fiction and creative non-fiction from brennan quenneville
Tehanu, the fourth entry in Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea Cycle, is difficult and, much as it pains me to say this about anything Le Guin wrote, often unenjoyable. Trading in the adventure and excitement of its predecessors, Tehanu focuses not on large-scale, world-altering conflicts but instead on the small, mundane acts that shape a [...]
A blasting power chord fades into the background as Lisa Loeb whispers the first verse of "Split Second" over a looping drumbeat. A snare roll crescendos into another burst of electric guitar and by the time Loeb steps back from the mic, a full band is thrumming along in mid-'90s pop-rock glory. Moments later the [...]
Like many of my peers, I came to love Texas post-rock quartet Explosions in the Sky through their breakthrough third album, The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place. Across that expansive record, whose five tracks combine for a playtime of over 45 minutes, ethereal interludes loop back on themselves, mutating into towering guitar riffs [...]
Remember liner notes? Before tangible media was sacrificed at the altar of the digital, I used to dig into CD booklets like I'd be tested on the material. (Which, depending on how you feel about nerdily bantering with friends, you could say I was.) One of my favorite aspects of liner notes was finding which [...]
There's a charming seasonality to OWEL's catalog. Back in 2013, the New Jersey band's self-titled debut arrived in the dead of winter with washed-out colors and a song literally warning that "death awaits in the snow." Their sophomore LP, dear me, was released in the fall of 2016 and is soaked in the fading light and [...]
Before I even arrived on campus for my freshman year, I had a homework assignment. A copy of James Gleick's Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything had been sent to every incoming freshman at my college and we had been instructed to read it prior to orientation. At the time, this really pissed me [...]
For a lot of upper-middle-class kids like myself, a back-to-school clothes shopping trip was the one chance a year I had to change or cement my look. On a sweltering August day, I'd find myself standing in a Pac Sun, trying to find a pair of jeans that fit and a novelty t-shirt that was [...]
Lately, I've been on a quest to sit down and listen to some of the albums that have been recommended to me over the years and that, for whatever reason, I've overlooked until now. Without further ado, let's take a look at three records that are classics for a lot of people and yet somehow [...]
One of the presents that my wife and I received after our wedding was a Vera Wang crystal bowl. It's a striking piece but given that we've lived in a small bungalow with tight hallways and crowded rooms for the entire five years that we've been married, there was no place to put such a [...]
An Air Gradia jetliner rolls slowly down the tarmac at a crowded airport, past the teeming gates and packed terminals. It weaves a careful path to the farthest reach of the concrete, to the most isolated location possible, before it comes to a stop. Its doors never open. Of the many indelible images of Emily [...]
