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HELLO and welcome to the 111th installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays I’ve read recently so that you can read them too and we can all know more about toast! This “column” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are.
The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gould’s tumblr, Things I Ate That I Love.
How Did Toast Become The Latest Artisanal Food Craze? (January 2014), by John Gravois for Pacific Standard Magazine – “I did a study in New York and San Francisco, standing on the street holding a sandwich, saying hello to people. No one would talk to me. But if I stayed at that same street corner and I was holding a coconut? People would engage. I wrote down exactly how many people talked to me.”
How Has Bust Magazine Survived? (January 2008), by Chris Chafin for The Awl – This was REALLY interesting to me because obviously BUST magazine was a big influence on me and the fact that they have continued to survive has given me hope for feminist media that is also kind of glossy. But also it scared me that although this magazine has been around since the mid-’90s, Debbie Stoller’s life looks like mine does now and I sort of hoped this phase of “doing all the things and not having time to follow through on other opportunities” would be temporary. La la la.
On Muppets & Merchandise: How Jim Henson Turned His Art into a Business (September 2013), by Elizabeth Hyde Stevens for Make Art Make Money via Longreads – This is one of those things that might only be relevant to my interests but who knows!
The Ghost Of V.C. Andrews (January 2014), by Kate Arthur for Buzzfeed – There’s a lot of buzz about V.C. Andrews right now ’cause another adaptation of the famed book Flowers in the Attic was on Lifetime this week! This is about her life and her phenomenal and unexpected success and also the life of the man who has been writing books under her name since 1987.
I Went On A Backstreet Boys Cruise (January 2014), by Torie Bosch for Buzzfeed – A former diehard Backstreet Boys fan and prolific penner of B2B fanfiction embarks on the adventure of a lifetime.
The Homeschool Apostates (December 2013), by Kathryn Joyce for The American Prospect – On how fundamentalist Christian homeschooling has become an enormous segment of the homeschooling population and it’s really fucked up and often even abusive and how it isolates kids from the world and is just overall not necessarily the best idea of all time and is also giving homeschooling a bad name.
Hana Williams: The Tragic Death of an Ethiopian Adoptee (November 2013), by Kathryn Joyce for Slate – I was led here via the article above and this story is really sad. “In 2008, Hana Williams left her Ethiopian Orphanage for a new life in America. Three years later, she was dead. In between, Hana’s life was a nightmare of abuse and neglect, as she struggled to adapt to her large new family, where dangerous ideas about religion and discipline ruled the home.”
Love and Death in the House of Prayer (January 2014), by Jeff Tietz for Rolling Stone – Holy shit this is fucked! “Tyler Deaton, a self-appointed apostle in one of the fastest-growing evangelical movements, loved Jesus, Harry Potter and, much to his dismay, other men. When his wife turned up dead, the secrets began to spill out.”
Fifty Shades of Greyhound, by Harrison Scott Key for The Oxford American – I’ve had numerous Greyhound bus experiences all over the country and always love reading about the Greyhound experiences of others. Like this essay, which is also funny, but also SUPER snobby.
The Ghostwriting Business (December 2013), by Alex Mayyasi for Priceonomics – Who really writes books written by celebrities or politicians or business leaders, how these books are put together, ghostwriters who write fiction, the future of ghostwriting, how it resembles other industries and so forth.
Sexy NYC (January 2014), by Lori Jakiela for The Rumpus – “For the rest of this horrible flight, I imagine taking the E train to the 6 every morning. I’ll stop at a corner deli for coffee in an “I Heart New York” cup. I’ll take the elevator to my office in one of the world’s most romantic buildings, a building so legendary I never thought of it as functioning office space but more of a movie set, the kind of place where ordinary people can be transformed.”
