The Books I Read in 2021

 

Of these, the best was The Whale: A Love Story by Mark Beauregard. It's the fictionalized story of the forbidden love between Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. It's so good and so sad. The Hawthorne character is exactly how I always imagined Nathaniel Hawthorne would be. Herman Melville is, surprisingly, extremely relatable. 

I haven't read Moby Dick, and honestly I probably never will because I asked my dad what it was like and he said, "Boring." We both like the Last of the Mohicans novels, so if he thinks it's more boring than James Fenimore Cooper's six pages of descriptions of trees, it's probably pretty boring, even if it is an extended Symbolist metaphor for love. 

Just know, as a bit of background information, that classic American literature lives rent-free in my mind at all times. 

There are a lot of really good ones in this middle photo, but I think my absolute favorite was State of Wonder by Ann Patchett. My copy belonged to my grandma, who loved Ann Patchett, especially Bel Canto. State of Wonder knocked me for several loops and, although it may seem counterintuitive to read about diseases in the midst of a pandemic, actually a good read for the COVID-19 outbreak. I highly recommend it. 

Carmen Maria Machado's graphic novel The Low, Low Woods is excellent, and of course reading Alex Trebek's memoir was a bittersweet pleasure. I think my favorite of these was the first one I read, Ayiti, a short writing collection by Roxane Gay. Everything Gay writes is phenomenal. And I'm not even that upset that she and her wife moved (moved back, in Gay's case) to Omaha and don't live in West Lafayette, Indiana anymore (where I always hoped I would accidentally run into them. Oh well, Indianapolis still has John Green). 

What was your favorite book that you read in 2021?

My 2021 on Tumblr in Review

https://thatwritererinoriordan.tumblr.com/post/670489221310644224/i-posted-20079-times-in-2021

December 2021 Currentlies

Currently Watching: I'm currently watching the new Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) kid on the block ("the block" in this case being Disney+): Hawkeye, starring Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton and Hailee Steinfeld as the younger Hawkeye, Kate Bishop. 

Hailee Steinfeld also stars in another current fave series, this one on Apple+, which I just got this year: Dickinson. The series is loosely based on the life of Emily Dickinson, but it uses the Civil War-era setting to comment cleverly on current events. Plots frequently revolve around the love triangle between Emily, her brother Austin, and their mutual paramour Sue. Guest stars include comedian John Mulaney as Henry David Thoreau and Billy Eichner (voice of librarian Mr. Ambrose on Bob's Burgers) as a wonderful, openly queer Walt Whitman. My favorite guest star, though, is musician Wiz Khalifa as the personification of Death, who frequently stops his phantom coach for Emily. 

Of course, as a teen, Steinfeld famously played Juliet opposite Douglas Booth's Romeo. She also has a fantastic singing voice and my little pop-loving heart appreciates her as a recording artist. 

I hope Hailee is having a happy Hanukkah 5782.

Here are some of Emily Dickinson's recipes, via LitHub, by the way. 

Currently Reading: Continuing with the American literature theme, I'm finally reading Mark Beauregard's The Whale: A Love Story, a fictionalized account of the relationship between Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. It's so good. Hawthorne's characterization is exactly the way I always imagined Nathaniel Hawthorne to be. 

I'm also midway through Rainbow Rowell's Attachments. No, I have not read the third Snowbaz book yet. I hope to get to it...someday. 

Further, I'm reading this book I picked up at the Book Warehouse at the outlet mall my husband and I recently visited:

It's not great. I was really hoping for a more folkloric book about contemporary urban legends, but what it really is is a lot of eyewitness accounts of alleged sightings of abnormally large dogs with Anubis-like ears but surprisingly humanoid faces. This seems to be a common misperception or hallucination that apparently a lot of Americans have had, but I wanted more theory and fewer examples. 

Readers of this blog will recall that I don't literally believe in the supernatural, but I did, in real life, have a misperception experience that took the form, in my mind,  of a weird black dog. It was over by the Center for the Homeless (where I used to volunteer) in South Bend, Indiana. I looked down the street and saw what appeared to be a black dog moving very quickly away from me in a very unnatural way. It looked like a dog on a skateboard, only I didn't see a skateboard; it looked like it was floating rapidly down the road. What it probably was was a black garbage bag being blown down the street by the wind. But for the record, I did momentarily have a weird canine experience once. 

