgan's top 10 of last year, I found out. It was good!


• I don't feel like I was missing anything by not having listened to an entire Soft Cell album before. The worst thing I put in my ear holes this week was ...I mean, Radiohead is the easy answer here because I just don't like them, but to be honest, this album wasn't the worst one of theirs I've had to listen to. But I could also say Wojciech Rusin just because weird electronic is not my preferred genre by quite a stretch.

+ = added to my library
♥ = already in my library

Keeping current here. Hi!

>39 ursula: Pigs? Interesting combo there...

>42 Berly: Nice to see you!

Yeah, I was a little surprised the first time, but there were several interludes about pigs. It did relate metaphorically to the themes about immigrants and refugees though.

Update on the internet: still none! Morgan called back to get our cellular 60gb refilled for the second time and this person was actually able to give us unlimited data, so that's a plus. We should be good with that until they fix it in June. Sigh.

Update on other stuff: I never got around to mentioning that Morgan and I went to see a concert. We saw The 1975 in Frankfurt.





And a link to one of my videos from the show (it's much better quality on my computer/phone than it is at the link but *shrug*): https://share.icloud.com/photos/0cd2dWohYxsBDkePm7o6sQwBg

As always, if you check it out, just click on the thumbnail at the bottom; I have no idea why it wants to give a giant "download" at the top and a tiny option for playback.

Finished up a couple of books, so here we go:



60 Songs That Explain the '90s by Rob Harvilla

nonfiction, audio

I guess that this guy has a podcast by the same name and covers there, as well as in the book, far more than 60 songs. They're sort of breezy little snippets about the songs, personal mixed with the larger picture. Mostly they were just okay for me. He's a certain kind of guy, you know? But the part about Stephan Jenkins and Third Eye Blind in particular was worth checking it out.

From the podcast website, a couple of the quotes mentioned in the book:

“Stephan Jenkins is a total megalomaniac freak. He’s so narcissistic that he’s not really capable of rational thought.” —Kevin Cadogan, former lead guitarist and Stephan Jenkins bandmate, Third Eye Blind

“Stephan Jenkins has caused a lot of misery in his lifetime. He’s a net negative as a person.” —John Vanderslice, San Francisco singer-songwriter and producer

“He made fun of me. Called me a fat guy. Screw you! He has no soul whatsoever. He and his band got into a fight once because he wanted to put just his picture on their T-shirt. I just think, ‘You are walking, breathing, living cheese!’” —Rob Thomas, frontman, Matchbox Twenty. Rob had gained 40 pounds on the first major Matchbox Twenty tour.

------

In the book, it's mentioned that Jenkins responded to Rob Thomas calling him cheese, saying something like "see, he can't even insult me without talking about food."

Anyway! Besides that, there's the obligatory talk about Nirvana and Kurt Cobain, Radiohead Tupac and Biggie, "Groove Is in the Heart" and how much of his life he's spent waiting for Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill to show up at their own concerts. And a bunch of other stuff. He covers a variety of genres of music, but I still walked away feeling like I wasn't really the audience for the book. I'm kind of allergic to music dudes.

>45 ursula: - Our go-to satellite radio station in the car is Lithium which is "90s alternative and grunge." At one point in the last couple of months, Harvilla was guest DJing and talked a bit about his book. It sounded mildly interesting but I probably won't seek it out.

>46 katiekrug: Yeah I think your instinct is right. It was mildly interesting. But aside from him being a music dude, there's also the fact that he is a certain amount younger than me and so his perspective on/memory about some of these songs is being like 14 years old and that kept me at a certain distance too, it's such a formative time for listening to music so I understood but couldn't understand with these particular songs, you know?

The Woman on the Stairs by Bernhard Schlink

First line: Perhaps you will see the painting one day.

The book starts out like you might be getting some sort of lawyer Sam Spade - essentially a man walks into his office with a momentarily mysterious dame and asks for help with an odd situation. The man is a painter, and he wants permission to go into the home of the man who owns one of his paintings so that he can repair it after it's been damaged. The other man doesn't want to let him do it. The painting is The Woman on the Stairs, and the woman in question is, of course, the woman in the office. She is/was the wife of the painting owner, and is now with the painter.

There's some back and forth with the painting and various situations, and in short order it becomes clear the lawyer also fancies himself in love with the woman (Irene), and conspires to help her out of the whole situation. It doesn't work out, which we know because the story starts out when he's old and Irene-less and reflects on what happened. In fact he's come to find her in his old age.

This book is the epitome of old white guy problems (and solutions). Not recommended.

Quote: Why do women always need to hear how you feel? They have to hear it - knowing it isn't enough. It's like in the army, where it's not enough that you serve loyally, you have to face the flag every morning and pledge allegiance. It's a ritual of submission, one which I refused to surrender to with my wife, and one which she eventually abandoned. At some point, she gave up asking me how I felt.

