HELLO and welcome to the 14th 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 that guy who kept all these exotic animals in his backyard and then killed them! 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.
I missed it last week ’cause I was buried in camp, so this one is particularly lengthy!
The Plagiarist’s Tale (February 2012), The New Yorker – This guy took plagiarism to a whole new level, constructing an entire novel out of pieces from so many other novels!
A Family Erased: The Chris Coleman Story (August 2011), St. Louis Magazine – “Could a father strangle his wife and young sons just to keep a high salary and a sexy mistress? And if not, who did?” Good question!
The Book of Jobs: The Great Debate (February 2012), Reuters – I tend to read whatever Maureen Tkacik (aka “Moe Tkacik” from Ye Olde Jezebel) writes, so I read this, and honestly I’ve not read much about Steve Jobs, and this was unlike the things I’ve already read.
And Then There’s Me (February 2012), The Pacific Northwest Inlander – One man’s story of growing up Mexican in a white family –> “People aggravate Shane because, he believes, they possess innately something he worries he will never find — the calm that comes from being perceived by the world the way you perceive yourself.”
Man or Beast (February 2012), Cincinnati Magazine – Crazy story of the man who let all his exotic animals loose in Ohio and then shot himself in the head!
Left Behind (Feb 2012), Los Angeles Magazine – “As an actress, she never rose out of B-grade obscurity, but when her mummified corpse was found last year, Yvette Vickers drew the international headlines she’d always yearned for.”
Not the Phil Donahue Show (Summer 1993), The Virginia Quarterly – Surprise! This is actually fiction. I didn’t realize that either when I started reading it, and it’s a story about a mother whose daughter comes out to her in the first scene, and then all of these other things I think you’d appreciate, I really do.
Forever Dies Hard (February 2012), BlogHer – Did you know that diamonds are not actually worth anything? Also me and the girl who wrote this article were in a calendar together once, weird.
She’s Here, She’s Queer, She’s Fired (July 2005), Texas Monthly – On the firing of a beloved basketball coach on account of her being a lesbian.
Boy Crazy (May 2001), Boston Magazine – This article is so weird! It’s about NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy-Love Association. I have no idea what is going on with the author of this piece or anything in it, I found the tone disorienting. Now you try it.
The Race That Is Not About Winning (March/April 2011), The Believer – A stunning ode to Michael Cera, of all people, and running, with lots of brilliant things in it like, “To the extent that running is about the self, it is the self nourished by solitude, not the self glorifying in narcissism.”
Listening to Books (February 2012), n+1 – My friend Caitlin used to make fun of me all the time for listening to so many audio books, but maybe she didn’t mean it.
The Angriest Man in Television (January 2008), The Atlantic – All about David Simon and The Wire.
feature image via its-becky.blogspot.com
these all look so good! i read the steve jobs one yesterday and loved it. thanks so much for this, i know what i will be doing tonight!
me toooo
I look forward to these so much. Riese is a reader of immaculate taste.
aw
I had been following the Terry Thompson story myself..Very disturbing stuff..And he let them “loose”..Not “lose”..Though in fairness, everyone/thing involved in this story did in fact “lose”.
“not the phil donahue show”… an interesting read. i guess i’ve never read a “coming out” piece from the perspective of the mother/parent, only from the perspective of the gay child. shelley is this gay-story antihero… at first so typically, infuriatingly, like a sitcom parent, what with the talk of “phases” and her daughter being too beautiful to be a lesbian. and then suddenly i’m assaulted with a-shelley-of-infinite-wisdom that is sensitive and sees beyond reed’s gayness.
i think it speaks to the fact that family tends to auto-respond with a very knee-jerk reaction but that’s all it is; it’s knee-jerk… and then you give it time, and that, like all the things children can come home and tell their parents, settles down and fits into the narrative and becomes not as scary as it was when it was just a thing people told you because now it’s also a thing people are actually doing. And it’s not so bad after all.
Riese, these posts never fail to completely derail an entire workday :)
Thank you.
Who the hell makes fun of someone for listening to audio books? That’s like making fun of someone for listening to the radio, or playing the harmonica, or enjoying Asian fusion cuisine, or taking their dog to the dog park. It just doesn’t make sense.
semi-related fun fact: Moe Tkacik’s younger sister is the first girl I ever kissed!
(I can’t believe I just put that on the internet)
i can, that’s important stuff
Bookmarking this and reading it later, thanks! Also, Gaston </3
So many good articles.
The Angriest Man in Television – Super interesting, I found the last season of The Wire and its focus on the newspaper fascinating so I appreciated this profile of David Simon.
The Book of Jobs – Loved it, and I will also read just about anything Maureen Tkacik writes.
Listening to Books – I’ve heard about people criticizing the popularity of audio books but it doesn’t really make sense to me. They don’t really work for me because I’m a more visual person, I need the paper in front of me, but to each their own. I have had long internal debates about whether listening = reading, but never really come to a satisfactory conclusion.
Boy Crazy – I got really creeped out that the one guy had adopted one of his former lovers, was a surrogate father to others, and had a bunch of them live with him at various points. It points to such a power imbalance between the individuals.
The Plagiarist’s Tale: Interesting, and it seems like it would be a lot harder to write something that’s nearly completely plagiarized than to write something original because of all the work involved in finding the plagiarized sources.
“The Plagiarist’s Tale: Interesting, and it seems like it would be a lot harder to write something that’s nearly completely plagiarized than to write something original because of all the work involved in finding the plagiarized sources.”
I know right, I had that same thought the entire time. I also kept thinking that his ability to recall the passages and pull so seamlessly from so many books must be a marketable skill in some other field besides writing fiction.
Re: Listening to Books — I much prefer reading books, but like she said, listening to books is great for housework and road trips. Usually the audiobooks I choose are non-fiction and/or things that are more light, for more serious reading I have to read. I listened to The Liar’s Club but then switched halfway through to the print version, it felt like something I needed to see.
that tree article is the most fucked up, amazing and simultaneously hilarious thing i’ve ever read
i need to reread it just to understand who the characters are
the part about the youtube video ranting is unbelievable. i could not stop laughing.
but the fact that queer people got so angry about it because they fundamentally have no safety net (i live in canada) made me sad/angry.
by the end of it, i thought the guys who married the tree really were insensitive assholes. their concept was so far outweighed by the real relationships and losses of teh queer people who responded
ugh. only in texas.
Listening to audiobooks is a significantly safer way to imbibe books while walking I’ve found, so for that they must be appreciated.
And I need to renew my n + 1 subscription.
My friends and I went as the Ohio Zoo Massacre for halloween last year…in poor taste?
i don’t really think anything is in poor taste, when it all comes down to it