Tag / Rob Harvilla

by admin

2024: The Year In Books

As 2024 comes to a close, my fourth full year of remote working, I managed to once again surpass my previous records by completing a whopping 61 books, two books more than my previous high set last year and my fourth consecutive year completing the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge.  I completed the challenge in mid-November and surpassed last year’s total in mid-December.  I read 22,622 pages, by far my highest total of all time and just the second time I’ve managed to surpass 20.000 pages.

Of those books, only five were non-fiction and, of the remaining 56 novels, only five 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 two hard covers, two paperbacks, 53 e-books and no audiobooks.  I continued to take advantage of my library card, which helped me procure 46 of the books I consumed throughout the year.

Over 69% of the books I read this year were by authors I had read before. The 19 authors that I read for the first this year were:

Jessica Knoll Isabella Maldonado Kathleen McGurl Lisa Taddeo
Lisa Jewell Millie Bobby Brown J.M. Dillard Lee Goldberg
Avery Cunningham Margot Douaihy R.F. Kuang Jessica Simpson
Jeffrey Lang Dayton Ward Holly Wilson Karin Smirnoff
Walter Beede Michael Connelly Rob Harvilla

Karin Slaughter, Jeffery Deaver, Laura Lippman, Elin Hilderbrand, Jessica Knoll, Michael Connelly, Minka Kent, Lee Goldberg, Rebecca Forster, Stephen King, and Sarah Pekkanen were the authors that I read multiple titles from during 2024.

17 of the books I read were released this year, while only three of them were released last century, with the oldest first published in 1997.

Continue reading →

by admin

Book 13 (of 52) – 60 Songs That Explain The ’90s

60 Songs That Explain The ’90s = Rpb Harvilla

On January 1, 1990, I was 15 years old, a high school sophomore ready and willing, if not quite able, to take over the world.  The music of the next decade is, primarily, the soundtrack of my life, even to this day.  In his book 60 Songs That Explain The ’90s, Rob Harvilla dives into, not necessarily the most successful songs of the decade, but certainly some of the most impactful, across the pop, rock, and hip-hop genres.  He doesn’t go into the nitty gritty behind the crafting or recording of each song, but where it fell in the cultural zeitgeist and how they impacted the world, the scene, or maybe just his life.  Songs like Doll Parts by Hole, Vogue by Madonna, It Was a Good Day by Ice Cube, and Metallica’s Enter Sandman.  Fiona Apple’s Criminal, with its suggestive video, to Wonderwall by Oasis, whose Gallagher brothers remain at odds to this day.  And, of course, Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana’s seminal hit that killed hair metal overnight and ushered in grunge and the so-called “alternative revolution” that ruled rock radio for much of the decade.

These are the songs that got me through high school, college, and my earliest days in the real world.  The songs I danced to at prom, rocked out to in the car after my friends and I got our licenses, and listened to on my way to and from work.