Currently Listening: These were the podcasts I mentioned in October 2020: 

- Omnibus with Ken Jennings and John Roderick

- FireStarters Podcast

- None of This Is Real

- Terrible Book Club

- Book Vs Movie Podcast

- You're Wrong About

Here are some of my other top podcasts:

- Big Gay Fiction Podcast. This episode is an interview with Sara Dobie Bauer; I know her from Tumblr.

   

- The History of Literature

- ArtCurious

- Black History Year

- Useless Information

 I (still) listen to all of my podcasts on Spotify Free, but many of these are available across numerous platforms. Curious about what music I listen to on Spotify? Here's a snapshot of my 2021 Spotify Wrapped:

Yeah, it's mostly Lady Gaga. So sue me.

The ultimate favorite is There Might Be Cupcakes by author Carla Pettigrew Hufstedler. I get stupidly excited every time Carla has something new to say. She introduced me to the tradition of Victorian Christmas horror stories, and I'm looking forward to another spooky Victorian episode this month. 

What are your currentlies? What are you making, reading, watching, and listening to? Everyone is welcome to comment. 

Currently Reading: "Change Sings: A Children's Anthem' by Amanda Gorman

https://thatwritererinoriordan.tumblr.com/post/663506267584790528

Happy 63rd Birthday, Madonna Louise Ciccone!

I Dream of Madonna: Women's Dreams of the Goddess of Pop by Kay Turner: Find it on Goodreads

Express yourself, don't repress yourself

Encyclopedia Madonnica 20: Madonna from A to Z by Matthew Rettenmund: Find it on Goodreads

Madonna made a face, the face she made in Truth or Dare when threatened with arrest if she performed the simulated-masturbation “Like a Virgin” dance. The face that tells you she intends to do what she pleases, fuck you very much. If the gods or man ever devised a way to counter this attitude in Madonna, I haven’t heard of it. 

Seeing this, Guy took another long drink from his bottle of Guinness and resigned himself to it. With that, they took their leave of the VIP room of the Hooters near the United Center. 

Erin had spent the night at the Palmer House Hilton. Her closet was full of clothes she’d bought earlier in the day on Clark St. She lay on the bed, sipping the tiny bottle of Skye Vodka from the mini bar. Undecided about which new outfit to wear to the club, she was about to go down to the bar to people-watch and mull it over when the phone rang. The front desk told Erin she had visitors. 

“Who?” she asked the clerk. 

“It’s Madonna, her husband, and Dennis Rodman. Should I send them up?”

“Certainly,” Erin said in her most distinguished tone. In a moment she heard the knock on the door. She opened up and the unlikely trio came tumbling in. 

Madonna looked hot. She was out of her nun’s habit and into a black spaghetti-strap top and a sheer black blouse, a bit like what she wore in “Vogue,” slightly toned down, and very flattering to her body, shaped as it was by yoga. Guy was out of his cardinal’s chasuble and had put on a decent suit. Dennis showed off his freshly waxed legs in red patent leather pumps and a red tulle ballerina skirt. He wore a black shirt, half unbuttoned, and brought together the black and the red with a Louis Vuitton handbag.

“Are you wearing a bra?” Erin asked, standing up to find herself face-to-face with Dennis’s lean, muscular chest. 

“Yes,” Dennis said, opening his shirt further to show her the lacy pink lingerie. “It was Victoria’s Secret, but I guess it’s not a secret anymore.”

“He’s not much of a lady, though,” Madonna said, giving Dennis a playful slap on the ass. “It doesn’t match with his thong.”

Read more in:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/999579319/enjoy-nostalgic-last-dance-toni-kukoc

Fic Rec: "Twice"

Friends, Sokovians, countrypersons, lend me your reading eyeballs: I found an extremely sexy fic on Tumblr featuring my problematic fave Baron Helmut Zemo as not-a-villain. No murdered kings of Wakanda here, only a university setting in which the brown-eyed boy is a heavily-accented polylingual history professor. 

Daniel Brühl portrait by Oliver Mark, Berlin 2015

Unburdened with the sadness of losing a wife and child, all he has is an ex-fiancee who didn't work out. (She's fine; she ended up marrying a Zemo cousin and presumably they're happy together.) 

