Monday Miscellany: Equal parts thrilled and disgusted

Notes from the week of June 24 - 30

Jul 01, 2024

Rabbit rabbit, and hello, friends! I’m in a good mood today because we’ve been blessed with a short reprieve from the heat wave. It is currently 83 measly degrees, with a breeze, (why does this sentence so far sound like Shel Silverstein is writing it) and I have the windows open and the ceiling fans on and it’s pretty blissful. I even got to go for a run this morning, during which I saw a woodchuck and either a goose or a heron (there was an elegant long neck disappearing off the path and into the trees at a distance). And now, I’m planning to sit on my front porch for a while with a book and the strawberry kombucha I bought myself as a treat for being brave at the doctor this afternoon. Join me with your own tasty beverage and let’s chat about some great books and music?

Currently reading

One of my favorite podcasts, Nerdette, recently ended when the host, Greta Johnsen, was laid off from WBEZ in Chicago. But! We can rejoice, because (1) Greta is now writing a delightful Substack newsletter called GRETAGRAM (all-caps compulsory), and (2) the Nerdette book club is continuing on in a slightly altered form. Yay!

That’s all to say: Greta’s book club pick for July is Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe, and my library hold came in early, and I zoomed through it in just a couple of days because it is delightful.

It’s about Margo, a 19-year-old college student who (oops) sleeps with her English professor and (oops) ends up pregnant and (you do you) decides to keep the baby despite the father fully flaking on the situation. I don’t want to go too far into the plot and ruin the pleasure of discovery, but I’ll just say that, to help soothe her titular money troubles, Margo creates an OnlyFans account and has her ex-pro-wrestler dad move in with her, and what ensues is much less slapstick and much more wholesome than I was expecting. This is an entertaining book to be sure, but it also has a big heart, and it takes on some serious issues in really nuanced and thoughtful ways. I just loved it.

In other online book club news, I’m almost caught up with Traci Thomas’s picks for The Stacks! This week I finished the May selection, No Name in the Street by James Baldwin, which is a nonfiction work, part memoir and part commentary about current events, politics, and race. It’s short and covers quite a range of topics, and while there are definitely some really insightful sections and quotes, as a whole it felt a little all over the place. This could be at least partially due to the formatting of the copy I read from the library, though, which I think might have been a first edition (from 1972)? It didn’t have any chapter divisions, and I’m wondering if a more modern printing would. Still, even if it doesn’t end up being my favorite Baldwin, I’m glad I read it and I’m looking forward to listening to the discussion episode.

Finally, this week I picked up Julia Armfield’s debut story collection Salt Slow, which has the same deliciously something’s-not-quite-right-here feeling of her novel Our Wives Under the Sea (one of my favorites from 2022). Armfield has a real gift with language—she’s so good at creating an unsettling mood, and her descriptions are sometimes unexpected but always strangely apt.

“The night is wide, uncurving, like the Earth might be flat and walkable from end to distant end.” (89)

These stories range in subject from a Catholic schoolgirl who becomes a mantis, to a woman who defiantly moves into a beach house belonging to the husband she is divorcing, to an all-female rock band whose shows somehow always lead to violence against area men, to a girl whose parents raise a wolf alongside her as a sister. But there are common themes of transformation, queerness, power, and the sea, and I was left with a feeling that was equal parts thrilled and disgusted. Honestly, the vibes aren’t too far off from State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg, which I talked about last time. Do recommend.

A legally-required heads-up: if you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links above, I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. ♥︎

Currently listening

This week I continued to loop BRAT by Charli XCX, particularly “360” and “Sympathy is a knife”—I actually woke up one morning with the latter in my head, sparked by watching this completely flawless TikTok several times the night before—and in looking for something else that was different but the same, i.e. giving off similarly powerful, “I don’t f*cking care what you think” vibes, I remembered Sleigh Bells, specifically their album Treats (2010).

The first track, “Tell ‘Em,” opens with percussive laser gun and hand clap sounds, and things never really let up from there. This is a shouty pop album with a hard rock soul, like a cheerleading squad but pierced and tatted up; it’ll make you want to throw your hair and stomp around. My favorite song is “Infinity Guitars.” Do you enjoy lighting things on fire, or watching movies where badasses walk away from explosions in slow-mo? Are you a woman who has previously identified as straight but would like to discover that she’s actually been bisexual this whole time? Here you go! Turn it up loud!!

This week I also listened through The Coroner’s Gambit (2000) by The Mountain Goats a few times. If you know me, you know that this is my favorite band. But! They have an extensive, and I mean extensive back catalog of music, and even having followed them closely since around 2007 or so, I’m still getting to know some of the older stuff. This particular album is on my radar right now because Merge Records just put out a limited-edition peak vinyl reissue of it, which I absolutely preordered and which arrived a few days ago. Isn’t she pretty? Who else is suddenly craving a bucket of buttery movie theater popcorn?

In a fit of “I don’t know what I feel like listening to” the other day, I resorted to scrolling my library on Spotify starting at the top of the alphabet, and boom—Alkaline Trio, Crimson (2005). This is another one that goes hard, but it also has piano in it, which college freshman me (at Furman on a piano performance scholarship) thought was very cool. And let’s be real, I still think it’s very cool. I love “Time to Waste” and “Mercy Me,” but if I had to pick a top track, it’d be “Dethbed,” partially due to the fact that it opens with a fun consonant stutter: ²

“C-c-c-calling all cars, all coroners,³ we’ve got a dead one here…”

Finally, Jordan and I have been watching Yellowjackets, and the soundtrack has brought back to mind some true bangers from the past—most recently “The World I Know” by Collective Soul. This song is so immediately and deeply familiar, and the intro instantly transports me to 1995, but I will say: I was 38 whole years old when I really listened to the lyrics. It! is! sad! And I’m betting it contributed in some small subconscious way to the deep melancholy that’s been living in my bones since before I can remember. Sending hugs and gentle pats to you, Collective Soul. I hope you’re doing okay these days.

² Which reminds me, this happens in “All for You” by Our Lady Peace too, and it’s one of the reasons I love that song—“Jack Kerouac, K-K-K-Kerouac, on the road and in my head…” I guess I have a thing for c-c-c-consonance.

³ I just noticed that that’s two instances of the word “coroner” in the music I listened to this week! What are the odds?

And another thing

Sometimes the articles Chewy publishes about pets are kind of interesting, like this one about why cats meow back when you speak to them (spoiler: one of the reasons can be that they’re just making small talk)!
I was having a conversation about social media with a few friends over the weekend, and one of them recommended The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World by Max Fisher. It immediately went on my to-read list.
If you, like me, enjoy classical music but sometimes struggle to find good recordings, here’s a list of five recent classical albums recommended by the NY Times (gift article).