Last week I kicked off what I’m hoping will end up being a weekly blog post on what I’m reading, watching, and listening to — in other words, my “culture consumed” for the week. Here’s a link to last week’s post, if you missed it. And below is a (slightly more organized than last week) summary of this week’s culture consumed.
- Books read:
- Tiny Pretty Things by Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton (Kindle) — My first book read in 2017! I’ve had this one for a while, but have been saving it because it’s about ballet, and I’m a sucker for a good dance book. If you are also a sucker for a good book set in that intense and somewhat insane world of professional dance, I highly recommend this book.
- Podcast episodes:
- I listened to a bunch of Code Switch episodes, starting with the first episode from 31 May, “Can We Talk About Whiteness?” I also listened to the post-election episode, the one about the crowd-sourced letter from the younger generation of Asian Americans to their parents about race and #BlackLivesMatter, and I listened to the “What’s So Funny About The Indian Accent?” episode. This is quickly becoming my new favorite non-writing podcast.
- The first episode of the new season of Writing Excuses promised another excellent year of craft talk. I am very excited about their plans for this year.
- I listened to the 2016 wrap-up and 2017 resolutions / predictions podcasts from Reading the End, Pop Culture Happy Hour, and Smart Bitches.
- And, I listened to the second half of the Sub Pop podcast’s season 2 finale interview with Father John Misty.
- Magazines and other news:
- Teen Vogue article on the problematic treatment of consent at the core of the new sci-fi movie Passengers — sounds like I can skip that one… nice reporting, again, Teen Vogue!
- The latest in the “Women of Harry Potter” series at Tor is on Minerva McGonagall
- I started reading The Economist Holiday Double-Issue. There are SO MANY good articles in there, I think it’s going to take me a while to get through this one…
- I saw this article on Book Riot’s blog, and it had a link to a template for tracking your books read. After going through the hassle of having to export my data from Goodreads in order to run stats on what I read last year, I thought I might adopt this tracker for my purposes and see how it goes. I’ll probably still log and review books on Goodreads, but this spreadsheet will make it so much easier to calculate all my various reading stats.
- Movies and TV:
- Miss Representation documentary about how women are portrayed in the media and how this effects them socially, economically, and politically. (available via Netflix streaming)
- I didn’t get around to watching Sherlock season 4, episode 1 until yesterday. This is especially frustrating because we actually bought the season on Amazon streaming because we weren’t sure if we’d be able to stream for free (we don’t have a TV/Cable). But, now it looks like you can watch the full episodes on PBS online. So, I sort of feel like an idiot. Well… at least I didn’t have to watch any ads, and I can feel good about paying artists for their art. Right?
- YouTube:
- Thoughts on Tomes “gush” review of The Magician King and spoiler free review of The Magician’s Land — making me consider reading the third book after all…
- Boho Berry’s bullet journal set-up video for Jan 2017 — I’m still not sure I’m doing this whole “BuJo” thing right, but I’ve been messing around with it for a couple months now and it seems to be something that’s working for me (sort of? I’m not entirely sure?). Every once in a while I watch one of these videos on YouTube to get some ideas or to try to figure out if I’m “doing it right.” Inevitably, I walk away shaking my head, half-convinced that people are taking a concept that seemed pretty straight forward and making it WAY more complicated than it needs to be… BUT… The “spreads” are just so pretty…. After watching videos like this, I end up with “BuJo envy” (is there a cute internet term for that yet?) and my creative brain wants to get crafty with my mostly utilitarian version of this trend. But, as it is, I struggle to find enough time to update the bare-bones version I’ve developed.
Queued up next…
- From my TBR: My library hold came up for Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski. So, I think I’ll be reading that next. In case you are one of the few people who hasn’t yet heard of this book (it made the rounds as highly recommended on so many blogs I read and podcasts that I listen to, I can hardly believe anyone hasn’t heard of it yet), this is not a book about Nirvana. It’s a pop-science book about the science of female sexuality. So far, I’ve only read the introduction, and I’m fascinated. If you are curious about the content but not sure if you want to buy/borrow the book, I recommend listening to the “Smart Podcast, Trashy Books” episodes #186 and #201. The first features an interview with the author and the second is an encore, follow-up with listener questions. So. Good. These are what initially got me interested in reading the book.
- On my podcast app: Monday is Writing Excuses day! Can’t wait to listen to the second episode of the season!
- In the news: Got this week’s issue of The Economist yesterday (the first issue of 2017), and I’m looking forward to catching up on the news in long form.
If you have thoughts on any of the above, or recommendations for me, please leave them in the comments. I’d love to hear from you!
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