The stakes and angst level are low. There's an age gap - she's 20, he's 39 - but they're both enthusiastically consenting adults. It's the same age gap that Jo and Friedrich have in Little Women, honestly. (I refer to the book, not the 2019 film in which director Greta Gerwig cast French hottie Louis Garrel as the Professor.) 

These links link to mostly text, perhaps with a few safe-for-work images. The text is explicit, rated M for mature, and most definitely not safe for work. 

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The author's social media name is J.D. ~ J.D., I salute you. If this were posted on An Archive of Our Own, I would definitely leave a nice comment and some kudos. 

Daniel, Sant Jordi, 23 April 2013 by Tasnim Aslam. The feast day of Sant Jordi - Saint George - is the Catalonian equivalent of Valentine's Day, but instead of cards and candy, Catalonians give books and roses. (Red roses symbolize dragon's blood.) It's a custom we definitely should import to the U.S.

The Trouble with Caviezels

I have to share this episode of QAnon Anonymous about Jim Caviezel and his connection to America's most destructive alternative facts. Pun intended, it's simply relevant to this blog's interests. 

Content warning within the podcast for antisemitism, racism, mention of sexual harassment, and homophobia. 

Some of these stories are rather amusing tales from the set of Person of Interest; others are harder to listen to. Jim Caviezel, it seems, is not only not a very good person, but also not a very smart person. I'm chagrined but not surprised, because straight white men are so often disappointing. 

(I know Not All Straight White Men. My dad is one. I'm married to one. I know a great number of you guys are kind, thoughtful, wonderful people. If you're not doing unkind things to people, then you should have nothing to feel defensive about.) 

Not problematic in any way: Taraji P. Henson. In fact, according to The Grio (which I believe is from the same parent company as the NBC television network), she has started a mental health campaign for African-American children called The Unspoken Curriculum. Taraji is as beautiful on this inside as she is on the outside, and she's very beautiful on the outside. 

Taraji, like my unproblematic straight white male fave Jon Bernthal*, is from Washington, D.C., which may soon be our 51st state. (Taxation without representation is problematic, which is why I also support statehood for Puerto Rico, if my fellow Americans in PR want it.) If you want to support students in the arts in DC so they can grow up to be future Tarajis and Jons, you can check out this book:

Sometimes I Have to Be Brave was written by student authors during the quarantine. It's a project of 826DC, a nonprofit company that gives kids in DC schools the tools they need to express themselves in writing. 

If you'd like to learn more about the Indianapolis Sikh community, you can read The Art and Spirit of K.P. Singh. Mr. Singh shares his visual art in this book as well as his writing. He was born in India and has lived in Indianapolis for over 40 years. I saw him on the local news this morning and I like having the opportunity to share something nice and positive after our city had a trauma. 

*He genuinely does seem to be a good guy, just acting and hanging out with this nurse wife Erin and their two sons and a daughter at their ranch in Ojai. I doubt we'll ever catch Jon Bernthal doing anything antisemitic, since he is Jewish. 

P.S. The Night at the Museum trilogy is on Disney+ now, if you want to see Jon as Al Capone. It also has Amy Adams as Amelia Earhart. 

Book Vs. Movie Podcast Episode: Arrival (2016)

Content warning, again, for mentions of violence and mentions of racism. 

Last week, I mentioned that this week's episode of Book Vs. Movie Podcast would be about the movie Arrival, based on the short story by Ted Chiang. That podcast episode is out now:

Because Chiang is a Chinese-American author, I referred in that previous blog post to incidents of anti-Asian-American violence. Another podcast, The Sauce with Maya Gurantz and Rebecca Cohan, covered the specific incident I mentioned in that post, namely the shooting incident that happened in Indianapolis on Thursday, April 15, 2021. 

The shooting took the lives of eight innocent people, including four who were members of the Sikh community. In their podcast, Gurantz and Cohan approach the shooter (who died by suicide shortly after the attack) from a perspective I didn't expect: through his association with the Bronies, an online community of men who engage in fandom culture related to the 2010s incarnation of My Little Pony. 

As a Gen Xer and an '80s kid, I remember My Little Pony from the toys, cartoons, and puffy stickers I had/watched as a child. Here's 8-year-old me playing with some My Little Pony toys and a Care Bear.

