January Recap

January has been marked with loss—the deaths of David Bowie and Alan Rickman, the closing of a favorite restaurant. But good things have happened, too: David Bowie’s newest and last album, Blackstar, came out. We celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. And we read a lot of books, listened to a lot of music, and watched a lot of movies.

We once again set our reading resolutions for the new year, and Melissa F. helped us start off right with Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Kayla gave us a list of her favorite R&B and hip-hop albums of the decade so far, suggested songs to go along with Between the World and Me and shamelessly plugged the television show Shameless.

Leigh Anne introduced us to poet Gregory Pardlo, and Whitney celebrated Lewis Carroll’s birthday. Ginny wrote an excellent and thorough book list on body positivity.

Ross summed up his reading accomplishments from 2015, and Natalie got a head start on her 2016 resolution to cook better meals for her family. Scott M. suggested some good reads from Latin America, and Jess began her 2016 reading challenge with a play. Kelly resolved to get in trouble, and Joelle explored Brian Eno’s music.

In February, we’ll be writing about books, movies, music and more by our favorite African American artists. We hope you’ll join us!

-Team Eleventh Stack

Remembering Alan Rickman

This is how I learned of Alan Rickman’s passing: I checked Facebook while eating breakfast, and immediately saw that my sister had written, “First David Bowie, and now Alan Rickman?… Please tell me that this is a hoax.”

“Not him,” I thought. “Maybe it actually is a hoax?” I didn’t have to scroll far to see that it wasn’t. When my husband came into the room, I didn’t have words, so I just pointed at the headline. He paused a moment and said, “I guess we’ll never have another Galaxy Quest.” Not that anyone really expected a sequel, but the point is, Rickman can’t be replaced. No one else has that distinctive, resonant voice. No one else has those perfect facial expressions.

Alan Rickman in 2011. Photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen; used under a Creative Commons license – click through for source.

Daniel Radcliffe, who starred with him in the Harry Potter movies, described him as “kind, generous, self-deprecating and funny.” He must have been a wonderful person, but he excelled at playing characters with a flair for being arch, put-upon or dour, i.e. the perfect voice for Marvin in the 2005 film adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. When you need a robot with a brain the size of a planet, who’s constantly depressed (and not afraid to let everyone know it), who better to turn to than Alan Rickman?

Below is a list I’ve compiled of times Rickman played a supporting role and still managed to steal the show—every single time.

Remember when he called off Christmas? Remember when he refused to say that stupid line one more time, but then said it anyway (of course)? Remember when he revealed the truth about his past to Harry?

What are we going to do without him? I guess we’ll have to obsessively watch his movies over and over. Here are a few to get you started, if you want to join me. There are plenty more, so feel free to mention your favorites in the comments.

• Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
• Sense and Sensibility
• Die Hard
• Galaxy Quest
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• All the Harry Potter movies

Farewell, Mr. Rickman. There’s only one thing left for me to say: By Grabthar’s hammer, you shall be avenged.

-Megan

Celebrating Alice

On the 27^th of this month, we celebrate the 184^th birthday of one of the most influential writers to grace children’s literature … the Rev. Charles Lutwitdge Dodgson. But most of us know him better under his super secret superhero/pen name: Lewis Carroll.

Born in 1832 into a conservative and religious family, Carroll’s father, a parish priest, married his first cousin and had 11 children. Carroll was the eldest boy, the family entertainer, and even though he had a stammer, he was a practiced storyteller for his brothers and sisters and a brilliant student.

Carroll had an affinity for children and collected “Child Friends” throughout his lifetime that raised some eyebrows, even in Victorian times, when the age of consent was 14. This otherwise dry, methodical, punctilious and orderly man preferred them to his adult peers, thinking of them as a refuge from adults and his duties as a Don of Mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford.  He came alive before children, inspired by their innocence and mere presence. And most especially by the presence of one little girl in particular: Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Before you  think about comparing him to another famous entertainer and child-afficiando, his biographers have described him as a man who held himself to high moral standards. Although Carroll never attained full priesthood, he did take his holy orders, and in Victorian times, a clergyman having children over for tea wasn’t considered especially scandalous. He simply loved the innocence of childhood.

