002—Consumed This Weekish

Read, watched, listened to...

a blessed being

Hello! Welcome to Because I Have the Time—letters, prose, compassionate offerings (aka solicited advice) , bookthoughts, and weekly dives into things I’ve consumed—written by Aimee Ortega. Today’s post is about things I’ve ‘Consumed This Weekish’. If you like reading it, subscribe here. As always, feel free to share it with people you think might enjoy it and on social media. Looking to read more? Older posts can be found on my page archive.

---

Read/Reading

• When I think of books I’ve felt deeply moved by over the past few years, a few— On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, I’m Lying But I’m Telling the Truth: Essays by Bassey Ikpi, The Light of the World: A Memoir by Elizabeth Alexander—immediately spring to mind. All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks is the latest addition to that list, and I found myself dog-earring every other page as I made my way through it last month. I’m planning on writing more about this book and the profound sense of affirmation that comes from seeing, finding, or hearing another person share beliefs you felt alone in

• All This Could be Yours by Jami Attenberg was an interesting composition of a family drama that I read very quickly but did not feel engrossed by

• The other day, I was busy devouring Brandon Taylor’s latest missive from his newsletter Sweater Weather, when I realized with a sense of sinking acceptance that I had a crush. Not on the man himself, but on his writing—I’m so fucking horny for it!! SEND HELP! I read his debut novel Real Life when it came out last year (loved it, expanded thoughts to come), and I was beside myself when I learned he wrote it in 5 weeks. His writing is incredibly sharp, and he has a way of capturing the subtleties and nuance of emotional mess in interpersonal relationships. It’s nearly too honest to look at, which of course means I want to mainline it. Two of his most recent short stories, “Otto” and “Prophets”, are very much worth your time

• If you live in your head, have spent a lot of time trying to figure out why your parents treated you the way they did, and have gone to therapy for more than 5 years Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson will likely be old hat to you the way it was to me. That said, I’m a big believer in encountering the same information in different formats or through different mediums. You never know what might lead to a revelation, and I believe many people would find benefit and value in reading this

• I struggled to connect with Safia Elhillo’s Home is Not a Country which I think had more to do with my expectations of what the book was going to be—traditional fiction versus a novel-in-verse—than the book/story/writing itself. The themes are young adult, because it is young adult!

• I’m currently reading Pleasure Activism by Adrienne Maree Brown

Watching/Watched

• For the past month or so, I’ve been feeling anhedonic about the selection of shows and movies available to watch on all of the little streaming platforms. I’d chalked it all up to pandemic ennui until I started watching The Sopranos for the first time. It made me realize mostly everything else that is out right now has been lacking

• The Zola Official Trailer!!! I’m looking forward to brainstorming a watch plan with friends for this. I can’t imagine sitting in a packed theater, so hopefully one of those drive-thru movie theaters that popped up last summer will be screening this on release day

• Miss Juneteenth has been on my watchlist since it came out last summer, and I’m looking forward to finally watching it tonight

Listening

• I’m not able to listen to music or podcasts while working/writing so I’ve been mostly listening to the sounds of spring outside of my recently opened windows. Please send me suggestions of what I shouldn’t miss by leaving a comment below

—Aim