Recent Media Diet – September 2024

Tony Scida

Sep 8, 2024 • 4 min read

Vintage truck parked in the Fan, taken by me with a vintage Nikon FE camera and developed at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond during a darkroom class.

I don't publish here regularly, so I thought I'd try something out and see if it sticks at all.

Here's a sampling of things I've read, watched or listened to recently:

Read

The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson

This is book one in what appears to be a billion-part series called The Stormlight Archive. This is not my usual genre, but some friends are reading this series as a book club (fortunately in a format where it doesn't matter that I'm far, far behind them). It was only a few years ago that I even heard of Sanderson, and I had no idea what a huge industry he is onto himself.

Book cover art for The Way of Kings, Book One of The Stormlight Archive, by Brandon Sanderson

I tend not to enjoy the more fantastic side of the sci-fi/fantasy bookstore (or library!) aisle. I find the characters, languages, cultures, etc., somewhat hard to track. As a slow reader on my best days, the intentionally baroque character and place names of a lot of fantasy slow me down even further. (I'm also not great at prioritizing reading, but ebooks help here a lot, as I always have a book with me, either on my Kobo or on the app on my phone.)

I really enjoyed this book. Sanderson is a really skilled storyteller, and I think he strikes a good balance between fantasy world-building and readability. It was a big book, but with nice-sized chapters that kept the action moving. I'm looking forward to reading the next in the series. (He's apparently not done writing the series, but I will be shocked if I ever make it all the way through.)

Thanks, Rachel, for the recommendation!

I'm currently reading Jon Sealy's The King Street Affair.

Also on my to-be-read pile (looking at these all together, they're all recommendations from podcasts... let's not pull too hard an that thread):

Joyful Recollections of Trauma, a memoir by comedian Paul Scheer
Youth Group, a graphic novel by Jordan Morris and Bowen McCurdy
Guitar Zero: The Science of Becoming a Musician at Any Age, by Gary Marcus

Watched

The Fall Guy

I wanted to catch this in the theater, because I was pretty sure I would enjoy it, but I never made it to a showing. Recently I saw the Extended Cut pop up as a Peacock exclusive and decided to check it out. I didn't realize they also had the normal cut (well, I didn't even look), and I'm not sure what was different about it, but I really enjoyed it. It's a fun movie with a very video-game feel (lots of POV and talking to, essentially, NPCs to get quests).

I loved all the big set pieces and the way it honor stunt performers (I particularly liked the behind the scenes shots during the credit showing the real stunt teams). I'm old enough to remember that there was a TV show of the same name, and to know the theme song and have seen the opening credits, but I'm not sure I ever actually saw an episode.

I'm currently watching through The Americans for the first time, and also look forward to catching up with The Bear and Slow Horses at some point.

Heard

Kind of Blue, Miles Davis

I imagine that, if there's a single jazz album that everyone, even non-jazz fans, has heard, Kind of Blue might be it. Of course, as a trumpet player, I've heard it many times, but recently I had some students learning Freddie Freeloader and the Miles solo from it, so I've been listening closely to it again recently. Just one of the all-time great albums, and I've had a lot of fun learning the Freeloader solo. I don't think I've tried to transcribe a solo since college.

Band of Horses and City and Colour

My fall concert calendar is rather full this year, and it kicked off with Band of Horses and City and Colour performing at Music at Maymont. Band of Horses was the draw there and they were great. I hadn't seen them before, so I didn't know they ever played covers, but they played a nice version of Never Tear Us Apart (INXS). (Setlist.fm says it's their most played cover in 2024, at 12 performances.)

City and Colour I wasn't familiar with at all, but I really dug their set. Definitely need to check out their catalog.

I also gave a brief listen to the new Gillian Welch and David Rawlings album, Woodland, but I need to give it a closer listen.

Podcasts

As a musician, you'd maybe guess that I listen to music all day long, but I listen to a ton of podcasts. Some of my longtime favorites include Strong Songs (where I heard bout the Guitar Zero book mentioned above), Judge John Hodgman (where I learned about Youth Group) and How Did This Get Made (Paul Scheer's movie podcast with Jason Mantzoukas and June Diane Raphael). More recently I've picked up The Rest Is History, a UK-based history podcast (recent topics include the Hundred Years War and the French Revolution, as well as topics that don't involve wars in France). I've also become a big fan of Jamelle Bouie and John Ganz's movie podcast Unclear and Present Danger and well as their subscriber-only Patreon show. (John's recent book about politics in the 90s, When the Clock Broke, is also on my TBR pile.)