Update on general life things:

I took my placement test for the integration course I'm required to take. Based on my score on the written test and my conversation with the woman, she said she'd place me in the 6th course. (There are 6 language courses, each lasting 5 weeks. A1.1, A1.2, A2.1, A2.2, B1.2 and B1.2.) I asked to be put into the 5th course, the first half of B1, because I feel like I really need more confidence in my speaking and could use the practice I'll get there. I got en email notice about when my class will start, which said just that there is no space at the moment, but I'm on the waiting list and I should come to the first day of the next B1.2 class and see if anyone doesn't show. That's on June 10.

She was surprised to hear that I'd been studying on my own for 15 months, it seemed to be a surprising amount of progress to her. Which was nice to hear since I often feel like I should be able to do more.

I got in for a teeth cleaning today, which was much-needed. The receptionist in the dentist's office is very nice, she knows me because I've been in there for approximately 10 appointments since September. Anyway, she never speaks any English but today it was really nice because I had to sign something and she said what the second yes/no question was but I didn't understand any of the words (haha) so she said (in German) "that means that someone ..." etc and it was basically asking if I was able to sign for myself or had to have someone else do it. But it was really 1. an act of kindness to explain it to me and 2. good that I was able to understand it in the end.

Morgan and I joined a gym, which is exciting. It's been way too long, and we both have fond memories of the days when we last belonged to one. It's super close, and they have some weird pricing deal without a contract - basically you start off at a price, and after 6 months it goes down by €5/month, and down by another €5/month after a year. Sounds good to me.

Weekly 5x5



The Beatles - The Beatles [rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥
Cruel Country - Wilco [indie] (2022 lists)
COWBOY CARTER - Beyoncé [country] (2024 releases)
Voodoo - D’Angelo [r&b] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
emails i can’t send - Sabrina Carpenter [pop] (2022 lists)

Wild Gift - X [punk] (1001 Albums list) +
Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) - Wu-Tang Clan [hip hop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
The Lexicon of Love - ABC [new wave/pop] (1001 Albums list)
Don’t Know What You’re in Until You’re out - Gladie [indie rock] (self pick)
Oh Me Oh My - Lonnie Holley [experimental] (leftover from last week)

Beauty and the Beat - The Go-Gos [new wave] (1001 Albums list)+
Fire of Love - The Gun Club [post-punk] (1001 Albums list) +
Boeckner! - Boeckner [indie] (2024 releases)
Velveteen - Pony [indie pop] (2023 lists)
Dare - The Human League [synth pop] (1001 Albums list)

Talk Talk Talk - The Psychedelic Furs [new wave] (1001 Albums list)
Greg Mendez - Greg Mendez [indie rock] (2023 lists) +
Juju - Siouxsie and the Banshees [gothic rock] (1001 Albums list) ♥
Vidrio (feat. I la Católica & Mabe Fratti) - Titanic [experimental] (2023 lists)
Horses - Patti Smith [punk] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥

O Monolith - Squid [post-punk] (2023 lists) ♥
Tom Tom Club - Tom Tom Club [new wave] (1001 Albums list) +
BIEN O MAL - Trueno [Latin hip hop] (2022 lists)/partial
TX, ’98 - FLIGHT MODE [emo] (self pick)
NewJeans 1st EP - NewJeans [kpop] (2022 lists)

----------------------------
******Notes on this week:

• Skipped for recency:
  Lemonade - Beyoncé (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list)
  Kind of Blue - Miles Davis (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥
  Are You Experienced - Jimi Hendrix (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list) ♥


• Patti Smith was #26 on the Rolling Stone list, so from here on out I’m listening to all of the albums there again no matter what. (I reserve the right to go back on that declaration - I haven’t actually looked at what is in the top 25.)


• I'd never heard of The Gun Club, but I liked this album! It seems that they were at the forefront of punk blues/cowpunk and so it makes sense I would probably like it.
  This 2022 Wilco album came right after I realized maybe I could get into them on my 3rd-or-so listen to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. But this album was just too long, and too same-y. There's some good stuff in there but it's buried underneath 18 other songs.
  Speaking of albums that are too long: it's been forever since I really put on The White Album and listened to it all the way through. There are a couple of really good runs of songs here but there's also a lot of substandard dreck.
  The Beyoncé album has been divisive for so many reasons - is it a country album by Beyoncé? Is it a Beyoncé album with country songs/perfomers? Is it a Frankenstein's monster of an experiment that never should have seen the light of day? Overall, I liked it. I particularly enjoyed the song she did with Miley Cyrus.
  Also enjoyed X. I've listened to their album Los Angeles a couple of times, but I would have said I didn't know anything on this album - then White Girl started playing. So you never know what you know!
  Really loved this Greg Mendez record. I didn't know anything about him, but apparently this is his 3rd album so I'll have to go back and listen to the others.


