Tag / Sara Quin

by admin

iTunes Top 200 Artists: #8

Music.  It is a powerful thing that brings people together, creates memories, and evokes emotions.  It is the universal language that speaks to the soul.  It forms the soundtrack of our lives.

It has now been five years since we last counted down the Top 200 artists in my iTunes library, featuring the songs I have listened to the most since 2007.  It is time to do so again, seeing which performers still resonate and if any newer ones have joined the fray.  So, without further ado, here are my most listened to artists, based on number of plays as of January 1, 2026.

We continue today with twin sisters who bonded in high school over a love of music following the discovery of their stepdad’s guitar.  My eighth most listened to artist: Sara Quin and Tegan Quin, known professionally as the band Tegan & Sara.

#8: Tegan and Sara
iTunes stats: 847 plays
Previous ranking: #7

Tegan and Sara entered my consciousness in the early 2000s, when I Hear Noises started to get some airplay on WXRT and someone gave me an MP3 knowing I would be into it.  Since then, I’ve seen them in concert, read their book. and listened to their music, with 84 songs, 61 of which I’ve listened to, from ten different albums in my collection.  They’ve dropped down one spot on the charts, despite a nearly 29% increase in listens over the past five years.  

I saw them in concert in October of 2005, at the end of what was a very busy week.  Prior to the show, I settled in at Rock Bottom in River North to watch the end of Game 3 of the ALDS as the White Sox finished off their sweep of the Red Sox.  After the game, a group of us hopped on the Red Line and headed north to Wrigleyville to check out Tegan and Sara at the Metro.  To be honest, I don’t remember much about the show at all.  The album they were touring in support of, So Jealous, is one of my favorites and I’m sure I enjoyed the performance.  But, my favorite baseball team was headed for the ALCS, I’d just been to two playoff games, and the Weezer and Foo Fighters show was earlier that week.  It’s all sort of jumbled together at this point.

by admin

2021: The Year In Books

As we wrap up 2021, my first full year remote working, I managed to read a whopping 54 books, an increase of 31 books over last year and my first year completing the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge.  I surpassed last year’s total in mid-June, passed my best years, 2015 and 2016, in late August, and completed book 52 with two weeks left in the year.  I read (or listened) to 18,670 pages, by far my highest total of all time and only the second time I’ve passed 10,000.

Of those books, 16 were non-fiction and, of the 36 novels, 10 were tied to a TV show, either as the source material or as a tie-in.  None of the books came out of my dwindling “to-read” drawer, with 43 e-books and 4 audiobooks.  For the first time since I was a kid, I got myself a library card, which helped me procure 14 of the books.

Just less than half of the books I read this year were by authors I have read before. The 31 authors that I read for the first this year were:

  • Tegan Quin
  • Sara Quin
  • Lucy Foley
  • Jenna Fischer
  • Matt Haig
  • Eric Nusbaum
  • Jon Taffer
  • Charlotte Douglas
  • Susan Kearney
  • Fredrik Backman
  • Jeff Pearlman
  • Minka Kent
  • Alan Cumming
  • Megan Goldin
  • Molly Bloom
  • Barack Obama
  • Ali Wong
  • Timothy Ferriss
  • Issa Rae
  • Walter Tevis
  • Tess Gerritson
  • Gary Braver
  • Andy Weir
  • Matthew Walker
  • James Clear
  • Grady Hendrix
  • Simon Sinek
  • Jason Fung
  • Julia Spiro
  • Jon Pessah
  • Ruth Ware

Erle Stanley Gardner, Mary Kubica, Jeffery Deaver, Andy Weir and Karin Slaughter were the only authors that I read multiple titles from during 2021.

6 of the books I read were released this year, while 5 of them were released last century, with the oldest first published in 1933.

Finally, the breakdown by month, which was fairly consistent across the entire year.

Continue reading →

by admin

Book 1 (of 52) – High School

High School – Tegan & Sara

In High School, their first memoir, twins Sara Quin and Tegan Quin, known professionally as the band Tegan & Sara, look back on their high school years in Calgary.  The sisters switch off chapters, telling the stories of their first loves, parties and drug use, and the discovery of their step-dad’s guitar and the start of their musical journeys.  After playing for their friends, they enter a music competition while still in high school and win, putting them on the path to stardom.

I first became acquainted with Tegan & Sara back in the early 2000s, when one of the tracks from their third album started getting a little radio airplay.  While their more recent work has moved into a style that doesn’t really work for me, those early works, especially 2004’s So Jealous, remain some of my favorites.  I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book, but it is basically like reading the shared diary of two sisters who find themselves on different, but similar, paths heading to the same destination.  They don’t shy away from the sibling rivalries that caused many a fight between the two, but they managed to always find their way back to each other and, eventually, to their music.

While writing this book, they found their old homemade demo cassettes of songs they wrote while they were in high school.  Their latest album is them partially re-writing and then recording those songs.  Reading the book has rekindled my interest in their music and I am tempted to check out this album.  Time will tell if I follow through with that or not.