NEW YEAR POST

Favorite New-to-Me Music of 2012:

1. Steve Roach - Mostly 'Structures From Silence' and 'The Magnificent Void'. As soon as I got internet at home again I got serious about getting into New Age and Ambient music. Steve Roach is my favorite so far. This is the most recent fave but it's on my mind the most.
2. Disclose - I've known about them for years but really started listening to them all the time this year. Every release is great but I listened to 'Nightmare or Reality' the most.
3. Enya - I found some Enya cassettes at a thrift store which reminded me that I liked New Age. When I was an early teen Enya was the only non secular music my dad would play on Sunday.
4. Darkthrone - I didn't really get Darkthrone till this year. I don't know why I didn't try earlier.
5. Death Metal - I continued listening to lots of Death Metal as usual. My favorites that I got into this year were Grave, Dismember and Bloodbath.
6. Billy Bragg - This was my walking around music for the first half of the year. I only listened to 'Back to Basics'.
7. King Diamond - Also from earlier in the year. I don't think I could have appreciated it any earlier in my life. I listened to 'Conspiracy' the most. 

I listened to way less Pop/Rock 'n Roll music than the year before. Also I feel like I didn't spend as much time listening to music as past years but that's probably cause I broke my mp3 player in a car door halfway through. 

Music Goals:

• Record at least two Smuts releases
• Record at least two solo releases
• Practice guitar more
• Listen to more Jazz and Classical music

Personal Goals:

• Read as many novels as comics (read less comics!)
• Write more (letters, journal, lyrics, etc.)
• Start School
• Be less negative
• Take care of myself more.

My Year in Reading, Again

Since 2007 I have kept track of every book I read.  Here is this year’s list.  By far this is the most I’ve read in a single year.  Not being in school is good for something, I guess.  Also, I read really, really good books this year.   

“Middlesex” – Jeffrey Eugenides

“We Have Never Been Modern” – Bruno Latour

“Slouching Towards Bethlehem” – Joan Didion

“The White Album” – Joan Didion

“Revolutionary Road” – Richard Yates

“All-American Poem” – Matthew Dickman

“A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat” – Arthur Rimbaud

“The End of The West” – Michael Dickman

“Eros And Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud” – Herbert Marcuse

“Wise Blood” – Flannery O’Connor

“The Age of Innocence” - Edith Wharton

“The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge” - Rainer Maria Rilke

“Wuthering Heights” - Emily Bronte

“Iceland’s Bell” - Haldor Laxness

“Letters From People Who Hate Me” - Steve Almond

“Open City” - Teju Cole

“Field Work” - Seamus Heaney

“The Trial” – Franz Kafka

“The Sorrows of an American” - Siri Hustvedt

“How Fiction Works” - James Wood

“The Liberal Imagination” - Lionel Trilling

“The Morning of the Poem” – James Schuyler

“Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror” – John Ashbery

“The Tennis Court Oath” – John Ashbery

“Selected Poems” – Frank O’Hara

“Blood Meridian” – Cormac McCarthy

“The Sheltering Sky” – Paul Bowles

“2666” – Roberto Bolano

“A Man in Full” – Tom Wolfe

“My Struggle” – Karl Ove Knausgaard

“Ficciones” – Jorge Luis Borges

“Sincerity & Authenticity” – Lionel Trilling

“The Dwarf” – Par Lagerkvist

“Disturbing The Peace” – Richard Yates

“The Varieties of Religious Experience” – William James

“For The Sleepwalkers” – Edward Hirsch

“Aeschylus II: The Suppliant Maidens, The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, and Prometheus Bound” – Aeschylus

