Happy New Year! Here’s hoping we can reclaim our democracy this year. We sure are trying, so if you live outside of the United States and are wondering what the heck is going on in this country, so are we … and we’re doing our best to keep up with the daily chaos. There are more of us who are pro-democracy, pro-international order and peacekeeping, and pro-rule of law, but you may not be able…
Forewarning: I touch on politics in this post, so if that isn’t your thing, go ahead and skip this. Author John Scalzi, whose work I’ve read a lot of this year, recently wrote a blog post called “Please Don’t Idolize Me (or Anyone, Really)” in response to people searching for a new creative person to look up to after several allegations of sexual assault surfaced against author Neil Gaiman. If you have a tendency to…
Normally, I read between 20 and 25 books per year, a mix of fiction and nonfiction. In 2022, I only read 4 books the entire year because we were packing and finishing up home improvement projects in order to sell our house. In 2023, I managed to read 13 books, well below average, because we were still sorting and getting rid of stuff from the move, as well as clearing out long-term storage and helping…