Book Review: The Book Of (More) Delights

The Book of (More) Delights

I remember randomly discovering poet Ross Gay’s The Book Of Delights a few summers ago, reading it while on vacation at the beach and being thrilled by his observational essays that celebrated the small moments in the days of a single year.

His new book — The Book Of (More) Delights — doesn’t change the format of what he is up to here: paying attention to the moments that count as delight, whether large or small or in-between. As before, it’s his voice — a sort of wondering, wandering narrator who is not afraid of meandering into many asides — that shines through in this collection, which begins on his birthday of one year and ends on the birthday of the next.

He shares much about his garden, his neighborhood, his family, strangers that he observes and meets (and at the end, helps), his own childhood memories, places and spaces, and more. The essays are short but well-constructed, and as with my reading of his first book, I came away not just as a reader, but as a reader trying to tune in to the delights of the world.

I am sure Gay would be happy to hear that.

Peace (In Small Moments),
Kevin

Jumping Ship On Goodreads; Moving to StoryGraph

StoryGraph Monthly Reads

For some time now, I’ve been thinking of leaving Goodreads, mostly due to the Amazon connection (I know, it’s been Amazon for a few years). I started there before Amazon took it over, and was irked that a book/reading site that I loved was folded into the Amazon Empire.

Amazon’s presence hasn’t been overwhelming, but still …

And recent controversies over gaming the Goodreads system by authors and commenters and others just leaves me with a distaste. I want a space to track my own reading, and hopefully, see what others are reading.

I’m moving over to StoryGraph, which is an independent platform with many similar features of Goodreads and few more (read-alongs, buddy reads, interesting use of stats, etc.) and if you are in StoryGraph, too, let’s connect (this is my profile) and share books.

These graphs here are from StoryGraph, using my Goodreads data from my 2023 reading.

StoryGraph Genres

I was stressed that I would lose all of my Goodreads data but StoryGraph does a nice job walking through how to get your data and then migrate it into StoryGraph. The migration of my hundreds of books read took about 24 hours but it looks like it all made the leap with me.

Honestly, though, I might still keep an eye on Goodreads, if only to get ideas about books to read, and which books are getting a lot of attention. I get my book information from a lot of places, and Goodreads is just one place.

StoryGraph Long Short

Peace (and books),
Kevin

Curating Silent Sundays (July-December 2023)

Each Sunday, I (along with hundreds of others – sometimes, over a 1,000 people) share out a single image for Silent Sundays. I share mine on Flickr and on Mastodon and on what was Twitter (Silent Sunday images are one of the only things I regularly share now in that space).

In June, I made a video of the images from the first half of the year (see below) and today, I am sharing out my images from the second half of the year.

Peace (and image),
Kevin

PS — as a sharing experiment on Mastodon, I invited folks to share their last image of 2023 on a Padlet Map. About two dozen folks from around the world took me up on my offer.

Made with Padlet

CLMOOC Collaborative Calendar 2024

CLMOOC Collaborative Calendar 2024

Another new year beckons — another CLMOOC collaboration happens.

A group of us from the Connected Learning network, connected as we have been over the years and living in different parts of the world, have come together once again to create a new year calendar of illustrations, photography, comics and puzzles.

And it’s free!

Head to the CLMOOC website to download your own copy for printing or viewing.

Peace (What The New Year Brings … please),
Kevin

Book Review: World Within A Song

World Within a Song by Jeff Tweedy

Reading how Jeff Tweedy listens is an interesting experience. Tweedy, of Wilco and other solo projects, is a thoughtful musician and music listener, and this book collection of small essays and observations, along with some reflections of his life as a musician, allows Tweedy’s mind to roam.

I appreciated learning about some bands I didn’t know about, and about Tweedy’s obsessiveness with music — sometimes, the more obscure, the better — as a kid who always felt a little out of place in his social circles because of that obsessiveness (which paid off as a musician leading bands like Wilco, and co-leading bands like Uncle Tupelo).

What comes through in a folksy but clearly authentic writing voice here in World Within A Song is Tweedy’s deep love and appreciation for the music of other artists, and how his own listening experiences shaped his life. I appreciated the stories, the observations, and even in places where I might have disagreed with him, I found myself, as a reader, almost in conversation with him.

And any book that celebrates all kinds of music, and provides some funny anecdotes about the world of a quirky rock band, is going to be OK with me.

Peace (and Sound),
Kevin

DS106: Remix Monday (on a Wednesday) Week 5

Oy. I completely missed the fifth and final remix for my Remix-it Monday that I started a month or so ago on a whim, to see if I could remix one single piece of art from the DS106 files every week, for five weeks. I was right on track for weeks one through four. Then, Christmas happened.

So this week’s Monday Remix comes on Wednesday (’cause I forgot about it completely Tuesday).

This final remix uses the Firefly AI Art generator, and then some photo filtering, in which the character is sort of looking to the future and wondering about where art and remix are going (same, here, by the way).

DS106RemixMondays5

Curious about the other remixes?

Peace (and art),
Kevin

PS — here is a remix that I didn’t end up using

DS106RemixMondaysEXTRA

A Calendar of 25 Poems: Advent Of Love

I used mentor poems from my friend, Deanna, and wrote 25 poems each day from December 2 (I wrote two that first day, to catch up, after realizing the first day had passed me by) through the 25th, and then designed this calendar of links to the mentor text poems, my poems, and the visual version (each used an AI-generated image based on the context or words of my poem).

The embedded version of my calendar is compact and might be too small to be useful, so here is the link to the published version of the calendar.

My process: I would read each poem shared by Deanna each morning, mull over the mentor text, find a line or phrase, then build a poem off that idea. Next, I would go into Firefly AI and work to get an image based on my poem, and then use Pablo to layer the text of the poem with the AI imagery. Finally, I would come to my own calendar and update the day.

Peace (and writing),
Kevin