• The worst thing I put in my ear holes this week was ... I'm going to say ABC. Didn't like it in the '80s, didn't like it now.

+ = added to my library
♥ = already in my library

Sounds like you’re settling in to German life. How’s the weather? Still rainy or is there another season beside rain?

>50 ursula: That Go-Gos album was one of the first I ever loved. I think I had it on cassette. I bought it recently on CD. I've been acquiring my past in music over the last 10 years. Mostly when we have a sale at the bookstore where I work.

>48 ursula: Thanks for eliminating that one from my list of possibles. I was put off by the premise of The Reader, so didn't even give it a try, and now I feel comfortable striking Schlink from further consideration entirely.

>51 Kristelh: Nope, it's rainy all year round, just about equally every single month.

We've had a couple of warm and sunny days, which is nice because we're not forecast to see the sun again for at least 10 days!

Settled in, yeah. Life has to go on, no matter how I feel about it.

>52 ReneeMarie: Nice! I don't have any CDs, or any way to play them. We buy albums on vinyl sometimes, but neither of us is really into collecting so we mostly use streaming.

>53 laytonwoman3rd: Yeah, I think I saw the movie of The Reader, but I wasn't excited to read the book at the moment. I'm trying to simultaneously read German books and avoid WWII (difficult!) so I went for this one instead. But it just ended up feeling like Philip Roth in Germany.

"Philip Roth in Germany" EW!

>55 laytonwoman3rd: My exact reaction!!

Hi Ursula! Just checking in here. Boo to all rain all the time. At least we have nice summers in Seattle.

>54 ursula: What streaming service do you use?

>50 ursula: I had five of those albums on CD, Ursula, including ABC and I must agree that it isn't easy to listen to.

I have 4,000 music CDs and they are all boxed up at the moment. My Honda Accord still takes them and records them for playback which I still think is cool. I can't help thinking that I wasted my money on buying all that music. That said I am slowly adding some vinyl back into my collection here and there although it isn't so widely available here.

>55 laytonwoman3rd:, >56 curioussquared: Ha! If that's the reaction then I know I nailed the description. ;)

Yeah, I would take having one nice season.

>57 ReneeMarie: I use Apple Music.

>58 PaulCranswick: I just don't really get along with the synth pop. There are definite downsides to streaming, not the least of which is the possibility that it gets pulled from a service for whatever reason. Also that it gets replaced with a Super Deluxe Remastered Extra Bonus Tracks version. I do a fair amount of editing the music in my library to remove all the ballast. On the other hand, you can't do that on a CD!

Since I decided I would be interested in owning some vinyl (Nov. 2022) I've bought ... 8 records I think.

>59 ursula: Thanks. That's me out. I don't Apple.

We sell vinyl in the music department of my bookstore, & even with my discount I've still only bought 2: Bing Crosby Xmas nostalgia. I do admit to being tempted by Working Class Dog and Physical when they went on sale, but I resisted.

>60 ReneeMarie: There are other options - Spotify, YouTube Music, etc. Apple Music is just what I personally use.

I used to work in a record store and I never bought any vinyl (I didn't have a turntable at the time but that certainly doesn't stop people). Since then, even though my husband does have a turntable, and it's been moved from California to Istanbul to Germany, it still wasn't something I was interested in. But I've been into getting some recent-ish records I love, as long as there's an option on colored vinyl.

>59 ursula: I have a similar number, Ursula! Mainly because the turntable and system I have is not really up to par at the moment. I may rectify that after I relocate back to the UK.

Weekly 5x5



Ready to Die - The Notorious B.I.G. [hip hop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #22)
Imperial Bedroom - Elvis Costello & The Attractions [new wave] (1001 Albums list) ♥
Let’s Start Here. - Lil Yachty [alternative] (2023 lists)
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles [rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list - #24 ♥
Tapestry - Carole King [singer-songwriter] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list -#25)

Pelican West - Haircut 100 [pop/new wave] (1001 Albums list)
I’ve IVE - IVE [kpop] (2023 lists)
Cainsmarsh - Rigorous Institution [metal punk] (2022 lists)
Languoria - Sofie Birch & Antonina Nowacka [ambient] (2022 lists) +
Headful of Sugar - Sunflower Bean [alternative] (2022 lists)

Junkyard - The Birthday Party [post-punk] (1001 Albums list) +
Bows + Arrows - The Walkmen [indie rock] (Morgan’s pick, from some list)
Sulk - Associates [post-punk/synth pop] (1001 Albums list)
The Ballad of Darren - Blur [alternative rock] (2023 lists)
Too Rye Ay - Dexys Midnight Runners [pop rock] (1001 Albums list)

