Blog Plans and Reading List

For a few weeks now, since I went without posing music with every post, I’ve been letting this little idea rattle around in my brain, about changing up the format of the blog. As mentioned previously, I’m trying to adjust the format such that I post more. I like posting, I like the blog!

Once I actually get my but in the chair, and my fingers hammering out the post, I feel pretty good. Not that we’re going to take the blogosphere by storm, as we once did, but I neglect this thing far too much, and I have a fair amount of time for side projects here in REU land, so I’m going to give this a shot.

There are four general areas in which I feel qualified to offer an opinion:

  • My Life, School Expereinces
  • Nerdy Things (Esp. Firefox, Evangellion, Gundam, LEGO, you know how I roll)
  • Music Reviews, Recommendations (Top 10 of the Year, Indv. Album Reviews)
  • Political Musings

The plan would be that every week includes two posts, in one of the above categories, using the first as a general catch-all in the event that I just want to share something with you.

I think this could work. Hashing out the best case scenario, the music section keeps the radio show fresh, the political one keeps me reading the news, the ‘personal’ one gives me an out in a busy week, and the nerdy one is my guilty pleasure that nobody will want to read.

Eventually, I’d like to boost it up to three, but I struggle enough with one, and so I feel that two’s a decent place to start. If I can keep it up during the summer, start entrenching the habit, then just maybe it’ll hold once I get back to school. And if not, that’s OK. At least we’d have a good summer.

Speaking of a good summer, I have been reading a ton! I got started on some books that Allison loaned me, and just went crazy. It’s been a long time since I haven’t had regular assigned reading, and get to use all that time to just read whatever I’d like has been fantastic; the list is as follows:

Catch-22 [Heller] (Carryover from Spring Semester)
Mountains Beyond Mountains [Kidder]
Pride and Prejudice [Austen]
The Man Who Invented the Twentieth Century [Lomas]
Slaughterhouse Five [Vonnegut]
Fahrenheit 451 [Bradbury]
Breakfast of Champions [Vonnegut]
Cat’s Cradle [Vonnegut]
The Last Question [Asimov]
The Road [McCarthy]
Neuromancer [Gibson]
Lolita [Nabokov]

I used to think I was a slow reader, and I still do, sortof. Can’t help but feel like I got back in the saddle though. I haven’t read this much this quickly since I was young and had entire summers to blow, and it’s been awesome! I admit, I stole the last 3 from Time’s All Time Best 100 Novels, and I’m a little scared to read Lolita, but it was that or some tragic thing about the Civil War… saddly, the pedophile novel seemed the lesser evil. We’ll see, I’ll keep you posted.

I was proud by how many books on that list I’d read at one point or another, pleased that several of them were not from school, satisfied with my education that many of them were, and surprised by how many I hadn’t heard of at all. Hrrrrm.