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2016 in Music
[This post is part of a large project in which I am going through the popular music released in each year. Please see the note at the bottom of the post re: omissions and limitations.] Introduction While there were a lot of strong albums released in 2016, from first rate artists like Sia, Ariana Grande,…
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2015 in Music
[This post is part of a large project in which I am going through the popular music released in each year. Please see the note at the bottom of the post re: omissions and limitations.] Introduction 2014 was an all-time great year in pop music for me, so it’s not surprising 2015 was a bit…
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Monthly Reading Roundup: February 2026
I realized last month that doing a full recap of all my reading was going to be too onerous to be sustainable, so this month I’m introducing a new format, Nine Raves and One Pan, with an additional spot highlighting a piece of Notable Nonfiction. Nine Raves Searching for Terry Punchout, by Tyler Hellard (2018…
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2014 in Music
[This post is part of a large project in which I am going through the popular music released in each year. Please see the note at the bottom of the post re: omissions and limitations.] Introduction There are some years whose music is universally acknowledged as being superlative — 1969, 1984, and 2024 come immediately…
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2013 in Music
[This post is part of a large project in which I am going through the popular music released in each year. Please see the note at the bottom of the post re: omissions and limitations.] Introduction If I had to pick a theme for the music I loved in 2013, it would have to be…
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2012 in Music
[This post is part of a large project in which I am going through the popular music released in each year. Please see the note at the bottom of the post re: omissions and limitations.] Introduction 2012 is the year that 2010s music finally feels like 2010s music. You have Taylor Swift’s shift towards pop…
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Monthly Reading Roundup
January was an interesting month in my reading life. Overall it was been successful, with a lot of 4.5- or 5-star reads, but not much has really stood out to me so far. The book for which I had the highest hopes, David James Duncan’s Sun House (2023), proved to be far too long, repetitive,…
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2011 in Music
[This post is part of a large project in which I am going through the popular music released in each year. Please see the note at the bottom of the post re: omissions and limitations.] Introduction If 2010 musically felt like it had one foot in the 2000s and one in the 2010s, 2011 felt…
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2010 in Music
[This post is part of a large project in which I am going through the popular music released in each year. Please see the note at the bottom of the post re: omissions and limitations.] Introduction The dawning of the new decade of the 2010s was marked with a lot of optimism. It was just…
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Top Reads of 2025
I’ve been doing these best reads of the year lists since 2017 and it’s become one of my favourite traditions. This year, I thought I’d recognize the top 25 of ‘25, fifteen fiction and ten fiction. Fiction 15. Life, and Death, and Giants, by Ron Rindo (2025) If I wanted to be nitpicky, there were…
Matt's Books and Music
So many books, so many songs
Matt's Books and Music 