'

feeling p good about this, especially since I'm not counting maybe 25% of the books I read

like, I won't lie, I read the first Merry Gentry book in its entirety earlier this week because I remember something weird LKH did and I was like "did this series actually happen"?

reader, it did.

why is she so into men with ankle length hair?? is this a widespread fascination among her readership or just like, a thing for her??

I. wait what?

Oh man, I had almost forgotten that series

It... sure was a thing that happened...

IT SURE WAS

w o w

anyway I finished Trick Mirror and Wild this week.

I enjoy Jia Tolentino's writing so I'm glad I read her book of essays, some I think I'd read before?

Athleisure, barre and kale: the tyranny of the ideal...

The I in Internet and The Cult of the Difficult Woman were the most enlightening reads for me.

But the Internet brings the "I" into everything. The internet can make it seem that supporting someone means literally sharing in their experience— that solidarity is a matter of identity rather than politics or morality, and that it's best established at a point of maximum mutual vulnerability in everyday life.

Wild I just read b/c I'm still cooped up inside and I wanted to pretend as if I were outdoors and having adventures, but really it's not expedition or wilderness literature so much as a memoir in the style of Oprah's Book Club.

Which is fine— there was some cliche repetition and some haunting, just-so language and I got what I wanted from it.

Some people really, really hate it though and think she made the whole thing up, which is wild. like, the amount of vitriol directed against her by the thru-hike community is?? well, a sobering glimpse at the internet that was, the internet that hated twilight.

the hate sites are still up!

anyway I am about halfway through Anatomy of Fascism by Robert Paxton, which is sort of a history of comparative fascisms.

Fascism is one of those words like "gaslighting" that means one thing but is used to mean many things, and I wanted to solidify my understanding of the concept, and it's p useful so far.

a 39 part hate review!! jeez

next up I have: the vanishing half, that intro to astrology book, and peasants into frenchmen, because why haven't i read peasants into frenchmen

I think it will be an interesting coda to all the twentieth century Europe reading I've been doing, since nationalism is such a theme

Arguably, LKH’s target audience is people who are into men with long hair

Even so, “ankle-length” is very specific.

Also, which astrology book? (I read one a while ago and I thought it was kind of interesting as a memoir.)

once, in an economics class, someone said "nation-state" but they were talking about like, the early modern economy, and I was like "should you really be using those words to describe countries before the invention of nationalism" and everyone looked at me funny. don't do history, kids.

pogonophile : right?? and so much is about like her failing to be a good role model

i skimmed and the amount of times she rips into cheryl for very slut-shamey reasons, phew

this is a memoir about a woman who lost her mother suddenly in her early twenties, and then went into a self-destructive spiral in the wake of that

yeah this blog just seems deeply bothered by strayed as a person.

and like, yes, she does cheat on her husband for reasons she doesn't quite understand (because she's in a self-destructive depressive spiral) but the story is about how she realizes she needs to find some degree of self-acceptance to move on and do better. it is deeply weird to go after her for failing to be a good role model.

They also hated the Dear Sugar stuff? Sheesh.

deeply weird also to attack her for skipping parts of the trail or?? idk, a lot of the hate is like "everyone pays attention to cheryl for doing this hike of part of the PCT but not x other female hiker who did the whole thing, backwards and forwards"

Nobody actually pays attention to Cheryl for the hike at all or we’d be talking to every single hiker

or else "she whines so much about losing her mother but lots of people go through that it isn't that special"

They pay attention to her for the writing and then for her compassionate understanding of people. (That’s why her Dear Sugar stuff was popular.)

here's another one

I think these people are the kind of people who are deeply skeptical of anyone getting attention because if you’re doing that, you’re acting out, and also, of any situation that they suspect might leave another person feeling special.

Bc how dare anyone think they’re better than the rest of us! They’re not even that good. Gosh.

yes. wild is a memoir so of course it's a bit navel-gazey, but she hardly comes across as a "mary sue", just someone who has learned to have compassion for her own problems, who can describe emotions in a way that is relatable to an audience, no small skill.

eat pray love bothered me a bit more in this respect, even though I think gilbert is probably a better prose stylist, maybe because I'm skeptical of modern spirituality becoming a cult of the self

anyway this is the astrology book, i say after avowing my skepticism

HAHAHA THAT’S THE EXACT ONE

I say, also after avowing my skepticism

yeah!! i like that it has rainbows on the cover

I will say that to me, it felt like the first half of a longer book? But I thought the memoir sections were interesting, and overall I think her horoscopes are supportive and harmless.

lmao our reading choices are very synced up at this moment

written in the stars

I did it as an ebook and highlighted the sections that were interesting to me.

anyway, I don't believe in astrology and don't ever expect to, but it's such a part of the pop vocabulary rn

i used to be more skeptical but i had a reading done for my birthday and it was A Lot

It’s also probably a fun diversion if you’ve been reading 20th century “rise of fascism” stuff a lot for the last few months

I like certain horoscopes but more in the “this is a harmless pep talk” “sort of similar to drawing some kind of daily affirmation card” way

(I like Chani, Free Will Astrology, and the Co-Star app.)

