Sunday Stealing

It’s early and I’m waiting for The Wife to get up so we can go do something fun, so I’ll pass the time by doing the Sunday Stealing! I haven’t done one of these in a few weeks and this one’s pretty easy. Technically it’s a FAB quiz (Film, Audio, Book) with one extra question added:

1) If you could attend a 4th of July fireworks display anywhere in the United States, where would you choose?

I’m not nearly as entranced by fireworks as I once was; I guess that comes from living with dogs and seeing how all the booms can affect them. But I do still like seeing them if I’m from a distance…and there’s just something about seeing fireworks exploding over a beautiful vista that can still excite me. I’d love to stand on the edge of Brooklyn, looking toward Manhattan, and seeing this:

Another great spot is a lot closer, though: Fireworks over Niagara Falls is amazing to behold. They launch them from the Canadian side. Amazingly, it’s been nearly ten years since the last time we were up there at night! I made a video from that visit, which you can see here (if the following embed doesn’t work super well, embedding Flickr videos can be wonky).

I think that’s the key to fireworks: seeing them from a distance, and over a spectacular vista. I wonder if they ever launch fireworks over the Toronto skyline…obviously not for July 4, but that city is spectacular.

2) What book are you currently reading?

I’ve just finished a re-read of a children’s book that I loved as a kid, one my mother picked out for me, called Paddle-To-the-Sea, which traces the adventures of a wood-carved Native American in a canoe that a young boy whittles and then sets free on the waters of Lake Superior, to float all the way to the sea. Mom had me read this book not long after we moved to WNY back in 1981, and it really shaped my perception of the Great Lakes region ever since.

I am also reading a novel called Where the Sea Lavender Grows, by Kitty Johnson. This is not a novel I’d likely ever have chosen had it not been part of a curated list, in this case the monthly offering of free “First Read” novels that are offered as part of my Amazon Prime subscription. The novel tells the story of two women, living decades apart, who live in the same cottage in England. So far I’m not sure what to expect of it, but I’m enjoying it thus far.

I’m also starting Ways of Seeing by John Berger, which is a book about visual art. With the new influence photography is having on my life, I’m finding myself engaging with visual art in a way that I never was able to before (more on that to come, I have a whole video and newsletter on the way about it), and I’m reading more and more books about art. And you know, if I have to have a “midlife crisis” where I decide to sink my attention and time into something, art is a pretty good one. I’ll take it.

I also checked out the newest edition of Tom Ang’s How to Photograph Absolutely Everything, which I read in a previous edition three years ago when I was just starting out with the camera. I do like going back to “Photography 101” kind of content, because while I’m getting better and better, I still think it’s a good idea to go back and brush up techniques that I haven’t tried much yet and remind myself of things I can do that I haven’t done yet.

Recent books completed: You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming (I think I only have two Fleming books left, one novel and one story collection), When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi (I hate to say this, but I increasingly think Scalzi just isn’t for me anymore, in terms of fiction), The Uncool by Cameron Crowe (Crowe’s memoir of his youth as a precocious music journalist; good book but it meanders a lot toward the end).

3) What have you been listening to?

In addition to all the music I listen to for presentation on this site, I’ve been listening to an album called Revel In Time, by Star One, which is a progressive rock/metal project band created by Arjen Anthony Lucassen, a Dutch musician. I will eventually write about this, but I don’t feel like I have the current vocabulary to do so. (I honestly don’t know how rock critics, the Lester Bangses of the world, can write cogently about an album after just one or two hearings. I have to live with an album for quite a while before I feel remotely qualified to write about it.)

4) What shows or movies have you been watching?

Right now we’re plowing through Season 3 of Sneaky Pete, a crime series featuring Giovanni Ribisi as a conman who gets out of prison and basically finds himself out of the frying pan and into the fire. It’s a really entertaining show with heists and conmen and found family that doesn’t realize it’s been found and a really engaging cast of characters. I’m also surprised to learn how good an actor Ribisi really is; he’s been on my radar forever and I’ve never thought him bad, at all, but here he’s magnetic.

We’ve also been watching Rizzoli and Isles, for our weekly murder-procedural fix, as well as slowly making our way through Blindspot (this show is bonkers) and a few others.

Movies? Oh, remember that data failure that cost me six weeks of content here? That also killed six weeks of updates to the post I was maintaining in which I wrote briefly about every movie we’ve watched this year. I suppose I should go back and reconstruct that, but the enthusiasm is lacking. We’ll see. But a couple of standouts are Remarkably Bright Creatures and Voicemails For Isabelle, both of which I recommend.

What’s going on in your worlds, folks?

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