Link Round-Up | Reading

This week, when I wasn’t bawling over Michelle Obama’s convention speech, I was reading great stuff on the internet. AKA what I’m doing every week.

Relevant to this post — Reading lists are the new mixtapes. How we take it upon ourselves to find and share great links with the people we know or want to know better.

This year is depressing, so I’ve had a hard time watching “prestige tv,” opting instead to watch Friends and Psych. This list from the AV Club of best shows so far this year might sway me.

A stray cat snuck into a zoo and found another cat. I can barely handle this link.

Someone articulated shit Hillary can’t say. (It is not clear to all commenters that Hillary Clinton did not, in fact, write this).

Throwback

Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer, was on NPR’s Fresh Air in May talking about his book and his own experiences living in Vietnam and as a Vietnamese immigrant in America.

Two Monks Invent Denominations. RIP The Toast. I’ve been going back through the archives and reading articles I missed or re-reading ones I love. Two Monks are the best monks.

#24in48 Recap | Reading

Peak summer — porch margaritas and books.

This past weekend was the 24 in 48 readathon. For those unfamiliar, the goal is to spend 24 of the 48 hours in the weekend reading. There are giveaways throughout the day and tons of people sharing their reading on Litsy, Instagram, Twitter, and the like. (I shared on Litsy, where you can find me @erinkwed).

In all honesty, I was not quite as ambitious as 24 hours. My goal was 12 hours of reading, which I came a little short on. Saturday I read for six hours, and Sunday I read for five.

Friday night/Saturday morning

I started with The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. An epistolary novel, it focuses on correspondence just after World War II with a newspaper columnist in London starting to write her next book and a book group from Guernsey. I actually had no idea that the Guernsey Islands were occupied during the war. The book is cozy, tragic, and heartwarming all at the same time.

Heading over to my parents to meet my Dad for lunch, I listened to a half hour of Angels and Demons each way. I’m enjoying the thriller and historical aspects of this novel, eye rolling at some of the dialogue and characterization. Overall a fun listen.

Saturday afternoon/evening

In the afternoon, I read Saga, Vol 6. I had been saving it for this weekend and was so glad I did. (**SPOILERS**) It was so satisfying to finally see some good things happening to this family. Honestly, the last volume was getting to be kind of hard to read, so this one was refreshing — back to action, humor, and pathos.

I followed it up with a palate cleanser of The Givenness of Things by Marilynne Robinson. I read Gilead in high school and didn’t see what the fuss was, but reading this essay collection with fresh eyes makes me want to revisit it. She is so smart, throws such shade, and just has a quiet quality to her writing that lulls you into complacency before hitting you in the face with her brilliance.

Sunday

Between Church, grocery shopping, and general lying around, I didn’t get as much reading in on Sunday. I did read all of Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist. It had been compared to Let the Great World Spin, which is one of my favorite books. I think that description was apt. This was a hard read, though, because the depiction of police brutality felt raw in a way I don’t think it would have a few years ago.

I also read bits and pieces of The Sympathizer all weekend. I’m kind of struggling with this book — it is a really good, fascinating book, but it isn’t engrossing. I almost have to remind myself to pick it up. I think it will be worth it when I finally finish, though.

All in all, this weekend was more than I’ve read in months. Definitely check out the readathon next time it runs. The next readathon will be January 21-22, mark your calendars!

 

Link Round-Up | Reading

(the Peony Garden at Nichols Arboretum this spring)

I recently did a thing on Twitter: I purged a lot of the accounts I was following. Once that was done, I went through and looked at who people I admired or people who shared great reads followed, and followed those people.

It has been so refreshing to have basically a brand-new Twitter feed, which has also resulted in saving a million links to share here.

(I’ll limit myself to five) (maybe six).

New Reads

Ghostbusters and 17th Century Nuns. What does it mean for women to fight possession, instead of being possessed? (Also, The Establishment has been killing it lately).

NPR’s Read, Watch, Binge series. The second installment recommends movies based on books you like. BRB adding them all to my to-watch.

Female solitude as rebellion. “Women are the anchors of social labor, the glue pulling the family, and then the community, together with small talk and good manners and social niceties. Living alone as a woman is not just a luxury but a refusal to bend into the shape of patriarchal assumption and expectation.” AKA an apartment of one’s own.

LaCroix has a fascinating history. The midwestern moms were right.

Joan Didion as pool reading.  I haven’t actually read Joan Didion, but this convinced me I need to change that ASAP.

Throwbacks

Dr. Martin Luther King on Vietnam. I am just now starting to read Dr. King’s speeches and essays,  having mostly just heard the sanitized version of his life in school. His work is so much more radical and political than I ever knew, and truly spellbinding.

Sleeping trees. “For the first time, trees have been shown to undergo physical changes at night that can be likened to sleep, or at least to day-night cycles that have been observed experimentally in smaller plants.” Trees have circadian rhythms, too.