But I grew up with a stepmother who was serious about it, had a sub to American Astrologer, owned an ephemeris.

i've always been pretty interested in christian mysticism, even as a cessationist by inclination. also i have an astrology themed d&d character.

though my upbringing was neither religious nor spiritual.

There is a little holy water font in my living room right now 😬

and yes— honestly before this i read uh, ordinary men (which is about a nazi killing squad), the rise of the third reich, and dark continent back 2 back. so a redirect to athleisure was finally in order.

But yeah, there’s always going to be some kind of look into the lives of people who do truly believe, and into their psychology. Or just the influence of hippie aunts or stepmothers.

back on the strayed beat: what is this

Weird

The basic premise that you shouldn’t take on a major trail hike with little to no preparation even if someone did it in a memoir is sound.

why are they so obsessed with whether or not she's a good role model

astrology can be a useful therapeutic tool and is a fascinatingly old folk tradition

But... this is damning with faint praise in a way that’s just not necessary

who would read this book and think "I too, wish to hike 1000 miles specifically in shoes that don't fit"

my brain is too pains to say anything more prodound about belief and spirituality

HOWEVER the strayed discourse is truly...............wild

I remember a lot of people lumped it together with eat pray love as carefree white girl shit when it really isn't

and I resent that,

it's very "???" to me that someone's reaction to a story of grief and coping is "HOW DARE YOU THINK THIS MAKES YOU SPECIAL"

there is a relationship there with into the wild and its movie and young people sort of hero-worshipping chris mccandless

which outdoorsy people were still mad about when wild came out

I didn't see Into the Wild movie even though it was partly filmed at my college (when I was going there, even)

I didn't see it either but we read the book in high school

Yeah, I've read the book, and other parts of Krakauer's writing, which I like, and I think the central tension in a lot of his writing is that he understands and feels the impulse to romanticize a life outdoors but also like very good at laying out why it's a terrible dangerous idea

I've read Into Thin Air more recently than Into the Wild though.

I think within a lot of these communities of outdoorsmen there's also a strong gatekeeping impulse.

yes,

and it's sort of mixed up with the idea of like, best practices

so there is an air of legitimacy of just wanting people to respect the environment and be safe!!!

but, also, concern trolling

here's a good blog post about wild

And best practices are not a bad idea at all but you don’t have to demonize the writer specifically

There is also always, always going to be a thing of shitting on anything women like in numbers, regardless of its inherent quality.

especially since I'm not sure "these are the mistakes I made as an idiot amateur, let me describe the painful consequences in vivid detail" is… actually going to make people want to repeat those mistakes.

been hearing good things about the vanishing half

i'm almost done with it and i highly recommend it

yeah, also it has a pretty cover

i'm weirdly unaffected by the cover even though i know a lot of people love it

ankle length hair.

I googled ankle length hair and Laurell K Hamilton and:

One personal preference is for long hair. I have a real thing for nice hair, and long means there’s more to play with.

But I’m very into texture about everything, and have discovered that not everyone’s hair is playably soft when its long. Some people’s hair is so coarse that it’s not pettable. I was very sad to find this out. So, it would be fair to say that I love hair with a soft, or pettable texture, and more is better.

my mum used to have knee length hair

it was not practical

hope these men with ankle length hair like living inside a tangle.

It doesn't seem practical or pettable imo.

she does mention that she didn't realize how much it would tangle in the post

she has THREE men with ankle length hair in this book?

is it a cult

in AB:VH there's a strip club iirc filled with lycanthrope dancers w/ridic long hair

in Merry Gentry that's just how the men of the Sidhe courts are?? The narrator mentioned that mortal men also wear their hair super long if they're fairy wannabes, and there is a Sidhe-worshipping cult in the first one.

i see.

I should be clear that the plot of Merry Gentry is that "woman is given exclusive harem full of hot, buff immortal men to try to impregnate her before her cousin fathers a child"

and as a result she eventually gives birth to triplets that somehow have nine different fathers or something like that.

It is kind of admirable in its shamelessness.