highwater

Hustle's done been bustled on outta here.  Happy New Year, y'all, and may God have mercy on our souls.

READING

• So yeah maybe I cheated to meet my 2025 reading goal by checking out a short audiobook (5.5 hours; The Year of Less by Cait Flanders), but whatever.  2026 goal is 26 books.  Last year I decided to do that: make my goal the same as the year.  Here's hoping this year I can do better on it all.  As for the mini-reviews of the books I've finished since my last update? 
• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens: magical as always. 
• Carol: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Darin Kennedy: laborsome.  First off, extremely long, given how extraordinarily short the original Christmas Carol is (ESPECIALLY by Dickensian standards).  Second, why did Kennedy feel the need to pile up the traumas on this teenage girl.  It's kinda defeating the point of the story (the importance of living in the world with kindness and generosity) by first giving her reasons for wanting to be withdrawn from others and generally apathetic about life.  Because, like, for the record, teenagers do not want or need a reason to withdraw and be apathetic about or cruel to others.  Being a straight-up teenager is justification for that kind of behavior in and of itself.  I have both been a teenager and worked with teenagers enough to know that this is true.  Instead, Kennedy has just given this girl so, so many traumas (a complicated birth, a younger sibling born two months early and plagued health problems, both parents and younger sister all die in a plane crash on Christmas, best friend also has a sick younger sister, new best friend dies from drowning after overdosing on something and it maybe wasn't completely accidental . . . ).  Carol doesn't need to be visited by three ghosts, she need intensive psychiatric help and also probably some antidepressants, and she deserves them!  Girl's had a bitch of a life!  Furthermore, the climatic twist was foreshadowed not by soft hints but by hitting the reader over the head with a brick repeatedly ("don't drink at the high school dance or the after party!" and "gee isn't this weather foul" not once but again and again and again).  Clearly I was unimpressed by this book.
• The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store by Cait Flanders: so it was fine.  Just, I guess, not what I was hoping it might be.  It simply wasn't very useful to me, and I was kind of wanting something useful.  I may have gleaned some tips, but a lot of it was much more focused on exploring the author's personal journey through their own "year of less" and the ways that their specific experiences both influenced and were influenced by the project, instead of offering some more generalized advice.  And that's fine, really more what I should have expected from the book, except I didn't really read the blurb, I kinda checked it out blind because I'm constantly trying to figure out how to get myself to consume less and maybe save some money for once in my damn life, so the title appealed.  But my personal experiences in life are in many ways vastly different than Flanders, so statements she made were just wild to me (What do you mean you don't adore just owning things and surrounding yourself with them?  95-some books is like, not many books at all.  But clothes are the most fun things to have, you can play dress-up all the time?  EIGHT pens?? And you think that's probably too many pens????).  I'm a proud maximalist who LOVES stuff, I just want to be a better one in terms of, like, finally overcoming the guilt of getting rid of things (especially things I was giving as gifts that I've held on to for years because of the guilt of not caring about it) and also not compulsively overconsuming because it's fun and makes me feel better.
• Anyway, my currently readings remain Ghost Story by Peter Straub and Oathbound by Tracy Deonn.  What can I say?  Humans are persistence hunters.

LISTENING

• Podcasts  Up-to-date with MBMBaM, TAZ, HftMT (still trying to do my relisten liveblog; should be getting more time for that again soon!), Gumshoes & Dragons.  Kept up with No Skip Christmas (for its first season?), fun and funny, sweet.  Dummy started new listening projects, too.  Namely: the Alice Isn't Dead feed suggests more Alice content to come, so I am finally listening to all of the initial run.  I also have started properly listening to Hey Riddle Riddle as of January 1st, with the idea being one episode a day (unless/until it becomes frenzy).  Furthermore, found a self-help-y slow-living-y content creator on Instagram who has a podcast in a similar vein, In the Meadow, that I'm gonna try out.
• Music  Nothing much to report.  Glad that Christmas music can be done now.  Not feeling music in general at the moment, but when I am I'll finish going through Mipso's catalog and I'm looking forward to diving into Nick Shoulders's work, because what I've heard I ADORE.

WATCHING

• Literally nothing for me, personally, a handful of old movies and whatnot with the family (The Thin Man series is usually a rewatch at this time of year for us).
• BUT two of my Christmas presents were series on DVD!  Santa must have passed the note on to my family that I am a big believer in owning analog media, because my brother gave me the complete Adventure Time and my folks gave me the complete Gravity Falls (one of my absolute favorite shows of all time).  I am quite happy about this, and am planning to try to watch them SOON.

