{"id":4559,"date":"2015-12-31T19:02:46","date_gmt":"2016-01-01T01:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=4559"},"modified":"2015-12-31T19:02:46","modified_gmt":"2016-01-01T01:02:46","slug":"the-year-in-awesome-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=4559","title":{"rendered":"The Year In Awesome, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><strong>Music:\u00a0<\/strong>Two albums that kept me interested from beginning to end were Grimes&#8217; <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Art-Angels-Grimes\/dp\/B0170XBN32\/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1451609854&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=grimes+art+angels\">Art Angels<\/a><\/em> and Jamie xx&#8217;s <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Colour-Jamie-xx\/dp\/B00V9MQZRU\/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1451609936&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=jamie+xx\">In Colour<\/a><\/em>. I liked Grimes&#8217; last album, <em>Visions<\/em>, well enough, but I wasn&#8217;t prepared for the pop mastery she displays on her latest. Over several tracks that range from gauzy pop confection to spare piano ballads, Grimes paints a self-portrait of an artist in full command of her craft and who will not tolerate any bullshit. <em>In Colour<\/em>\u00a0is a guided tour of electronic music of the past two decades, filtered through Jamie xx&#8217;s ear for melody and a good beat. The chorus in &#8220;Loud Places&#8221; is one of the best musical payoffs I heard this year.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Books<\/strong>: Two books that stayed with me this year both addressed the beauty and peril to be found in life&#8217;s randomness. Kate Atkinson&#8217;s <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Life-After-Novel-Kate-Atkinson-ebook\/dp\/B008TUQ60G\/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1451609739&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=life+after+life\">Life after Life<\/a><\/em> follows the multiple fates\u00a0of a British woman who lives and dies repeatedly in the first half of the twentieth century, while <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Station-Eleven-Emily-John-Mandel\/dp\/0804172447\/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1451609659&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=station+eleven\">Station Eleven<\/a><\/em> by Emily St. John Mandel introduces us to a traveling theater troupe navigating a bleak postapocalyptic America. Each book beautifully illustrates how small events can ripple through time to shape the lives of people we will never meet.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;d like wish my readers (all ten of you!) a happy and safe New Year. Perhaps we can create a few of our own ripples in 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Music:\u00a0Two albums that kept me interested from beginning to end were Grimes&#8217; Art Angels and Jamie xx&#8217;s In Colour. I liked Grimes&#8217; last album, Visions, well enough, but I wasn&#8217;t prepared for the pop mastery she displays on her latest. Over several tracks that range from gauzy pop confection to spare piano ballads, Grimes paints <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=4559' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pop-culture","category-11-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-1bx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4560,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4559\/revisions\/4560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}