Welcome to the library!

Pretty ironic how, after having just cast well-founded suspicion on the Substack Industrial Complex, I’ve started one myself.

In my defense, this newsletter isn’t going to take the place of my blog, nor is it trying to serve the same purpose with a price tag attached. Instead, my goal for this newsletter is to have a space to recommend media (books, music, poetry/prose/journal publications, articles) that can reach many friends at once. I may not have anything physical to lend out, but I’d like to think of myself as my own little librarian here, sorting through the proverbial stacks and honing a comfortable literary space.

People who know me well know about my Goodreads. I’m a bit of an evangelist. People who know me well also know that I salivate at the opportunity to curate recommendations, to partake in that heady combination of self-aggrandizement and (real or perceived) community service. Between the impulses I know myself to have, and the real encouragement I’ve received to develop a more Official™ recommendation system, I’m introducing this!

Anyway, without further ado, I’m going to list my first set of recommendations below! I’m not going for a particular number of items, a particular degree of “newness,” or a particular style or length of description. I’m going to list more recent stuff most often but not feel beholden to it –– maybe I’ll further hone this later, but for now, I’m just seeing how it feels to get the stuff I like on the page.

So, without further ado, here are my recs, all read/watched/listened to 2021!

Today’s Recs:

Books:

• Kristen Cashore, Winterkeep

• Elana Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend

• Alix E. Harrow, The Once and Future Witches

• Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Life and Love from Dear Sugar

• Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown

Podcasts:

• Citations Needed

• Maintenance Phase

• Suave

• We Be Imagining

(2021) Albums:

• Beach Bunny, Blame Game

• Kate Davis, Strange Boy

• Katy Kirby, Cool Dry Place

• Pearl Charles, Magic Mirror

• Pom Poko, Cheater

• The Weather Station, Ignorance

• Yasmin Williams, Urban Driftwood

Poetry & Prose & In-Between:

• Barbara Tran, Red O (2020)

• Ben Okri, A Wrinkle in the Realm (2021)

• Destiny Birdsong, and though the odds say improbable (2020)

• E Yeon Chang 이연, Citrus Bangerz (2021)

• Evelynn Black, Endless Preface to an Imaginary Work (2019)

• Justin Phillip Reed, Insidious (2010)

• Kathryn Smith, Three Poems

• Linda Gregerson, Horse in a Gas Mask (2021)

• Will Cordeiro, In the Shadows of the Canyon (2020)

My Recent Work:

• Chapbooks! Buy The Dream Journals now, A Hole Walked In and add them on Goodreads! [x] [x]

• “Big Red,” Flash (Non/)Fiction in Opia Magazine.

• Two Poems in Electric Literature’s “The Commuter.”

• Two Poems in Luna Luna Magazine.

• “Mise en scène” in GASHER Journal.

• Read WRITING OURSELVES / MAD folio, part 1, at ANMLY Lit.

That’s all for now –– let me know what you think, what you’d like to see more of, and if you have any recommendations of your own!