It was a big week. I sent out a newsletter filled with end-of-year updates about my business. I found out that a book which includes a chapter I wrote was finally published! I made headway on a Storymap project I've been collaborating on, I edited a journal article for a client, I reached out to a few businesses and organizations I would like to work with, I looked into a potential grant opportunity, I had several meetings with colleagues, I drafted a blog post for a social justice group I'm active with, I wrote a blog post for The Metropole and edited a few upcoming posts.... and I feel great! I'm invigorated and inspired by all that I am working on these days.
Here's what captured my attention this week...
I'm reading: I finished Paul Goldberg's The Yid, which was underwhelming. I found the premise compelling, but the humor never resonated with me--I'm not yet enough of an alter kaker, I guess. I've now moved on to The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty, which was my December Book of the Month pick. I would describe it as Game of Thrones, if GOT was set in the Middle East in the nineteenth century and you turned all the various Houses into djinn. There's also no incest and rape (so far), which is an improvement over GOT. It's well plotted and populated by some interesting characters, but I have a small complaint that's distracting from my enjoyment of the book: all the fictional proper nouns sound like the terrible made-up names I would have chosen back when I was writing fiction in elementary school. The capital of the djinn world is Daevabad, the tribe of East African djinn are Ayaanla, and one of the djinn languages is Divasti. It seems like the author took existing (mostly Arabic) words and just added extra vowels. That said, it's pretty awesome to read a Muslim fantasy novel--it freshens up what had become, for me personally, a tired genre.
I'm listening to: my protest playlist while I re-read Dr. King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail."
I'm watching: I finished the new season of Netflix's Ultimate Beastmaster, which was an absolutely mind-numbing delight. I'm now moving on to the second season of the equally mind-numbing and even more delightful Revenge Body with Khloe Kardashian, the first episode of which aired last night. I never got into The Biggest Loser and its spin-off training shows, but had to watch Revenge Body "for research" because I want to do a book project on the Kardashian family. The stories are inspiring! I now understand the appeal of these shows.
What are you reading, listening to, and watching this week?