WHAT have you finished lately? Ehm, nothing.

WHAT are you reading now? An Unexpected Hero, Rhett C. Bruno & Jaime Castle; The Death of Mrs Westaway, Ruth Ware. Also listening to Ron Swanson- um, Nick Offerman — read me Wendell Berry’s Unsettling of America, but it’s 13 hours so that will take me the better part of a month to get through.

WHAT are you reading next? Will finish a science title. Safe to say nonfiction is not making an epic comeback in 2024.

Well, this is the first time I’ve put pen to paper — er, in the digital sense — in a few days. I tried rather deliberately to disengage from Internetland during the Christmas holiday, both to be more Present during the season and to get a break from it. My project before the end of the year is to unsubscribe from some email newsletters, because I received a ridiculous amount of tech and foreign policy news on Christmas day itself. I’m really going to have to dial down the amount of substacks I’m subscribed to! I also want to reconcile Goodreads and my own list, because Goodreads is ~20 books behind.

Last weekend my ladyfriend and I visited the Ave Maria Grotto up at St. Bernard’s Abbey. This is a monastery north of Birmingham, with a prep school attached. Earlier in the 20th century, one of the brothers began recreating little models of churches, shrines, that sort of thing. It grew into a park with over 125 miniatures. It’s well worth seeing in the daytime, but during the Christmas season the brothers decorate the park, and they add music to boot. It’s magical experience, one where freezing temperatures can be countered with hot chocolate.

The library was closed Tuesday through Thursday for Christmas, but I didn’t get up to much besides Christmas worship with the ladyfriend, both at her church in Leeds and mine at St. Paul’s. Our Christmas Eve service is always magical, the great nave festooned with red ribbons, poinsettias, and glowing candles: the sconce scandals are only lit for Christmas Eve services, I think, unless we do an evening Epiphany service. I also attended services Christmas Day, both because I wanted to (haven’t missed one offered in thirteen years), and because there’s a curious lack of people willing to serve on the altar Christmas Day. I did most of my family feasting on Christmas Eve, and spent Christmas Day visiting friends and “framily”, not getting home until close to 11 at night. One particular joy for me was that my blood family and godfamily from church got to spend time together: it’s not often those two worlds intersect.

I’ve received a few books for Christmas so far — I say so far because my ladyfriend is under the weather, so we haven’t been able to exchange — including a “Weird Travel Guide” that highlighted the Grotto for Alabama; the Oregon Trail guide to adulting; and John Grisham’s Framed, which slightly amuses me because I’m pretty sure the giver meant to give me Grisham’s Camino Ghosts. One “book” I gave myself was a journal from Paperblanks, discovered via BookStooge. Paperblanks makes journals with special designs: this one is a drawing of Amy Winehouse with a reproduction of her handwritten lyrics. Amy Winehouse has been one of my favorite artists since I heard NPR reviewing her new cd back in…2006 or so, so I’m hoping this item will lure me back into regular journaling.

I began regular journaling in 1997, and was fairly consistent with it until 2007, when I moved to university. I say “fairly consistent” because 2007 was also the year my writing itch began getting scratched here, but I continued journaling throughout university, using the back sides of sheets as a commonplace of sorts and the front sides for my writing. I was reading constantly at college, because I had direct and daily access to a massive university library with books to supply any intellectual curiosity, and I’d hole up in a cubby reading Erich Fromm or Epictetus, scribbling down quotes and my thinking about them. But tragedy struck: during one of my moves back and forth between home and the university, I lost that journal, and I was so crushed by this I just stopped writing altogether. I’ve made attempts to restart over the years — I probably have five composition notebooks with a handful of entries and then nothing — but I’m optimistic about this one. Since the Kingsnorth conference I’ve been wanting to root myself more in material reality, which includes physically writing and not just typing.

After today, I’ll have another big break and not return to work until Wednesday, so we’ll see what kind of reading I get up to. I still want to post reviews for Anxious Generation and Bad Therapy before the year’s end since they’re both on the top ten list for this year. Hope your year is winding now nicely!