Sleater-Kinney Returns

The articles on Sleater-Kinney's return have been coming. This is one of the more recent ones, by Pitchfork. It's no secret that I am a fan. Sleater-Kinney is on my bucket list - "Bands to watch 'live' Before I Die". Yes, some people have Bucket Lists like that. Their music carried me through some bad times. The growls of their guitars, Carrie and Corin with their vocal intensity, the invigorating drumbeats - their music makes me feel more alive.

When they announced the band was on "indefinite hiatus" - it was heartbreaking. Then they came back, sneaking a new single onto the vinyl collection of their old records last year. I was so excited, promised myself I had to catch them when they tour.

Life right now is making it hard to travel, so I will wait. If it is meant to be, it will be.

Then they went and did something like this with their friends, and they remind me again why I totally adore them:

Let's not forget their appearance on David Letterman's. A heart melting moment.

QUOTE | From Tiny Beautiful Things

One of those quotes from Cheryl Strayed's Tiny Beautiful Things that stayed with me. There were many memorable quotes in that tiny little book that was full of heart and loss - and so much hope. This one though - lingered most powerfully. Well, perhaps because it was at the end, but most likely because of what it had to say about getting yourself screwed up in a bad, self-hating place - and yet that there is something within us still worthy, still beautiful, and deserving of grace. Grace in the shape of a purple balloon. Such a tiny beautiful thing.

Everyone should read that book.

“One hot afternoon during the era in which you’ve gotten yourself ridiculously tangled up with heroin, you will be riding the bus and thinking what a worthless piece of crap you are when a little girl will get on the bus holding the strings of two purple balloons. She’ll offer you one of the balloons, but you won’t take it because you believe you no longer have a right to such tiny beautiful things. You’re wrong. You do.”

― Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Reading Goals for 2015:

#1: Finally Finish War and Peace

So it seems this month is sort of the 150 anniversary of the publication of War and Peace. Sort of.

According to Paris Review, the story was first serialized in 1805, and it was reworked later:

Well, sort of: the first installment of what was then titled 1805 was indeed published in the January 1865 issue of Russkiy Vestnik. It ran in serial form for the next two years. However, Tolstoy wasn’t happy with this version and reworked much of the book—which he called “not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle”—before publishing it as War and Peace in 1869.

Time to get to it. So, I declare, 2015 will be the year I finally finish reading War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.

Records for 2014

Books Read for 2014

1. Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence • Daniel Goleman
2. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running • Haruki Murakami
3. The Hunger Games • Suzanne Collins
4. Catching Fire • Suzanne Collins
5. Mockingjay • Suzanne Collins
6. Nemesis • Jo Nesbø
   Translated from Norwegian by Don Bartlett
7. Cave in the Snow • Vicki Mackenzie
8. The Land Where Lemons Grow: The Story of Italy and its Citrus Fruit • Helena Attlee
9. Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar • Cheryl Strayed