On a scorching hot July 4^th in 1862 on the river Thames, he was, as usual, hanging out with Alice Liddell and her sisters. As they begged for a story, he unwillingly told them the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. He hadn’t written a single word down, and it was only after Liddell’s incessant nagging that Carroll did finally put pen to paper (because kids are amazing at reminding grownups what they should be doing). So can I get all of you take a second out of your day to thank Ms. Liddell? It’s only because of her that generations of artists, photographers and writers were able to be influenced by this wonderful work of imagination. Let’s hear an amen to that!

The Library has loads of books based off of Mr. Carroll’s works. Let’s take a look at just a few of the awesome titles:

• Alice’s Pop-Up Wonderland by Nick Denchfield: This title is only available at CLP Main’s Children’s department and does not circulate, but is a fun way to explore Wonderland.
• The Annotated Alice by Lewis Carroll: Looking for a little more in-depth information on your favorite author and his brilliant wordplay by the world’s foremost expert on Carroll? This is the place to start.
• Alice in Wonderland: A Graphic Novel by Alessandro Ferrari: If you’re looking for the classic book, but with an artistic twist, look no further than this fun graphic novel.
• Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter
• I Am Alice: Body Swamp in Wonderland
• Alice in the Country of Hearts
• After Alice by Gregory McGuire
• Lewis Carroll: A Biography by Morton N. Cohen

Share your favorite Alice spin-offs or tributes in the comments!

-Whitney

Body Positivity Reading List

Abbey’s recent post on Jes Baker’s new book, Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls: A Guide for Unapologetic Living, inspired me to write a longer post on body-positivity. I think that Baker’s book is great, but if I had a criticism, I’d say that the title is misleading. Body positivity is emphatically not just for girls and women, nor is it just for fat people.

Contrary to what you see in the media, we are not all supposed to look the same.

Simply put, the body positivity movement is about feeling good about your body in a culture that constantly sends all of us messages about how we’re not good enough. Body positivity goes way beyond fat and thin; it’s about intersectionality — the ways that different aspects of our lives and identities intersect with our body image; it varies for everyone, but this might include race, disability, size, age, sexuality, gender presentation and more.

Again, I think Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls is a dynamic and accessible introduction to and exploration of the concept of body positivity, but as Baker herself points out, it’s far from the only book out there on this subject. Here’s a look at some additional options:

Children’s Books for Talking about Body Image

• What is Beautiful? – Maryjean Avery
• I’m A Pretty Little Black Girl! – Betty Bynum
• Mixed Me! – Taye Diggs
• Brontorina – James Howe
• Halfway to Perfect – Nikki Grimes
• Real Kids Come In All Sizes: Ten Essential Lessons to Build Your Child’s Body Esteem – Kathy Kater
• My Princess Boy – Cheryl Kilodavis
• Chris P. Bacon: My Life So Far … – Lucero Len
• Stand Tall, Molly Lou Mellon – Patty Lovell
• My Rules for Being a Pretty Princess – Heath McKenzie
• Freckleface Strawberry – Julianne Moore
• What I Like About Me! – Allia Zobel Nolan
• It’s Okay to be Different – Todd Parr
• You’re Wearing that to School?! – Lynne Plourde
•  101 Ways to Help your Daughter Love Her Body – Brenda Lane Richardson
• The Skin You Live In – Michael Tyler

Disability and/or Health and Body Image

• Health at Every Size:  The Surprising Truth About Your Weight – Linda Bacon
• The Unapologetic Fat Girl’s Guide to Exercise and Other Incendiary Acts – Hanne Blank
• The Obesity Myth: Why America’s Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to Your Health – Paul F. Campos
• Mermaid: A Memoir of Resilience – Mary Eileen Cronin
• Disability, Gender and the Trajectories of Power – Asha Hans
• Surface Tensions: Surgery, Bodily Boundaries and the Social Self – Lenore Manderson
• Baring It All (DVD)

Gender and/or Sexuality and Body Image

• Not Tonight Dear, I Feel Fat – Michael Alevar
• Gender Outlaws – Kate Bornstein
• Trans bodies, Trans Selves : A Resource for the Transgender Community – Laura Erickson-Schroth
• Come As You Are – Emily Nagoski
• The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics and the Ethics of Queer Life – Michael Warner
• Black Genders and Sexuality
• Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme

General/Misc.