DOING

• Going to attempt another Low Buy year, but hopefully I can create better rules and, more to the point, stick to them better this time.  Last year's attempts did actually help me be a little more aware of my spending habits; I feel that even if my efforts are ultimately not successful in law, they will be in spirit.  Last year's incremental improvements still count as improvements, and improvements can always build on each other!
• Same is true of my persistent attempts at decluttering things.  Slowly getting rid of more and acquiring less.
• Also I want to set up some Analog Year guidelines for myself, specifically in attempts to do less idle phone stuff and more stuff I care about, like messing around with arts and crafts stuff and reading and writing.  Speaking of . . .
• Perhaps, PERHAPS actually attempting a Writing Month now, this very month, this very January Year Of Our Lord 2026?  None writing yesterday, today I just type up a scene I'd scrabbled out on my phone awhile back and put it in my annex doc, but I'm thinking maybe tomorrow I'll try to focus back up and get going for real, and maybe that I'll give myself some grace of a couple of days into January and so a couple of days into February, too.
• I'm a projecty person.  Can you tell.  Love to start a project.  Just not so good with the follow-through.

It has been a bananas last couple of weeks, which I mostly would not like to repeat at all ever!  It was like one million years of stress.  Last night was the first night I actually slept in all that time.  Woof.  Anyway, moving forward!  Even though there's not too terribly much to update on, given the stress.

READING

• Biggest update: I finished The Grimmer.  Decent, I enjoyed it just fine. Very much the thing, though, where having it compared to another book or another writer's work kind of spoils it for me.  I don't want to know a book's tropes, or what two other pieces of media it's a mix between, or whatever.  I really just want to find out what it is for myself.  While listening to The Grimmer, a lot of me was focused on finding comparisons to the works of John Bellairs--"oh, yeah, this is the sort of story he would have written if!"  Maybe I just want to experience a story without going into it with the burden of expectation.
• Besides that: things continue.  Progressing with Ghost Story at a glacial pace, although I'm starting to get a bit more into it, now that I've actually had time to read some the past couple of days.  "Continuing" in Oathbound (I haven't listened in a couple of weeks, ope, but I will be starting again SOON.  Like.  Maybe tomorrow.  Maybe).  I've picked up a new little collection of Emily Dickinson's poems that I'm thinking of just blazing through for a mental break.

LISTENING

• Podcasts  Maintaining: HftMT, MBMBaM, TAZ, Gumshoes & Dragons.  Have added Arnie Niekamp's new limited project, No Skip Christmas.  An easy and entertaining listen.  I like Christmas music fine, and I've been enjoying this as both a means of finding new, interesting holiday songs (maybe some I can even impress my music-snob, Christmas-music-hating brother with?) and expanding my own Christmas playlist.
• Music  As just mentioned: I have started listening to some Christmas music.  This is primarily not for my personal listening, but for family listening experiences (in the car, etc).  In a place where people are either Crazy For Christmas or truly Grinchy Scrooges about it all, I feel kind of ambivalent about it all.  Is early-to-mid-November way too early to be so steeped in holiday cheer?  Oh, sure, definitely.  But I don't actively hate it so intensely that I'm gonna bitch about it.  The way I see it, Christmas music is a vast improvement over what my mother's radio is usually set to (Christian music).  As for personal listening--I find myself still leaning more towards music than my fiction listening queue.  Well, that's fine.  Adding to my story vibes playlist, perusing my Apple New Music Mix, etc.  The problem with starting to listen to some Christmas music, however, is they're throwing that into my algo.  That's a bit "ew" for me.

WATCHING

• Shoot from the Hip.  That's all.  Yesterday--my first opportunity to de-stress in two weeks--I watched the full hour-and-a-half "Jingle Boys" special.  It was healing.  It was truly relaxing in a way I haven't had in two weeks.

DOING

• The writing, the NaNoWriMo project, got put off.  Indefinitely, possibly (tragic), although I am being TOLD that wouldn't January be a good month to give that a try?  Okay, fine--but they better give it to me, then.  Please, god, let me have it.  In the mean time, I'm listening for my vibes and daydreaming in the shower, A LOT, and getting some bits down on paper now and then and praying I don't lose any of this.
• Biggest doing has been: major progress in reclaiming space in my room (queen bed removed, daybed in place, I've got my desk moved, too, which really if I could get all that straightened out before January, aka, Writing Month, wouldn't THAT be great?) and then working like nuts to get some of the cats in our care adopted out.  We've made good progress on that--we officially have taken the little lady who stole our hearts into our home, and then we've taken three of the other Biggies to their new homes, and are expecting to meet the family of the fourth this weekend.  So we just have Doc left of the first batch--and all three of the Candy Crew, of course, but they're only now two months, so they really need to be a little older to place them, anyway.

