On Artists With Opinions // The Sunday Reading Roundup [2.26.17]

One of the things I most often have to defend (sometimes to others, and mostly to myself) is the relevancy of all my non-musical activities to classical music. And lately, as our current socio-political climate has gotten only more charged, I’ve seen an alarming rise in a certain sentiment towards non-political figures who choose to offer their thoughts on the crisis du jour.

Said sentiment, often in need of being cleaned up, can be summed up thusly: “Shut up and go back to making music/dancing/acting/[insert verb for other forms of art-making here].”

The idea is that if you’ve chosen to create art (“art” here being used as a catch-all phrase encompassing all forms of creative expression), you only have permission to create things for others to enjoy, and that you have somehow ceded your right as a thinking person to share your thoughts and opinions with others.

So, before I dump my laundry basket of weekly reading on you, I want to say a couple of things about what art is, and what it is not.

Art is not created in a vacuum.

Art is not meant to be consumed in a vacuum.

Art is not solely a vehicle to beautify the world.

Art is a distillation of its creator’s worldview, shaped by personal experience.

Art is a reflection of the world in which it is created.

Art is meant to challenge as well as inspire.

An artist who uses their medium as a form of expression (and not merely a craft that exists for its own sake) has a responsibility to observe humanity in all its terrible beauty and wonderful dysfunction, and to think critically about that beauty and dysfunction. An artist’s task is to tap simultaneously into that which is personal and that which is universal, and one doesn’t do that by pretending the outside world doesn’t exist.

So don’t give artists grief for thinking about things outside of their craft, because that’s their #$@%ing job.

Now, here are some of my favorite things that I’ve read/watched this week. Some slightly different themes emerged, so I’ve categorized accordingly.

Articles

Excellent pieces whose weird clickbait-y headlines are a disservice

Washington Post: “Refugees are already vigorously vetted. I know because I vetted them.” by Natasha Hall

During nearly four years as an immigration officer, I conducted in-person interviews with hundreds of refugees of 20 different nationalities in 10 countries. I saw countless refugees break down crying in my interview room because of the length and severity of the vetting process. From that experience and numerous security briefings, it’s clear that the authors of Trump’s order are unfamiliar with the U.S. immigration system, U.S. laws, international law and the security threats facing our nation.

Huffington Post: “I, Too, Am An Immigrant. I, Too, Belong.” by Raj Panjabi

(Found, upon reading this one, that the article was primarily an excerpt from a commencement speech, and that while it is indeed a powerful immigrant narrative, its focus was on the power of selflessness, neither of which were reflected in the headline. Oh well, HuffPo, you do you.)

Like many other refugees and immigrants, my journey has not been ”self-made.” As I share below, I believe the Americans who acted selflessly — providing my family with shelter, helping my parents secure jobs, sponsoring our green card applications, and mentoring me as a teenager — helped make my journey possible. I believe the selfless acts that shaped my life matter, as ever, for the lives of refugees and immigrants across America. And I believe no person, no policy, and no institution can strip the power we each have to act selflessly.

Pieces whose headlines could honestly have used a bit more clickbait

Reflecting On One Very, Very Strange Year at Uber” by Susan J. Fowler

(This blog post has gone viral without resorting to having a clickbait-y headline, so really, who am I to fault it?)

When I joined Uber, the organization I was part of was over 25% women. By the time I was trying to transfer to another eng organization, this number had dropped down to less than 6%. Women were transferring out of the organization, and those who couldn’t transfer were quitting or preparing to quit. There were two major reasons for this: there was the organizational chaos, and there was also the sexism within the organization. When I asked our director at an org all-hands about what was being done about the dwindling numbers of women in the org compared to the rest of the company, his reply was, in a nutshell, that the women of Uber just needed to step up and be better engineers.

Lowrider: “Richard Montanez — Raza Report” by Henry De Kuyper and Mike Landers

(This article is from 2011, so really they’re forgiven for not being clickbait-y.)

His [Richard Montanez’s] enthusiasm is contagious, and his empathy for human struggle is genuine. He’s the product of a low-income Latino family and knows all too well what it’s like to work hard and barely make ends meet. Now he is far removed from that struggle, as Richard is the executive of multicultural sales and community activation at PepsiCo North America—a far cry from his initial job as a janitor with Frito-Lay. 

