a November consumed

Consumption diaries No. 3

hi friends happy Friday! I once again went a month+ without a newsletter, so I think it’s just time I accept that this will never be a regular thing for me. It’s hard enough for real writer people to come up with things to write about; for me it’s just not something worth forcing.

November isn’t my favorite month, but it’s over now! Here’s another round of what I consumed in a month.

books read

• From Bad to Cursed by Lana Harper — the last of my spooky season reads. It’s not like I’m well-versed in the witchy romance genre, but I think this series is my favorite of them. I’m still a hater, but this book wasn’t bad.

• Kiss Her Once for Me by Alison Cochrun — and an immediate pivot to holiday-themed romances! I’d recommend this for everyone tired of extremely hetero rom-coms, but again, I am a hater, and this was fine because all romances are fine to me.

• Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors — I didn’t want to like this because the characters are insufferable hot white people, but I did. I wrote a longer goodreads review for this one, because for some reason I’ve started doing reviews there?

• Pride and Protest by Nikki Payne — I immediately take back what I said, all romance is not fine. Opposite of Cleo and Frank, I wanted to like this Pride and Prejudice retelling and simply could not, despite it being set in DC and tackling the topic of gentrification. Another long rant of a goodreads review will tell you why!

I don’t know that I’ve ever read so many romances over other genres in a single month. I’m having trouble concentrating on reading anything that requires my brain. For some people it’s YA fantasy, for me it’s contemporary romances with silly cartoon covers. It’s astonishing because I end every review with “it was good I guess, for a romance,” but just like the ways of the universe, it can’t be explained.

Also, because I’m writing reviews on goodreads more than on insta these days (I KNOW it’s owned by Amazon and I’m being problematic!!), you can add me or follow me on there, if you’d like. I also use StoryGraph, and it would probably make sense to post my rants reviews there too.

other things read

• in Virginia Sole-Smith’s substack Burnt Toast, she discusses the fatphobia in our perception of who gets to exercise properly and feeling like your natural state of motion is no motion. As a “bigger” person who is neither thin nor fat and has struggled with body issues for over half of my life, I had to fight to keep my mind open while reading this. The problem I have with exercise is that it’s objectively good for you, on many levels, but society’s current views are rooted so deeply in diet culture (and ableism) that it’s hard to define “good.”
  
  I often find myself frustrated when I read arguments for leading a sedentary lifestyle — despite my love of doing nothing, despite my hatred of diet culture — because I fully believe that my able-bodied self functions better with regular movement and I feel confused. Talking about diet and exercise gets complicated because not only is it so incredibly personal, but it can also feel impossible to separate fact from fiction. What do humans actually need? There are the studies proving regular and prolonged movement is necessary for heart health, depression and anxiety, and bone mass and density (this last one is particularly important to me as someone whose partner broke his leg this year in spectacular fashion).
  
  I am able-bodied — that is, able to exercise without much thought as to whether I’m capable — and my natural state is to be critical of and quick to “fix” my body, which means I believe all these studies with little afterthought. I want to feel, physically and mentally, like I do when I’m regularly exercising. I want to prevent whatever might befall me as I age, even if prevention isn’t all that possible.
  
  But as Virginia points out, the problem with diet and exercise culture is never really about health. It is about being thin and performing thinness. It forces us into a counterproductive all-or-nothing approach to movement that creates a lifestyle opposite to what all this research tells us — that regular exercise keeps us healthy and alive and happy. What exercise does not do is make us good people worthy of love and value. And to suggest otherwise is to suggest that thin people are inherently more than fat people.
  
  But I like Virginia’s conclusion: That amongst all the many seasons of our lives that require priorities to shift, we should allow exercise to be one of them. And further, that if you have an unhealthy relationship with fitness or some internalized fatphobia to conquer, redefine exercise. It all counts. CrossFit doesn’t make you a better person than taking your hot girl walks. And moving does not make you a more valuable human than not moving at all. The binary is useless. Virginia also links to some other writers who discuss this topic and I really, really appreciate all the smart people who have informed and changed my views.

