An Intro to my 25 Days of Top Songs / Books

Well, here it is, the last day of November and we move into the holiday month; Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, etc. Yesterday I put up the outside lights. (I may try to add a few more today or next week, but they are basically up. So today I'm going to plan some of my December posts. I may also do one other post today, as I've finished two more books this weekk and want to update those.

Each year I try to do some sort of Top *** list. Some years I've done top TV shows, movies, actors, songs, books, etc. Last year, following my wife's example I did a Musical Advent calendar, picking 25 songs to lead up to Christmas day. So this is my plan for this year, the 25 favorite songs from my USB (I amend it regularly so there have been many changes over the year) and my 25 favorite books of 2019. Now fair to say, I haven't read all of my selections for 2019 yet, so it would have been possible that some of my December books might have the list.

So today, this is my plan. I'm going to warm things up with 3 songs that wouldn't make my Top 25 but that I really enjoy. Let's call them my novelty songs. I'll also highlight three of my December books that might have made it to my Top 25 list, but that I can't fairly add. So lets get started with some music.

Musical Trio

The Trash Mermaids

1. The Trash Mermaids - Panic Attack.

During my searches for new music, I have to say that quite often I'm attracted by the name of a group. You'll find that with all three of today's selections. The Trash Mermaids are described as an electro - pop band. They are lead by French vocalist Scarlett Blu. I quite like this song.

X-Ray Spex

2. X-Ray Spex - Identity.

X-Ray Spex were a punk rock band that formed in London in 1976. In their first incarnation they only released one album and five singles, calling themselves 'deliberate underachievers'. The song that I have is Identity from 1978.

Duck Sauce

3. Duck Sauce - Barbara Streisand.

OK, live and learn. (I mean me, here by the way). Duck Sauce is an American / Canadian DJ duo that formed in 2009. It consisted of American Armand van Helden and Canadian A-Trak. I just heard this song recently but it was their big single, released in 2010.

So there you go for my intro to December. In case you're worried about it, this will be my only forays into punk I think.

Now on to my three books. As I mentioned earlier, these are three of my December books that I have a feeling might have made it to my Top 25 list. So rather than leave them out, here they are as teasers for the month of December.

Literary Trio
I started two of the books in October but they are tomish and have taken me awhile to get going. I do have 5 or 6 books on the go at a time. The other book I've started this past week.

a. The Passage by Justin Cronin (Horror). I've had this book for a few years but finally dug it out, dusted it off and have given it a try. It reminds me of Stephen King's The Stand quite a bit.










"An epic and gripping tale of catastrophe and survival, The Passage is the story of Amy—abandoned by her mother at the age of six, pursued and then imprisoned by the shadowy figures behind a government experiment of apocalyptic proportions. But Special Agent Brad Wolgast, the lawman sent to track her down, is disarmed by the curiously quiet girl and risks everything to save her. As the experiment goes nightmarishly wrong, Wolgast secures her escape—but he can’t stop society’s collapse. And as Amy walks alone, across miles and decades, into a future dark with violence and despair, she is filled with the mysterious and terrifying knowledge that only she has the power to save the ruined world."

b. Middlemarch by George Eliot. I've read other books by Eliot and love her writing. Middlemarch has been no exception. It usually takes me awhile to get into the flow of these classics but I've been enjoying it very much and will probably finish it next week. It's been worth the effort. 

"By the time the novel appeared to tremendous popular and critical acclaim in 1871-2, George Eliot was recognized as England's finest living novelist. It was her ambition to create a world and portray a whole community--tradespeople, middle classes, country gentry--in the rising provincial town of Middlemarch, circa 1830. Vast and crowded, rich in narrative irony and suspense, Middlemarch is richer still in character, in its sense of how individual destinies are shaped by and shape the community, and in the great art that enlarges the reader's sympathy and imagination. It is truly, as Virginia Woolf famously remarked, 'one of the few English novels written for grown-up people'."

c. Death in Captivity by Michael Gilbert. I've read some of Gilbert's mysteries. This mystery is set during WWII in an Italian prisoner of war camp. The initial premise has intrigued me.










"While it has many of the elements of the classic detective story, it is also a gripping novel of mounting suspense that takes place in a 1943 prisoner of war camp for British officers in northern Italy—it was the first of Gilbert's numerous later works that would feature suspense and danger as much or more as elements of detection. Gilbert himself had been a British officer during the war, was captured, and interned in an Italian camp. He escaped and spent several months making his way through the Italian countryside trying to reach the British lines. Much of this book apparently reflects his own experiences. It was the basis of a 1959 British film, Danger Within (Breakout in the United States), that closely followed the events in the book. H.R.F. Keating, who wrote Gilbert's obituary for The Guardian, said that "Gilbert's time as a POW prompted Death In Captivity (1952), surely the only whodunnit set in a prisoner-of-war camp."

There you go, some songs and books to lead you into the Christmas countdown. I hope I haven't scared you away with any of my selections. See you tomorrow. Happy December.