Blog Posts

Blog Posts

Month of Joy: Listening to the Odyssey by Kate Heartfield

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This fall, I taught an evening course at a university about an hour’s drive from my house. The drive in was a dismal drive at the tail-end of rush hour, and at this latitude at this time of year, the journey was dark both ways. In those dark and tired hours, I found a source of great joy: The audiobook version of Emily Wilson’s new translation of The Odyssey. Experiencing an epic poem as an oral performance is entirely different from reading it. Wilson used iambic pentameter, the traditional meter for English verse. The lines are shorter than in Homer’s dactylic hexameter, but the number of lines in the poem remains the same, in Wilson’s translation. Wilson also used simple language because “stylistic pomposity is un-Homeric” and to encourage a more visceral engagement with the story.

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Month of Joy: My Father by Ausma Zehanat Khan

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My father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease several years ago. Unfortunately, his variant of the disease included symptoms of gradually worsening dementia. The tragic irony of this is that my father was a psychiatrist for whom mental health was a lifelong calling. When I was in high school casting about for projects to work on, my father would recommend that I shed light on issues such as depression, personality disorder, or addiction. He helped me with these projects, teaching me to grapple with all sides of an issue, but he made sure I understood that the well-being of the patient should be central.

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Month of Joy: Socks by Rhiannon Held

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Something that never fails to bring me joy is $1 Target seasonal socks. I know I’m not alone in my enjoyment of fancy, patterned socks—they’re the subject of entire specialty stores, one of which is even a 5-minute drive from my apartment, not to mention the staggering variety available online. Patterned socks are a way to be wild, or twee, or geeky in secret, a mark of personality that doesn’t necessarily have to be shared with anyone else. The only trouble, I find, with many of the patterned socks available out there is their price. If we accept the fatuous financial advice currency of lattes (Give up one latte a day and soon—!) most pairs cost two lattes, if not three. For me, that makes them a “get one pair and try to really, really enjoy it” item. A “self-control” item. And that’s not a simple pleasure anymore. That’s an adulting pleasure, one that drags with it a complicated tangle of required self-control and then guilt if you fail to properly deploy that control. And I understand the appeal of purchasing one, ridiculously expensive chocolate truffle and savoring every single bite (all two of them). I do! But I also understand a wish to sometimes stuff yourself with chocolate and not have to either blow your monthly grocery budget in one trip to the artisan chocolate store or have your coworker look at you and sniff, “How can you eat those store brand chocolates? They taste like wax.”

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Month of Joy: Book Reviews by Andrea Johnson

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With the rise of book bloggers, semi-pro zines that feature book reviews, fanzines, and sites that fall somewhere in between, every few months this question shows up on social media: Who are book reviews for? The conversation often pops up after an author has made a boneheaded response to a review on a blog, or a particular new title is getting lots of positive or negative attention, or an author asks on twitter “Should I interact with bloggers who review my book #AskingForAFriend.”

Announcements and Errata, Podcast Updates

Welcome to 2019: A Year of New Things (Podcastery, a Month of Joy, and Jen’s Delicious Tears)

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2019! We’re finally here. Like you, we’re hoping it will be a good one. 2016 ended rough. 2017 was even worse. And 2018 was sort of like getting kicked in the teeth by the high school bully every single day. Whether you lost a loved one, your government lost its damn mind, or you tried desperately to keep your hopes up in yet another year of trashfires and horror, we know this last year has been just as tough on you as it has been on each of us. That’s why we tried to make 2018 a “Year of Hope.” Hopefully, our podcast was a little beacon of light in an otherwise dark abyss. Of course, 2018 wasn’t all bad. U.S.-Americans sent a message to the alt-right that y’all ain’t gonna keep this country for long. We got a new Star Wars movie (which Shaun says was absolutely kickass). There were some amazing books by old friends, new friends, and folks we haven’t met yet. Heck, 2019 was a year of phenomenal writing of all kinds. Plus, N.K. Jemisin won another Hugo Award (we’re temporarily renaming it the Jemisin is Awesomesauce Award). In a lot of ways, 2018 was a good year.

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Korean Drama Review: W – Two Worlds

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Stories can be about many things. There are stories about love, revolution, trauma, or all of these things at once. And then there are stories that are about, well, stories. Storyception, if you will. Often, these stories are about creators and their work, and they force us to think about the very process it takes to make the books, movies, and comics that we consume. Where do the ideas come from? What does it cost to bring them to life? What are the consequences? I really enjoy these kinds of meta stories, so of course I was immediately drawn to W: Two Worlds. W: Two Worlds originally aired from July 2016 to September 2016. As the title suggests, it’s about two different worlds: the real world, where the main character Oh Yeon Joo lives, and the fictional world of a famous webtoon named W, where our other main character Kang Chul is the protagonist. W (the webtoon, not the drama), is written and drawn by Yeon Joo’s father and follows rich boy vigilante Chul as he attempts to find the culprit who murdered his family one fateful night.

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