Happy Summer everyone! It’s time for another look at what’s been lighting me up this week.
A lot of my reading time and ‘spirituality’ time is still going to research for my Summer blog series. Despite the effort involved (and getting caught in a thunderstorm on a library run Wednesday!), it’s still been a lot of fun and really interesting.
This means that I haven’t done as much of my normal reading this week. The highlight was absolutely the third book in Pat Barker’s Trojan Women series, The Voyage Home. I’m not sure if she’s planning more in the series, since we don’t follow the POV character from the first two books at all in this one, or if it was intended as a trilogy. If there’s more, I’ll be excited to read it; otherwise, this is as perfect as a Greek legend retelling series can be. The only book that really stood out this week was Tom Rob Smith’s The Farm (2014), a fascinating psychological thriller in which a London man has to discern between his parents’ very different version of events.
Part of the reason why this year has felt like an off year for music is that, with only a couple exceptions, the highly anticipated albums haven’t made much impact. I’m so happy to say that, for me at least, there’s another exception this week, with a really strong release from HAIM, I quit. And I say this as someone who has often been underwhelmed by their output. I’m two lists through the album as I write this and there isn’t a single skip for me. And that’s saying a lot, because it’s the twenty-first century, and I’m as impatient as everyone else.
These are a few of the things that have been keeping me going and brightening up my way this week. So what’s lighting you up?
Matthew Root 