Pieces whose headlines got it just right

The New York Times Magazine: “The Stir-Fried Tomatoes and Eggs my Chinese Mother Made” by Francis Lam

This paragraph is, as the kids say, my everything:

I knew that I wasn’t going to figure out a recipe for it, because I realized that my not knowing how to make this dish was akin to my Cantonese getting rusty, to not knowing when Chinese New Year is every year. It’s because I’m not an immigrant, only a son of immigrants, and so I know only the frayed facsimile of the world that my parents grew up in. Being part of a culture without living in it is like being in a long-distance relationship. You can make it work with grand displays of affection and splendid visits, but you don’t get to have coffee together on a Sunday morning — the little things, the stuff daily life is built on. 

[Note: my mom (and grandma and aunt) also made this dish, and taught me to make it, but their version is vastly different.]

The New Yorker: “When Immigrants Are No Longer Considered Americans” by Hua Hsu

The history of immigration policy is filled with moments like these, when a group goes from subhuman to superhuman within a few short years, because of political winds beyond their grasp. […] It’s a reminder that the “Creed of Democracy” contains limits—that no amount of assimilation or integration will protect you when an alien requires conjuring; that being a model citizen means little when laws can be enforced arbitrarily, and you no longer qualify as one. Yet many of us still try to live up to such impossible standards.

Language Realm: “Translating Puns in Harry Potter” by…?

So how do you translate a pun? Although there is, obviously, no one solution to this problem, there are strategies and tricks that help. You can hope for a happy coincidence between your source and target languages, unlikely though this is; you can find a close alternative, which sometimes is obvious but often requires considerable thought; or you can recreate the entire pun in a separate fashion, which requires a lot of effort and may fail. 

Buzzfeed: “Muslims Shouldn’t Have to Be ‘Good’ to Be Granted Human Rights” by Sara Yasin

had to smile, to be polite, to dissolve the hostility of those who thought Muslims were savage, alien creatures. I had to accept the explanation that these incidents were either less significant than they felt or just evidence of one individual’s ignorance — and that it was my responsibility to change their minds. I was never supposed to see them as the product of all the vehement anti-Muslim narratives in pop culture and the news that helped justify the surveillance and arrests our communities experienced in the aftermath of 9/11. Over and over again, my non-Muslim friends told me to brush these things off because they didn’t really see them as part of a bigger, systematic inequality: That would have meant thinking about what role they had in changing it.

I don’t know what’s going on, but Cracked is killing it

Cracked: “6 Big Differences That Turn City Dwellers into Liberals” by Loey Nunning

Suddenly multiculturalism isn’t some failed, politically correct agenda, it’s just your neighborhood. Cities are diverse because this is where people come to find jobs, and the vast majority of immigrants, both legal and illegal, live in them. By the time you show up in town, this huge kumbaya-world stew has already been boiling for ages. When you live around people from all over the world, you get to see first hand that most immigrants are normal, hard-working people, just with cool accents and better food.

Cracked: “The Real Reason for the Trans Bathroom Panic” by Ian Fortey

The idea of people being out there who are transgender is difficult for some to deal with. It’s a relatively new idea for some folks. But those people also need to appreciate an important point, and that’s who gives a shit? Who gives a shit if you’re not comfortable with gender identity and trans rights? If it’s not about you, why does it matter to you? 

Cracked: “6 Surprising Things You Learn in the Alt-Right Media Bubble” by Robert Evans

If you want to build a movement, here’s the first thing you should know: The best way to convert someone to a point of view is not to get in their face and scream inflammatory slogans. It’s to simply filter the facts so that they arrive at the conclusion you want on their own. Modern white nationalism has mastered this.

Documentaries

Lately I’ve been binge-rewatching Parks and Recreation and Veep (what can I say, there’s comfort in TV shows centered on ambitious and conflicted women) but I’ve ventured back into the wonderful, beautiful world of documentaries.

BBC Earth’s The Blue Planet

I know this series is going on sixteen years old (!), but I haven’t rewatched it since it came out, and all I can say about it is [heart eyes emoji]. It’s on Netflix!

SOMM: Into the Bottle

Highly, highly recommend. It’s beautiful, it’s informative, it’s thought-provoking, and it’s an inspiring reminder that art is art is art—that the drive and the struggle to create is universal, and that there is meaning to be found in toiling to create something that, in the end, exists for only a moment.

(Photo taken by me, from a 2015 trip to Paris.)

The Sunday Reading Roundup [2.12.17]

I haven’t done one of these in a while (almost a year, geez) so hang tight, there’s a lot of reading material here. In the interest of organization, these will be roughly grouped by theme. Obviously the groupings are roughly drawn, and there’s a lot of overlap; I recommend that you just read all of them, though admittedly it might take a while.

