Let's get weird
Hello my friend,
Happy Friday! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I can honestly say (while there’s so few of you reading this) that I miss you dearly. While I have been informed that newsletters have been dead since 2019, I figured that this might be an easy way to spark a reconnection. Compiling a newsletter of links and my own rambling is admittedly a very weird and self-indulgent response to isolation, but these are undeniably strange times and I am an advocate of the ‘hey man, whatever gets you through’ approach.
I’ve spent a lot of time not writing over the past few weeks, which is the thing I very clearly should have been doing. Some of the things I did instead of write were:
paint a wall
binge the new season of the Crown on Netflix
set elaborate mouse traps throughout the house (why won’t they die??)
visit many medical professionals
binge Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You on Crave
start a newsletter where I have to write different things from the things I really should be writing
repot and rearrange plants that were perfectly happy the way they were
The only one of those things that I recommend wholeheartedly is watching I May Destroy You, but maybe that’s just because of the joy I take in watching someone else struggle with writing their own book (then ultimately write something that is wildly successful because that’s how it works in the movies.)
Anyway. I hope you don’t hate this, and maybe even forward it to a friend, if that’s the kind of thing you’re into. I hope you will stick with me for a while and we can get weird together. Here’s hoping this is the start of something good.
The best thing I heard this week
“That guy’s got a personality like unbuttered toast.” - accurate colleague is accurate
I’m reading
Piecing together the mysterious deaths of nine students in the Ural Mountains. How Canadian newsrooms block non-white voices and reporting because they couldn’t possibly be objective if the story has any impact on them. Despite 76% of Canadians supporting a wealth tax (including 70% of Conservatives), the Liberals, Conservatives, and Bloc voted against a 1% tax on an individual’s wealth over $20 million and other pandemic profiteers. (On an unrelated note, if you know anyone with an extra $20 million lying around, please feel free to pass along my PayPal details.) The rich millennials who are pushing to pay more taxes. The First Nation on the BC/WA border that was told they had been declared extinct. Learning how to thrive through a winter lockdown from Norwegians.
The (incidentally Canadian) good stuff
For better or worse, there’s no easier way to put me off reading or watching something than to say that I ‘should’ read or watch it. (It took me ten years to watch Slumdog Millionaire.) It’s an attitude I take to heart especially with CANCON. I don’t want to have to engage with something because I *should* as a Canadian, I want the national pride bit to be a bonus. “Wow, this book is really good AND it’s Canadian.” That’s why I’m aiming to cut through the meh and share the good stuff with you, my friend. These recommendations are, in the immortal words of Sum41, “all killer, no filler.”
Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing is a real ass- and heart-kicker. It was published a few years ago, but considering current events, I think it’s a really important read. Beyond its importance, it’s a damn good story. Spanning Vancouver, China, and Hong Kong, this novel is a multi-generational roller coaster that follows a family through the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square massacre right up to the present day. The story will wrap its fingers around you and squeeze you till you can’t breathe, then you’ll feel lots of feelings about what’s happening in HK. You can get it here for $22.
Happenings
I was a top ten finalist for an award, and have been asked to do a (very) short reading for it. It’s happening the afternoon of November 26th. You can sign up (and get a recording of the event which features many writers who are much, much better than me) here on eventbrite.
Until next time, I miss you. Have a great weekend.
- Trish