We could get into the historical circumstances of the Ronald Reagan era, the end of the Fairness Doctrine, and how it allowed cartoons that were essentially 22-minute commercials to turn my generation into superconsumers who love corporations in a way that Millennials and Gen Z find weird and disgusting. But that's a topic for, perhaps, another day. 

Although I'm well-known to suffer from bouts of nostalgia, in general I don't watch the remakes of cartoons I watched as a child. I haven't seen the Voltron, She-Ra: Princess of Power, or My Little Pony remakes of the 2010s. (I might watch She-Ra, though. I've heard a lot of good things.) Through the power of pop culture, I'm aware of the Bronies. They were even parodied in a 2014 episode of Bob's Burgers. 

I hadn't heard about the connection between the mass murderer and the cartoon show. If you're prepared to fall down this particular rabbit hole, listen as Gurantz and Cohan explain how Bronies, neo-Nazis, and the lunatic QAnon conspiracy theory are all connected. It's super gross. 

But in a way, now I better understand how medieval people ended up in bizarre death cults after their experiences with the Black Plague. Yay, history. 

 

If you're reading this in the future: Life during the pandemic was a mess, my guys, gals, and nonbinary pals. Be good, love your neighbors, protect your neighbors, don't be a Nazi, and don't allow Nazis in your fandom space. People who claim that they're "using Nazi symbols ironically" and "testing the limits of free speech" are not making those arguments in good faith, and you can't engage with them as if they were. 

Podcast Episode Rec: 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' on Book Vs. Movie

Content warning: I mention violence and anti-Asian American hate in this post, below the Spotify embed.

As I sadly had to report last time, Jim Caviezel is canceled due to some QAnonsense. But you know who isn't canceled? The lady Ms. Taraji P. Henson. 

You can read my review of Taraji's memoir here. I bought it from Half Price Books, but you could also support your favorite independent bookstore by buying it from BookShop.org. My favorite Bookshop.org destination is Brain Lair Books, which was recently featured in Publishers Weekly. 

Among Taraji's best films is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, for which she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award. The Brad Pitt-Cate Blanchett vehicle (which I've technically seen but didn't observe closely - it was on in the background while I did something) is based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. 

This week, the Book Vs. Movie podcast (mentioned in the 5 Recommended Podcasts post) compared the movie to the short story. I listen to my podcasts on Spotify. You can find the episode on Spotify here:

Next week's episode is about Ted Chiang's scifi short story "Story of Your Life," which was adapted into the film Arrival starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner. Check it out. 

And if you wanted to, you could also buy Ted Chiang's book from Bookshop.org. (There are no affiliate links in this post. Informational only.) The Nebula- and Hugo Award-winning author is Chinese-American. May is Asian and Pacific Islander American Heritage Month, and it's never a bad idea to read more Asian and Asian diaspora writers. 

It's really awful and unfortunate, but hate crimes against Asian-Americans are on the rise. I happen to live in Indianapolis, where last month we had a horrific crime take place that took the lives of four members of the Sikh community. The south side of Indianapolis, in addition to a large South Asian-American community, also has a large number of people who are Chin, an ethnicity from Burma. Many of my Chin neighbors are practicing Christians who didn't feel free to practice their religion in Burma. (Burma is in a humanitarian crisis right now, with many refugees having to flee from the government.)

I strongly favor everything that protects and empowers people of Asian descent, and you know what? Buying and reading fiction really does help, on an individual level. Not only do Asian-American authors need their royalties, but reading fiction also encourages empathy, as readers learn to put ourselves in the shoes of people who aren't exactly like us. 

Of course, I do know that buying and reading diverse authors is not a substitute for addressing systemic racism. I'm not suggesting that it is. I'm suggesting we do both. 

The co-hosts of Book Vs. Movie podcast are one Caucasian and one Latina. Support their podcast, support independent bookstores, support your local Black-owned businesses, protect your Black friends and neighbors*, support your local Asian American-owned businesses, and protect your neighbors of Asian descent - including yourself, if applicable. We're all in Year 2 of this pandemic together, so let's all do our parts and help each other out. 

*If the phrase "Black lives matter" seems controversial to you, do not interact with me in any way. This is a matter of life and death and I don't have to time to explain to people who are behaving in bad faith that human lives do, in fact, have value. 

