ok this one has some insane tonal shifts
life is a mine for content
I’ve started 2024 off in a signature reading slump. Luckily, this one is not (solely) the result of a depressive episode — I’ve had a very pleasantly busy few weeks (minus this whole “applying to grad school” thing I’m toying with).
For example! In a beautiful ceremony, my long-time friend Riley who is also a loyal follower and subscriber and their incredible partner Taylor got married!!! A very special congratulations to them, not just because of their devotion to the #readwithmith cause, but because they are a perfect couple and threw the best party ever that also doubled as a romantic evening for me and my first dance partner Max (also a subscriber and it was his birthday this week so everyone say happy birthday chaos queen!!). Love was certainly in the air that weekend, as John (my “real” date) won me a sweet baby dragon who looks like Tairn without even knowing it.
At the wedding, I had the distinct pleasure of finally meeting Riley’s friend and coworker Jess, with whom I’ve been virtually chatting all things romantasy with for several months. It was truly so fun. Influencers in the wild! Also, an extra thanks to my pal Maeve, who I had a lovely time catching up with after a few years; to my very sweet surprise, she told me she reads almost all of my newsletters (I truly don’t expect anyone to). I am lucky to know such cool people who are so supportive of my goofy endeavors, even from afar.
Aquarius season forges on …
reads
presents!
I have some special book-related birthday shout-outs to make:
My wonderful friend Morgan took pity on me after reading my sob story in my last newsletter about the Yankee swap and got me a generous Barnes and Noble gift card. I have not yet decided on my purchases, but rest assured they’ll be described in great detail here.
Frequently mentioned friend of the pod Caroline gifted me a Fourth Wing-themed candle called “The Wingleader’s Leather.” If this is anything even vaguely similar how Xaden smells (it’s exactly how he’s described every other page), I get it ten thousand times over.
My pal Ewan visited and presented me with a book entitled Sex with a Brain Injury. I could give any amount of context on what it’s actually about and the title would make sense, but I’d rather you just come to your own wild conclusion. (it’s queer-authored and seems to be a cool and meaningful book on concussion recovery that I am excited to read and don’t want to invalidate because it’s something I know so many people struggle with and are often not given proper care for, but just imagine one of your friends who doesn’t read very much handing that to you with no context)
Every year, without fail, my British Empire-loving friend Caleb buys me a book that I’ve already read, which I always enjoy, because I love having physical copies of books, but it is absolutely hilarious. Last year, it was Casey McQuiston’s One Last Stop (he was so proud of this one, too, because it’s about being gay on the train), and the year before, Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation. This year, however, he nailed it with What the Day Owes the Night by Yasmina Khadra. In fact, he ordered it from Shakespeare and Co. in Paris, a lovely treat for me even though he is supporting the French economy (bad).
This wasn’t a birthday gift, but I completely forgot to mention my favorite former coworker Alexa got me Samin Nostrat’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat in a little secret Santa we did at the end of the year, which, if you can believe it, was stolen from me at the Yankee swap the year before this one BY THE SAME PERSON WHO TOOK MY GIFT CARD!!! AHHHHH!!!!!
the only book I’ve finished this year. so sorry
Based on everything I just wrote above and the length of time it took me to actually get to the so-called “main” section of this newsletter, it will likely not come as a surprise that I only got to one book in January. lol! But as far as a piddling output goes, at least I emerged having read something as powerful as The Bluest Eye. Content warning for SA, child sexual abuse, racial violence, incest … etc.
This is Toni Morrison’s first novel, and it is a short and devastating one. At the core of the tale, set in a mostly white town in Ohio during the Great Depression, is a young Black girl named Petola who wishes for blue eyes to make her beautiful because everyone thinks she’s ugly and make no secret of it.
It’s just such a fucking phenomenal treatise on race and class and gender. I want to write a full literary analysis of this right now because Morrison is just so good at laying all these themes out for us in a beautiful way. Fortunately for you, that would spoil some plot points, so I’ll save you the essay. Morrison writes about whiteness as the standard of beauty and the source of violence and conflict in numerous ways — both outside and within the Black community. In the novel, Black = ugly, so Black women who are able to mimic whiteness as best they can are perceived as superior, though their efforts are for naught. The lack of empathy that everyone has for Petola, even in the face of terrible violence inflicted against her, is representative of this.
