Weekly Roundup Jan 13th
It’s been a busy week! Every Friday I offer a roundup of interesting things I’ve read/watched/listened to during the week.
Apparently poetry is dead again, at least according to one Catholic poet. Yawn. I actually think more people are reading and writing poetry than ever before, so I don’t buy it. And I don’t think the level to which Americans are worshipping T.S. Eliot is the right barometer of poetry’s health.
If you’re still building your 2023 TBR list, you’re in luck, as there are a lot of lists circulating of recommended books. Electric Lit has a roundup of Books to read by WOC. They also have a great list of the most anticipated LGBTQ+ books of 2023.
And Vulture has a list of anticipated reads as well.
My book club is reading Thistlefoot by Gennarose Nethercott. Get in touch with me if you’d like to participate in the book club, which will meet over Zoom at the end of every month.
I loved this essay by Naomi Jackson “on losing and finding [her] mind.”
Self-published author Susan Meachen faked her own suicide because of being, supposedly, bullied by fans, and is now trying to pretend it was a totally reasonable thing to do. This whole story has been a WILD ride.
I’m not even ashamed to say I’ve been devouring Prince Harry’s memoir Spare. I think his openness and honesty about the problems within the royal family, and the racism and abusive behavior of his family toward him and his wife is admirable, and more men need to speak out about mental health. It cannot be easy to take a stand against such a powerful family and live with the very public consequences, not to mention lies spread about you by the people who are supposed to love you the most. I am listening to the audiobook read by the author, and it’s gripping.
I’m still reading Babel by R.F. Kuang, and it just keeps getting better. I haven’t had much time to read it lately, and I want to savor it because I’m enjoying it so much. I’m not a fast reader. I think as a child I might have been, when the books were much easier, and shorter, but the past 20 years, I have been a slow reader. Sometimes I am jealous of friends who read 300-400 books a year, but I doubt that will ever be me. The most I’ve managed is 200 the year I was studying for my comprehensive exams during my doctoral program. It’s not a numbers game for me, though. I just want to read good books, and Babel definitely qualifies.
I know I’m very late to the party on this, but I listened to the most recent episode of the podcast “Armchair Expert” where Dax Shepard interviews Anna Kendrick about her upcoming movie and her own experience in an abusive relationship. They really got into the messiness of life, and it was great. I haven’t listened to any other episodes, but I can say this one was really interesting, and I’m looking forward to watching Kendrick’s film Alice, Darling.
Another podcast I’m enjoying is “Teacher Quit Talk”, about K-12 teachers who have, for various reasons, quit teaching. I really appreciate the frankness with which these women discuss their challenges and the realities of teaching in the US these days.
I love watching videos of visual artists making art. Courtney Diaz, the Australian woman behind Little Raven Ink is one of my favorites. I love her approach to art journaling and could watch these videos for hours.
This piece from the L.A. Times on the “TikTok aesthetic” is fascinating. I avoided TikTok for a very long time, and I know there are very legitimate privacy and security risks with the platform, but I’ve also found wonderful pockets of niche communities, and the algorithm delivers.
I’m fascinated by the way each person experiences a different “side” of Tiktok depending on the type of content we most like to watch. No two people have the exact same curation of content, therefore, while TikTok certainly has trends, it also has micro-trends, which seem to flood your “fyp” aka “For You Page” (the primary way people consume content on the platform) but are actually not that widespread when you consider the app as a whole. I could talk about this for hours. Fall semester of 2021, I had an assignment where students had to take a reading from our class (Writing and Social Issues) and “translate” it into a TikTok “storytime” (an unofficial subgenre of content on TikTok), and the results were amazing. [Students who didn’t like or want to participate in creating a TikTok had alternate assignment options, but every student chose to make a TikTok that had to be accompanied by short explanation of the choices they made in their translation. It’s definitely an assignment I’ll keep around.
Fun question of the week: What kinds of videos are on your fyp? Let me know in the comments, and have a great weekend! Mine is mostly cute animals, books, and mental health and neurodivergent TikTok.
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