Forever a Stranger, and Alone - 2018 wrap-up

- O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder, lost!*

Authors, politicians, entrepreneurs, and musicians. They all die. Some of them die young, some at their own hand, some die shortly after a partner or long-time collaborator passes. Some we miss, others we ponder, still others we wonder that they were still alive up to 2018. 

Dolores O'Riordan
'Fast' Eddie Clarke
Ursula Le Guin
Billy Graham
Stephen Hawking
Barbara Bush
Verne Troyer
Margot Kidder
Glenn Branca
Tom Wolfe
Kate Spade
Anthony Bourdain
Vinnie Paul Abbott
Steve Ditko
Jon Schnepp
Aretha Franklin
Robin Leach
Kofi Annan
Philip Roth
John McCain
Burt Reynolds
William Coors
Paul Allen
Stan Lee
George H W Bush
Penny Marshall
Ricky Jay
Matt 'Guitar' Murphy

Here also, is my annual favorite; a list of albums that came out 20 years ago. These are records I listened to extensively, either when they were new, as I discovered them, or in some cases, in the last year. They each represent a time period to me. As examples: my first concert was seeing the Newsboys on their Step Up to the Microphone Tour; I also re-listened to Opeth's My Arms, Your Hearse this summer as I working my way through a grindcore/death metal book called Choosing Death (review soon).

Air - Moon Safari
Beck - Mutations
Belle & Sebastian - The Boy with the Arab Strap
Cake - Prolonging the Magic
Jerry Cantrell - Boggy Depot
Death - Sound of Perseverance
Death Cab for Cutie - Something About Airplanes
Dishwalla - And You Think You Know What Life's About
Eels - Electro-Shock Blues
Eve 6 - Eve 6
Kid Rock - Devil Without a Cause
Liquid Tension Experiment - Liquid Tension Experiment
Metallica - Garage Inc.
MxPx - Slowly Going the Way of the Buffalo
Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Newsboys - Step Up to the Microphone
The Offspring - Americana
Opeth - My Arms, Your Hearse
Pedro the Lion - It's Hard to Find a Friend
Rancid - Life Won't Wait
Refused - The Shape of Punk to Come
Joe Satriani - Crystal Planet
Elliott Smith - XO
System of a Down - System of a Down

The albums I bought this year include:

Ihsahn - After
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue (LP)
Mastodon - Crack the Skye
Lifelover - Konkurs
Mastodon - Blood Mountain
Ulver - Bergtatt: Et eeventyr i 5 capitler

Books I read this year are listed below:

Tad Williams - The Dragonbone Chair
E B White - Stuart Little
Jorge Luis Borges - Ficciones
Grant Morrison - The Invisibles Vol 1
Fyodor Dostoevsky - The House of the Dead
Dan Simmons - Hyperion
Neil Gaiman - The Absolute Sandman Vol 1
Daniel Clowes - Ghost World
Paul Auster - City of Glass
Brian K Vaughan - Saga Vol 1
Beverly Cleary - Beezus and Ramona
Scott Snyder - American Vampire Vol 1
Brian K Vaughan - Saga Vol 2
Dan Simmons - The Fall of Hyperion
Gaston Leroux - The Phantom of the Opera
Brian K Vaughan - Saga Vol 3
Brian K Vaughan - Saga Vol 4
Neil Gaiman - The Absolute Sandman Vol 2
Brian K Vaughan - Saga Vol 5
Joe Abercrombie - The Blade Itself
Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
Joe Abercrombie - Before They Are Hanged
Richard Bach - Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Brian K Vaughan - Saga Vol 6
Paul Auster - Ghosts
Joe Abercrombie - Last Argument of Kings
Alexandre Dumas - The Black Tulip
Paul Auster - The Locked Room
Neil Gaiman - The Absolute Sandman Vol 3
Joan Didion - The White Album
Brandon Sanderson - Oathbringer
Beverly Cleary - Ramona the Pest
Isaac Asimov - I, Robot
Dan Simmons - Endymion
Wendy & Richard Pini - Complete Elfquest Vol 1
Raymond Carver - Where I'm Calling From
Tom Wolfe - The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Robert Cormier - After the First Death
Philip K Dick - Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Brian K Vaughan - Saga Vol 8
Wendy & Richard Pini - Complete Elfquest Vol 2
Wendy MacDonald - Mrs Piggle Wiggle's Magic
Wendy & Richard Pini - Complete Elfquest Vol 3
Dan Simmons - The Rise of Endymion
Hylke Speerstra - Cruel Paradise
John Fante - Wait Until Spring, Bandini
German Stories - ed. Harry Steinhauer
Beverly Cleary - The Mouse and the Motorcycle
John Irving - The World According to Garp
Neil Gaiman - The Absolute Sandman Vol 4
Neil Gaiman - The Absolute Sandman Vol 5
Octavia Butler, Damian Duffy - Kindred
Terry Pratchett - The Colour of Magic
Katherine Anne Porter - Flowering Judas
Arthur C Clarke - The Sands of Mars
Joe Abercrombie - Best Served Cold
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Hermann Hesse - Journey to the East
Dante, illus. Seymour Chwast - The Divine Comedy
Grant Morrison - JLA: New World Order
Tom Robbins - Jitterbug Perfume
Anna Sewell - Black Beauty
Beverly Cleary - Henry Huggins
Neil Gaiman - The Graveyard Book
Joe Abercrombie - The Heroes
Niccoli Machiavelli - The Collected Machiavelli
Brian K Vaughan - Saga Vol 9
John Fante - The Road to Los Angeles
Frank Miller - Batman: The Master Race
Terry Pratchett - Mort
Ursula K Le Guin - The Dispossessed

Here is an index, chronologically ordered, of weekly words:
04/22/18 Criddler
04/29/18 Resistentialism
05/06/18 Cruentation
05/13/18 Koan
05/20/18 Aether
05/27/18 Skint
06/03/18 Thaumaturgy
06/10/18 Petrichor
06/17/18 Anathema
06/24/18 Widdershins
07/01/18 Dybbuk
07/08/18 Defenestration
07/15/18 Contranym
07/22/18 Exulansis
07/29/18 Riggwelter
08/05/18 Homunculus
08/12/18 Liminal
08/19/18 Chthonic
08/26/18 Brinkmanship
09/02/18 Limerance
09/09/18 Elision
09/16/18 Hirsute
09/23/18 Inchoate
09/30/18 Retcon
10/07/18 Tontine
10/14/18 Internecine
10/21/18 Golem
10/28/18 Banal
11/04/18 Phlegmon
11/11/18 Bowdlerize
11/18/18 Sobriquet
11/25/18 Portmanteau
12/02/18 Love/Storge
12/09/18 Love/Philia
12/16/18 Love/Eros
12/23/18 Love/Agape
12/30/18 Apotheosis

*Thomas Wolfe