Things I'm Digging Now
Oct. 13th, 2020 08:23 pmHere are some things I've been enjoying that I just felt like writing about.
Book: So I'm always in the middle of a few books, but sometimes one captures me. One of the embroidery designers I follow on IG showed a photograph of a Tara French book. I don't remember exactly what she said, but my curiosity was piqued. "Her" book was already checked out in Libby, so rather than put in a hold I found another library ebook by Tara French, Witch Elm.
Witch Elm is a mystery story, but it's not your typical mystery. The narrator/protagonist is himself the victim of a burglary and has a traumatic brain injury. Later, evidence appears about a 10-year-old murder of one of his school friends. The burglary and murder seem to be connected, but it's unclear how. But the amazing thing is how well (in my opinion) French writes the perspective of someone who has a TBI. Along those lines, there's the issue that the narrator is definitely unreliable - he has lots of gaps in his memory, and we're also not sure how much of his personality is the same post-injury. The story is told from his point of view, but it's kind of like...which him? He feels profoundly different after his brain injury, and the murder happened when he was 18, so there's the passing of time to consider too.
It's hard to get a grasp on who the protagonist actually is, in a lot of ways, but he definitely is both privileged and unaware of his own privilege. I'm not sure what will happen to him or what he's done or hasn't done. I can't wait to get back to it!
Patreon: So I followed a writer I really liked on Patreon, but then she decided to go in a different direction and I ended up deciding to stop subscribing. And then there was an activist that I thought was doing good things but couldn't ever quite manage to watch. So I ended up deciding to stop subscribing to her too. I felt kind of guilty about both things.
Now I'm subscribing to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jakebe 's Patreon, and I love it so much. We're friends, disclaimer, but I somehow missed that he had a Patreon (tbf, we had kind of lost touch for a while, in the way that will happen sometimes). I really enjoy reading his writing, and I like feeling like a member of a club of readers. They're serial stories, kind of an urban fantasy with a romantic component. Learn more here. With the activist, it felt like an "eat your vegetables" sort of thing, like I felt like I should make myself consume her videos because they would be good for me. But this is different - it's something I genuinely look forward to and feel happy about. I feel like I just now have the sense of what Patreon is maybe supposed to be.
Twitch: So back...wow, a quick google search suggests 2008? Time flies. Apparently back in 2008 I was watching these Ill Doctrine videos put out by Jay Smooth, who's super big into both hiphop and politics. I enjoyed his take on things. Here's a short NPR article about him from 2009. Anyway, he and I are Facebook friends (he's friends with me and over 4000 other people - he's just very nice about accepting friend requests I think), so I've been somewhat nominally aware of what he's been up to. Anyway, recently with the pandemic, he's started doing Twitch streams. Basically, he'll either play some music videos or watch a movie or TV show and do commentary and a bunch of folks comment in the chat section. It doesn't sound exciting but I'm low-key liking it. This week, for Indigenous People Day, he played a bunch of Native hiphop and it was the perfect capstone for the day, something I didn't know I needed but that felt great. He usually streams MWF, though he also is doing a stream for the Joe Biden Town Hall this Thursday (and is likely *not* streaming tomorrow). I subscribed but you don't have to in order to take part in it. https://m.twitch.tv/jsmooth995/profile
Song: My kid pointed this song out to me, and Daveed Diggs is on fire. It's high speed rap, full of linguistic twists and turns (and a lot of f-bombs) and is, shall we euphemistically say, not a feel-good paean to the boys in blue. It's about Black Lives Mattering, and people marching, and it's just a good cathartic listen for those of us who are increasingly disgusted with white supremacy and this administration. I'd say give this one a pass if you are a Trump supporter, but I'm guessing if you are, you've already stopped reading me. :-D
Return to Stitch and Bitch: It's kind of a misnomer because we really don't bitch as much as talk about interesting things we've seen and heard, but my stitching group decided to start meeting again. I love my stitching friends. They bring so much joy to my life, and I was missing them during the pandemic. Right now we're meeting outside under one member's carport and sitting 6+ feet apart, and we're chatting and doing crafts (two of us are embroidering and two of us are doing crochet).
