HELLO and welcome to the 281st installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays I’ve read recently so that you can read them too and we can all know more about burnout! This “column” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are.
The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gould’s tumblr, Things I Ate That I Love.
So, What Really Happened To The Cauldron?, by Jamie O’Grady for The Cauldron, January 2019
This is honestly never a question I’ve asked myself, as I didn’t even know this apparent sports-related website ever existed. But as a person who is trying to make a media thing happen themselves, and in these times, I found this VERY interesting — it had many familiar struggles.
Creating While Clean, by Chris Heath for GQ, January 2019
Eight sober musicians — including your very own Julien Baker and Soko, as well as Steven Tyler, Ben Harper and the guy from Phish — on their path towards sobriety, their non-sober days, and thriving creatively without drugs or booze.
What Happened To Lindsay Lohan?, by Scaachi Koul for Buzzfeed, January 2019
A true gift from the world to you on this Friday!
The Art of the Pan: What’s the Point of a Bad Review in 2019?, by Rob Harvilla for Pitchfork, January 2019
First of all, editors—especially editors at The New York Times—love it. They love bad reviews. And they’re fun to do because they give you access to a lot of writerly tools that are fun to use. You can be funny. You can be clever. What you’re doing is, you’re demonstrating your superiority to a thing that you’re writing about… But positive reviews—where you can make a case for something that you really feel enthusiastic about, and still write as well as you can—that’s a lot harder, and a lot more valuable.”
Unruly, Adjective, by Carmen Maria Machado for Unruly Bodies, April 2018
Obviously I love every word this woman has ever written and you know what else I love? Writers cataloging their various special skin issues because I have so many of them myself!! It’s very validating. Bodies are so weird!
I Was a 4-Year-Old Trapped in a Teenager’s Body, by Patrick Burleigh for The Cut & Epic Magazine, January 2019
Speaking of bodies being weird! Can you imagine having the body and sexual impulses of a 13-year-old as a 4-year-old? I cannot!
Free, or Something Like It, by Rachel McCarthy James for Hazlitt, November 2018
I remember when these little gifts in cereal boxes and the ones you could buy with “Camel Cash” were such a thing, and now I guess we live in a world where Cracker Jacks don’t even have toys in them anymore. I imagined the decline of these items was just an increased awareness of their worthlessness and of the perils of a mindless accumulation of Stuff, but I guess it has more to do with online shopping and changing consumer habits.
Everything After, by Chloe Caldwell for Hobart, January 2018
The writer struggles to articulate her own sexual orientation when her best-known book is about dating women and she is currently dating a man.
Book reviewers seemed justified in analyzing or challenging my sexuality. One reviewer verbatim said: I question Chloe’s love for women.
This line, I don’t know where I heard it, or is it just a thought I’ve had?
I Google myself every day to find out if I’m gay or not.
Everything You Think You Know About Toxic Shock Syndrome Is Probably Wrong, by Nona Willis Aronowitz for Lifehacker
I had a feeling!
How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation, by Anne Helen Peterson for Buzzfeed, January 2019
Have you read this one yet? I found it VERY VALIDATING.
We use Fresh Direct and Amazon because the time they save allows us to do more work.
This is why the fundamental criticism of millennials — that we’re lazy and entitled — is so frustrating: We hustle so hard that we’ve figured out how to avoid wasting time eating meals and are called entitled for asking for fair compensation and benefits like working remotely (so we can live in affordable cities), adequate health care, or 401(k)s (so we can theoretically stop working at some point before the day we die). We’re called whiny for talking frankly about just how much we do work, or how exhausted we are by it. But because overworking for less money isn’t always visible — because job hunting now means trawling LinkedIn, because “overtime” now means replying to emails in bed — the extent of our labor is often ignored, or degraded.
How Three Tokelau Teenagers Survived Being Lost in the Ocean for 51 Days, by Michael Finkel for GQ, May 2011
I read this two weeks ago and have not stopped thinking about it! It is bananas, and I was glued to the page.
I’m not gonna say I cried through the Chloe Caldwell piece or anything like it, nope, but I am sending it to every queer woman I know in straight-looking relationships because that was about as real as it gets.
i no longer anticipate ending up in relationships with cis men, but as someone who is more often single than in a relationship, i very much identified with the power of being single.
gonna save this one to read a few more times.
Wow. I read the Lindsay Lohan and the precocious puberty article and I’m sort of overcome.
Whew the last paragraph of the Carmen Maria Machado piece was amazing.
Eesh. I was not at all ready to read this over my breakfast. Not at all. “according to The Atlantic’s history of the tampon, some women were said to wear just one Rely tampon for an entire period, eventually extracting a gigantic, mushroom-shaped object from their vaginas.”
Fridays are usually super busy for me, so much so that I often don’t have time to check my beloved AS throughout the day. I gotta tell you Riese, one of my favorite feelings is waking up on a Saturday morning to find a Things I Read That I Love. 💜Thank you for always putting together such a great collection of longreads!
Yes!
I second that! Perfect Saturday morning reading