PopSugar Reading Challenge Book 33 or The New Weird

For a place I've always wanted to visit, I read the Welcome to Night Vale book. Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor have been telling us about this weirdly magical place since 2012 and I've always wondered what this place would look like. The closest I came to visiting was to see the live show earlier this year with the voice actors surrounded by a community of fans.

Fink and Cranor write a spectacular podcast. I adore Welcome to Night Vale. However, I don’t think Night Vale’s weirdness translated especially well into print format this time.

I found it hard to engage in the book as much as I expected. I adored this town and these characters. Why isn’t this speaking to me more? I’m willing to bet that if I’d done the audio book, it would have totally altered my experience.

I don’t think the book was bad but it was as amazing as I expected it to be. It was good and tied up a very curious story that’s been running around the podcast for ages. It’s a bit rare that Night Vale’s weirdness gets explained so that was pretty fun.

I’d love to see another Night Vale book in the future. Maybe short stories about various pieces of weirdness with people around town or another novel that ties up a loose end. BF enjoys Night Vale but doesn’t have a ton of reading downtime so I’m thinking about getting the audiobook off bandcamp as a surprise for him. We’ll see if that changes my mind about the book a bit.

This One Time at Bandcamp

I think I love bandcamp. It's a great place to discover new and unknown artists or for independent artists to get their stuff out there. 

You can stream all musical content for free. I absolutely love this since I need to spend less money but have that annoyingly human thirst for novelty. My brain loves the fun chemical rush of a new thing. Now I can just get it for free.

If I ever did get around to downloading, most of the download costs are very comparable to iTunes. It may be better than iTunes since your money is going right to the artist instead of some corporate machine and the man. (Picture me in a flannel shirt and grumbly for that last part and it gets even better.)

Michael Cera quietly dropped his new album from there. I discovered Dessa and Eliza Rickman from Welcome to Nightvale weather. I love the unique and ethereal sound of Rickman's music. I discovered The Smittens while poking around on their discover section. A friend told me about Margot MacDonald who's a local artist with some serious talent. She reminds me a tiny bit of Emmy Rossum on her first album.

You can follow artist you like and add CDs you don't want to buy or download right away to your wishlist (done it). I swear if I get more money and start downloading things from here I'll turn into such a hipster. 'I'm listening to this awesome indie band you've probably never heard of.'

It's not all indie stuff, although that does seem to be a majority of stuff I'm finding. I've seen metal, electronic, rap, devotional, classic, and comedy. I've got so much exploring to do.

Music: Ruth by Michael Cera

PS: If you're not listening to Welcome to Nightvale, wtf are you waiting for???