Spunky! - Grrrl Gang [indie rock] (2023 lists)
Love in Constant Spectacle - Jane Weaver [alternative] (2024 releases)
Trials & Errors - Magnolia Electric Co. [indie] (self pick) ♥
Food For Worms - Shame [alternative] (2023 lists)
The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground [rock] (self pick) ♥

Violator - Depeche Mode [synth pop] (TrebleZine 100 all-time favorite albums list) ♥
LP.8 - Kelly Lee Owens [electronic] (2022 lists) +
The Nightfly - Donald Fagen [jazz pop] (1001 Albums list)
The Message - Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five [hip hop] (1001 Albums list)
The Heavy Hours - The Heavy Hours [indie] (self pick) ♥

----------------------------
******Notes on this week:

• Skipped for recency:
  Nebraska - Bruce Springsteen (1001 Albums list)
  Strange Disciple - Nation of Language (2023 lists) ♥
  Memento Mori - Depeche Mode (2023 lists)


• Well! This was, honestly, not my favorite week. But we’re into the top 25 of Rolling Stone, so I’ve started listing the ranking of each of the albums there. And as I said last week, I believe, the 1001 list is now into not-my-favorite-era of ‘80s music. But I had Elvis Costello, at least, and I’d never listened to The Birthday Party before but I also liked that. (It's pretty out there, though.)


• I may have finally found a live album I like. Trials and Errors by Magnolia Electric Co. is live, although I didn’t know that when I started listening to it, and in fact didn’t realize it till the end of the first song. But there was something about the sound that I loved right from the beginning.
  
  

It turned out to be kind of appropriate to have listened to Blur shortly before reading about Damon Albarn’s mini-meltdown at Coachella over the crowd not singing along to a song that came out in *checks notes* 1994. I’ll be honest, this album was better than my general impression of Blur, but I still didn’t like it much.


• The worst thing I put in my ear holes this week was The Nightfly by Donald Fagen. I was telling Morgan about all the ways I didn't like it when suddenly I realized I was hearing a similarity to something in my head - looked him up on Wikipedia and yep, he's from Steely Dan. It all made sense.

+ = added to my library
♥ = already in my library

>62 PaulCranswick: Morgan has close to 200. He had to sell a bunch when we originally left Denver though, he regrets some of those because there were some old punk records that are probably impossible to replace.

It's important to have a decent player, of course, so they don't get damaged.

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro

First line: If on a sunny day you climb the steep path leading up from the little wooden bridge still referred to around here as 'the Bridge of Hesitation', you will not have to walk far before the roof of my house becomes visible between the tops of two gingko trees.

My first 1001 Books list book of the year. I think this is my 4th Ishiguro book (The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go, Klara and the Sun). Honestly, I'm not sure what to say about this one. In a lot of ways it reminded me of The Remains of the Day in the sense that the main character is pretty reserved and things are mostly just suggested. In this case, there's the added layer of it taking place in Japan in the late '40s/early '50s and everyone is still feeling the aftereffects of "the surrender".

The main character, Ono, is an artist and his younger daughter is on her second attempt at getting married. The negotiations on the first engagement broke down for reasons that Ono doesn't seem to entirely understand. His older daughter suggests that perhaps it had something to do with his past, and after denying that's even possible, he goes to talk to some people from his past to see if he can mitigate any damage it might do to this second negotiation.

Did he do something? How do his past associates actually feel about him? Is that really what his daughter was saying to him at all? It's such an odd feeling to spend 3/4 of the book wondering what awful thing he might have done and then 1/4 of the book contemplating the nature of gaslighting.

Anyway, it was a good book and tackled a changing world from the point of view of an older generation while also drawing some parallels between personally moving on from WWII and the nation moving on from it, and I think left an open question of how much self-reflection and self-recrimination are healthy or necessary.

Weekly 5x5



London Calling - The Clash [punk] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #16) ♥
To Pimp a Butterfly - Kendrick Lamar [hip hop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #19)
The Tortured Poets Department - Taylor Swift [pop] (2024 releases) +
Careful! - Deeper [indie rock/post-punk] (2023 lists) +
This Could Be Texas - English Teacher [indie rock] (2024 releases)

German Error Message - German Error Message [folk] (2024 releases) +
Mañana Será Bonito - Karol G [reggaeton/latin pop] (2023 lists) / partial
Baiser Mortel - Lala &ce & Low Jack [French hip hop] (2022 lists) +
Messy - Olivia Dean [pop] (2023 lists)
Hackney Diamonds - The Rolling Stones [rock] (2023 lists)

