Charm City Rocks, by Matthew Norman

I started reading Charm City Rocks, Matthew Norman's rom-com from 2023. It's a delightful story about a divorced single dad, a music lover who lives over a record store in Baltimore, who crushed on the drummer of a briefly famous all-woman rock band in his younger years. Enter the object of said crush, trying to live out her life without falling into an abyss of regret about her truncated music career. Their meet-cute, driven by the dad's 18-year-old son, accidentally stoned on gummies, is a lovely moment that sounds, looks and smells just like Fell's Point in Baltimore, a city where --- in the words of another Norman character in another book -- "everyone always seems to have been drinking." 

I may not get much done in the next day or so, except to deplete a box of Kleenex, which, as a white, male, hetero, cisgender boomer I probably shouldn't admit, but maybe I can have a pass in the spirit of the season? (12/18/25)