Read, Shake, Apprecite #8
Welcome to Read, Shake, Appreciate! This is your weekly round-up of words that made me feel inspired, songs that made me shake my ass, and people who I think deserve some spotlight.
This week I’m reading:
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
I was doing a quick online search for the best fiction books of the year and this novel appeared. The plot was outlined as the story of a woman who’d achieved massive social media fame, travelling the world giving talks about online culture, whose reality was suddenly disrupted by an IRL family emergency. I read it in three sittings.
Lockwood so perfectly, terrifyingly captures the spirit of what it means to live online in politically engaged spaces. The book is written in short (almost tweet-length) paragraphs that are sometimes hilarious, sometimes disturbing, sometimes poetic, all while referencing memes, viral news stories, hashtags and moments of online outrage. The disjointed, almost frantic pace completely mirrors what I’ve felt happening to my own brain in times where I’ve been most hooked on the endless scroll. This then develops into a deeply touching, life affirming story (based on the author’s personal experience). It’s unlike anything I’ve read before. Here’s an early couple of paragraphs that made me snort:
“The word toxic had been anointed, and now could not go back to being a regular word. It was like a person becoming famous. They would never have a normal lunch again, would never eat a Cobb salad outdoors without tasting the full awareness of what they were. Toxic. Labour. Discourse. Normalize.
“Don’t normalize it!!!!!” we shouted at each other. But all we were normalizing was the use of the word normalize, which sounded like the action of a ray gun wielded by a guy named Norm to make everyone around him Norm as well.”
This week I’m shaking to:
Cloudy Day by Tones and I
Wait for the chorus to hit… Trust me.
This week I’m appreciating:
Alice of @aspoonfulofalice
Alice is an absolutely unapologetic anti-diet content creator and all-round great human. She makes the kind of content that is perfect for anyone just jumping off the diet wagon (especially if they previously went to SW 👀), and her pastel palettes prowess puts 2017 Megan to shame. Being on her IG is like surfing on clouds in fat positive heaven. I can also personally verify that she is one heck of a good egg – you won’t regret the follow.