More people! More friends of mine!

Finished:

+ Listened to Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online by Fortesa Latifi. This was good but harrowing. Influencer culture seems so gross to me in general, but when you add children to the mix, I find it actually morally wrong. Latifi is scrupulously fair to the family vlogging parents she interviews, trying to understand their points of view even when she disagrees with them. She's always giving the benefit of the doubt in a way that feels generous without crossing into stupid territory, though I am considerably less generous myself.

I like how she started with the mommy bloggers and talked about how they were different--back then, the focus was on the experience of motherhood, not on the children themselves, and also the moms could easily write under a pseudonym and not tie their children to their blogs. These days the focus is very much on the children, and the most interesting parts of the book are where she talks to the kids themselves. You've got a wide range of reactions from a teenage girl who hates her mom's influencing and admits that she's stopped telling her mom anything about her life because her mom always turns it into content even when she says she won't to kids who think that being an influencer is the best thing ever.

One thing that I now know that I can't unknow is that the "family" vlogging/content that does the biggest numbers is anything where kids are scared/hurt/upset/vulnerable and wow, sometimes I really hate the world.

My biggest takeaway is that I am so so so so glad that my sister and I are on the same page re: kids and social media (in short: no) because I genuinely don't know how I would handle it if she was plastering my niblings' faces all over the internet. They are obscenely adorable children (this is not just me being biased--perfect strangers stop us in stores to tell us how beautiful they are) and also hilarious and smart, so they'd do numbers, but oh my God, I am so glad that literally the only things they use the internet/phones for are FaceTiming with me or my parents.

If you can handle the dystopia of it all, this is a very good one to read. If you want a little glimpse into what it's like to decide if it's for you, Jane Marie on The Dream podcast just interviewed Latifi, so you could listen to that episode.

+ Orlando. As I said while I was reading it, I did not love this one the way I love some of Woolf's other stuff, but it was certainly interesting. There were things I really liked about it. The prose is wonderful, of course. I liked the stuff that was deconstructing the genre of biography and what we can know about historical figures, though I wish there had been more of it, frankly. The stuff where she was making fun of the Victorian era was incredible and funny and of course a Bloomsburian would knock that out of the park. And of course because it's Woolf, there are some sharp insights into gender and writing and how those two intersect.

But as a whole work, I really came away with a "I don't really get it" feeling. I understand what she's doing with certain parts of it, but I'm not sure I understand the overall project or what the meaning of the gender shift is.

But I'm glad to have read it!

+ Listened to "You Just Need to Lose Weight": And 19 Other Myths about Fat People by Aubrey Gordon. I knew most of the ideas she would hit here since I have been listening to her Maintenance Phase podcast since literally the first episode and have never missed a single episode lol. But I just like Aubrey so much, so it was fun hanging out with her--she's so smart and funny and compassionate and steely when she needs to be. This is one of the best Anti-fat Bias 101 books out there, so if you're new to that movement, I highly recommend it.

+ True Grit by Charles Portis. A friend on Tumblr had posted a quote from this book and I was like, "Omg, that's amazing," so I picked it up and OMG THIS BOOK IS AMAZING. A truly perfect example of the power of narrative voice, it made me giddy!

It's the 1870s and Mattie Ross is 14 years old when her father is murdered and she hires a marshal to go with her to hunt down the culprit and bring him to justice. An elderly Mattie is telling us the story sometime in the 1920s and this is the kind of book that first person was invented for.

There are two film adaptations of this book and both are good, but they are not nearly as good as the book itself (though all the props in the world to baby Hailee Steinfeld for being a perfect Mattie) because even with voice-overs, film adaptations cannot truly replicate her voice, which is the single best thing about the book. The plot is fun! The characters are all very well drawn! But Mattie's voice is a truly incredible literary achievement. Line after line just blew me away. Mattie is pragmatic and unflappable and steely and humorless and pious and ruthless and yet you never lose sight of the fact that she is still a child. I don't know how he did it. There were parts of it that were so funny (especially the chasm between some of the more outlandish/dramatic parts and the matter-of-fact way that Mattie tells the story) that I wanted to hug Portis.

One thing I kept thinking about while reading it was how sorry I am for anyone who reads it without knowing a ton about the Bible. Because for the first fourth of the book, there are Biblical allusions on every single page--after that, the rate of them slows down, but they're still there. And I truly feel that anyone who isn't picking up on them is missing out. I strongly, strongly believe that the Bible should be taught in literature classes from elementary school and Christian history and theology in history classes from the same age because you simply cannot understand vast swathes of both literature and history if you aren't familiar with this stuff. And also you miss out on great jokes!

Perhaps my favorite bit was this:

I do not know to this day why they let a wool-hatted crank like Owen Hardy preach the service. Knowing the Gospel and preaching it are two different things. A Baptist or even a Campbellite would have been better than him. If I had been home I would never have permitted it but I could not be in two places at once.