• Body Respect: What Conventional Health Books Get Wrong, Leave Out and Just Plain Fail to Understand About Weight – Linda Bacon
• Body of Truth: How Science, History, and Culture Drive Our Obsession with Weight—and What We Can Do About It  -Harriet Brown
• The Body Project – Joan Jacobs Brumberg
• Embrace: My Story From Body Loather to Body Lover – Taryn Brumfitt
• Live Large!: Ideas, Affirmations and Actions for Sane Living in a Larger Body – Cheri Erdam
• The Good Body – Eve Ensler
• Size Matters:  How Height Affects the Health, Happiness and Success of Boys—and the Men They Become – Stephanie Hall
• Looking Good: Male Body Image in Modern America  – Lynne Luciano
• Love Your Body, Love Your Life – Sarah Maria
• Beautiful You: A Daily Guide to Radical Self Acceptance – Rosie Molinary
• The Adonis Complex: How to Identify, Treat and Prevent Body Obsession in Men and Boys – Harrison Pope
• Fat is a Feminist Issue: An Anti-Diet Guide for Women – Susie Orbach
• Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion – Virgie Tovar
• The Fat Studies Reader – Marilyn Wann
• The Body Reader: Essential Social and Cultural Readings
• Body Outlaws: Rewriting the Rules of Beauty and Body Image
• Breasts (DVD)

Media and/or Advertising and Body Image

• All Made Up: A Girl’s Guide to Seeing Through Celebrity Hype and Celebrating Real Beauty – Audrey Brashich
• In Your Face: The Culture of Beauty and You – Shari Graydon
• Am I Thin Enough Yet? The Cult of Thinness and the Commercialization of Identity – Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber
• The Girl on the Magazine Cover: The Origins of Visual Stereotypes in American Mass Media – Carolyn Kitch
• Airbrush Nation – Jennifer Nelson
• The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women – Naomi Wolf
• Women, Celebrity and Cultures of Aging
• Miss Representation (DVD)

Race and Body Image

• Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America – Ayana Byrd
• Bright, Light and Damn Near White: Biracial and Triracial Culture in America – Stephanie Rose Bird
• Hair Matters: Beauty, Power, and Black Women’s Consciousness – Ingrid Banks
• Skin Deep: How Race and Complexion Matter in the “Color Blind” Era – Cedric Herring
• Hungry for More: A Keeping-It-Real Guide for Black Women on Weight and Body Image – Robyn McGee
• Hair Raising: Beauty, Culture and African American Women – Noliwe Rooks
• Style and Status: Selling Beauty to African-American Women, 1920 – 1975 – Susannah Walker
• Other People’s Skin: Four Novellas

Art by Carol Rossetti – Click through for source.

This isn’t a fully comprehensive list, but it’s my hope that this is a good starting place for those interested in these topics. I also highly recommend spending some time with nontraditional  media; amazing things are happening in the body positive community online. Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls has a fantastic online resource list in an appendix, and  the #bodypositive, #bodypositivity, #medialiteracy and #effyourbeautystandards tags on Instagram and Tumblr are another good place to start.

Riots not diets,

Ginny

Stay Out of Trouble? Never!

When someone tells me to stay out of trouble, I invariably respond with, “Never.”

Well-behaved women seldom make history, after all.

And that is one of the many reasons why I love Kelly Link’s newest short story collection, Get in Trouble.

These nine stories are fantastically dark and brooding, but not so dark as to leave you utterly depressed at their end. They touch on death, suicide, betrayal, secrets kept and secrets revealed, creepy trends, the afterlife, and more.

My favorite story from the collections is the first one, “The Summer People” (which you can read online at The Wallstreet Journal for free!). It begins as one thing and transforms into another, and I love the way Link leads the reader from grounded reality to an otherworldly fantastical place.

Some short story collections feel scattered or uneven, but this one never misses a step. Once you’re thrown off balance by the unreality and harshness of that first story, Link keeps you unsettled through the rest of the collection, hardly giving you room to breathe. Her prose is fantastical but solid–you know there’s more bubbling under the surface, even if you can only glimpse it.

The characters are all complex, flawed, and relatable. They don’t always behave well (you can guess that from the title), but you can’t help but relate to them anyway (And who behaves well all the time, anyway?).

One of the subtler themes in this book is that of longing and belonging. Many of the characters want something that they cannot have, or can only have at someone else’s expense. Some of them appear to belong to a group, but feel isolated and alone. Watching them all work through their problems, sometimes to a tragic conclusion, is riveting and heartbreaking.

