My Dry January (February, March and Most of April Too).

I love books... more than music, videogames, comics and any other of my media based hobbies. I think this may surprise many people who know me.

Whenever I go out, be it a holiday, day trip or even a small walk somewhere, I always take a couple of books with me; you never know when it will come in handy as there could always be a (in)convenient time where I need to fill time. Books are a huge part of who I am and the way I am. By reading we connect to others and create ‘memes,’ Dawkins’ idea of how we spread units of information such as values, customs, traditions and ideas.

The combined collective history of the world, the knowledge and wisdom thereof, is contained within books whilst stories allow me to experience places I may or could never visit. Terrestial or offworld, I can travel through time or space to the past or future. I can be a difference race, species or being- the possibilities really are endless.

I've always loved libraries, their peace, the smell of old books (I recently learnt that this is called biblichore- what a great word!) and the atmosphere they give... wonderful. I've always loved reading and read voraciously in my youth and formative years. As time has passed and my free time- truly free time away from work and family commitments- has become squeezed I've used my Audible audio book subscription as a crutch to keep up to date with my reading habits. In this way I've read loads of books but nothing beats actually holding a real book, finding a comfortable spot and losing yourself in the text for hours on end.

Time is finite though so I have to be picky with what I consume but not everything is gold. However, in some ways, even the lowest common denominators, the 7/10 books if you will, offer an insight or idea that remain long after you have put the books down.

I read I Am (Not) a Prisoner: Decoding The Prisoner by Alex Cox about The Prisoner TV series and it gave me insight into this confounding cult phenomenon. Talking about confounding, I read Twin Peaks Unwrapped by Ben Durant and Bryon Kozaczka about all of the Twin Peaks series. I loved revisiting one of my cultural lodestone and its breakdown of season 3, Twin Peak: The Return, was excellent at letting me parse that ending. I very recently finished a fascinating deep dive into The OA by David Sweeney. The short book was like a longform essay (just over 100 pages) about the show and I finished it with a whole list of new texts and media to check out. The same was the case for the Hideo Kojima book of essays, The Creative Gene. Finally, I love the artwork of Yoshitaka Amano and reading his beautiful biography was a real treat.

Audible wise, I've listened to over 40 hours of audio books. I started the year with Fern Brady's autobiography Strong Female Character and learned a lot about masking and how ill equipped schools were to deal with such a wide spectrum of need. I also finished Werner Herzog's memoir/ autobiography/ Stream of Consciousness/ Philosophy book Every Man for Himself and God Against All and man do I love that man; his creativity and the way he speaks about the human condition are unparalleled, in my humble opinion. To plug a knowledge gap, I listened to Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture by Ytasha L. Womack which presented a world of hope and aspirations, free from the legacy of slavery and subjugation. The Ark Before Noah by Dr. Irving Finkel was a fascinating listen about the origins of the Ark myth and his journey through the Mesopotamian cuniform tablets is carefully detailed. Finally, I listened to one of my favourite writers Johns Higgs’ I have America Surrounded and learnt a lot about counter-culture figurehead, Timothy Leary.

Anyways, we are at the mid-stage of May as I write this and, even thought my pile of videogame shame is huge, I've enjoyed taking some time out to read and catch up with my favourite hobby.