Grief, tragedy, and hard things

The New Yorker: “When Things Go Missing” by Kathryn Schulz

I genuinely can’t pull a quote from this beautiful piece that sums it up; it begins, innocuously whimsical, and then crescendos in depth and intensity.

GQ: “The Man Who Cleans Up After Plane Crashes” by Lauren Larson

Jensen doesn’t have any harrowing rescue stories. He’s looking for something of more abstract value—a piece of a person, literal or figurative, that he can bring back to a victim’s family to say “We tried.” He knows from experience that when a person’s life has been obliterated, even the tiniest shards can bring solace.

New York Times Magazine: “‘I Have No Choice but to Keep Looking‘” by Jennifer Percy

“I expected it to be difficult,” Takamatsu said, “and I’ve found it quite difficult, but it is the only thing I can do. I have no choice but to keep looking for her. I feel closest to her in the ocean.”

New York Times: “Patton Oswalt: ‘I’ll Never Be at 100 Percent Again‘” by Jason Zinoman

“Grief is an attack on life. It’s not a seducer. It’s an ambush or worse. It stands right out there and says: ‘The minute you try something, I’m waiting for you.’”

Glamour: “Stanford Sexual Assault Case Survivor Emily Doe Speaks Out

“Victims are not victims, not some fragile, sorrowful aftermath. Victims are survivors, and survivors are going to be doing a hell of a lot more than surviving.”

The Guardian: “Monica Lewinsky: ‘The shame sticks to you like tar’” by Jon Ronson

Lewinsky’s outlook on her scandal has been doggedly non-ideological from the start. “I’m endlessly fascinated by how people derive meaning in life,” she says, “the chasm between how idealised people pretend life is and how complex we really are.”

Cracked: “This is What Safe Spaces and Trigger Warnings Actually Are” by Isaac Cabe

Trigger warnings and safe spaces get so conflated because they’re both meant to evoke the same criticism — that we’re coddling college students instead of exposing them to new ideas. But if a student has been so damaged by a previous experience that they literally can’t focus on the lesson, then something needs to be done to help that student. We’re not “preparing students for the real world” by re-exposing them to things from the real world that have already messed them up pretty bad.

History

Buzzfeed: “The Past Hundred Years of Gender-Segregated Public Restrooms” by Shannon Keating

Concerns about secretions, disease, and physical threats to the body are vessels through which deeper and more significant anxieties — regarding gender, sex, shame, and power — have been codified into law and reified by social norms over the span of decades.

Lucky Peach: “The History of Pho” by Andrea Nguyen

Vietnam is a country with a history spanning more than 3,500 years, but pho is a relatively new food. It was born at the beginning of the twentieth century in and around Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, located in the northern part of the country.

Smithsonian: “‘The Hatpin Peril’ Terrorized Men Who Couldn’t Handle the 20th-Century Woman” by Karen Abbott

“If the men of Chicago want to take the hatpins away from us, let them make the streets safe,” she said. “No man has a right to tell me how I shall dress and what I shall wear.”

Note: The above quote was from 1910.

London Review of Books: “Royal Bodies” by Hilary Mantel

Women, their bodies, their reproductive capacities, their animal nature, are central to the story. The history of the reign is so graphically gynaecological that in the past it enabled lady novelists to write about sex when they were only supposed to write about love; and readers could take an avid interest in what went on in royal bedrooms by dignifying it as history, therefore instructive, edifying. Popular fiction about the Tudors has also been a form of moral teaching about women’s lives, though what is taught varies with moral fashion.

Immigration

New York Times: “Refugees Encounter a Foreign Word: Welcome” by Jodi Kantor and Catrin Einhorn

As sponsors sign the paperwork that commits them, no one really explains the potential range of their unofficial duties: showing a newcomer to spit in a dentist’s sink by miming the motions, rushing over late at night to calm a war-rattled family terrified by a garage door blown open by the wind, or using Google Translate to tell children who lived through war and exile that they are supposed to wear pink at school for anti-bullying day.

New York Times: “What Does it Mean to Help One Family?” by Jodi Kantor and Catrin Einhorn

The family was living through the first refugee crisis in history in which people without countries or homes could communicate instantaneously with one another. Previous generations of refugees often ached for any information about relatives, but now messages zipped back and forth around the world on free apps. The joy of such regular communication came at a steep cost: constant updates on the misery of relatives left behind, intensifying worry and impeding progress for those trying to carve out a new life. 

