Some recent reading ~

Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time by Rob Sheffield


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Yeah, I didn't really know a lot of this music... I am not up to date on the cool indy bands, and I never was. But I am sadly current when it comes to things like life and loss, and so found this to be moving and tragically real. There's kindness and moments of startling clarity and aimless, endless driving through the mountains, and I loved every page of it.

I continue to make mix tapes, and playlists, and mix CDs, because there are just songs that are just right for certain things. There are songs to hate by, songs to cry with, songs to sleep by, songs to be absorbed by... and music is as full of memories as any smell, any taste, any picture.

Just as an example of something that I really loved -


"It was bewildering and humbling to keep discovering how many brave things people can fail to talk themselves out of doing. There are a hundred excellent ways to talk yourself out of (writing a note like the one she sent me), and I've used them all."

Me too. I can talk myself out of just about anything... distract myself until it's too late to call, it's too far to go, all the stores are closed, and everyone else in the world who can still sleep is sleeping. And then I can spent the night berating myself for being a coward, cajoling & bribing myself into doing it 'first thing in the morning,' writing it on one to-do list after another. And I am constantly surprised that there are people in the world who just pick up the pen, or the phone, or the cookies they've just baked, and get it done: They just do the thing that seems impossible to me. I am in awe of those people ~ the ones who always remember to care.

Anyways... this book made me cry, which isn't fair, because now I have to make a new bookshelf, and go through my list again.


Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with a Film or Digital Camera by Bryan Peterson


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I was really hoping there'd be some sort of magic that would help to make this whole F stop business make better sense to me, but I'm not finding that to be true. I suppose I'll have to give in and take an actual, physical photography class, because I am just. not. getting it.


A Place Called Here by Cecelia Ahern


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Searching for missing persons and winding up a missing person. It's an interesting idea ~ when you need answers that aren't there, how do you find them?

(Maybe spoiler-ish?)


Even at the end of the story, I'm not entirely sure if Here is real or not, but the book kind of makes you wish it were. An Oz full of lost people, waiting for someone with the ruby slippers.

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