READING

• Finished Sisterhood Everlasting.  I mean, I'm probably gonna do a write-up of my thoughts eventually (soon?).  Because what a disaster that book is.  Oh my god.
• That does mean, however, I am able to move on to greener pastures!  I've started The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, and although I haven't yet encountered any of said haunting, god does it feel good to read a GOOD book.  No, I will not be watching the Netflix adaptation from a few years ago that was probably deservedly buzzy--I enjoy reading horror books and listening to horror podcasts, etc, but ya boy cannot watch horror.  I don't know if it's the gore so much as it is the violence.  Brain just can't deal with actually seeing that.
• Looking ahead, because I love to make plans even if I'm gonna end up changing them!  Ghost Story by Peter Straub next.  After that, I really want to try to get back to my barely-begun Discworld chronological readthrough, so Mort, and then presently I'm feeling classics, so I"m planning to do Wuthering Heights (the upcoming movie sounds like a disaster--I didn't enjoy the book at all when I read it when I was like 13, but I'm going to give it another try) and then Louisa May Alcott's A Long Fatal Love Chase.  Fascinated to see what her pulpy non-Little Women stories were like.  I've got some books I borrowed-then-airplane-moded on my Kindle I really should get back to, but.  Eh.  I am first and foremost a mood reader, and them ain't the mood.

LISTENING

• Podcasts  OFFICIALLY CAUGHT UP on Magic Tavern as of last Wednesday, I think?  What an absolute delight.  As a result, I have jumped RIGHT back in and am currently doing a liveblog listen on my Tumblr.  Since I restrict my Tumblr usage to certain hours on my phone, though, I've also restarted MBMBAM (don't ask why my brain makes me work this way) as my bedtime relaxing listening and I'm working through the rest of The Black Tapes (in season two, currently) in the other off times.  Terry Miles's work is something else.  I listened to all of Rabbits and hated it; hated the first book (audio) even more.  But The Black Tapes started out so promising, but also I already know how it ends, and like.  Is it worth my time?  Why do I want to watch the car crash?
• Music  Nothing new to report

WATCHING

• For personal reasons, I might be doing my comfort movies soon.  And that's fine!
• In general--I think I need to let myself watch more TV stuff that I want to watch.  Because I do enjoy a good sitcom, and there are a ton of them out there!  Ones I started and REALLY enjoyed and haven't finished over the years: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Office, 30 Rock, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Superstore, The Good Place (I HAVEN'T FINISHED THE FUCKING GOOD PLACE can you imagine), probably some others.  Ones I want to try, they look so promising: Abbot Elementary and Ghosts (both the BBC and the American import), there should definitely be others.  Ones I just want to watch again because I have such deep love for them: Community, Parks and Rec, Arrested Development.  And that's just the stuff from like, the last 20 years.
• But first, honestly, I might go back and watch the series I own on DVD.  Star Trek (TOS) sounds fun, but mostly I think I REALLY want to watch The Kids in the Hall again.  And if I watch KITH I know I'm gonna go right into Newsradio.
• So yeah.  Might move myself to that after I get caught up on some YouTube stuff.  I don't know, maybe it's just that I'm bored with that right now.
• Still wanna get Dropout again, but that's feeling like a far goal each day.

DOING

• Might do a TAZ Amnesty relisten in October to prep for finishing (FINISHING????????) my dumb stupid self-indulgent fic that I started six years ago as a personal mock-NaNoWriMo this November.  Undecided, but leaning toward.
• Working on some more digital decluttering lately.
• Also--I have gotten back to my junk journaling/scrapbooking!  Catching up on June's scraps at this point, still, but man does it feel GOOD to do some of that again.

Treated (woof) myself to finally finishing my reread of Forever in Blue by Ann Brashares, the fourth installment in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series yesterday, and, as often the case with books, and especially books I have read multiple times, I Have Thoughts.  That's one thing I like about rereading--more time to distill the Thoughts.  Also I enjoy that I get to visit books at different times in my life, that's good for shifts in perspective and understanding of the world and myself.  For instance, the first time I read this book (when it came out, when I was close to finishing high school myself), I absolutely HATED it.  Now?  Eh.  There are a few shining bits that I love, truly love, but also there's stuff that is . . . I guess more boring or out-of-left-field than truly loathsome.

