2022 in media

some of this comes from a tag, courtesy of Emily : )

how many books?

So far I have read 92! (I am doing this tag a bit preemptively because I just finished my final assignment of the semester and am very excited to do non-school writing. I hope to read 100 this year.)

(Also, it is only fair to note that of those 92 books, some were philosophy books I only read most of, a few were long poems that I thought should count but weren’t *quite* book-length, and a couple were dialogues or essays that happened to be listed on Goodreads. So it’s probably more like 75ish actual full-length books. But I am going to say 92 because that’s impressive, and plenty of those shorter things were actually difficult and challenging reading.)

top five

New to me:

1. The Ballad of the White Horse
2. Piranesi
3. Confessions
4. The Silmarillion
5. Surprised by Oxford

May your Paths be safe, your Floors unbroken, and may the House fill your eyes with Beauty.

Piranesi

Honorable mention to all the Shakespeare I read (no particular play sticks out as a favorite, really, but it was mostly very good), The Man Who Was Thursday, Hannah Coulter, and all the philosophy books I really enjoyed reading but didn’t agree with enough to call “favorites.”

Rereads:

1. The Horse and His Boy
2. The Odyssey
3. Return of the Thief
4. Walking on Water
5. Out of the Silent Planet

Even a traitor may mend. I have known one that did.

The Horse and His Boy

story that came to me at a darker period

Reading Shakespeare aloud with friends helped anchor my weeks this past semester, and I’ll revise my earlier statement and point to Much Ado as among the best. Also, though I didn’t know it when I read it in the spring, Chesterton’s Ballad would later help me through a lot of emotional turmoil. And A Darkness at the Door helped distract me from stress over Thanksgiving break (we’ll see if my grades thank me later).

book that left you speechless

The Present Age by Kierkegaard left me with a lot to say and yet I’m pretty sure none of what I came up with approached the confusing brilliance of the author himself. I’m frustrated and intrigued and I intend to read more of his work in the future.

These words were spoken by Him to whom, according to His own statement, is given all power in heaven and on earth. You who hear me must consider within yourselves whether you will bow before his authority or not, accept and believe the words or not. But if you do not wish to do so, then for heaven’s sake do not go and accept the words because they are clever or profound or wonderfully beautiful, for that is a mockery of God.

The Present Age

top five films

1. 1917
2. Much Ado About Nothing (Kenneth Branagh)
3. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (rewatch)
4. Tolkien (rewatch)
5. Henry V (Kenneth Branagh)

I highly recommend all of these, but 1917 in particular is gripping, beautiful, and very well done, a look at a tiny part of a grand and awful war and one man’s courage in the face of incomprehensible violence and death.

live theater

I saw five shows at my college and two elsewhere. The highlights were definitely Ada and the Engine, which is wonderfully sad and disturbing and was done quite marvelously, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which really can’t help but be hilarious.

• The Threepenny Opera | 2 stars for the show itself, 4 for the production
• Ada and the Engine | 3 for the show, 5 for production
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream | 5 for the show, 4 for production
• Translations | 3 stars for both
• Our Town | 3 stars for both
• Pilgrim (2 times) | 3.5 for the show, 4.5 for production
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang | 2.5 for the show, 3.5 for production

reading goal updates!

In 2021, I shared a list of my reading goals for the next year (which I updated in mid-2022). Here is how I did on those:

• finished rereading the Queen’s Thief series!
• re-read The Hobbit and read The Silmarillion
• read The Man Who Was Thursday
• read Shadow and Bone and its various sequels
• read Right Ho, Jeeves and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• decided not to read The Door On Half-Bald Hill or Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
• decided not to (immediately) read The Songkiller’s Symphony and Operation Lionhearted
• am still in the middle of The God of the Garden, The Book of Concord, and Wittenberg vs. Geneva
• still planning to read The Yearling and The Gift of Fire
• & Death By Living and LOTR are still on my (very) short-term TBR!
• there are too many books on my June list to keep writing about here, sorry

Here are some books I want to read in 2023:

• Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl and Death By Living by N.D. Wilson
• The Gift of Fire by Richard Mitchell
• LOTR
• Cursed by Marissa Meyer
• This Beautiful Truth by Sarah Clarkson
• The Ball and the Cross by Chesterton
• The Wind in the Willows by Grahame
• The Death of Ivan Ilych by Tolstoy
• Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
• Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
• and these!

music of 2022

I try to chronicle my music tastes on Spotify. Here are some songs I loved this year:

• most everything Andrew Peterson, but especially “The Power of a Great Affection,” “The Rain Keeps Falling,” “Many Roads,” and all of Light for the Lost Boy
• Red (Taylor’s Version) because even a homeschool graduate classics major is susceptible to romantic angst in the form of pop music
• “I Sit Beside the Fire and Think” by Clamavi De Profundis
• “Achilles Heel” by J.Maya; this romantic pop also has classics references!
• “Old Churchyard” by The Wailin’ Jennys
• The Longest Johns & The High Kings
• “Nobody Knows” by The Lumineers
• “In the Kitchen” by Renee Rapp
• “Dostoevsky” by Scott Helman

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I wrote this after finishing my last assignment for this semester of college. The feeling of freedom was all too brief as now I am off to try and write and read a copious amount of words this break. I hope you all have a wonderful Advent and a happy and blessed Christmas. I’ll be back soon.

Tally ho,

Thalassa

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