3D Country - Geese [alternative country] (2023 lists) ♥
1999 - Prince [funk] (1001 Albums list)
Kid A - Radiohead [alternative rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #20)
The Velvet Underground & Nico - The Velvet Underground & Nico [art rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #23) ♥
Nails - Benefits [noise punk] (2023 lists)

Final Summer - Cloud Nothings [indie rock/noise rock] (2024 releases) +
The Dreaming - Kate Bush [art rock] (1001 Albums list)
Gifted - Koffee [reggae] (2022 lists)
Music for Films Edited by Moths - Kramer [alternative/indie] (2022 lists)
Don’t Forget Me - Maggie Rogers [indie pop] (2024 releases) +

Rip It Up - Orange Juice [post-punk] (1001 Albums list) +
Highway 61 Revisited - Bob Dylan [folk rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #18) ♥
Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen [rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #21)
New Gold Dream (81/82/83/84) - Simple Minds [new pop] (1001 Albums list)
Pornography - The Cure [gothic rock] (1001 Albums list) +

----------------------------
******Notes on this week:

• Below the chart:
  Say Laura - Eric Chenaux (2022 lists)
  Hexen Valley - Gnod (2022 lists)
  This Could Be Heaven - 10 Minute Warning (self pick) +
  Keeper of the Shepherd - Hannah Frances (2024 releases)
  
  Skipped for recency:
  The Number of the Beast - Iron Maiden (1001 Albums list) ♥
  Thriller - Michael Jackson (1001 Albums list)
  Crazymad, For Me - CMAT (2023 lists)
  
  Skipped because Kanye:
  My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - Kanye West (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #17)


• Turns out I did have something I had to skip from the top 25 of the Rolling Stone list! No Kanye, ever.
  
  Kind of a lot of good stuff for me this week. Looking at the other albums from the top 25 for a moment: I'm never mad about listening to London Calling, at least most of which is probably embedded in my DNA at this point. Kendrick Lamar made a musically good album here but I still don't really enjoy it, some songs are great but most of the lyrics are just not appealing. I can't stand Radiohead, listening to this one (I have never sat down and listened to this one before) didn't change anything! If I were forced to add one Radiohead album to my collection, it would be OK Computer, I guess. The Velvet Underground & Nico, I mean come on, stone cold classic. I'm not always crazy about Nico but pretty much everything here works. Highway 61 Revisited, yep. Had a lot of that in my head for the last week, and that's pretty impressive in a week where I also listened to London Calling. Did my due diligence and listened to Born to Run again. My opinion remains the same.


• Other stuff - I'd never actually listened to Pornography in full either, even though I consider myself a Cure fan. Shockingly, this was good too. ;) This album by 10 Minute Warning was something I ran across when someone was posting about the best grunge albums. This is subtitled something like "the lost 1984 recordings" so it's proto-grunge, but it was really good, and it was interesting to be able to hear the glam rock, metal, psychedelic etc all coming together in what would form the grunge sound. Orange Juice was a band I'd never heard but I liked the album.
  
  New releases: Of course I listened to the new Taylor. Especially as it turns out a good part of this album seems to be about Matty Healy, the lead singer of The 1975, who I just saw in concert last month. It's pretty good. A lot of people are complaining about the sameness to Midnights, but I never really got into that album so maybe I'm immune to that. There are some typically corny lyrics here but she also gets realer than I feel like she has in the past. A song telling her fans to mind their own business! A song about masturbating while thinking about someone else when you're in a relationship! A song about performing epic shows when you want to die!
  
  Maggie Rogers made one of my favorite albums of 2022, so I was very excited about her new album, which was a lot to live up to and therefore it was a little bit of a letdown. But I've only listened to it once, and I'll be going back to it. It's good, it just didn't grab me the way the last one did.
  
  German Error Message was a random find somewhere and I don't know that I was expecting folk, but it was pretty good!


• The worst thing I put in my ear holes this week was: Simple Minds. I haaaaaaate them. I've hated them since I first became aware of their existence back in 1983 or whatever. Honorable mention: Kate Bush. Like Bjork, I've just never understood the appeal.

+ = added to my library
♥ = already in my library

Today I went in to finally get the crown put where the old one fell out at the end of August. Since then I've had a bunch of useless exams and appointments, then surgery and an implant put in, then a couple more checkups, an appointment to have the mold taken, and finally today's to fit the crown.

It was done, I asked him if I needed to not eat for a while or what. He said it was fine to eat. I'd googled and it looked like maybe it was a bad idea to eat anything too chewy or hard in the first 24 hours, which made sense to me. Anyway, I went home, made myself lunch (pasta), chewed it on the opposite side of my mouth as I have for nearly the last year, and heard CRACK!