“Birds of America” – Lorrie Moore

“Mythologies” – Roland Barthes

“Illuminations” – Walter Benjamin

“Alfred and Guinevere” – James Schuyler

“Nine Stories” – J.D. Salinger

“The Lacuna” – Barbara Kingsolver

“The Opposing Self” – Lionel Trilling

“Anna Karenina” – Leo Tolstoy

“Antwerp” – Roberto Bolano

“Barabbas” – Par Lagerkvist

“Play It As It Lays” – Joan Didion

“Gisli Sursson’s Saga” – Anonymous

“Full Tilt: A Memoir” – Paul Santoro

“The End of The Affair” – Graham Greene

Fiction: 29

            Novels: 24

            Short Stories: 4

            Plays: 1

Poetry: 9

Nonfiction: 13

            Essays: 2

            Memoirs: 2

            Pilosophy/Literary Criticism/Etc: 9

American: 31

Irish: 1

English: 2

Icelandic: 2

Swedish: 2

Norwegian: 1

Russian: 1

Chilean: 2

Argentinean: 1

Greek: 1

French:  3

German: 4 (I included Rilke and Kafka here because they wrote in German even though they were Austrian and Czech, respectively)

Total: 51

Favorites in no order: The End of the Affair, 2666, Anna Karenina, My Struggle, Barrabas, The Liberal Imagination, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The Age of Innocence.

Tim Blood's Year In Reading

In 2007 I started keeping a list of every book I read. What follows is 2011's list.

A lot of re-reading this year. A lot more 'educational' and a lot less 'recreational' than years past, which makes it difficult to pick 'favorites'.
Though I'm satisfied and looking forward to 2012's reading lists. I'm shooting for 50 books. Ambitious.

2011:
“The Atom Station” – Halldor Laxness
“Pan” – Knut Hamsun
“Special Orders” – Edward Hirsch (twice)
“Hunger” – Knut Hamsun (twice)
“The Best American Short Stories 2009” – Edited by Alice Sebold
“The Writer’s Portable Mentor” – Priscilla Long
“The Shell Collector” – Anthony Doerr
“The Double Helix” – James Watson
“The Time Machine” – H.G. Wells
“Brave New World” – Aldous Huxley
“Freedom” – Jonathan Franzen
“Prelude to Revolution: France in May 1968” – Daniel Singer
“Plaza of Sacrifices: Gender, Power, and Terror in 1968 Mexico” – Elaine Carey
“A Tale of Two Utopias: The Political Journey of the Generation of 1968” – Paul Berman
“The Tiger’s Wife” – Tea Obreht
“Orientation and Other Stories” – Daniel Orozco
“The Mezzanine” – Nicholson Baker
“Out Stealing Horses” – Per Petterson
“A Journey into the Past” – Stefan Zweig
“Earthly Measures” – Edward Hirsch
“Everyman” – Philip Roth
“Mysteries” – Knut Hamsun
“Humboldt’s Gift” – Saul Bellow
“Fear and Trembling” – Soren Kierkegaard
“Invisible Cities” – Italo Calvino
“The Orange Eats Creeps” – Grace Krilanovich
“Victoria” – Knut Hamsun
“Blackbird and Wolf” – Henri Cole
“Of Human Bondage” – W. Somerset Maugham
“Against Interpretation and Other Essays” – Susan Sontag
“Selected Poems” – James Schuyler
“The Virgin Suicides” – Jeffrey Eugenides
“Tadao Ando: The Geometry of Human Space” – Masao Furuyama
“Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self” – Marilynne Robinson

American: 21
Norwegian: 6
British: 4
Icelandic: 1
Italian: 1
Danish: 1
Swiss: 1
Japanese: 1

Fiction: 22 (Novels: 14, Novellas: 5, Short Story Collections: 3)
Poetry: 5
History: 3
Philosophy: 2
Literary Criticsim:1
Writing: 1
Memoir: 1
Architecture: 1

Total: 36

Favorites in no order at all:
Hunger, Mysteries, Pan by Knut Hamsun (I read Hunger for the first time in 2009, but it's still a favorite)
Special Orders by Edward Hirsch
The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr (I read it for the first time in 2008, but it's still a favorite)

Right now I'm reading "Sources of The Self: The Making of the Modern Identity" by Charles Taylor and "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides. Who knows will I'll finish those two mammoths.