Grady Hendrix for the win again. After reading The Final Girl Support Group, I found this rad talk from the Library of Congress w/ Hendrix and Tananarive Due. Worth the listen.

Volk at Launchpad in Albuquerque, January 2024

Goddamn Gallows, Launchpad in Albuquerque, January 2024.

Perfect band with only 2 songs.

Uncle Stevie to the rescue. And mug wine. Because vacation.

Tinder Box by Anthony P. Hatch

Full Body Burden by Kristen Iversen

Area 51 by Annie Jacobsen

I’ve been in a pretty dark reading phase for a bit now. Lots atomic history and adjacent areas of national security history (like CIA spycraft planes at Area 51).

Apparently, when I could get out of the Cold War, I dove into Tinder Box, a history of an early 20th century American theater fire in Chicago. Which - if yer into theater history, was super good!

All were great audiobooks.

Been on a Kate Brown kick! Plutopia is a fascinating historical juxtapose of 2 plutonium plants, Hanford in eastern Washington state, and its Cold War sister site in Myak, in the Soviet Union. Think of these two sites as fenced off company towns that were always better funded than any other proximate regional workplace with better salaries and perks like subsidized homes. Brown said in an interview with Process: A Blog for American History, that these atomic cities bought, “compliant and silent workers, people who willingly traded in their political and biological rights for consumer rights and financial security.” It’s an interesting read. Really great audiobook.

Just started another book by her, Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future. Through archival reconstruction, Brown posits that we still don’t understand the full health effects of Chernobyl. A hella compelling examination.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/plutopia-kate-brown/1113303419

On a motherfuckin’ Mary Oliver kick, as happens every other year or so. I CLEARED THE SHELF at the library. They were just waiting there for me to nab them. After abt ten books of Oliver, I am going to throw myself at Le Guin. What a good goddamn not even autumn yet.

Just finished The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency, by Annie Jacobsen, on audiobook.

A compelling 2016 Pulitzer Prize nom abt the military industrial complex, how it funds advanced scientific research, where that research might meet public use, and when it stays hidden.

One story deep into The Low Desert, by Tod Goldberg, and I’m super digging it. If you like stories about folks who inevitably find themselves in how-the-hell-did-it-all-end-up-in-the-shitter situations, you’re gonna like this book.

Frank Bill is consistently a badass writer who I adore. I will continue to read every book this talented SOB puts out.

Back to the Dirt on audiobook is bananas good.

Holy heck. I really dug this book. If you want a creepy read with a smidge of gore and great character development, All Hallows is FREAKIN GREAT!

Noon time dance party

A heck yes graphic novel about Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone.

Wright Morris

Eroded Soil, Faulkner Country, Mississippi

1940

Sunday reading: Nobody’s Fool: The Life and Times of Schlitzie the Pinhead.

A warm portrait of a performer with a little known, hardly recorded history.

A hell yeah horror pre order!