Eye to Wonder

I love hearing about what media people are engaging with and love seeing the best of the year lists come out. I don’t always go back and review my favorites from the year, but this year I decided to join the fun and list my favorite books and music of the year. Reading is my most established (and favorite) habit, so I had a lot of great books to choose from. I’m trying to get back into listening to more new music, so I had fewer favorites. I hope next year that I have more new music I’ve listened to a lot and love. I also added in the Goodreads graphic of all the books I have read (to date) this year. My favorite books of 2025: 5.) These Heathens by Mia MacKenzie. I really loved this short book set in the south during the 1960s. It follows Doris, a seventeen-year-old from rural Georgia, who travels to Atlanta for an abortion. The story takes place over the course of one weekend, and features several Civil Rights leaders (Martin Luther King, Coretta Scott King, and Malcolm X among ot...

This year, I’ve been trying to listen to more music. It’s something that makes me feel like myself, but it’s also something I’ve gotten out of the habit of since having kids and getting into podcasts. Even when I listen to music, I often listen to old favorites instead of new releases or new-to-me music. This weekend, I incorporated listening to new music in a different way, and I think I want to try this routine more often. On weekdays this time of year, I don’t go on walks too much because it is often dark when I am getting ready for my day and working out. This Saturday morning I decided to take advantage of a slower-paced schedule and walk around the neighborhood looking at holiday decorations. Generally when I walk, I queue up a podcast, but I didn’t feel like taking in more information or content. I felt like letting my mind wander, and I wanted to check out some more music from artists I am discovering from best of the year playlists. I picked an album (Cameron Winter’s “H...

Growing up, I always enjoyed listening to music. I briefly played piano and clarinet. I was in the middle school band (lured by the promise of a trip to Disneyland to perform). I liked listening to CDs and the radio and later my iPod. Joel is really into music and was in a band in college and coordinated concerts for the campus radio station. When we met, I was doing an internship that had a super long commute, and he used to make me CDs with different weekly playlists. I wish I had kept more of them even though I don’t have a way to play them now. Eventually, I started listening to podcasts and my commute time to work mostly shifted towards new episodes rather than albums although I still listened to music. As I became a parent, and then a few years later, a stay-at-home parent I gradually noticed that music was becoming a less prevalent part of my life as my kids became old enough to request songs and wanted to hear the same songs over and over. There was less time when I was the ...