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Baron Zemo: Problematic Hot Villain

 Enjoy Nostalgic Last Dance Toni Kukoc Zine, Spring 2021 (Issue #4), is out now!

Digital Issue #4 - only $1

Print Zine

Issues 1-4 package - all 4 issues for the price of 3

Since you, dear reader, know that I'm a huge Marvel nerd, you may not be surprised to read that I've been watching WandaVision and, more recently, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. 

One character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) who reappears in TFATWS is Baron Helmut Zemo. You may remember him from The Avengers: Civil War, in which he killed T'Chaka, king of Wakanda and father of its current king, T'Challa. He pinned the bombing murder on the Winter Soldier in hopes of tearing the Avengers apart from within. 

I don't forgive Zemo for killing King T'Chaka. I do understand that part of his motivation for doing so was that the Avengers unleashed Ultron on the world. Ultron not only killed Wanda Maximoff's twin Pietro but also killed Helmut's father, wife, and son Carl. The Zemos, like the Maximoffs, are from the fictional country of Sokovia. 

Baron Helmut Zemo is a complicated bad guy, less sympathetic than Black Panther's Erik Killmonger, but still with some sad widower Frank Castle vibes. 

Zemo is played by Daniel Brühl, a Catalonian actor born in Barcelona to a Spanish mom and a German dad. Only yesterday I remembered that I'd seen him speaking German (one of his several native languages) in a movie once before: Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (sic). I even wrote an unsolicited-by-anyone article about it, "Brad Pitt Is Not the Hottest Guy in Quentin Tarantino's Latest," written in 2010. It also singles out Michael Fassbender (before I knew he was an accused domestic violence offender - canceled) and Eli Roth. 

Brühl's character in Inglourious Basterds is a Nazi. Tarantino, for all his flaws (accused of sexual harassment on several occasions and poor on-set treatment of his muse/ex-girlfriend Uma Thurman, whom I adore), at least clearly hates Nazis. Brühl's character, on the other hand, is cute but not sympathetic, giving off strong "Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List" vibes. As I say far too often in these Nazi-infested modern times, where is the Bear Jew when I need him?

Zemo on TFATWS is more sympathetic, although I'm torn. Like Billy Russo/Jigsaw on The Punisher, he's a bit queer-coded. Billy Russo, a character who was known to have been sexually abused by a male predator as a young teen, embodied that problematic trope that queer people are queer because of their sexual trauma. Not only is this not supported by clinical evidence, but it also reinforces the mistaken notion that heterosexuality is the default for human sexuality and everything else is some kind of mutation or deviation from the norm. 

It's my opinion that Billy Russo is queer-coded even though his two sexual relationships in the series are with women. He appears to be flirting with every other character he encounters, including Frank Castle. Your mileage may vary.

On the other hand, it's harder to argue that Daniel Brühl isn't playing Helmut Zemo as bisexual, especially after Episode 5. Zemo appears to be sexually attracted to Bucky Barnes (the Winter Soldier), lovingly caressing his face at one point. 

Bisexual-coding your villains skirts dangerously close to the Depraved Bisexual trope, the notion that people without a clear gender preference are, in the words of TVTropes.org, "cold-blooded sociopaths." As a person without a clear gender preference and a non-sociopath, I take personal offence. Representation matters, and although I always want to see more bisexual and pansexual characters in the media, I want to see positive representation as well as regicidal criminals. 

Daniel Brühl is totally adorable, though. Add him to my Fictional Harem, along with basically everyone else from the MCU. 

I have an opening in my Fictional Harem, by the way. I had to kick Jim Caviezel out for being, unfortunately, an advocate of the impossible, nonsensical, illogical right-wing QAnon conspiracy theory. I'm fascinated with conspiracy theories as a species of contemporary folklore, but I cannot abide folk who take part in counterfactual disinformation campaigns that borrow tropes from anti-Semitism. As a person with an Irish-American dad and a Polish-Jewish-American mom, I won't allow my human rights as a Jewish person to be eroded in the service of white supremacist fears. 

See you at the TFATWS season finale on Friday. 

(Edited slightly for clarity on May 7, 2021.)