As somebody who grew up a Campbellite (though we NEVER would have used that word to describe ourselves; it's pejorative), this had me rolling.

Wait or this:

I had hated these ponies for the part they played in my father's death but now I realized the notion was fanciful, that it was wrong to charge blame to these pretty beasts who knew neither good nor evil but only innocence. I say that of these ponies. I have known some horses and a good many more pigs who I believe harbored evil intent in their hearts. I will go further and say all cats are wicked, though often useful. Who has not seen Satan in their sly faces? Some preachers will say, well, that is superstitious "claptrap." My answer is this: Preacher, go to your Bible and read Luke 8: 26-33.

Or this:

I confess [Election] is a hard doctrine, running contrary to our earthly ideas of fair play, but I can see no way around it. Read I Corinthians 6:13 and II Timothy 1:9, 10. Also I Peter 1:2, 19 ,20 and Romans 11:7. There you have it. It was good for Paul and Silas and it is good enough for me. It is good enough for you too.

I LOVE THIS BOOK. And will be buying myself a copy.

I am sad to discover that Portis didn't write any other historical fiction about women, but I will have to read his other books even if they don't sound like my thing just because he's so damn talented.

Currently reading:

+ Listening to the audiobook of Culture Creep, essays by Alice Bolin about life in the 2020s through a lens of feminism and pop culture. She's a great writer with some really good insights. I'll have more to say when I'm done.

+ Still haven't picked up The Magician's Daughter yet, but I will finish it at some point.

+ I was craving some Benjamin January yesterday, so I started The House of the Patriarch, book 18. I've been drawing out this series over the course of years, but I am nearing being caught up and then what will I do???? (Start over at the beginning, I guess.)

Trying to bring this back!

What I finished:

+ Disciples of White Jesus: The Radicalization of American Boyhood by Angela Denker. This was not exactly what I expected, which was a more sociological exploration of the way that white Christian boys are being taught white supremacist/Christian nationalist beliefs. Instead, it was a very personal journalistic exploration that drew on sociological data. Denker did things like travel to Columbia, SC to meet the pastor of the young man who murdered worshipers at Mother Emanuel church in Charleston, talked to pastor teaching confirmation classes in rural Midwestern communities, and drew on her own work as a pastor to get an angle on what white Christian boys are being taught about masculinity.

This is very much a book for Christians; it is written from a progressive Christian perspective and as such would probably be annoying to people who are progressive but not Christian. Still, I don't regret listening to it and I am glad this resource is out there for Christians who are trying to combat extremism within the church.

What I'm reading:

+ Orlando by Virginia Woolf for book club. I'm about 1/3 of the way through, and I am glad this wasn't my first Woolf. The language and the flashing insights are gorgeous, of course, and I actually love how deeply weird it is with things like time--it's absolutely written on a mythic scale which I think is very cool--but I think if this was my first Woolf I would be more wtf??? about it. The casual racism is a lot!

I don't know that I will ever love this like I do Mrs. Dalloway, but it's certainly an interesting reading experience and I am enjoying myself! We'll see how I feel when I'm done.

+ The Magician's Daughter by H.G. Parry. Despite my intense annoyance at books about female protagonists whose titles frame them in relationship to a man, I checked this one out on a whim. It has the energy of an old-school YA fantasy novel (complimentary) and I'm enjoying it! It doesn't feel formulaic or as simplistic as most YA does today, even if it doesn't quite have the richness of my old faves.

I was taken from the beginning; the story starts out with a teenage girl who's been raised on a magical island in a crumbling castle, knowing nothing about the rest of the world except what she's read through books. Classic Lauren-bait, 11/10, no notes. Once we leave the island, things don't hit quite as hard for me, though I'm reserving my judgement until I finish it.

It turns out it's one of those "magic is disappearing!" books, which I think is an overdone trope, but this is certainly one of the better versions of that story I've read. The worldbuilding is quite fun, even if it isn't very innovative. There's no romance, the main relationship is between the protagonist and the man who raised her, which is well done. Hopefully we'll get some real emotional oomph in the last third of the book and I will be able to unabashedly recommend this to people who are looking for a light but not insubstantial read.

+ "You Just Need to Lose Weight" and 19 Other Myths About Fat People by Aubrey Gordon. I just needed an audiobook to listen to while I was cooking on Sunday, and I was like, "Wait! Aubrey from my beloved Maintenance Phase podcast has books! I can just listen to her read them!"

I knew a lot of this stuff already, but Aubrey is such a great person to hang out with--funny, compassionate, uncompromising when she needs to be. The work of fat advocacy she does must be exhausting considering the everything of our current culture (for a while there in the 2010s I really did think we were making strides on the topic of bodies, and then the one-two punch of Covid and weight loss drugs happened and now we're right back to heroin chic and it's so awful), but I admire her so much for doing it.