For the audiobook, each story has a different narrator; a common practice for audiobooks of short story collections. Generally, there’s at least one narrator I can’t stand (it was hard for me to get through Haruki Murakami’s The Elephant Vanishes because one of the narrators irritated me so much, and of course that one read multiple stories), but there wasn’t a bad one in this bunch.

Like the stories, the narrators feel as if they go together. There’s no discord or disharmony in their reading–each one fits the story he or she reads, and they sound good next to each other.

If you like authors like Karen Russell, Haruki Murakami, Jorge Luis Borges, and/or Aimee Bender, give Kelly Link a try.

Request Get in Trouble in print, as an eBook, as an audiobook, or as an eAudiobook.

My Five Favorite R&B/Hip-Hop Albums of the 2010s (So Far)

 

Black History Month is soon approaching, but it doesn’t have to be a certain month for me to talk music. This post is all about R&B and hip-hop, specifically some of my favorite r&b and hip-hop albums of the 2010s.

Beyoncé: 4

Year released: 2011

This was the album where Bey went back to her R&B roots. Personally, I feel that this album doesn’t get enough credit for how good it is. This album spawns the girl power anthem “Run the World (Girls),” a beautiful love song “1+1,” and one of my all time favorite songs of hers, “End of Time.” I feel like this album was overshadowed by her pregnancy.

Drake: Take Care (also available on Hoopla)

Year released: 2011

This was the album when Drake mania exploded to another level. It’s also where the assumption that Drake is emo began. Personally, I don’t think that he’s emo. I just think that he’s comfortable with expressing how he feels, which is refreshing. This album is one that you can press play & let it ride. One of my favorite tracks on this album is “The Real Her” that features Lil’ Wayne & Andre 3000, who delivers my favorite verse on the song. This album also features the classic “Marvin’s Room,” which spawned several remixes over the summer of 2011.

Miguel: Kaleidoscope Dream

Year released: 2012

Miguel carefully avoided the sophomore slump with Kaleidoscope Dream. This album is what made Miguel crossover into mainstream attention. This album features the Grammy Award winning, timeless single “Adorn.” The album is alternative R&B & it works. It’s a great album from start to finish.

J. Cole: 2014 Forest Hills Drive

Year released: 2014

J.Cole has always made great music, but this is the album that finally made the naysayers pay attention & give him his long overdue credit. Cole did a very brave thing with the release of this album by having it come out without releasing any singles. This was a bold decision, but it worked because it sold a lot in its first week. Not many artists nowadays can do that. This album was a story, with each song being a snapshot into a different time in Cole’s life. It’s a great album not only for hip-hop, but for music in general. The album features “Apparently,” which is a great song and the first verse always gets me emotional when he talks about his mother.

Chris Brown: F.A.M.E.  

Year released: 2011

This album was Brown’s comeback album, and in my opinion, his best album. On this album, Brown showcased that he could do practically any genre of music, even rap. He proved that on the blockbuster single “Look At Me Now.” This album earned Brown a Grammy for Best R&B Album in 2012. It was well deserved.

Honorable mention- Kendrick Lamar: good kid, m.A.A.d. city (also available on Hoopla)

Year released: 2012

This album is one of the best rap albums that I’ve heard in a long time. This album is basically Lamar’s autobiography set to music. Throughout the album, listeners can hear snippets of his friends and family on different tracks. It gave audiences a closer glimpse into the life of Kendrick Lamar.

These are some of my favorite R&B/hip-hop albums of the 2010s so far. What are yours? Let us know in the comments below.

~Kayla

Baby’s on Fire

My first year of college, 1983, was a huge transitional year in my musical awareness. I worked at the university’s music library and I also became a DJ. At work, I was exposed to classical music for the first time, international music like Indian ragas, and contemporary composers like Steve Reich and Edgar Varese. At the radio station, I played music I was more familiar with at first, punk and prog rock were my staples, but I greatly expanded my repertoire every day. At home, I was obsessed with these four albums by Brian Eno:

 Here Come the Warm Jets (1974)

 Taking Tiger Mountain (by Strategy) (1974)

Postcards for this Peking opera gave Eno the idea for the name.

 Another Green World (1975)

Here is a book detailing the album: Brian Eno’s Another Green World by Geeta Dayal.

 Before and After Science (1977)

Listening to them on Hoopla has brought me back to that time.

