New Writing, Books I'm Excited About, Etc.

I have new poems published by Little Old Lady Comedy. One piece came out in September, which you can read here, and another piece came out in July, which you can read here. 

Little Old Lady Comedy has new editors and a new website. There was some overlap between the previous editors and the new editors. The gist of it is that you can read my most recent pieces published by Little Old Lady Comedy here, and you can read my Little Old Lady Comedy pieces published before this summer here. 

One of my favorite books that I read this summer is This American Ex-Wife by Lyz Lenz. 

I really enjoyed this book, especially as someone who has never been married and doesn't have kids. (I am, however, an exhausted auntie.) The book made me think about this and this. Then I started thinking about a Lyz Lenz and Julia Fox Venn diagram, with their similarities and differences. I feel like this Lenz-Fox Venn diagram should actually exist, but I don't have time to make it. I've also always felt that a mashup video of Elaine's awkward dancing on Seinfeld and Drake's awkward dancing in the "Hotline Bling" video should exist. Sometimes I think of this when I hear Kendrick Lamar's "Not Like Us." Anyway...

Two books I'm excited to read are Perfume & Pain by Anna Dorn and A Complicated Passion by Carrie Rickey.

I enjoyed reading Exalted by Anna Dorn this past winter, so I'm looking forward to reading Perfume & Pain, which is being adapted as a series. I thought I read earlier this year that Exalted was optioned for film, but I can't remember the details.

A Complicated Passion is a biography of Agnès Varda by the film and art critic Carrie Rickey. I recently saw Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) and I loved it. I'm excited to watch it again. It is one of those movies that you want to watch multiple times, like Stage Door (1937) and All About Eve (1950). When I think of more recent movies I've seen several times, I think of movies from the aughts like Best in Show (2000) and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). Obviously, there are a lot of movies that I've liked since the aughts, but I can't think of any that I felt I had to watch more than once. So, I'm looking forward to rewatching Cléo from 5 to 7, seeing more of Agnès Varda's films, and learning more about her by reading this biography.

Herbalogic also sent me a box of their products which was nice of them. (How did they read my mind about the PMS?)

This song is stuck in my head. I hope I'm remembering everything I wanted to post today. I still feel tired from the latest covid vaccine I got last week. 

Charleston Shoe Co.

Charleston Shoe Co. is a woman-owned business that has donated thousands of shoes to women in developing countries and to U.S. healthcare workers. The owner, Neely Woodson Powell, was inspired by a shoemaker she met in Mexico in 1996 and studied shoe design at Savannah College of Art and Design.

Neely sent me some of Charleston Shoe Co.'s bestselling shoes. The company aims to spread what Neely calls "Shoe Joy" with shoes for women that are both cute and comfortable.

The first four photos are of the Cannon in Linen. The last four photos are of the Sumatra in Black. 

Obviously, their shoes are really cute! I'm not sure why, but I tend to pick out shoes that either have high heels or are flats. So these designs with a small heel definitely fill a gap in my wardrobe. I love how versatile they are. They go well with a lot of different outfits. 

I'm impressed with how comfortable the shoes are. They feel really supportive. I started dancing at a young age, and I was a professional dancer in my early and mid-twenties, so I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't have pain in my feet off and on. Later on, I had a severe case of axonal Guillain-Barré syndrome. I recovered, but I was left with residual nerve pain, which flares up the most in my feet and hands. So I definitely appreciate well-made shoes! I will be wearing both pairs of shoes a lot until it gets cold again in the Midwest.

New Piece Out (5/16/2024)

I have a new piece published by Little Old Lady Comedy which you can read here.

I thought this video about the "blockout" was interesting. 

I'll post more soon.

Books I Want to Read (January 2024)

These are some of the books I want to read...

Zero-Sum: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates 

Future Feeling by Joss Lake 

 

Outrage Machine: How Tech Amplifies Discontent, Disrupts Democracy—And What We Can Do About It by Tobias Rose-Stockwell 

 

Excavations by Hannah Michell  

 

The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth’s Past Mass Extinctions by Peter Brannen  

 

Search History by Eugene Lim 

 

This Exquisite Loneliness: What Loners, Outcasts, and the Misunderstood Can Teach Us about Creativity by Richard Deming  

 

The Heartbreak Years: A Memoir by Minda Honey 

 

The Upstate by Lindsay Turner 

 

The Writing Life by Annie Dillard 

 

Rental Person Who Does Nothing by Shoji Morimoto  

 

Rogue by Mona Awad

 

Cities of the Red Night by William S. Burroughs  

 

The Guild of Saint Cooper by Shya Scanlon 

 

I Didn’t See It Coming by William E. Jones 

 

Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art by Lauren Elkin 

 

Vengeance Is Mine by Marie NDiaye

 

The Young Man by Annie Ernaux

 

No Crying in Baseball: The Inside Story of A League of Their Own: Big Stars, Dugout Drama, and a Home Run for Hollywood by Erin Carlson  

 

Nox by Anne Carson 

 

A Starlet’s Secret to a Sensational Afterlife by Kendall Kulper 

 

A Matter of Appearance: A Memoir by Emily Wells 

 

Shy by Max Porter 

 

Abortion: A Personal Story, A Political Choice by Pauline Harmange  

 

What’s Eating Us: Women, Food, and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety by Cole Kazdin 

 

The Thick and the Lean by Chana Porter 

 

Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond 

 

Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life (10th Anniversary Edition) by Dani Shapiro 

 

Your Driver Is Waiting by Priya Guns 

 

Up with the Sun by Thomas Mallon 

 

Lives of the Wives: Five Literary Marriages by Carmela Ciuraru 

 

Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society by Arline T. Geronimus

 

Without Children: The Long History of Not Being a Mother by Peggy O’Donnell Heffington 

 

Exalted by Anna Dorn 

 

Pleasure and Efficacy: Of Pen Names, Cover Versions, and Other Trans Techniques by Grace E. Lavery 

 

Lessons from an American Stoic: How Emerson Can Change Your Life by Mark Matousek 

 

A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters by Steven C. Hayes 

 

literally show me a healthy person by Darcie Wilder 

 

The Novelist by Jordan Castro  

I hope everyone had a happy holiday season. I posted some pictures of me with my nephews from Thanksgiving Day (11/23/2023) here.

Looking forward to the long weekend!

P.S. I definitely recommend this essay which you can read here. It was published in 2019, but for some reason, I didn't come across it until sometime in 2023. After reading it, I made a note that it is a must-read.