Since these narratives are usually neatly broken down into the separate stories of Bridget, Carmen, Lena, and Tibby, that's how I'm going to look at the book.  Except in reverse order of that.

TIBBY  Oh my god, it's literally the same story every time with her.  I like Tibby fine, I think she's a very realistically drawn character.  I like the moody-alt-grungy-artist vibe she's bringing to the party, you know, especially since that's the archetype my high school self most closely aligned with.  I think that she and Brian are absolutely the sweetest couple (sucker for friends-to-lovers).  That said, in literally all of the books her story is the same.  Tibby wants to live bigly and authentically.  Tibby encounters someone who lives bigly and authentically, and they inspire her to try.  Her actions have consequences.  She shuts down, isolates, watches a lot of TV for a bit.  She decides she can't keep living that way, makes the brave choice to live bigly and authentically again, resolves never to make the mistake of retreating again.  Story over, the end, see you next book for more of the same.  Tibby is great.  Brian is great.  I truly am so found of their characters.  Too bad Brashares does NOTHING with them.  At times it feels like she came up with Tibby just to have a way to work a dying-kid story into the first book.  Give the final book in the series (YIKES THAT'S UP NEXT FOLKS), kinda feels like this could be true.

LENA  Again, practically the same story every time, or at least in three of the four so far.  Lena and Kostos, Kostos and Lena.  It's all longing and agony and overwrought emotionality, and by this book?  I am over it.  (Again, in preparation for the final book: YIKES.)  Which is so unfortunate, because Lena's story in Girls in Pants truly sang.  Working with resolve and intention to make her dream of becoming an artist come true?  The insights on seeing and on seeing that her growing as an artist gave her?  Beautiful.  But mostly?  That she was not defined by her relationship to Kostos (or to any other boy) in that book made it something really special for me.  As a high schooler, I found the tragedy of Lena and Kostos so romantic, but now it's just boring to me.

CARMEN  I really enjoyed the authenticity of Carmen as a student just finishing her first year of college in this book.  The portrayal of her as a girl who used to have big dog energy in high school (not like, the stereotypical popular--with the undercurrent of mean--energy, but the energy of someone who was someone in their school, if that makes sense) who found she had fallen out of place when reaching college hits so real.  Previously she had status because she had her place predefined for her.  She had a home, a family she mostly understood her place in, a friend group that she definitely had her place in, an incredibly close and defining friend group.  Then she goes to college, totally out of any place she's ever known, completely without the security of her friends for the first extended time in her life, and suddenly she's invisible in a way she does not undderstand?  Absolutely relatable.  I think most kids going off to college experience at least some of that, if not completely that in their own way.  Loved that, loved that her confidence and brashness just dried up, and that her story was all about getting those back.  The Shakespeare/acting thing did feel a little bit contrived, but that's mostly because I knew soooo many kids deep into theatre stuff in high school, and I find it hard to buy someone that someone would just kind of stumble into that scene.  I think even going into sets, lighting, costuming, whatever, you go with into it with some kind of intention, not just because some girl tells you that you should give it a try.  My high school didn't even have a theatre program to speak of, but it still had theatre kids for sure--they just worked in community theatre instead, seeking out what was available to them.

BRIDGET  Oh man, over the years Bridget has gone from being absolutely my least favorite to kind of my precious baby girl.  I can pinpoint when this happened well enough--it was when I had my first hypomanic episode that I knew to be such.  Next time reading through the books, suddenly it was like, oh girl, I get you now.  Bridget's story in this has such good bones.  Unfortunately, the meat of it has me going, huh?  What now?  Um are you sure?  The idea of Bridget not being sure of what Eric wants when he says he's going to spend the summer in Mexico, the idea of Bridget trying to reclaim her home and rebuild some kind of relationship with her father and her brother--absolutely golden.  But the middle interlude of it all, of Bridget . . . jetting off to Turkey?  On an archeological dig?  Really?  The absolutely most random choice, and not in the ha ha fun cutesy "soooo random" way.  In the way that truly I have no idea where that could have come from, other than Brashares happened to be reading up on archeology for fun at the time and thought, hey this is interesting and neat!  Bee could do this!  An compelling thematic hook for sure, but I don't feel like it was well enough developed, and in part that's because of the gross relationship with the married-and-unstable young professor (yuck, Bridget, ew girl).

Anyway, I think that's all I'm going to dash off for now (I gotta get ready for A Day, too), except to say: the next and final book in the series, the Ten Years Later book.  It's a doozy.  Hang on, I'm probably going to rip it to shreds.  It's made me so mad for SO long now.