Crystal > Recent Status Updates

I'm not convinced youth and/or drug use make one a raging bigot but the reviews are glowing so maybe there's a redemptive arc (do I want to listen to a redemptive arc rn??).

Attempt #4589035 to try to figure out how to talk my dad out of a conspiracy theory.

Collection of Free Audiobooks on Audible - these audiobooks were made free to stream while school is out during the pandemic - no login/account required:

https://stories.audible.com/start-listen

Scribd available for free for 30 days with no credit card or commitment needed:

https://scr.bi/ReadFree
https://twitter.com/Scribd/status/124...

I've been putting together free/inexpensive ebook/audiobook resources for shelter in place:

https://sleepwalking.nu/post/61306570...

I had started this sometime very early in the week after seeing it on Kindle Unlimited but gave up partway through the dog chapter. Now that I'm beyond the part where the r-word appears like 3-4 times a page (& it's a comic!) maybe it'll grow on me.

Honestly, I could do without the so-called poetic writing in this memoir. A man (in this memoir about having Indigenous ancestors multiple generations back) stands like a totem pole, an abusive husband is like Hitler advancing on Europe. It's just so cringe.

I had accidentally marked this as read when trying to add to to my to-read list a month or two ago but now in the middle of my first reading session with this anthology.

Started reading this essay collection because the essay on the Yorkshire Ripper was referenced in Becoming Unbecoming by Una but I'm really put off by Smith's comments on a former Page Three model's body. Not just shaming but also implication that the size of her breasts is abnormal, something "gone mad." It's such a classic move for the time that commentary on sexism is done in a sexist way. Gross.

Really love her essay that opens with how the mentally ill are trained to talk of our feelings and experiences in a psychiatrically approved way to appease mental health professionals. It's spot on. If you appear to lack "insight" you run the risk of being labeled a problem patient, being hospitalized, or being talked or forced into undergoing adventurous med changes.

I'm a bit baffled as to why he included the essay on English literature and entertainment. While his other essays are engaging in this essay he seems vastly out of his depth.

This was a lovely book and after a couple frustrating reads I wanted something to sustain me so a quick re-listen. Have queued up at the library so I can read it too.

A poet I admire praised this collection quite highly and unsure if I was missing something (I'd listened to it on Scribd and also read the ebook) I'm now giving it another go.

Here we go, reading about my disorder (even to the type) by a writer of color who shares the diagnosis and who became successful writing literary fiction, who is successful outside of memoir. My dream.