feature image via shutterstock
HELLO and welcome to the 159th 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 Reese Witherspoon! 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.
Reese Witherspoon Has Always Been Wild, by Anne Helen Peterson for Buzzfeed, December 2014
I think that my ability to read extensive things about movie stars basically comes down do this: did Anne Helen Peterson write the thing? If yes, then okay, I’m on board. This was good. Also y’all need to see Freeway if you haven’t already, it’s a really cool movie.
Does The Handmaid’s Tale Hold Up?, by Adi Robertson for The Verge, December 2014
This was an intense and glorious look back at the book I was reading the week of 9/11, which creeped me out then and continues to. It lingers. And Margaret Atwood is the best and continues to be. I didn’t necessarily agree with all of this author’s points, but they were worth thinking about regardless.
Why I Still Love Rent, by Sandra Allen for Buzzfeed, December 2014
On loving RENT, then and now and forever, even if, in retrospect, some of it seems kinda dumb. This article can live in my house and I’ll be its shelter.
The Personal and The Believable, by Tiana Reid for Full Stop, October 2014
“This summer I felt like I was trying to make sense of a senseless place. Most of the time I wanted to shout, “People are dying! People are dead!” but I was alive so I felt somehow indebted to a sort of logic of tempered feelings, which isn’t so much about being alive but about being dead and breathing. So I didn’t shout. Instead I enveloped myself in the work of two very different creative producers, the poet Fanny Howe and the hip-hop group Shabazz Palaces. This summer I believed in them, at a particular moment when I felt very much like not being in the world at all.”
Inside The Universal Life Church, the Internet’s One True Religion, by Aaron Sankin for The Kernal, December 2014
The story behind that place that gave me the certificate that enabled me to marry these crazy kids earlier this year. It is not the story that I expected, that is for damn sure.
Why We Love Crime Fiction, by Neal Conan for NPR, August 2009
In which Neal Conan talks to Law & Order executive producer Rene Balcer and mystery writer Walter Mosely about why I’m addicted to Law & Order.
Life On The Land, by John Camp, May – December 1985
This took me a while to get through but it was worth it, if you want to read about the life of a family farm circa 1985 and how to dry hay and shit like that. I loved it.
The Limits of Jurisdiction, by Erin Siegal McIntyre for Guernica, December 2014
A couple adopted a child from Guatemala, where giving up one’s child for adoption to American parents is often the best way to make ends meet, but they believe that the child was abandoned when in fact she was not, her parents are alive and want her back and she was kidnapped. So this is how that happened and what happened next.