Yep, the crown broke.

Back to the dentist, they took it out and I'm supposed to get the NEW new one put in tomorrow. I pissed off someone in the pantheon of dentistry gods, I swear.

>67 ursula: - What the heck?!?! That's crazy.

>67 ursula: Noooooooo!

The term to grit your teeth takes on a meaning all of its own.
All the best for you and your teeth, Ursula!

OMG!! I hope you have much better luck with the second crown!

>68 katiekrug:, >69 norabelle414:, >70 SirThomas:, >71 curioussquared: Thanks, all. I'm hoping this one goes better too. Also that "repairing" it doesn't mean gluing it back together and creating an eternal weak spot.

That is what I would classify as a true horror story. What a process. Hope the next one goes without a glitch.

>73 Kristelh: I've lost track of how much time I've spent at the dentist since last August, but it's a lot!

This one seems to be good, and it's nice to be able to chew like a normal person for the first time in I don't remember how long. (My old crown that was put in somewhere between 2017-2019 was never quite right.)

Just caught up. Hope you have mire luck with the new crown.

So pressed with your language work Ursula.

Loved the Ishiguro when I read it years ago. I also loved his most recent one.

The Lie by Petra Hammesfahr

First line: It was a horrible night, even for the boy who, at fourteen, has already witnessed much barbarity, though not in this country.

Let's just get this out of the way immediately: this was terrible. It's a thriller about a woman who meets her double, and the double has a job for her: stand in with her husband for a weekend so that the double can go and spend that time with her lover.

Of course there is much more going on, and it's a hard job pretending to be someone else, requiring more than just picking a fight with the husband so that you don't have to really talk to him. The "much more" in this case just gets more and more ridiculous and the ending ... predictable but laughable. No one cares about anyone who dies; it's sort of amazing when the surviving people are not supposed to be psychopaths.

I guess Hammesfahr's book The Sinner was the basis for the first season of the Jessica Biel show, which I haven't seen but am now vaguely curious about. Is it as bad?

>75 Caroline_McElwee: Thanks for the good wishes, things seem to be good so far.

They say that every language you learn makes the next one easier, whether or not they're related. I think it's just more familiarity with the ins and outs of grammar and different ways things are expressed in various languages.

Ishiguro seems to write books that I spend more time thinking about after I finish them than I expect.

>76 ursula: I watched the first season of The Sinner and it fell really flat for me. The big mystery did not live up to the hype and the show made a lot of hay out of the lead detective being into S&M which was not relevant to the plot.

>78 norabelle414: Hm, I have to admit I'm even more morbidly curious now.

We're now 1/3 of the way through the year and my stats haven't changed a ton, but here they are anyway.



Keeping the Americans down by reading awful books written by Germans.



I think I have another nonfiction audio book in my future to bump that percentage up a little, I can't remember what I put a hold on. This is one of the lower percentages of "literature" I've had, usually it dwarfs everything else but beggars not being able to be choosers with German authors is what's tipping this one, I think.

Oh my god, I did it again - totally forgot to post this at the beginning of the week in spite of having it mostly finished.

Weekly 5x5



Exile on Main St. - The Rolling Stones [rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #14)
Exile in Guyville - Liz Phair [rock] (self pick, to go with Exile on Main St.)
Work of Art - Asake [hip hop] (2023 lists)
It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back - Public Enemy [hip hop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #15)
Colour by Numbers - Culture Club [new wave] (1001 Albums list)

Revolver - The Beatles [rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #11) ♥
UTOPIA NOW! - Rosie Tucker [singer-songwriter] (2024 releases)
The Lamb as Effigy - Sprain [experimental rock] (2023 lists)
In Lieu of Flowers - Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties [indie rock] (2024 releases) +
I Never Loved a Man The Way I Love You - Aretha Franklin [soul] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #13) ♥

Stone - Baroness [metal] (2023 lists)
Porcupine - Echo & The Bunnymen [post-punk] (1001 Albums list) +
Pyromania - Def Leppard [hard rock] (1001 Albums list) +
Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) - Eurythmics [synth pop] (1001 Albums list)
But I’ll Wait for You - Local Natives [indie] (2024 releases)

Sonancy - Loop [space rock] (2022 lists)
Black Metal - Venom [metal] (1001 Albums list)
Mutate - Abadir [electronic] (2022 lists) +
New Blue Sun - Andre 3000 [new age] (2023 lists)
Rio - Duran Duran [new wave] (1001 Albums list) ♥

Thriller - Michael Jackson [pop] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #12)
Growing Eyes Becoming String - The Telescopes [alternative] (2024 releases) ♥
The Portrait You Painted of Me - Alison Cotton [singer-songwriter] (2022 lists)
Versions of Me - Anitta [pop] (2022 lists) / partial
Life Under the Sun - Militarie Gun [hardcore punk] (2024 releases)