Note: There’s a third part to the series that this and the above article belong in, but I have a backlog of several hundred (!) articles to get through and I haven’t gotten to that one yet.

Washington Post: “How to be an American: Syrian refugees find a home in Trump country” by Robert Samuels

“Now I am concerned about how they will treat me if they agree with the president, if they will treat me in a racist way,” she said. “I worry this ban will change how I feel inside, that it will cause me to worry more for me and my kids. We did not come here to cause trouble. We just want to live.”

Washington Post: “Trump says Syrian refugees aren’t vetted. We are. Here’s what we went through.” by Linda J.

Each member of the family told their story, and those stories had to be consistent with interviews given by other people who knew us. If our answers didn’t match information U.S. officials already had, or if they couldn’t validate our information, we didn’t progress to the next step. I had only a glimmer of hope that this would work — and that we could have a safe life for my daughters. We lived on that hope.

Washington Post: “Anne Frank and her family were also denied entry as refugees to the U.S.” by Elahe Izadi

But as the Frank family filed paperwork, immigration rules were changing — and attitudes in the United States toward immigrants from Europe were becoming increasingly suspicious, Breitman wrote. The American government was making it harder for foreigners to get into the country — and the Nazis were making it difficult to leave.

Refinery 29: “I Work Alongside You Every Day —But Depending On Who Wins The Election, I Could Be Forced To Leave” by Fiona Marlie Rezei

In my case, a win for Donald Trump could mean leaving my immediate family, my friends, and my job to return to a country I haven’t seen since I was 10 years old. 


The fear of losing the life I have built for myself over the past 15 years crystalized when I turned in my final college assignment almost three years ago. I should have been ecstatic, relieved, and happy; excited for what the future would hold like my other cap-and-gown-donning classmates.

New York Times: “Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded” by the Dalai Lama and Arthur C. Brooks

This helps explain why pain and indignation are sweeping through prosperous countries. The problem is not a lack of material riches. It is the growing number of people who feel they are no longer useful, no longer needed, no longer one with their societies.

Note: This isn’t just about immigration, but I’m kind of stuck as to how to categorize this, so here it stays.

Classical Music

The New Yorker: “Making Art in a Time of Rage” by Alex Ross

What is the point of making beautiful things, or of cherishing the beauty of the past, when ugliness runs rampant? Those who work in the realm of the arts have been asking themselves that question in recent weeks. The election of Donald Trump, and the casual cruelty of his Presidency thus far, have precipitated a sense of crisis in that world, not least because Trump seems inclined to let the arts rot.

The Guardian: “Lemony Snicket: ‘The problem with being interested in classical music is that people look at you funny” by Daniel Handler

You might be sitting with friends talking about pop music, or what you’ve read or seen on television, and everyone’s on the same page. And then you say “Yeah, it reminds me of that Shostakovich quartet, that chord at the end” and there’s a chill in the room, and the mood is killed. I thought if I seduced more people into the world of classical music I wouldn’t be as lonely and wretched.

Huffington Post: “Why Musicians Need Silence in an Always-Connected World” [Interview with Stephen Hough] by Carlos Gardels

So there is a need in the arts to delve deep, and to live with the material and let it be absorbed. This is very important. It’s related to any kind of growth. The Internet tempts us to think that because an email or a new website can be accessed in seconds that everything works at the same instant speed. Art is more like the growth of a plant. It needs time and space.

Creative Review: “How the Toronto Symphony Orchestra uses graphic design to guide audiences” by Mark Sinclair

Instead of quoting the article, I’m just going to tell you that I got a nerdgasm from this, having gotten a minor in graphic design in addition to my major (and another minor) in music.

Feminism & Toxic Masculinity

Bustle: “On Newt Scamander, Toxic Masculinity, and the Power of Hufflepuff Heroes” by Emma Lord

Newt Scamander takes every trope we know about the Male Hero — the toxic tropes that we have grown up with, that are so internalized in traditional narratives that we don’t even blink at them anymore — and flips them on their head.

Newsweek: “Women of the CIA: The Hidden History of American Spycraft” by Abigail Jones

Women have been central to American spycraft since 1776, and they continued to play important roles in the World War II–era Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA’s predecessor. Even so, the agency has a long history as a chauvinistic old boys’ club rife with sexism. “People treat it as only men have a calling to serve their country and it’s unnatural for women to do it,” Bennett says. “Women have been extremely involved and integral! It burns me up to no end. Women in intelligence is not new. We’ve always been important, and there’s nothing strange with us wanting to do this role.”