These albums are pop music and avant-garde at the same time. They contain driving rhythms and multi-textured aural qualities, with glam-rock sensibilities at times, ambient electronica at others. I hear direct influences of David Bowie and David Byrne. I also hear a unique set of songs similar to other music only in what has come after. The vocal timber is what I think draws me the most. Eno’s voice goes from almost sneeringly punk to decidedly New Wave. A frequent contributor to the albums is Robert Fripp, my favorite guitarist of the era.

I listened to these so often, they would be in the soundtrack to my college years if it were a movie, just like in this one: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.

Brian Eno has been an influential record producer since the 1970s. His sonic stamp is present on the albums of The Talking Heads, U2, Coldplay, and many others. He was planning to collaborate on another project with his good friend David Bowie. It was Bowie’s recent death that prompted me to revisit these touchstones of my past.

 

-Joelle

Cooking Tips from the Tasteless

We are  more than halfway through January, so it may be a little late in the game to talk about New Years Resolutions … buuuuut I feel like I am actually succeeding for once, so I want to share my winningness with you, dear readers!

This year, instead of cut and dry, do or die resolutions having to do with my weight (a favorite for me and every other person in America according to current TV commercials), I made a promise to myself to work on some more general things.

1. I will yell at my kids less (already failed spectacularly, but hey it’s an every day battle)
2. I will get back to crafting (I have made 6 batches of goats milk soap and cannot wait to make more while also boring everyone to death with details about soap making. Look out, that post is coming soon, dear readers … i.e., captive audience)
3. Learn some new recipes…

…I am a mediocre cook (and that is being nice). Don’t get me wrong, I love to eat delicious food and I appreciate that cooking is an art form … mama just don’t have time for all that nonsense. For years the only “spice” in my cabinet was salt and my usual goal is to have a protein, vegetable, and starch on the plate in under 30 minutes. Edible is what I aim for, adjectives like “tasty” and “flavorful” are out of my reach. But recently my husband and my oldest daughter have been voicing their … let’s say concerns … over my recipe repertoire. So this year I decided to try something new. I checked out a few cookbooks from the Library, found recipes to try, and then (this is where it gets interesting) … I read them. I didn’t just glance at the ingredients, substituting half of them with what I had on hand.  I made lists, I purchased things and I followed the directions. And do you know, it worked? So far I have made three different meals from three cookbooks that my husband and kids ate, and then … ASKED FOR MORE. Not for something else, mind you, but for more of the thing I cooked.  It. Was. Amazing.

The Best 30 Minute Recipe (suggested by my boss Ian!)
From this cookbook, I made a skillet version of shepherds pie. Even with peeling and mashing the potatoes myself (my kids had a field day with the peels, creating “witches stew”) this really did only take 30 minutes and it was delicious. (Sadly this was also the only meal I remembered to photograph.) I plan on making several more recipes from this book. I may even go out and buy my own copy, and that is saying something.

I Didn’t Know My Slow Cooker Could Do That
This one I just pulled off the shelf on a whim. I love my slow cooker and the few passable things I do make are made in the slow cooker, where all I have to do is dump the ingredients in and walk away. I have tried to find different slow cooker recipes before but generally get annoyed because they mostly seem like variations on the same 10 to 15 recipes. This book had a couple new things I have never tried before and the beef and broccoli recipe that I made was great.

One Pan, Two Plates
This was another one I found on the shelf. I really like the idea of those “4 or 5 or whatever random number of ingredients” recipe books, but when I’ve flipped through them I don’t really see anything interesting. I picked this one up hoping it would be similar in theme given that the recipes were limited to one pan and meant for weeknights. But that it would offer more flare; and while the recipes were a little more involved, I liked that the directions were simple and ingredients were kept to a minimum. Also, technically I have four plates I need to fill nightly, but my seven-year-old eats like a bird and the toddler can only put away so much before passing out in a food coma, so it worked for us. I made Hungarian beef goulash, mainly because I have always wanted to try goulash; it’s a great, fun word to say. I will admit I may have liked this more than my husband and kids, but I don’t care. It was yummy. A lot of the recipes in this book seem like things outside my ability level, but they also sound delicious, so I am going to try and stretch myself by making a few more recipes. If things go well this might be another title I actually go out and buy for keeps.

