2018 in Consumption

(Acknowledgment: this post was written toward the end of 2018, but I held off on publishing it until now, because I wasn't sure how to frame it)

I pretty much devoted this year to poetry, didn’t I?

A lot of my consumption (readings and viewings) seem distant... like it’s already been more than a year, even since the most recent stuff.

BOOKS

I did manage to read the whole of Gregory Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind (review), which gave me several new tools for thinking, especially in separating a forest from its trees, or a metaphor from its content, or what have you.

Before that, it seems my only other reading was the stuff of nightmares and enigmas: Stephen King’s Insomnia, Cabin in the Woods by Paul Trembly, and a book-length study of Pu Songling’s ghost stories called Historian of the Strange (review).

Toward the end of the year, I also finished Craig Morgan Teicher's We Begin in Gladness, which was a wise and well-considered discussion of how poets unfold over the course of careers and lifetimes. I'll try to add a review eventually.

MOVIES

Movies? Again, I handed so many late nights over to poetry... but I managed to watch Tale of Tales just this month, and before that, Star Wars VIII, Slow West, American Fable, Babylon Berlin, and both seasons of Stranger Things.

My wife and I have also imbibed The Last Kingdom and The Great British Bake-Off, so I’ve scratched all sorts of different erogenous spots.

This has been a quick summary of my 2018 media consumption. At this point, I need to accept that this blog is pretty much entirely for my own benefit, but at least I have it recorded. Upcoming post: 2018 new work and publications. Happy January!