----------------------------
******Notes on this week:

• Skipped for recency:
  Violent Femmes - Violent Femmes (1001 Albums list)
  Duck Rock - Malcolm McLaren (1001 Albums list)


• I took the opportunity of having Exile on Main St. come up on the part of the Rolling Stone list where I'm not skipping any albums to play it alongside Liz Phair, song 1 - song 1, etc. It was an interesting experiment. I know she said it wasn't exactly an answer, as in the themes didn't necessarily match, but she was trying to match the mood and feel of the album overall. It worked surprisingly well like this, I think. It felt pretty much like a single album with every other song just sung by a woman.
  
  Listening to Thriller again, maybe my biggest takeaways were that 1. That Vincent Price interlude in the title track is just really goofy if you listen to what it actually says, 2. Speaking of goofy, The Girl Is Mine is just a deeply terrible track and is only made worse by the lyrics of 25-year-old Michael and 41-year-old Paul McCartney trying to pretend they're fighting over the same girl, and 3. One of the most problematic songs on the album is the most fun musically (PYT).


• The 1001 Albums list is firmly into the territory of music that was happening while I was becoming aware of music - I was 11 in 1983. I owned the Duran Duran and Def Leppard albums. I hadn't listened to that second one in a million years, but it's really still a good album. This is maybe the third Echo & The Bunnymen album I've listened to on various lists, and I liked it quite a bit. The last one wasn't great for me (Ocean Rain). I didn't listen to them much at the time, aside from whatever hit the radio, so it's interesting to visit their music now. I also certainly wasn't listening to Venom at the time. Interesting that this is where the term "black metal" came from, even though they don't sound anything like what falls under that genre. I read on Wikipedia that they sang about Satanism and such because they felt like it was entertaining in the way of a horror movie.
  
  Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties is a project by the lead singer of The Wonder Years, in which he has adopted an entirely different persona. Aaron West is trying to make it as a musician, though with only middling success, and he's an alcoholic who has been slowly destroying most aspects of his life. Sounds grim, but it's really not that different from the songwriting of a lot of artists who are sort of in that situation. This is the last of the trilogy of albums and it seems that Aaron finally decides to find a way out of where he's been. I enjoy this project a lot.
  
  André 3000 of Outkast infamously put out an album last year that was not hip hop or funk, but instead a flute album in a new age vein. It's all right, but I don't feel like I am at all equipped to actually judge.


• The worst thing I put in my ear holes this week was Sprain. There was a lot of yelling at me about god and such.

+ = added to my library
♥ = already in my library

Photo from a hike this weekend. The whole thing was incredibly underwhelming but at least I got this picture out of it.

Oooh, interesting to hear about your paired listening of Exile on Main St. and Exile in Guyville. I'm planning on doing that, too, at your suggestion but it'll probably take me awhile yet to get to that (chronological) point on the list.

Thanks for sharing the picture of your hike. Sorry it did not satisfy! It does look kind of underwhelming. Did it rain on you?

>83 bell7: Yeah I think chronologically it's going to be quite a ways off!

>84 Kristelh: No rain while we were out. I think all the wooded areas around here are pretty underwhelming. It just feels like everything was cut down and then replanted with all the same trees somewhere around 25 years ago. Just so boring.

Was the trail in the country? Was there any wild flowers? Did you see any wild life. It appears there was plenty of moss. (Because of rain). Leaves are spring green and the trail has plenty of fall leaves yet.

>86 Kristelh: Yeah, we're in the middle of a lot of forest. There are occasionally a couple of flowers, but nothing like an expanse of wildflowers, and not a lot of variety in the ones we see. No wildlife - we saw a squirrel once out of all of our hikes in various places. Always a lot of moss.

Finished another puzzle.



The next puzzle is from the local secondhand store, so we'll see if it has all its pieces! I love an adventure.

>88 ursula: That's a great-looking forest but I can't imagine it made an easy puzzle!

Great puzzle but also agree that it looks very hard.

This was my most recent puzzle completion:


(1000 piece eeBoo brand)

Much easier than yours!

>91 katiekrug:, Nice Katie, I like it.

>89 norabelle414: It wasn't too easy, no!

>90 Kristelh: It was fun but challenging.

>91 katiekrug: That is so cute, I love the puzzles you do!

We started watching the adaptation of Blake Crouch's Dark Matter last night (on Apple TV). I don't know how it's going to be, I'm not that crazy about the lead actor so far, but Jennifer Connelly! Also, we didn't get to watch all of it because our internet ran out again. You know, back when our internet died in April and they told us it would be fixed in June, they gave us 6 GB of data, which we went through in a day and a half, and then they gave us another 6 GB, same thing. Then Morgan called again and they gave us "unlimited" data, but it was apparently only good for a month. So in the middle of the show suddenly nothing would load.

