Weekend Reading Slump

[highlyeccentric]

I suppose one way to tell that I'm not doing too great right now is that, though I'm keeping on top of my immediate work responsibilities, I'm not getting any books read, for work or for fun.

Here's something of substance I read lately, apropos of not managing to read (books): Against the burnout generation. Reducing burnout to a generational quality misses the key factors in who profites while overworking, who stays afloat and who doesn't, and the whole systemic structure that has us all like this.

---

Currently Reading: Exactly as last fortnight
Fiction for fun: Shafak's Three Daughters of Eve is on hiatus again
Poetry: I'm still enjoying The World's Wife, in fits and starts, and Paradise Lost via podcast. I withdraw my earlier comment about The World's Wife falling into the trap of not ever grappling with the fact that many women ardently sexually desire men, it's picked up its game there.
Lit Mag: Making small headway with the spring Meanjin, finally.
Non-fiction for fun: All on hiatus
For work: A fair few things, including Heng's 'The Invention of Race', Jost's collection on Chaucerian humour, and a bilingual collection (fr/eng) from the Int'l Arthurian Society congress 2015.

Recently Finished: no books!

Online fiction: Sofia Samatar (Strange Horizons), Selkie Stories Are For Losers.

Up Next: extremely many things. So many things. Ugh.

---

Links of possible interest:

Fatima Measham (Meanjin, Winter 2019), Love In A Time of Apocalypse. I thought I bought that issue when I got back to Aus, but I have no memory of this essay. More's the pity.

Anthony Oliveira (Hazlitt), Paper Faces On Parade, an in memoriam essay for Joel Schumacher. Just... filled with delightful queer love for pop culture.

Olivia B. Waxman (Time), History and Conservation meet in a 'Surprised Eel Historian'. Surprised Eel Historian is one of the gifts of #medievaltwitter, do recommend.

Daniel Ryser (RTS Info), Switzerland is sending a dangerous signal to the world. We've got worrying new anti-terror legislation, ugh.

Max Read (Book Forum), review of Richard Seymour's 'The Twittering Machine', A psychoanalytic reading of social media and the death drive. I don't exactly endorse the apparent thesis, but the description of social media as an addictive negative feedback machine is definitely worth taking in.

Candida Moss (Daily Beast), Rimming was everywhere in the Middle Ages, but not for the reason you think. Medieval arse-kissing goes viral.

Andy McGlashen (Audabon), Duck stamp artists turn to spent shotguns to meet new pro-hunting mandate. The duck stamp is a hunting permit, but is also collected by conservationists. The new rules make for some odd art.

Annabel Crabb (ABC.net.au), Can a Budget shaped by male leaders hope to deliver for the women hit hardest by the Recession. Despite the shallow headline, this is some of Crabb's better work.

Adrian Van Young (Guernica), The Hole In the Fence. Memoir piece, in which a small boy forms fast friendship with a nun.

Melian Solly (Smithsonian Mag), What happened when Woodrow Wilson came down with the 1918 flu?.

Emmett Stinson (Sydney Review of Books), The ethics of evaluation. This is a really good, complex essay on literary reviewing.

Irina Dimitrescu (LRB), How To Read Aloud: review of two books on early modern reading practices, and just a really interesting piece in itself.

Tom Socca (Slate, 2012), How to cook onions: why recipe writers lie and lie about how long they take to caramelise.