Each week (give or take one or two here and there) I share three things I like – It could be a book, a movie, a podcast, an album, a photo, an article, a restaurant, a food item, a beverage, or anything else I simply enjoy and think you might too. You can find a whole pile of things, especially books, I like and recommend HERE.
1. Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy
This was the first of Conroy’s novels I ever read. Since that time I have read all of them (there aren’t many, about a half dozen). Lords of Discipline is as forceful a novel as I have read. To describe the plot would not do it justice, but here is the gist. Will Maclean is a cadet at Carolina Military institute (a fictional school in Charleston, SC based largely on The Citadel where Conroy attended). He is asked to look out for the first black incoming freshman in school history and see him through his plebe year, a year that breaks and washes out numerous incoming cadets. It is a story of race, southern culture. the majesty of Charleston, friendship, betrayal, and so much more. And it is rough. Conroy pulls no punches, minces no words, and hides nothing. He writes with a sort of angry, pointed, sad, beautiful force I have found in few other novelists. His books deal in the complexity of the ugly – the ugliness of history, family, mental and emotional health, relationships. But they deal in the beauty of those things too. Pat Conroy is one of my favorite novelists and stands alone in style.
2. Libsyn
This is more nerdy and less fun than some predictions, but it’s pretty valuable for podcasters. Libsyn is the hosting service we use for The Happy Rant. It is affordable and makes it easy to connect podcasts to all major listening apps/services. It also provides statistics that are as granular as any I have seen. Good stats are hard to come by for podcasters since they are distributed through Apple, who keeps their data very close to the vest, and numerous other disparate apps and platforms. Uploading and posting episodes is easy and clean and they provide easy-to-embed codes for blogs and other sites too. I have tried a couple other hosting platforms, and Libsyn is the best I have come across.
3. Ken Griffey Jr. Home Runs
With the Polar Vortex having crushed much of the country and the dismal prospect of February ahead of us we need something especially spring timey to give warmth and happiness. Nothing is as spring timey as baseball and few things in baseball warm the heart as much a sweet lefty swing. And who had one of those? Ken Griffey Junior, that’s who. Enjoy.
