So, I wrote a thing

[fluorescentbrains]

seeing straight men be disgusted by booktok smut recommenders has actually radicalized me to the side of booktok smut recommenders. girls your taste may be atrocious but i will never disparage you for exposing mainstream discourse to the concept of soaking through your underwear. spent my whole life listening to men talk about penises it’s about time they get jumpscared by women talking about pussy in crude detail on social media. go forth and goon my warriors

[insomniac-arrest]

I work at a bookstore and hearing one of my male coworkers call smutty romantasy "the downfall of society" because it's "literally just porn" radicalized me

Men have an entire industry. Entire industries dedicated to their sexualities. Let women have fantasy sex. there's not even a camera crew involved.

[furiousfurious]

Left this in the notes

[insomniac-arrest]

😂

[goodattellinglies]

[sosoconfusa]

girl rot era

[blu-et]

fucking brutal section headings from the herman melville wikipedia page

[call-me-moby-dick]

[murrderdith]

Please be gentle to the Cool Girls. We* are in mourning.

Please be gentle to the Cool Girls. We* are in mourning.

I came to Joan Didion late. I read her after Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton and Adrienne Rich and bell hooks and Amy Hempel and Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou — the literary canon of Cool Girls**— feminine rejoinders to the men and boys whoever fancied themselves Holden Caulfield or The Beats. I can place some authors and some books in space and time. I found an abandoned copy of The Exorcist in…

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[murrderdith]

A year into the pandemic, I am just trying to find any way to distinguish myself from a feral cat.

A year into the pandemic, I am just trying to find any way to distinguish myself from a feral cat.

On this International Women’s Day I must announce (admit?) that I’ve been making an effort to match my underwear every day. It’s an odd thing to commit to when the women around me are foregoing underwire bras and pants without elasticized waists entirely. This isn’t an exercise in confidence-building or an advertisement for sexual availability. It isn’t an achievement of any kind. I am not…

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[murrderdith]

Old Dogs. New Tricks.

Old Dogs. New Tricks.

I am a terrible guitar player. I have played the guitar every day for almost a month and I am not good. I didn’t expect to be good this soon or ever. This is not a surprise or disappointment and, while I am occasionally frustrated by the way my fingers refuse to transition smoothly from the G to C chord, I am not in any way discouraged. I make videos of my terrible guitar-playing and send them…

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[murrderdith]

I think it goes without saying that I am not interested in your plan for the zombie apocalypse

I think it goes without saying that I am not interested in your plan for the zombie apocalypse

For the last week, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Francine’s hair in Dawn of The Dead. 

This isn’t the scene in the mirror with clumsy black eyeliner, and her hair pulled up in teased curls, where she drags a pistol across her cheek, exaggerated by a thick streak of blush. Her face in the mirror at the abandoned mall salon is obvious, late-70s farcical excess down to the drawn on…

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[murrderdith]

fetch the bolt-cutters

In the morning before I get out of bed, before even the dog starts to rustle or the cat comes in to beg for food, I sit up a little and think that maybe this morning I’ll make breakfast. I eat breakfast most mornings but would it be too much effort of a Tuesday morning to poach my eggs? A soft-boiled egg is more benign neglect than active work. We usually have the ingredients for a creamy,…

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[murrderdith]

bookshelf organization in the time of covid-19

bookshelf organization in the time of covid-19 ... if the booklist is off, my systems are as flawed as all the others are revealing themselves to be.

I’ve kept a spreadsheet of all the books I own for the last eight or nine years. I started it when I realized I had three copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a book I have been made to read in parts or its entirety at least twice, never enjoyed, and no longer own. The other night, as I was updating the list, adding books I’d recently purchased and color-coding books I’d recently read, I noticed that two…

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[murrderdith]

January update, three weeks late

January update, three weeks late

Books read in January:

Sula by Toni Morrison

Beloved By Toni Morrison

A Daring Arrangement by Joanna Shupe

A Notorious Vow by Joanna Shupe

Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

A Groom of One’s Own by Maya Rodale

I haven’t made much of a dent in the syllabus so far. It isn’t that I haven’t been reading, just that most of my reading hasn’t applied here. This…

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[murrderdith]

2020 Reading Syllabus

My reading in 2019 felt directionless. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy any of the books I read last year. I did, but I also spent a lot of the year staring at my bookshelf unable to pick anything up. Even when I made a decision, I might still find myself in bed watching strangers on the internet cook, the book I was supposed to be reading sitting on my lap or on the nightstand, untouched.

I spent a…

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[murrderdith]

The screens are breaking my brain

The screens are breaking my brain. I need to find a way to restore my cognitive patience (...and maybe break up with my phone.)

I’m starting to worry I’m here too much…

Not here, on this website—clearly I am not. But I am way to available online on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. I was never supposed to want to be here too much, unless the here to which you are referring is church or somewhere wholesome but not-church, thinking churchy thoughts. I wasn’t supposed to be here the way I dressed or carried myself. It…

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[murrderdith]

On (Not) Writing

I did it.

I forgot the thing you aren’t supposed to forget. The thing you’re told in every remotely worthwhile writing class. Writing is about writing. It isn’t the result of talent or inspiration or even just having a good idea. The only way to write is to write.

For the last few years now, I’d sit down with a line I thought up or the vague beginnings of an idea or a scene I wanted to sketch and…

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[murrderdith]

In which Meredith promises to think about reading Finnegan's Wake...probably.

In which Meredith promises to think about reading Finnegan’s Wake…probably.

A couple days ago an internet friend made a comment on one of my Instagram posts about wanting to read Ulysses one day. I gave him a completely sincere if a little snarky, response: Ulysses opens like any other book. You start at the first line and read all the way until the final punctuation. (In the case of Ulysses, you can’t miss it. It is quite a punctus.) I can say this because I’ve already…

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[murrderdith]

String Theory I think everyone wants to make something. I don’t believe there is anyone who wants to go through life without leaving any trace of having lived it.

[murrderdith]

I don't know what a beach read is either

I don’t know what a beach read is either

  I would 100% spend all summer on this beach. Illustration by Zac Redden.

In the same way a beach body is the body you have at the beach, a beach read is any book you bring to the beach. 

We’re officially in the middle of summer here in the Mid-Atlantic and I wanted to make sure you all knew this before you head out to the beach or the pool or your backyard or front stoop or apartment balcony…

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