I think that's all I have for right now, but I do want to add that it's a good mental exercise, thinking about things that I'm into and taking the time to write about them.
Book: So I'm always in the middle of a few books, but sometimes one captures me. One of the embroidery designers I follow on IG showed a photograph of a Tara French book. I don't remember exactly what she said, but my curiosity was piqued. "Her" book was already checked out in Libby, so rather than put in a hold I found another library ebook by Tara French, Witch Elm.
Witch Elm is a mystery story, but it's not your typical mystery. The narrator/protagonist is himself the victim of a burglary and has a traumatic brain injury. Later, evidence appears about a 10-year-old murder of one of his school friends. The burglary and murder seem to be connected, but it's unclear how. But the amazing thing is how well (in my opinion) French writes the perspective of someone who has a TBI. Along those lines, there's the issue that the narrator is definitely unreliable - he has lots of gaps in his memory, and we're also not sure how much of his personality is the same post-injury. The story is told from his point of view, but it's kind of like...which him? He feels profoundly different after his brain injury, and the murder happened when he was 18, so there's the passing of time to consider too.
It's hard to get a grasp on who the protagonist actually is, in a lot of ways, but he definitely is both privileged and unaware of his own privilege. I'm not sure what will happen to him or what he's done or hasn't done. I can't wait to get back to it!
Patreon: So I followed a writer I really liked on Patreon, but then she decided to go in a different direction and I ended up deciding to stop subscribing. And then there was an activist that I thought was doing good things but couldn't ever quite manage to watch. So I ended up deciding to stop subscribing to her too. I felt kind of guilty about both things.
Now I'm subscribing to
jakebe 's Patreon, and I love it so much. We're friends, disclaimer, but I somehow missed that he had a Patreon (tbf, we had kind of lost touch for a while, in the way that will happen sometimes). I really enjoy reading his writing, and I like feeling like a member of a club of readers. They're serial stories, kind of an urban fantasy with a romantic component. Learn more here. With the activist, it felt like an "eat your vegetables" sort of thing, like I felt like I should make myself consume her videos because they would be good for me. But this is different - it's something I genuinely look forward to and feel happy about. I feel like I just now have the sense of what Patreon is maybe supposed to be.Twitch: So back...wow, a quick google search suggests 2008? Time flies. Apparently back in 2008 I was watching these Ill Doctrine videos put out by Jay Smooth, who's super big into both hiphop and politics. I enjoyed his take on things. Here's a short NPR article about him from 2009. Anyway, he and I are Facebook friends (he's friends with me and over 4000 other people - he's just very nice about accepting friend requests I think), so I've been somewhat nominally aware of what he's been up to. Anyway, recently with the pandemic, he's started doing Twitch streams. Basically, he'll either play some music videos or watch a movie or TV show and do commentary and a bunch of folks comment in the chat section. It doesn't sound exciting but I'm low-key liking it. This week, for Indigenous People Day, he played a bunch of Native hiphop and it was the perfect capstone for the day, something I didn't know I needed but that felt great. He usually streams MWF, though he also is doing a stream for the Joe Biden Town Hall this Thursday (and is likely *not* streaming tomorrow). I subscribed but you don't have to in order to take part in it. https://m.twitch.tv/jsmooth995/profile
Song: My kid pointed this song out to me, and Daveed Diggs is on fire. It's high speed rap, full of linguistic twists and turns (and a lot of f-bombs) and is, shall we euphemistically say, not a feel-good paean to the boys in blue. It's about Black Lives Mattering, and people marching, and it's just a good cathartic listen for those of us who are increasingly disgusted with white supremacy and this administration. I'd say give this one a pass if you are a Trump supporter, but I'm guessing if you are, you've already stopped reading me. :-D
Return to Stitch and Bitch: It's kind of a misnomer because we really don't bitch as much as talk about interesting things we've seen and heard, but my stitching group decided to start meeting again. I love my stitching friends. They bring so much joy to my life, and I was missing them during the pandemic. Right now we're meeting outside under one member's carport and sitting 6+ feet apart, and we're chatting and doing crafts (two of us are embroidering and two of us are doing crochet).
I think that's all I have for right now, but I do want to add that it's a good mental exercise, thinking about things that I'm into and taking the time to write about them.