I am going to try and keep this resolution. There is a certain amount of pride I felt making things that my family liked instead of  something that just met their basic dietary requirements. If you have any suggestions for other recipes or cookbooks I should, try leave them in the comments, and I will report back any triumphs, and failures, from your suggestions.

-Natalie

 

Read Harder: Vol. 1

This year, I plan on chronicling my adventures with Book Riot’s 2016 Read Harder Challenge.

Read a play

I thought, for a hot second, about re-reading something from my high school English classes. But then I remembered that I hated Hedda Gabler, and while I love Shakespeare, I just didn’t have it in me. I wanted something short and funny. Arsenic and Old Lace, maybe?

Written in 1939 by Joseph Kesselring, it opened in 1941 and ran for 1,444 performances. This dark comedy is centered around the Brewster family — our hero Mortimer, his two brothers and their spinster aunts. And aside from Mortimer, they’re all insane.

Teddy believes he is Panama Canal-era Theordore Roosevelt, digging locks in the basement. Jonathan has just had surgery to conceal his identity (he now looks like Boris Karloff and was, in fact, played by Karloff on stage) and is on the run with his alcoholic doctor. The dear, sweet aunts have taken to murdering elderly gentlemen by offering them a bit of company and a glass of home-made elderberry wine laced with arsenic, strychnine, and “just a pinch” of cyanide. Poor Mortimer just wants to get married.

If farce and dark comedy is your jam, I can’t recommend this enough. And check out the movie, directed by Frank Capra; it stars Cary Grant as Mortimer and Peter Lorre as the surgeon, Dr. Einstein. I saw it as a kid and I think it informed my sense of humor as much as any Muppets or Mel Brooks movie.

— Jess

 

 

Hey Babe, Let’s Go Out Tonight

 

Image from:  ca.hellomagazine.com

 

Monday morning I was home, and had somehow avoided watching or listening to the news or going online to check my social media news feeds. When I finally logged in around noon, the first thing I saw was a sad post in my Facebook feed, mourning the loss of David Bowie (born David Robert Jones).

Surely this must be a hoax, I told myself.

Sadly it was not. Over the course of the day, the main thing that struck me was how many people (from completely different walks of life) where in mourning or disbelief over his passing. It takes a cultural icon of a very unique and special stature to garner this sort of grieving from so many different people around the world.

You too have probably engaged with Bowie’s music or art at some point in your life. Today the Eleventh Stack bloggers would like to share their own favorite David Bowie songs or memories, and we encourage you to share as well in the comments section. Farewell, Mr. Bowie — the world is made a little less interesting by your passing.

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It’s nearly impossible to choose just a couple of favorites from Bowie’s vast catalog of amazing music, but if I must, these are my current choices. Ask me next week and I may choose different titles.

“Golden Years” (Station to Station, 1976) – This is one of my husband’s favorites, too. It’s hard for me not to play air guitar or otherwise jam to this song.  I love the refrain: “I’ll stick with you baby for a thousand years. Nothing’s gonna touch you in these golden years.”

“Modern Love” (Let’s Dance, 1983) – Although the backup singers annoy me slightly, I still adore this song. I had no idea what I was listening to the first time I heard it on the radio, and I kind of hated it and kind of couldn’t get enough of it. It just got into my head, and the more times I heard it, the more I loved it.

My favorite Bowie pop culture moment is when he turned out to be the shape-shifting leader of the Guild of Calamitous Intent on Venture Brothers. I don’t care that he didn’t actually do the voice. It was too awesome for words.

-Megan

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We had a white cat growing up with two different colored eyes that my aunt named Bowie (aka The Thin White Duke). I thought it was such a lame name for a cat. The only thing i really knew about Bowie at the time was that he was the dude wearing tights in Labyrinth that gave me strange and uncomfortable feelings.

Fast forward ten or so years, and Bowie’s music would become an essential part of the soundtrack to the rest of my life. I love so many of his albums, but hold a special candle for Hunky Dory, since it was the first record of his I bought on vinyl as a burgeoning wannabe music nerd.

Special mention should probably go to his 1977 album Low, which I still find haunting and beautiful to this day.

-Tara

[A tip: the library owns many David Bowie albums on CD, but most of them have a wait list at the moment. However, our streaming service Hoopla has many, many Bowie albums that you can check out right now. If you’ve never used Hoopla and would like some help we’re always happy to lend a hand.]

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