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Reading the End Posts

Unions unions unions: A links round-up

The answer to like, most of these articles is: more unions. Okay, not most of them. But some of them! Yay for labor organizing! I have made it through this week, a genuine miracle considering all the fuckshit this week has contained, and what I want to do this weekend is lie around and eat grapes and read about the British Empire’s many atrocities. But what I will do this weekend, probably, is lots and lots of stuff, because that’s who I am, fundamentally, as a person. TV is in a writers’ crisis and a showrunners’ crisis. What do book…

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LINKS: Some Links

If you only knew how many times I’ve intended to post this links round-up and gotten distracted! It is twice! Twice I have meant to do so! Then time went on, and I didn’t post them, and everything was and is chaos. You know! You know how it is. So now here it is, a month since my last links round-up, and I have a crazy number of links, but that’s just how we’re going to have to live our lives now. Like if I told you how many times I have eaten popcorn for dinner in the last month,…

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Episode 155 – The Last One

Lovely, lovely, wonderful listeners, the time has come. It is our last ever podcast. Over the course of the pandemic (as you will inevitably have noticed), we have had a harder and harder time getting podcast made, and we eventually realized that it was time to shut the thing down. We’ve had such a great time podcasting together and interacting with you fantastic people, and we will miss you a ton. This final episode features A GAME, a meta-chat about the podcast and what we’ve learned and how we’ve changed and why one of us is just deeply, deeply wrong…

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Tripping Arcadia, Kit Mayquist

The older I get, the more cynical I become about the consciences of the very rich. Used to be when fictional rich people were cartoonishly evil, I would think it was unrealistic. Now I’m like, no, actually, that sounds right. Rich people probably do poison each other at parties for shits and giggles. Tripping Arcadia had my number from the beginning by telling me in the introduction that a whole bunch of amoral rich people were probably going to die. Like, way to reel me in, book! Not just telling me the end before I read the middle, but promising…

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Yes, There Are Some Takes on the Slap Thing: A Links Round-Up

I apologize in advance for extending the life of the slap discourse, and I invite everyone to ignore it and move forward with your lives. It is also notable (to me) that there has not been an equivalent amount of discourse about Louie CK winning a Grammy, which — since you ask! — does indeed make me want to set myself on fire. So amazing how confessed abusers get to carry on having richly awarded careers! It is almost as if the industry doesn’t actually care about protecting people from abuse! I don’t know! Without further ado, some links: “Blackness…

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Season Two of Bridgerton Is Pretty Good If You Don’t Think Too Much About It

Very uncharacteristically, I got sick this past week, which meant I spent a lot of time on the couch cross-stitching and watching the second season of Bridgerton. Last season was a trifle rapey for my tastes, and also I just wasn’t that compelled by the central couple, who didn’t seem that into each other, and also whenever they had sex it looked extremely boring and/or uncomfortable. Which, if you’re making a high-budget adaptation of a bodice-ripper, an endeavor that has my whole-hearted support, I feel that it’s the least you can do to make the sex look fun. Anyway! Season…

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I Forgot to Add a Title to This Post: A Links Round-Up

A long-overdue links round-up! The fact of its overdueness means that it contains many, many good links for you to read and enjoy. Some are quite sad. None are about the war in Ukraine, but a few are about COVID. You can just skip those. In fact you can skip straight to the last one, which is just a drunk couple with a kid explaining Paw Patrol to some sober people with no kids. Their desperate sincerity kind of got me in on Paw Patrol, except no it didn’t because I’ve seen that shit and it sucks. Why can’t kids…

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What I Get Out of Three-Star Reads

Book Riot’s excellent “True Story” newsletter, which focuses on nonfiction, recently linked to a piece called “I’m Breaking Up with 3-Star Reads,” about the decision to stop pushing through the just-okay books and to focus instead on finding books to truly love. As a relentless optimizer myself (I know, I know, it’s capitalism trying to brainwash me, I know I’m sorry), I was allured by the author’s plan to optimize their reading by DNFing books as soon as they realized those books wouldn’t be four- or five-star reads. I have led (or attempted to lead) many a DNF-shy friend down…

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Review: Goliath, Tochi Onyebuchi

When I feel a bit sad about my reading/blogging focus having shifted to focus so heavily on recent releases, I comfort myself with a reminder that reading recent releases gets me in on the ground floor of new authors. This is fun because when they hit it big, I get to be a hipster about it (in a few years I’m going to be a nightmare about Micaiah Johnson and y’all will all be tired of me), but it’s also fun because I get to see their development as writers. Ideally, with supportive agents and editors, and the sales to…

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Review: Wingbearer, Marjorie Liu and Teny Aida Issakhanian

Ever since she was a baby, Zuli has lived in the tree that holds the souls of dead birds. It’s an idyllic existence — surrounded by beauty and the love of her spirit parents (and the concern of a slightly fussy alive owl called Frowly), she spends her days clambering around the tree and chatting with the souls of dead birds before they head off to be born again the lives of new bodies. When the souls of birds stop coming home to the tree, Zuli is determined to set out into the world to find out why. If you’ve…

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