The domino effect is playing out much quicker than I expected. I wrote just yesterday about far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) bringing an on-its-face small…
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May 26, 2021 9:18 a.m.
As a lifelong novel consumer who enjoys throwing myself into other worlds for hours on end, it probably won’t come as a surprise that I don’t read too many short stories.
The few I have read were part of a capstone creative writing course my senior year of college. But those short works of literature have stuck with me long after graduation the copies a little dusty with faded highlighter marks, cracked spines and remnants of past lives in other libraries, homes and schools.
Years later I still remember some of them, primarily due to the feelings I experienced while reading them. As I mention in my review of Knockemstiff below, I still feel physically uncomfortable when I think about that Donald Ray Pollock collection. I have very few visceral memories of books 5-plus years after reading them, but Pollack is different. His writing is haunting and his characters are sad people who do awful things and live in a world, a town, that to
“I’ve been getting book recommendations from TikTok.”
My childhood best friend said this to me during one of our check-ins, proving once and for all, that as much as you try to resist it, TikTok will eventually consume us all. Come and claim me Gen-Z, I will give the middle part a shot.
My new reading recs friend and I don’t keep in touch as much as both of us would like nowadays. A global pandemic, and her being an emergency room nurse while I am just a lazy texter complicate the matter. One thing we never fail to do when we check in, though, is to ask what new books or authors the other is reading.
March 5, 2021 10:00 a.m.
So, unbelievably (or maybe believably take your pick) we’re hitting the one-year mark of quarantine life. TPM will get to celebrate this “momentous” occasion in about a week on March 11, the day the New York office started working remote.
If you’re like us, you’ve probably had a not-so-great year! And I’m not just talking about the number of demoralizing pandemic stories we covered we had the presidential election, an
insurrection/attempted coup, horrible storms and Ted Cruz being the absolute worst (shocker). Even with the vaccine light at the end of the long, arduous, complicated tunnel, it’s still hard to get excited about much of anything lately. We’ve become accustomed to disappointment following any splash of positive news.