Morgan called them, but by the time he was on hold for an eternity and all of that, it was too late to restart it. And the representative gave him 10 GB, which was gone within 24 hours. So now we're on our 2nd round of 10 GB and we'll see if he can get anything more or if he's going to have to spend half an hour or so on the phone with them every day from now until early June when it's supposed to be fixed.

Weekly 5x5



Hovvdy - Hovvdy [indie] (2024 releases)
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill - Lauryn Hill [neo soul] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #10)
Architecture & Morality - Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark [synth-pop] (1001 Albums list)
Meat Puppets II - Meat Puppets [cowpunk/psychedelic rock] (1001 Albums list)
Murmur - REM [alternative rock] (1001 Albums list) ♥

Rumours - Fleetwood Mac [rock] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #7)
Hearts and Bones - Paul Simon [pop] (1001 Albums list) ♥
Bless This Mess - U.S. Girls [pop/r&b] (2023 lists)
Blood on the Tracks - Bob Dylan [singer/songwriter] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #9) ♥
Radical Romantics - Fever Ray [alternative] (2023 lists)

Echo the Diamonds - Margaret Glaspy [rock] (2023 lists)
Salome - Marriages [post-rock] (50 best post-rock albums) +
Beyond the Uncanny Valley - myst milano. [hip-hop] (2023 lists)
Nonetheless - Pet Shop Boys [synth-pop] (2024 releases)
Out of Step - Minor Threat [hardcore punk] (1001 Albums list)

Below the House - Planning for Burial [post-rock] (50 best post-rock albums) +
Purple Rain - Prince & The Revolution [r&b] (Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list #8)
Phase Corrected - Shit & Shine [rock] (2022 lists)
Deep Politics - Grails [post-rock] (50 best post-rock albums)
Intimate Publics - Osheyack [electronic] (2022 lists)

Soul Mining - The The [pop] (1001 Albums list) +
Dream Talk - Still Corners [indie] (2024 releases) / partial
Living Torch - Kali Malone [ambient] (2022 lists) +
Stew - A Will Away
Mutate - Abadir

----------------------------
******Notes on this week:

• Skipped for recency:
  The Lamb As Effigy - Sprain (50 best post-rock albums)


• I had to use a different album generator, so there are no name overlays in the graphic, sorry! Listening to the top 10 of the Rolling Stone list now. I feel like I've finally come back around to Purple Rain - I loved it at the time, but over the years I'd grown to really hate When Doves Cry and it made me think maybe I was just over the album. I really enjoyed it this time through though.
  
  1001 list continues to be a mix of artists I listened to endlessly: REM, ones where I only knew the hits: OMD, and ones that I never listened to at all: Minor Threat, The The.


• I didn't expect a new Pet Shop Boys album, but in looking at their Wikipedia, it appears they've been putting one out about every 4 years and I had no idea. This one was fine.
  
  Two discoveries from the recent albums: Marriages was amazing, and if you're into ambient, check out Kali Malone - the album is just two long tracks.


• The worst thing I put in my earholes this week was a tie, I think, between Osheyack and U.S. Girls. (Morgan also hated the first one, and said he couldn't imagine ever putting the second one on again, but didn't have such a visceral reaction).

+ = added to my library
♥ = already in my library

Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

First line: There were children, and then there were the children of Indians, because the merciless savage inhabitants of these American lands did not make children but nits, and nits make lice, or so it was said by the man who meant to make a massacre feel like killing bugs at Sand Creek, when seven hundred drunken men came at dawn with cannons, and then again four years later almost to the day the same way at the Washita River, where afterward, seven hundred Indian horses were rounded up and shot in the head.

I really loved There There by Tommy Orange. I didn't love this one, although there are certainly things to appreciate about it. This is a saga over the years, starting in the late 1800s, and eventually ending up with the characters from There There - Jacquie Red Feather and her children Orvil, Loother and Lony, and her half-sister Opal. I think Orange writes beautifully both about the Native experience (and the experience of wondering what it means to be Native when your culture has been diluted, denied, and beaten out of your ancestors), and about addiction.

But I feel like a common problem of these "family through generations" type of books is that inevitably not a lot of time is spent with most of the characters and therefore you don't feel that connected to them. I think it's worth reading, but his debut was definitely better.

Also, how the heck does he have a character visit California in 1924 and mention "the earthquake in 1905"? 1906!!!

Quote: To endure or pass through endurance test after endurance test only ever gave you endurance test passing abilities. Simply lasting was great for a wall, for a fortress, but not for a person.