• My gal Erika’s essay, Lessons from Hyrule. I love everything she writes, I love her cool gamer girl insights, and I love her. I thought this was a really beautiful reflection because it was done so unexpectedly — through Legend of Zelda. She talks a bit more about the gamer girl aspect in a recent substack, too.

• An ode to my favorite emoji 🫡

• The NYT 100 notable books of 2022 list, of course. These lists are so interesting to me because bookstagram’s responses of “I’ve only read two of these” or “I haven’t even heard of half of these books” shows that professional book critics and us internet amateurs are just on completely different planes. Not to say that one is higher than the other, but they’re certainly not the same. There are so many good books published in a year, and I always wonder what makes one notable. At least we know that popular and influential aren’t traits that make a book “notable” because mercifully, there was no Colleen Hoover on the list after her record-breaking year.
  
  For the record, I’ve read Bliss Montage by Ling Ma, Either/Or by Elif Batuman, Joan is Okay by Weike Wang, Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth, The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan (actually, I DNFed this, oops), and The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida (I’m cheating but I only have about 80 pages left). I linked to my instagram posts for the ones I actually said something about.
  
  NPR’s list is less … pretentious? At least, it certainly focuses more on the fun and joy of reading than the objectively Good writing.

• There was a lot of talk around the chaos of Joan Didion’s stuff being sold, but my fav was The Atlantic’s The Magical Thinking of Joan Didion’s Estate Sale, about how Joan the person and Joan the impossibly cool myth have become indistinguishable from one another. The voyeurism her estate sale invited is the essence of celebrity culture, but it is fascinating how desperate we are to own a piece of someone we think we knew, even if that piece is literally just paper clips.

Ian Bogost @ibogost

A bar called The Copy Desk where they offer an alternative to your drink order and you get kind of really upset for a second but then realize, no, that's in fact a better order.

watched

• Seasons 4, 5, and half of 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer — god, I love this show.

• Crash Landing on You — simply incredible that I could go from rolling my eyes about the absolute most improbable scenario to crying my eyes out instead. This is a pretty popular k-drama, and I have to admit I judged y’all for watching a show about a South Korean woman who goes paragliding in a tornado and crash lands in North Korea only to fall in love with the KPA soldier who finds her (no really), but I’m fully on board despite how wildly inaccurate the depiction of North Korea is.

• Falling for Christmas — I only watched this to see Lindsay Lohan’s dazzling return to the silver screen, but I failed to remember that no matter what, this is still a bad Netflix holiday movie. And sorry, why is that blonde dude from Glee the romantic interest? It’s all bad. The best part is this animated raccoon. Blink and you’ll miss it!

  

• I started a rewatch of Drive to Survive. I know y’all are so tired of my Formula 1 obsession, but the season ended this month and I feel untethered from reality without these dumb hot European boys and their cars that go vroom. I promise the show is better than you think!
  
  And speaking of cars that go vroom, my bestie Sarah went to the NASCAR championship for work (!) and wrote about the push to get attendees vaccinated amidst stagnating vaccination rates nationwide. It’s really interesting, and honestly, everyone reading this is probably in the same urban liberal bubble as me — Sarah’s article looks at a demographic we often write off because it’s easier to stereotype than understand.

• Love is Blind season 3. Lord, the straights are not okay.

bought

• I finally succumbed to the Gen Z fashion lifestyle and bought vegan leather pants. The funniest part isn’t the pants but just that we’re calling it vegan leather now. The cows thank you.

• everything else I spent my money on is either too stupid or too embarrassing for its sheer amount, so thank you no further questions.

misc.

I saw a lot of people I loved, traveled to Virginia and North Carolina, spent a collective 17 hours on Amtrak, and turned 31! This was a heavy month, news-wise, and something about the holidays these days just makes even the softest of blows to the world feel like the end times. Hopefully December is kind to us all. I know my consumption for the next 30 days is going to include a lot of awful Christmas nonsense, so distract yourself however you need to.

phoebe ♡ @phoebecaliel

"currently reading" girl you haven't touched that book in 8 months stop lying to yourself

thank you thank you for reading, and happy holidays to everyone who is a holiday person. subscribe if you’d like, share if you’d like, talk shit if you’d like, talk to me if you’d like.