I’m a big fan of crowdfunding. Much to the detriment of my wallet sometimes, but ah well. In the past I’ve supported quite a few Kickstarters and I’ve also joined in some Indiegogos, and GoFundMes. Beyond getting cool things and supporting cool projects I’ve also come to see crowdfunding in the same light I see various Social Media platforms on their best day: they give me hope for the future. I think they are an important counter-weight to the growing influence of mainstream, soulless corporate control over our media, art, and politics. Continue reading
Category Archives: Entertainment Consumed
Reading Plans For 2014
I got some good reading in last year, but, like most things last year, my reading fell short of what I’d hoped for. The biggest failure was not succeeding at the 2013 Women in Genre Reading Challenge from World’s Without End. My other big reading fail of 2013 was buying way too many ebooks, digital comics, and audiobooks. My ‘to be read’ pile would probably fill up a couple rooms in our apartment if it were physical instead of digital.
So, reading in 2014 is going to be about addressing the mistakes of reading in 2013. My two big goals are succeeding at my reading challenge this year (a Speculative Fiction by Authors of Color Challenge) and cutting a large swath through my TBR pile.
The Music I Can’t Stop Listening Too Lately
So I’m becoming more and more of a music omnivore. There are very few genres of music I don’t like, and in fact my music collection probably has at least one representative of most any well known genre. They only major exception I can think of off the top of my head are Boy/Girl Group Pop Genres where how pretty the singer(s) are and how well they dance are often as or more important than the actual music. No. Sorry – this is not, has never been, and probably will never be my thing.
The 2013 Reading Challenge I Totally Failed Was…
The Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge held by Worlds Without End, which is a great website for readers of genre fiction to check out.
The Challenge was pretty simple – within the 12 months of 2013 read 12 books written by women authors whose work you’d never read before and post a review. I failed pretty spectacularly at this, for several reasons. Chief amongst those was that I didn’t do much writing of any kind for most of last year, especially blogging or writing reviews. Secondary problems included starting the challenge fairly late and having way, way too many things on my ‘to be read’ pile.
The Twilight Zone is Back…In Comic Form
I just finished reading the newest rebirth of the THE TWILIGHT ZONE, and I have to say I’m looking forward to more. I’m a fan of The Twilight Zone and, despite this being on ongoing series, Issue #1 “The Way Out” really feels like it belongs in the Zone. If you can read the narration on the first two pages without Rod Serling’s voice in your head then I’m pretty sure you’ve never seen an original Twilight Zone episode. I mean check this out:
…The opposition offers into evidence an otherwise nondescript neighborhood on the west side of Manhattan. A crossroads of secrets, dreams and desires whose longitude and latitude can only be found–in THE TWILIGHT ZONE.
Jazz Collection Update
I’ve written previously about my growing interest in and enjoyment of jazz here and here. Since then I’ve added quite a bit to the collection picking up some new albums for musicians I already had, like Art Blakey and Charles Mingus and adding many new jazz artists and groups to the collection. Some of these have become favorites of mine. Charles Mingus’ The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is nothing short of incredible, a true work of genius. Clifford Brown is great and his work with Art Blakey (possibly my favorite jazz musician) on A Night At Birdland Vol. 1 & 2 is really enjoyable. Pharoah Sanders’ Elevation gets a lot of plays as does Bobby Hutcherson’s Dialogue.