The way the book unravels is something to behold. The narrative devices generally work well, and the motifs flow into one another seamlessly. We are able to empathize with every character in some capacity at the hands of their subjugation, but feel an appropriate amount of disgust for the ways in which they translate their self-loathing into heinous acts against others — and, again, a fundamental understanding that the perception of whiteness as the norm and superior is at the core of it all.
I do wish there was some more breathing room for us to better understand the characters; there are times when the novel’s brevity is a bit of a weakness. I can appreciate the general tone, but I think it would have been even more effective if we had a fuller picture.
The universal nature of Morrison’s work, however, cannot be understated. I felt a rather melancholy connection to this book as I recalled feeling unattractive when I was younger solely because of my ethnicity, which was meaningful for me to think about. I’m reading Sula next for #toni2024, and I look forward to being sad once more. 4.3/5.
current reads
I’m currently reading Things You May Find Hidden In My Ear by Mosab Abu Toha, another work of Palestinian poetry. I’m really enjoying it so far. There’s an extra pressing factor to this one; the author was recently kidnapped by the IDF and forced to flee his homeland with his wife and children, leaving the rest of his family and loved ones behind. If you don’t like poetry and/or only have time to read one thing this week, please, please, please make it his piece in The New Yorker about his journey.
other media
documentary
On that note, I saw a fantastic Palestinian documentary the other week: Bye Bye Tiberias. It’s by Lina Soualem and focuses on her mother’s — Hiam Abbass, popularly known from Succession — return to her native Palestine after years away.
Fuck, I cried pretty much the entire time watching this. It’s not necessarily a tear-jerker, but if you’re an immigrant or have immigrant parents or any experiences of the like, you will cry like a little baby. I don’t know how you could watch videos of elderly people who have lived there their entire lives with their hands in the air, walking barefoot as they’re escorted out of their country by Israeli tanks, not knowing that they’ll never return to their homeland, without feeling devastated.
It’s also a good rebuttal to people who are like, well, why don’t these people just leave Palestine? They don’t want to. It’s their home and it’s being invaded and violently wrested from them by foreign entities who wish for them to be dead or gone so they can subsume the land for their own twisted political and financial gain. Why would you want to go somewhere else, perhaps a country contributing to your displacement, to and be treated like shit when you get there? It’s not even like we’re committing atrocious war crimes for the benefit of American citizens, like the government would like us to believe, since 38 million of us live in abject poverty. I think my parents would have stayed in Iran in a heartbeat, families intact, if they could have.
Okay, for my own mental health, I am going to talk about something incredibly funny and ridiculous now if you’ll pardon the SWERVE in tone.
on cinema cinematic universe
I am deeply and fully addicted to what I believe may be one of the most brilliant comedic endeavors to ever grace our reality: the On Cinema universe. My very funny friend Miller and I are working on a little comedic project (much more to come on that), and she mentioned that On Cinema was an inspiration for her. I really like Tim Heidecker and every comedian associated with that subversive space, and I have seen at least two of my friends wearing their trademark hideous On Cinema polos, so I figured I’d finally check it out. The premise is a movie review web series hosted by two hapless critics who, as a great YouTube commenter once said, leave you with less of an understanding of the films they’re discussing by the end.
I did not realize this would be a near-full-time commitment, but I’m so glad for it. One may not assume from the premise, but this project has spawned a cinematic universe of epic proportions, including, but not limited to, multiple fictional movies and TV shows created by the characters; a five-hour-long murder trial done completely in character; live-streamed Oscar specials that often result in severe injury; a full documentary about fictional Tim’s political aspirations; music published on Spotify by his “band” … it’s so genius. He and Gregg Turkington are masters of the craft.
This is exactly what I love about comedy: when it’s absolutely absurd to the point of no return but rooted just enough in reality for you to feel a genuine investment in the characters’ lives. I am literally counting down the days until the next Oscar special where, I can only imagine, someone will be arrested and/or dead.
go pats baby … masshole forever … see u next time