Hazlett's Music and a Reading Rabbit Trail For Action Fans
Fantastic Friday is back from summer break!
Happy school supplies season to all you nerds out there!
I hope you had the right amount of rest and adventure this summer and squeezed in some good books along the way. (Please tell me what your favorites were!)
My main adventure highlights include co-leading a cabin for our church’s student ministry camp; exploring Park City, Utah for a family vacation; riding in a hot air balloon; potty training my youngest; and reading more fiction than any previous summer I can remember. I even re-read Gone With the Wind, which was a whole experience as a mother now living in the South. (More thoughts on this read soon.)
There was a good mix of busy and bored for the preteens with the three year old orbiting around us all like a constant explosion of confetti. But now we’re solidly done with summer break and I’m ready to rein my household back into good routines.
I got back to Fantastic Friday today (it’s late, I know) and need you to listen to Hazlett this weekend if you haven’t already. Please also enjoy the following reading rabbit trail, including a book about Dickey Chapelle pictured above. And promise me that you will share some of the random ways you have stumbled across your reads.
“Shiver” by Hazlett
The song on repeat for me this summer first caught my ear on Amazon Prime’s Motorheads (story set in the Rust Belt/Appalachia and includes Shooter’s Ryan Philippe, so it was an instant watch for me). Their song rights budget must’ve been crazy with all the hits, but this little dream by Hazlett is what struck a chord for me.
you still dance, but you’re out of time…
“Shiver” has almost (but not quite) dethroned Dustin Tebbutt’s “The Breach” and Chance Peña’s “i am not who i was” for my fiction writing vibes.
And of course the rest of Hazlett’s songs are just as ethereal. Please also appreciate these ones with me if you haven’t heard them yet:
Book Rec Rabbit Trails
If you tell me about a book recommendation, please also tell me how you came upon it in the first place. Always.
The longer the rabbit trail, the better.
Here is one reading rabbit trail for you…
Growing up with a single dad, the VHS tapes we rented from the video store were action movies.
All. Of. Them.
This influenced me in such a way that as a 6th grade girl I remember naming Tommy Lee Jones as my favorite actor and Armageddon as my favorite movie. (Normal, right?)
During college I was still watching The Unit and 24 on breaks at home and I think over the years it became more of a comfort genre than solely for entertainment.
Why is this sound nostalgic and not stressful:
My brother and step-brother eventually served in the military, so my appreciation for action movies meandered into the military and warfare. So when when the Terminal List first appeared on my Amazon Prime suggestions, it was an instant binge the first weekend of its release.
Then my usual post-show deep dive began. It was time to watch actor interviews (y’all it’s Chris Pratt and Taylor Kitch—you know, Tim Riggins) and read everyone’s wildly different reviews of the show (some folks grew up different, I see) and I quickly realized….WAIT, THIS IS A BOOK?
The audiobook was available on Everand, so it was my treadmill listen at the gym. I rarely read contemporary setting books in this genre, so I didn’t feel compelled to continue the rest in the series. However, I still wanted to know more about the author, Navy SEAL Jack Carr and came found out OH, HE HAS A PODCAST?1
Jumped right into that rabbit hole.
Over the last two years, I have listened to countless episodes of Carr’s Danger Close podcast and he offers enough variety on the show that I’m still not bored. Carr is an intuitive interviewer and features conversations with veterans, authors, actors, and more. I will listen to veteran stories all day, but I was especially intrigued by how much Carr talks about books and reading. He now has a whole podcast dedicated to his Bookclub selections, but you can find his earlier reading list archives here. He recommends fiction and nonfiction, classics and contemporaries and even features reading lists based on titles he used to research his own books. Boy, do I love lists.
This afternoon I finished the gem of book Strangers in Time by David Baldacci, featured as the July pick from the the Jack Carr Bookclub.
It’s a WWII novel featuring found family and resilient youth in the face of bewildering loss and heartache. This was another audiobook listen for me and while I loved the Audible multi-narrator version, I still wish I would have hard a hard copy to sit down with and underline the beautiful language. I will be assigning this as an enrichment title for my girls when we cycle back through WWII history and will certainly be reading more of David Baldacci in the future. (Any favorites to recommend?)
But this reading rabbit trail is not over.
Two weeks ago I went to dinner with my friend and our stoic male server was taking a while getting over to grab our order. When he circled back to our table, he said, “Sorry, I had to explain a whole book to someone.”
Do tell.
“Well, it’s a war story…”
I got ready to write it down while he stepped away to grab his hardcover copy from behind the bar, the B&N 50% off sticker still on it.
And this chill dude who didn’t even greet us with his name when we sat down suddenly came alive while he told us about this incredible female war correspondent who we have to read about. Then he told us about some of his other favorite war history books and some authors in the military thriller genre.
It was a whole rabbit trail that clearly made work feel less like work for him and I adore how books can do that with strangers. He’s for sure going to like Jack Carr and I am very excited to read First to the Front by Lorissa Rinehart.
I thank my dad and Tommy Lee Jones for this particular rabbit trail. Had I not had a single dad with a taste for action movies or brothers in the military, I’m not sure I would appreciate the books and movies that I do. It makes me wonder what else shapes our reading and watching tastes.
I’d love to know what you’re reading and listening to this weekend and how you came across that title. Let me know in the comments! Bonus hearts if you can tell me the most random way you’ve come across a book recommendation.
In the next couple weeks, I have for you a couple posts that I hope will clear up some misconceptions about homeschooling, a piece about curating our Internet spaces with care, and a story about my childhood experience of being separated from a sibling and reconnecting with her 15 years later.
So buckle up, I guess.
Dear authors of the world: I am the nerd who searches your name in my podcast app and will listen to as many of your interviews as I possibly can. So if you’re wondering if your readers want to hear you talk: yes, this girl wants to hear your thoughts on writing, reading, and everything else.
Oh, Alexis. What have you started. I don’t have an action war stories list, but I do have so many more. Do you want my 100 Best Fiction list or my 100 Best Biographies, History and Memoir list or my Picture Book Biography list or my Best Read Alouds list or . . . As for the best books I’ve read recently,The Unselected Joutnals of Emma M. Lion take the prize. Not action war stories.