The Atlantic: “Not Wanting Kids is Entirely Normal” by Jessica Valenti

American culture can’t accept the reality of a woman who does not want to be a mother. It goes against everything we’ve been taught to think about women and how desperately they want babies. If we’re to believe the media and pop culture, women — even teen girls — are forever desperate for a baby. It’s our greatest desire.

Cracked: “7 Reasons So Many Guys Don’t Understand Sexual Consent” by David Wong

No, the alternative is to recognize that ridding guys of toxic attitudes toward women is a monumental task. I’ve spent two solid decades trying to deprogram myself, to get on board with something that, in retrospect, should be patently obvious to any decent person. Changing actions is the easy part; changing urges takes years and years. It’s the difference between going on a diet and training your body to not get hungry at all.

Vox: “The research is clear: electing more women changes how government works” by Sarah Kliff

Changing the conversation can have an effect on the laws that Congress eventually passes: One recent study of Congress since 2009 found that the average female legislator had 2.31 of her bills enacted, compared with men, who turned 1.57 bills into law.

Boing Boing: “To find Hillary Clinton likable, we must learn to view women as complex beings” by Caroline Siede

Our movies, books, and TV shows are filled with attractive female love interests, badass female warriors, hissable female villains, and bumbling female leads. But we don’t have very many female protagonists who are allowed to be flawed in ways that are messily realistic not just charmingly endearing. We haven’t been taught to empathize with flawed women the way we have with flawed men.

Miscellaneous Fascinating Things

Racked: “Perfume, Power, and God” by Arabelle Sicardi

Perfume made you lose your head, forced you to face God sooner.

I’m fascinated by this connection between god and perfume and power. What’s the power of smell and how is it linked to politics? And have they always been linked like so?

The Economist/1843 Magazine: “Demand Curve” by Brooke Unger

The authors of “Signalling status with luxury goods: the role of brand prominence”, which appeared in the Journal of Marketing in 2010, do so by dividing the rich into two groups: “parvenus”, who want to associate themselves with other rich people and distinguish themselves from have-nots, and “patricians”, who want to signal to each other but not to the masses. They theorise that more expensive luxury goods, aimed at patricians, will have less obvious branding than cheaper ones.

New Republic: “Across the Broken Bridge” by Suki Kim

Shenyang and Dandong, filled with North Korean defectors, contract workers, and government officials, are notorious hubs of sensitive information on North Korea, and I was hoping to learn something new.

NY Mag: “10 Extremely Precise Words for Emotions You Didn’t Even Know You Had” by Melissa Dahl

Priceonomics: “The Campaign to Make You Eat Kimchi” by Sarah Scharf

As it turns out, so-called ‘gastro-diplomacy’ is gaining traction as a valuable form of international relationship building and stimulus for tourism. As Public Diplomacy magazine notes, these countries “have recognized the seductive qualities food can have, and are leveraging this unique medium of cultural diplomacy to increase trade, economic investment, and tourism, as well as to enhance soft power.”

Outside Online: “The Bears Who Came to Town and Would Not Go Away” by Sarah A. Topol

First there were a few, then a dozen, then many more—the bears were showing up around Luchegorsk at a rate of up to ten per day. They moved in elongated convoys, following each other down the same paths through open fields, like they had all locked onto the same GPS route and the coordinates led straight to Luchegorsk. 

Priceonomics: “How an Ad Campaign Made Lesbians Fall in Love with Subaru” by Alex Mayyasi

This was the type of discovery that the small, struggling automaker was looking for. But Subaru had been looking for niche groups like skiers and kayakers—not lesbian couples. Did the company want to make advertisements for gay customers? At the time, in the mid 1990s, few celebrities were openly out. A Democratic president had just passed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, and after IKEA aired one of the first major ad campaigns depicting a gay couple, someone had called in a bomb threat on an IKEA store.

Buzzfeed: “How Taylor Swift Played The Victim For A Decade And Made Her Entire Career” by Ellie Woodward

By teasing the press and public in this way, Swift has been able to control the narrative around her relationships, ensure sustained media attention, and bolster record sales. She has created a narrative so compelling, so regular in its offerings, so melodramatic, that it’s reminiscent of a soap opera – it’s impossible to look away. Each instalment is thoroughly analysed: Of course we want to know the next episode. She’s taught the public – gradually, cleverly – to cling to the next development. Why are the public so obsessed with her relationships? Because she makes them irresistible.

LA Times: “Framed” by Christopher Goddard

 This is a long read in six parts, but it’s extremely interested and really well-written; highly recommend.

