Week 4: Catch of the Week
Week 4: Catch of the Week
The animals will stop moving when I stop breathing.
Welcome to Wide Net.
All aboard.
The Paper Menagerie – Ken Liu
There’s no such thing as a casual reader. The act of reading is such an implicitly intentional activity, a truly whole-self endeavor, that it can’t be distinguished with these terms of loyalty and allegiance. While the director and the musician have the luxury of visual and audio, respectively, the author must partner with the reader to build worlds, develop attachments to the characters, and work through the conflict.
If you consider yourself a casual reader, I encourage you to sit with this collection of short stories by Ken Liu. Enter the worlds and let it change you.
Ken Liu’s short story, The Paper Menagerie, won the big three sci-fi awards nearly ten years ago, but its impact never left me. It masterfully depicts a mother’s love, the complexities of an interracial family, and the pain that comes from the foreignness we acknowledge and impose on others.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
In high school English, I barely read the books we were assigned. I can’t remember if I was supposed to read Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or if it was the AP kids who had it in their lockers but here we are. I listened to this one on a few long drives.
Obviously, this book has had its share of controversy (funnily enough from both sides) but I found the dialogue and characterization one-of-a-kind. There’s a reason it’s required reading.
Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong Places – Nadia Bolz Weber
Nadia Bolz Weber is a Lutheran pastor whose books and newsletter have challenged me to reassess what I believe and why. In Accidental Saints, she invites you to get off your high-horse and remember what Jesus was about.
The Russell Moore Show – Malcolm Guite’s Hope for Hurt Christians
I’ll repeat a similar phrase my wife told me when she was making this qualified recommendation, “I really want you to listen to this podcast, but I know you won’t want to because of who made it.“
She was correct. But I listened. And I’m glad I did.
Malcolm Guite is a poet, writer, academic, and Anglican priest whose poems and sonnets are powerful reflections on the Christian life, with its many ebbs and flows, peaks and valleys.
As someone currently clawing through a series of valleys whose depths I fear I have not reached, his words of encouragement and joy, hope despite great suffering, and peace despite despair, were good news to me.
Triple Click – Steam Deck, Switch, and the Rise of Handheld Gaming
Now I absolutely believe we can make a distinction between casual gamers and hardcore gamers. I find myself somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. After getting a gaming PC, I imagined it would bump video games to a preferred form of entertainment, but the static nature of sitting at a desk–while life was moving around me–kept me casual.
In the linked episode, the Triple Click gang (a video game podcast whose backlog I’m currently listening through) talk about the advancements and advantages of portable gaming consoles. From the Nintendo Switch to Valve’s Steam Deck (basically a portable gaming PC), the trio discuss the shift in gaming that blurs the line between casual and hardcore.
Levar Burton Reads – The Paper Menagerie
We’ve got all kinds of synergy up in the catch this week. It’s almost like you’re without an excuse to not give The Paper Menagerie a chance. Levar Burton, famous for inspiring a generation of young readers on Reading Rainbow, started a podcast a few years back where he just reads the stories he loves. It was on this podcast that I first heard about The Paper Menagerie, and felt the hot, heavy tears flow after each listen. The care and intentionality Burton shows in his curation of stories is what I aspire to.
[I also have several short stories I’ve started but never finished that I imagine him reading as motivation to keep writing. One can dream.]
Arlo Parks – Collapsed in Sunbeams
Arlo Parks is an accomplished singer/songwriter and she did it is all before she entered her second decade of life. The tracks on Collapsed in Sunbeams are funky, and the vocals are so smooth. She’s also got an Operation: Doomsday poster taped to the wall in her Tiny Desk. Good music and good taste can’t beat it. Favorites Tracks: Hurt, Hope, Black Dog, Just Go.
Citizens – A Mirror Dimly
A Mirror Dimly isn’t Citizen’s most celebrated or (IMO) best album sonically, but every couple of weeks, I put it on and am reminded how much I needed to be reminded of the truths it proclaims.
The title of the album comes from the Apostle Paul’s description of received revelation and prophecy in 1 Corinthians 13 being incomplete this side of eternity. I think the translation that follows is a helpful paraphrase,
We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
To see a reflection in a mirror is not to see the real thing, but a facsimile, a reproduction. To be in thick fog is a disorienting experience, but when our allotted weeks expire, we shall see and know fully the real thing; that which creates the reflection in the mirror. Until then, we hold on, in faith and hope, motivated by love.
Favorites: Crown Him, Day by Day, Relent, Doubting Doubts.
Giveon – When It’s All Said and Done…Take Time
I’m fortunate that I went through my teenage heartbreaks as a teenager. It spared me of the Top Spot on the Spotify Wrapped being a genuine sad boy album. Giveon’s When It’s All Said and Done…Take Time is a breakup album, with all that entails. The ill-informed second chance, the blue-light of a phone screen at 3AM, the commiserating with other broken hearts. Favorite Tracks: World We Created, Heartbreak Anniversary, Like I Want You.
Joshua Milo – SUPERHIGHWAY (Live)
Milo plays keys and bass in previous recommendation Tilar and really shines in this 20 minute LP. Gives off a stripped down Snarky Puppy sound. Excited to see what else he comes up with.
Odd Tinkering – Restoring Broken Nintendo Wii Controllers
Did I mention we got all kinds of synergy in this week’s catch? Am I ever going to buy a complicated piece of obsolete electronics to repair? Probably not. Fortunately for me though, the ducktor is in and he’s fixing a Wii controller.
Finding Focus and Concentration
Gamma Waves for Focusing
While I was writing this post, I was listening to gamma waves for focus, concentration, and memory. I’m not sure if its actually effective or if my brain is just really weak against the placebo effect, or if someone is illicitly re-programming me. I’m sure there’s “science“ out there for it, but it helped me write and edit for work this past week.
Pink Noise for Drowning Out Noise
Several years back I read Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections (I’ll do a write-up on that recommendation in another post) and one of the characters in the book listened to pink noise to help him drown out the noise on public transit. (Apparently, Franzen uses the technique for writing novels as well). It can be overwhelming when you first start, but eventually, the noise fades to a pleasant hum that eliminates distractions.
See you next week.
Ad meliora
If I put you on to something in this list, or you like what I’m sharing, tell me about it! If you like Wide Net, share it with friends or people you think would like it too.