A few days ago I broke stride and dedicated an entire piece on my completing Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son. I usually put the review into the announcement of what I’ll be reading next. But it was just good enough that I couldn’t even think about what I’d be taking on next at the time.
That didn’t last long, of course. Especially since I had to read it on my Kindle. This got me thinking that I shouldn’t let my local library dictate what I want to read. Besides, I was running out of prospective Pulitzers (you’d think they’d make it a practice to have every one of them, but they don’t, and the ones they do have aren’t the ones in which I have the most interest).
Believe it or not, our library here didn’t have a copy of Ernest Hemingway’s Pulitzer winner (1953), The Old Man and the Sea. I can almost see that though. It’s such a short book, it might’ve just fallen in a crack somewhere and gotten lost (although I thought I saw it as part of an anthology…that I couldn’t find when I went to the shelves).
Anyway, here I am, taking on something most people may have read in high school (not me, but I think I read it some other time later), and I expect I’ll actually be done today (it’s kind of cool seeing the Kindle “percentage read” notification advancing pretty much with every screen). But I’m already ready for the next next up — which I’ll talk about when I review this one.
I’ve been enjoying Shane & Shane’s Psalms: Live album quite a bit over the past few weeks, and I’d say it’s my favorite. Just about every track is beautiful, and even the one or two that aren’t awesome are merely excellent.
But, sometimes you need to reset and dig up an old bunch of favorites to perk you up, so I stumbled back to what I’ve long considered one of the best albums of all time, Supertramp’s 1974 masterpiece, Crime of the Century, and one of its best tracks, “Asylum.” I’ve put it up here before I’m sure…maybe a couple of years ago…but hey, it’s always worth a listen, and I know at least one person who will appreciate the reminder…