monday mix tape

i made you a mix tape of all my favorites this week

Links:

• First things first. I saw this photo of a work by Katie Herzog linked on my Design for Mankind feed and haven't been able to stop looking at it all week. The fact that it's made from yarn and is a 6ft by 8ft installation just makes it that much more fun!

Phonebooks, Katie Herzog

• NY Times Op-Ed Guest Columnist, Bono, ruminating on the Chairman, the art of music and Irish pubs... (I'm getting pretty excited about the new album due in March!)

• What's your favorite song-in-movie sequence? This post had some pretty great selections (we just introduced our sons to the 80's classic Back to the Future a couple of weeks ago!), many I'd never heard of, and a few I wouldn't bother with. Alas, my all-time favorite song sequence in a movie was not even listed.
  
  
  
• I love the library, I love reading lists and I loved this article. (Thanks to Andy Crouch at Culture Making for pointing it out!)

Speaking of reading suggestions...

Books: Cyndere's Midnight, Jeffrey Overstreet

Maybe you remember my thoughts on Overstreet's first novel, Auralia's Colors and maybe you don't. Maybe you remember my comments of admiration for this disciple artist in my picks for Favorite Creators and Cultivators in 2008 and maybe you don't. But I hope you'll remember to check out this series the next time you visit your favorite bookstore. It's worth the looking and worth the reading.

This weekend I am still trying to get over this mid-winter illness and found it the perfect time to finish reading this second in a series of four titles in Auralia's Thread. I found that Overstreet's confidence in storytelling had only grown since the first title. I was more drawn into this other-world, the Expanse and more entranced by the small beauties found in a few brave souls trying to make a difference in the midst of adversity and ugliness.

If the mark of a good read is that one is removed from reality for a time but more hopeful than ever about the reality they face after turning the last page, than this, indeed, was a good read.

They found the cave where Lesyl was singing. Children were gathered in a crowd about her. Merya, once a Gatherer and now in charge of planning meals, stood cradling her newborn at the edge of the room, listening. Many of the soldiers, the Gatherers, and the Housefolk were assembling as well.

Cal-raven tried to quell the emotions that seized him as he took in this sight. Peace. Relief.

Lesyl sang quietly about a magnificent violet tree that had fallen in a storm. One bird tried to lift it, but her wings were much too feeble. Another came to offer help, but they were not enough. But when their whole flock descended, each bird grasping a branch, they could fly together and lift the tree, planting it back in the scar of its uprooting. As she sang the chorus again, the children of Abascar raised their tired voices to join her. (Cyndere's Midnight, pp. 310, 11)