I feel a way about reading memoirs from people my age. You’re the same age as me. What have we even done. But fortunately they’re all under the guise of “collection of essays” and those tend to sit better with me.
Earlier this year me and Lauren went to go see Michelle Obama on her Becoming tour. A few weeks ago I sat at Brazos Bookstore and listened to Saeed Jones talk about his new book How We Fight For Our Lives. I’ve read neither. Sometimes the need to own a book is greater than the need to sit and read it right away. And I’m only reading books by women this year so Saeed will have to wait.
But I heard good things about Jia Tolentino’s book Trick Mirror. A friend whose opinion on books I trust recommended it. Jia was at Brazos earlier this year because she’s a native Houstonian but I didn’t make the reading but they said good things about the book too. I’m stuck in the middle of a fiction paperback so I’m using an Audible credit to listen to Trick Mirror.
The good thing about audiobooks is how quickly you can go through them but what sucks is when you have to rewind and rewind and write down the quotes like you just dubbed your favorite song off the radio.
Anyway I’m very much into these essays right now. In the essay “Ecstasy” cover’s Jia’s childhood years spent going to a mega church in Houston and how she found the Michael Watts chopped and screwed radio show one Sunday night and had the same experience as she used to feel going to church. She does a deep dive into religion, the unique experience of growing up and living in Houston, all things Houston rap, and how tripping off MDMA seems very similar to the tales people tell when they’ve had a religious revelation.
There’s an excerpt here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/27/losing-religion-and-finding-ecstasy-in-houston
And then I was like “oh I suppose a blog is just a collection of essays, isn’t it.”