Hey friends!
It’s the toad that you saw hop across the road on your drive home last night, Sam Cote, here with this week’s Weekly Favorites. Stick around to the end for an exciting announcement!
What I’m Reading: I just finished my reread and annotation of A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers! Somehow it managed to be even better the second time around. On reread, I realize how tight of a book this is. It is consice and theme-packed without feeling rushed or overextended. It falls into both utopian and solarpunk science fiction, yet where it truly shines is in its ability to wrap the reader (me) in a warm blanket of validation. I’m planning to start the sequel, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, later today.
What I’m Listening To: Being between audiobooks has meant that I have more time for podcasts! For the past year one of my favorites has been Ologies with Alie Ward, and I’ve enjoyed diving back into it this week. I listen out of order and skip around to whichever episodes sound interesting (spoiler: they all do). In Ologies, we get to learn about every imaginable discipline of science through interviews with top researchers and experts in their respective fields. If you grew up on Hank Green videos and 30 Rock like I did, you’re sure to love Ward’s personality and interview style. I frequently laugh out loud while listening. This week I listened to the episodes on “Forest Entomology” (bugs and the woods), and “Anthropodermic Biocodiology” (the study of books bount with human skin); both of these are part of last year’s Spooktober episodes.
What I’m Watching: My girlfriend, Hailey, and I finished up Gravity Falls, and started book one of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It’ll be my third watch-through of the sereies, and her first. I’m looking forward to seeing some old friends and stepping back into the world of Avatar 🙂
What I’m Making: My bedroom is in the continual process of “making.” Every day my needs demand something different of the space, so elements move around and take different shapes. The resulting mess and I are locked in a fierce tango of creation and destruction.
How I Slow Down & Unplug: Yesterday I put my phone aside, cleared my desk and made tea. I’m not sure what the “right” way to do it is, but I made the process slow and intentional. It helped to relax my body and clear my head. I also got to channel Sibling Dex (A Psalm…) and Iroh (ATLA).
! EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT !
My Patreon page is live! If you’d like to support me and my creative pursuits, please consider subscribing for as little as a dollar a month– the link to do so is also on the homepage.
The Grasshopper tier ($1) gives you access to a monthly book club that I’ll be running on Discord (once I finish setting it up). The Apprentice tier ($5) lets you vote on which book we’ll read for the book club, and your name at the end of my YouTube videos. The Champion tier gives you all that, and early access to my YouTube videos. Finally, the Master tier gets you everything, plus a personal shoutout in the next possible YouTube video for being such an awesome supporter.
Thank you for reading this far!
samdcote.com 