Well, friends, I hope you are all hanging in there. These past few weeks have been hard even by 2020 standards, as the country’s government showed yet again — as if there remained any doubt — that it does not care about Black lives, and will uphold white supremacy at any cost. The protests that resulted have been met all too frequently with police violence. If anyone reading this has felt unsure about the aims and demands of the Black Lives Matter movement, I hope those doubts have been laid to rest in the past fortnight. Our country must confront…
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Tavia and Effie are sisters — not by blood, but in every way that matters. Both of them badly need the support and love of a sister. Like her late grandmother, Tavia is a siren. But the world, not to mention Tavia’s father, dislikes and distrusts sirens, and Tavia lives in fear of her secret being discovered. Meanwhile, Effie was long ago the only survivor of a terrifying incident in a Portland park, and she has begin to fear that the incident is coming back for her. After a few years of hearing about — but not being able to…
Leave a CommentI named my links round-up after the first link in the bunch because if I named it after the last link I would cry. This is a horrible week, and I haven’t been able to do much reading yet of the no-doubt-terrific analysis that folks are doing on the situation in Minneapolis. In lieu of that, I’ll just link to the bail fund and encourage folks to donate. I also very much encourage you to call your secretaries of state and ask them to enable expanded mail-in voting for future elections. This country. Anyway. Some links! Here are so, so…
Leave a CommentAttentive listeners will notice this is NOT the podcast in which we review Quan Berry’s book We Ride Upon Sticks, and also that one of us Jennys is absent from it. Whiskey Jenny is taking a short podcast break (everything is fine! she just needed a pause!), but since we both want you to have cheery quarantine content to enjoy, I am pressing on, with the assistance of some kind and helpful guest hosts. Today I’m welcoming Friend of the Podcast Renay to chat about the media we’re consuming in quarantine, how the heck to recommend comfort reads effectively, and…
Leave a CommentWelp, the end of another week is upon us. Is the weekend a punishment or a reward, or neither? What distinguishes our days, if we can’t even go to the goddamn library? (Oh my God I miss the library.) (I don’t want the library to reopen until it can do so in a way that’s safe for library workers; I just miss it.) I have a plan to mark the passage of time by making a new batch of frozen breakfast burritos. This seems fine, but do you remember the time Before when a person could go out to a…
Leave a CommentRemember a long time ago when you first read Donna Tartt’s debut novel The Secret History? Remember how you were like, blown away by it? And then some time went by and maybe you sort of forgot or didn’t trust the memory of how wildly in love with it you were? Especially because the books you read the year you studied abroad all feel like a weird fever dream because you were terribly depressed that year (like the time you read The Time Traveler’s Wife and were so consumed by grief that you literally couldn’t get out of bed for…
1 CommentThe coronavirus situation sure does continue to continue, doesn’t it? I hope everyone who is reading this and all your families are doing okay on health and okay on money, and that you have plenty of nice things to keep your head above water in the midst of all these terrible things. Suzanne Walker considers the disability narrative (such as it is) in the otherwise really fun show The Witcher. No one knows anything, and everyone’s mad. Anne Helen Peterson continuing to bring truly excellent reporting on the human elements of the pandemic. Ancient monks struggled with isolation, too. Naomi…
Leave a CommentWho here has seen Harvey, anyone? The old movie where Jimmy Stewart has an invisible friend that is a six-foot-tall rabbit named Harvey, and this friendship causes some anxiety to his friends and relations? I ask because there’s a scene late in the movie where Jimmy Stewart says, “In this world, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant. Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.” A of all, I am pleased to have quoted him. Secondly, this moment from the movie Harvey exactly sums up my approach to language. For years…
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