(As usual, this roundup is a mix of French and English. Comme d’habitude, ce récap est un mélange d’anglais et de français.)
Quelques nouvelles perso
Je commence à être vraiment confortablement installé à Grenoble. Le fait d’avoir mes potes à 10min de vélo, c’est vraiment extraordinaire, et quelque chose que j’avais oublié à Paris : pas besoin de s’organiser plusieurs jours à l’avance, un « je vais au insérer bar dans une heure si tu veux » ça couvre les bases et ça facilite tellement les interactions !
J’ai aussi bien profité de mon mois de juillet pour lire et me balader en France, comme vous pourrez le constater dans ce récap.
Reading
Books
In English:
- We Deserve Monuments, by Jas Hammonds, had me sobbing during most of the second half of the book.
- The graphic novel Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohamed was beautiful and moving, and I highly recommend it. It was also nice to read something in translation from Arabic – I haven’t done much of that yet and the writing style is really special!
- All my Rage by Sabaa Tahir follows two Pakistani teenagers in an US high school, with their own issues and trauma and, well, all their rage.
- Spinning by Tillie Walden, which was recommended by the hosts of the (French) RomComment podcast, is Walden’s recollections of being a tween mid-level figure skater who moves to Texas, trains every morning at 4am, finds out she’s gay, and is understandably a bit overwhelmed.
- In Wild and Crooked, by Leah Thomas, two kids become unlikely friends. There’s the criminal-in-training daughter of a guy who murdered someone, and a disabled kid who finds solace in tabletop role playing. Oh, and whose dad got murdered by the first one’s. When that comes to light, oddly enough, it doesn’t go down well with the town and their respective families.
- I read the Scholomance trilogy pretty much in one sitting (aside from this pesky « I need sleep » little thing).
- Finally, a bit more nonfiction: I love Daniel M. Lavery’s blog The Chatner, so I couldn’t miss the essay collection Something that may shock and discredit you, about being trans, or being religious, or maybe Greek mythology or reality TV, I’m not quite sure.
En français :
- Abobo Marley de Yaya Diomandé parle d’un jeune homme ivoirien qui rêve de venir en Europe et illustre à merveille l’adage «un tiens vaut mieux que deux tu l’auras» en détruisant méthodiquement chacune de ses chances de réussir au pays.
- Grenoble Calling: une histoire orale du punk dans une ville de province, de Nicolas Bonanni et Margaux Capelier, était une lecture très appropriée pour cet emménagement et super intéressante. J’en ai résumé quelques points pertinents sur la nouvelle page Wikipédia Punk à Grenoble mais je recommande vraiment le bouquin, et en particulier le CD qui va avec.
- Je suis une fille sans histoire, d’Alice Zeniter, est un petit message d’amour à la rédaction d’histoires, aux femmes, et à la langue française. Il est drôle, il est émouvant, il ne révolutionne rien mais rappelle des messages importants, je l’ai beaucoup aimé. Ça tombe d’ailleurs bien, puisque j’ai toujours L’art de perdre quelque part dans mes cartons (la bibliothèque n’a toujours pas été livrée, non).
Articles académiques
Articles non-académiques
- ‘I no longer know how to think about borsch’
- Why fake kidnapping stories are everywhere
- Giving Google permission to index and use our content
Watching
Movies
In chronological order:
- But I’m a cheerleader was very cringe and perfect for a too-hot afternoon where I didn’t know what to do. It’s not a good movie. I didn’t want a good movie.
- Nimona, however, absolutely was a good movie, and you should watch it.
- Birds of Prey was fun, and sometimes fun is all I want.
- Barbie was also fun, but this time I have to be honest – fun was not all I wanted. I was happy to see something pink and happy at the theater for once and that made it all worth it, but honestly, not a masterpiece…
- unlike Oppenheimer, which solidifies my transition into a very manly man, I guess. That one was absolutely incredible.
TV Shows
My partner told me about Severance, which had vaguely been on my radar since it came out. I took it as a sign to finally watch it and it was GREAT. Amazing. I need season two now.
I also watched Good Omens season 2. It was okay – I have to be honest here, I liked season 1 but I just liked it. Season 2 was the same: it was nice and I’m immediately going to forget about it.
Video essays
- The weird rise of fake podcasts
- Gen Z’s Obsession with Youth & Beauty is VERY Disturbing
- The Playlistification of Music
Other
My friend Sébastien made yet another amazing art project and you should watch his wonderful video, which includes the demo and how he made it.
Listening
Podcasts
In English:
- « Liberal Fascism » by If books could kill
- « Children of men, the only modern movie » by Kino Lefter
- « The golden age of internet piracy » by Srsly Wrong
- « Bonnie and Clyde (and Blanche and Buck) » with Jamie Loftus by You’re Wrong About
- « Chat control? The Stasi look like amateurs compared to this shite » by Vulnerable by Design
- Hal Schrieve on Gender Reveal (including lots of talks about trans literature and what «t4t» and «chaser» really mean)
- « The country of the blind » by 99% invisible
En français :
- « Peter Norman, justice pour le troisième homme de Mexico » by Les grands récits
- « Enfances et colonisation : être enfant en situation coloniale, ça veut dire quoi ? » par Des Colonisations
- « Que reste-t-il de la NUPES après le combat des retraites ? » par Penser les luttes
- « Histoire de l’anarchisme » par Paroles d’histoire (table ronde)
- Laurent Chalumeau chez Bookmakers, longue interview émaillée d’anecdotes qui m’a donné envie de lire ses romans (vous me direz, c’est le but du podcast)
Music
- Found CDs at the yearly library sale, which I haven’t listened to yet. I’m really, really glad to have found Joey Bada$$’s eponymous (?) album, which I used to listen to on repeat.
- Grenoble Calling, le CD de punk dans le livre mentionné plus haut.
Going
I spent a long weekend in Narbonne (south-west France) for a Wikimedia weekend, which was really sweet. Narbonne looked wonderful and has loads of adorable little corners.
I also spent one day in Lyon on a whim and rediscovered some of my favourite places there.
Photo looking down a river within a presumably French town. It is morning yet there’s surprisingly no one, given how pretty it looks and the number of things around. Left to right: courtyard with coloured umbrellas like a playground; riverside road, gently sloping; river itself, clean and blue with three boats camping the one exit; better riverside road with a line of bushes and shade; upper street, an avenue of an array of complete shade producing trees under which are storefronts and coloured umbrellas. Across these in the back are about 5-storey mildly warmly coloured residential buildings, connected together and of varying styles and heights. It seems to continue on top of a stone bridge, medieval building standards style, across the river#Alt4You
alt4you
Thanks for the alt text! I wrote one in French on the WordPress post but it seems that the sync didn’t work properly.
Read L’Art de perdre by Alice Zeniter L’Algérie dont est originaire sa famille n’a longtemps été pour Naïma qu’une toile de fond sans grand intérêt.…