The Sunday Reading Roundup [02.28.16]

Dear cheese lovers, I have been to heaven on Earth, and it is The Cheese Shop in Carmel-by-the-Sea. Witness:

cheese shop

This photo, by the way, represents about 15% of the actual cheese available in the shop. It is impossible to photographically represent all the cheese for sale without stitching together a veritable quilt of panoramic photos. Shoutout to Midori for introducing myself and Bryce to this hamlet of glory.

(Goes without saying, but this post was not sponsored by The Cheese Shop. Cheese, like sleep, is one of those things I love so much that I will willingly write sonnets for any organization that enables me to have it.)

Now, on to some things I recommend reading. (Only one actually has to do with food.)

Articles

Bon Appetit: “Life Before Avocado Toast: The 16 Ways Dining Has Changed Since 2000” by Mark Byrne

Edison bulbs, the end of tipping, and lines that stretch out the door—all in the name of dinner.

Note: as someone who blithely eats up food trends and has, in all seriousness, done the Portlandia thing at multiple restaurants, I found this super interesting.

The Toast: “Kind-Hearted Reality Shows I Would Like To See” by Maddie Howard

I don’t want to watch anyone fail, and I don’t want to watch anyone fight — I just want the reality-show equivalent of a gentle massage or a home-cooked meal, and to be reassured that not everything in the world is horrible, all of the time. Here, for any interested networks, are brief pitches for some kind-hearted reality shows that would meet this need and pander directly to me.

Cracked: “5 Weird Ways America Has Returned To The Dark Ages” by Adam Tod Brown

When you think of the Dark Ages strictly in terms of the handful of conditions that defined the time, comparisons to the state of American society today get a lot easier to make.

Note: Yes, I know the headline is all doom-and-gloom clickbait-y, but it’s a thoughtful and interesting read, I swear!

Cracked: “I’m Asian: 6 Forms Of Racism I Deal With Every Day” by Dennis Hong

Keep that in mind the next time you’re inclined to call a minority oversensitive. Are you aware of their experiences? Can you step inside their body and say with 100 percent certainty that the lifetime of slights they’ve experienced are no big deal at all?  […] That’s why people who have never experienced racism have a hard time comprehending why innocent comments elicit such dramatic reactions.

Note: Cracked is killing it with their columns addressing racism, sexism, bullying, economic inequality, etc. I’m also really glad that the recent surge in published articles about casual racism across the board is calling into question the idea that everyday discrimination is an acceptable staple of the Asian-American (or really, non-Caucasian American) experience. In other words, I’m not going to stop sharing this stuff. #sorrynotsorry

Medium: “Yahrzeit” by Stephanie Wittels Wachs

I think about the day a person dies, how the morning is just a morning, a meal is just a meal, a song is just a song. It’s not the last morning, or the last meal, or the last song. It’s all very ordinary, and then it’s all very over.

Note: This is a piece by Harris Wittels’ sister on the year anniversary of his death, and it’s just too heartbreaking, and too beautiful.

Shameless Nerdery

Tumblr: Sorting Hat Chats

Confession: I don’t talk about my Harry Potter obsession most of the time because the depths of my past-the-point-of-cool nerdiness (and my unabashed hatred of the movie adaptations) are a little too intense for most people, and I like having friends.

That being said, I’ve been neglecting to read actual news lately because I’ve been tearing through the posts on Sorting Hat Chats. It’s not Potter nerdery as much as it is a very elaborate personality classification system based on the House system, but it’s fascinating stuff and I’ve spent too much time pondering the Primary/Secondary/Model/Performance classifications for various Potter characters as a result.

If any of that sounds remotely interesting to you, start here.

An Actual Book

Alexander Hamilton, by Rob Chernow

Speaking of obsession…Hamilton has officially taken over my head like a zombie infection. I actually bought the book (as in, the book that inspired the musical) for Bryce, but I’m the one reading it right now. Oops.

I’m only a couple of chapters in, but I’m happy to report that it is easy to digest, well-paced, and a totally fascinating read.

(The Amazon link above is an affiliate link that generates a small commission.)

Speaking of Hamilton… [More Shameless Nerdery]

Genius: Hamilton Lyric Annotations

You could legitimately spend weeks reading this stuff. Every single track has a mini-essay, and every single line has its own mini-essay, and the annotations are what I’d imagine you’d get if you threw some music majors, history majors, and literature majors into a blender and gave them a thesis deadline. It’s brilliant.