New Washington album is out! And it is A Good. However, it doesn't contain 'Dirty Churches' (or Claws, or American Spirit), which I had with some difficulty restrained myself from buying as a single because presumably it would be on the forthcoming album. Very, very odd.
Otherwise I continue to enjoy the new TSwift and the two Namoli Brennet albums, and I've been listening to Murder Ballads' 'Pretty In Scarlet' a bit again.
Podcast wise, a couple more Magnus. I am not looking forward to the Great Worm Showdown i assume is coming. And I listened to The Spouter Inn's episode on 'Song of Myself', and certainly I enjoyed hearing them talk about Whitman more than I have ever enjoyed attempting to read Whitman. A bit more progress with Paradise Lost has also happened - I got as far as the infamous angel sex passage.
Finally, I listened through, and greatly enjoyed, and would recommend, the Lords of Misrule audio drama of
The Canterbury Tales (just the Knight, Miller and WOB's tales - and those familiar with the rapey-er elements will note the WOB's prologue is strikingly free of domestic violence, and her tale has been strategically changed: the script was originally written for public performance outside York Minster, which I suspect has something to do with that).
Some online essays I have enjoyed of late:
Rebecca Rukeyser (LitHub), Yearing for my grandmother Muriel Rukeyser
Teddy Wayne (New Yorker), Small Talk in the Black Death. This is probably a lot funnier if you wouldn't prefer to read in-depth analyses of plague-era social norms and their commonalities or divergences from now, over shallow satire. As shallow satire goes it's pretty good.
Sari Altschuler and Paul Erikson (The Panorama), Charles Averill's The Cholera Fiend: Fiction For a Pandemic. This describes a hillaribad piece of CHOLERA CONSPIRACY THRILLER FICTION, i love humans.
Hillery Stone (Guernica), Fever in the Woods. I think I mentioned this one in my last reading post preface. It's... if you've got kids or any kinda Ish to do with kids and rural medical access this might be one to treat with caution.
Paige Turner (Poly.Land blog), When polyamory doesn't revolve around men. Features a man who cannot comprehend the existence of a triad composed of lesbians.
Sam Dylan Finch (Healthline), ADHD: quick focus boosts. Most of 'em seem pretty sound for most distraction / procrastination brains.
Steacey Easton, interview with Alex Sturbaum (CountryQueer), Looming with Alex Sturbaum. I believe I need Sturbaum's album soon.
Laura Newberry (LA Times), Therapist uses doll play to remind black girls of their innocence. More concretely, to encourage imaginative play, develop emotional awareness, and build age-appropriate social bonds. There's a line in there about adultification - "As a therapist, Curry knew that if children aren’t given the time and space to play, imagine, explore and be free of the pressures and stresses of their world, there’s a much higher chance that they will be more childlike as adults." That obviously affects Black kids disproportionately, but it also snapped into focus some things I recognise in some of my white queer peers.
Emillio Carrero (Guernica), The Season of Children. Memoir piece about a post-hurricane period when the author and another child of colour turned on a socially inept white friend of theirs. Contains pretty brutal scenes of bullying.
Sophie Haigney (LARB), Makeshift refuges: Edith Wharton's homebuilding.
Hayley Gleeson (ABC news), Men with nowhere to turn. A thoughtful piece on men as victims of domestic violence - i was particularly struck by the part where Gleeson says she contacted a number of domestic violence charities, who typically told her that they do provide services for men, but would not speak on the record about it for fear of their statement being picked up by MRAs. On the other hand, there are some things Gleeson doesn't interrogate here - the way she tells the lead example story it rather sounds to me as if both the adult man AND his female partner might be victims of abuse at the hands of the partner's teenage son.
Sam Knight (Guardian UK, 2017), How the Sandwich Consumed Britain. On the history of the supermarket sandwich and the (then - i wonder how covid has affected this?) booming sandwich trade in the UK. ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING, do recommend.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}