Spring 2021 Zine Sneak Peek

Last Dance zine, Issue 1

Last Dance zine, Issue 2

Last Dance zine, Issue 3

Congratulations to Brandy Norwood for winning the Soul Train Certified Award at the Soul Train Awards on November 29, 2020!*

Ever since The Great Gatsby went into the public domain on January 1st, 2021, not a single day has gone by that I haven’t beaten on, boats against the current, drawn back ceaselessly into the past. It’s this damn pandemic; it stirs up the nostalgia for simpler times when we could, like, go outside and do things. 

Influences: My RPF Origin Story

The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order by Marcelle Karp

Bust is just about the only U.S. magazine for adult women that does not suck, and this book captures some of the best offerings of its early days. Some of its highlights include "The Mysterious Eroticism of Mini-Backpacks" by James Reling and "My Keanu: A Fantasy" Lisa Palac, which I credit with giving me the permission I needed to write some of my early writings.

Lisa Palac’s fic is an imaginary tale about Keanu Reeves. It was a real person fic (RPF) I became aware of before I knew any fandom or fan fiction writing terminology. The Bust Guide was released in 1999 and I checked it out at least twice from my local public library, which at the time was the Main Library of South Bend, Indiana. 

Episode 27 of the “The Worst Thing We Read This Week” podcast is about the book Ship It by Britta Lundin (the showrunner of Riverdale). In the book, the fictional character Tess talks about her obsession with the Jonas Brothers. Tess likes to read Jonas Brothers incest fiction - she ships them with each other. As they’re being completely squicked out by this, the podcast hosts mention the author Cassandra Clare.

Cassandra Clare wrote, very early in her career, Harry Potter fan fiction**. You can read this on Wikipedia, where it says that, spelling her pen name “Claire” at the time, she wrote something called The Draco Trilogy. What it doesn’t say is that she also wrote Ron Weasley/Ginny Weasley incest fiction. I’m not judging; it’s FICTION. I’m just saying.

Clare went on to author the Mortal Instruments series. May the memory of Godfrey Gao be a blessing. 

*It went unsaid in the Autumn 2020 issue so I’ll say it now: I fucking hate Chris Brown and I will never, ever listen to the Chris Brown track on Two Eleven. Fuck you, Chris Brown.  

**Fuck you, JKR. Trans lives matter.

*** “Having to read footnotes resembles having to go downstairs to answer the door while in the midst of making love.” - Noel Coward

“Worse than not realizing the dreams of your youth would be to have been young and never dreamed at all.” -  Jean Genet

Currently Reading: 'The Unidentified' by Colin Dickey

Good news came yesterday in the form of an email from my local library: Colin Dickey's The Unidentified: Mythic Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsessions with the Unexplained was ready for me to borrow the audiobook. I started listening to it yesterday. 

I'd listened to the audiobook version of Dickey's previous book Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places some time in the last year or so - apparently I didn't record it in Goodreads, but it was some time when I lived in my apartment in downtown Indianapolis. I could barely put it down. I'm well-known to enjoy stories about hauntings (note that I don't believe in ghosts) and modern folklore. 

In chapters 1 through 3 of The Unidentified, Dickey discusses the modern folklore of Mount Shasta and the alleged Lemurians. In her Demonslayers novel series, author Kate Douglas used the mythology of the Lemurians to weave her tale. She got me interested in the discarded scientific theory of Lemuria - an incorrect but perfectly respectable theory about how lemurs ended up on the island of Madagascar - and how charlatan Helena Blavatsky turned the faulty science into a woo-woo spiritualism that endures among the alternatively spiritual today. 

What I didn't learn from Douglas's fiction but did learn from Dickey's nonfiction: the indigenous people of Mount Shasta and the surrounding region are the Winnemem Wintu nation. Just like reading Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series must be taken with a grain of respecting the Quileute people, who are real human beings and not Meyer's fictional creation, if you're going to approach the folklore of Mount Shasta, respect the Winnemem Wintu people and their traditions (or GTFO). 

I highly recommend that readers of Stephenie Meyer visit the Truth vs. Twilight website. If at all possible, please help the Quileute tribe move its school to higher ground, out of the flood plane, by contributing to the fund for the school. 

(P.S. Yes, I am still working my way through Midnight Sun. It's not that I'm not enjoying it, it's just that reading physical books has been difficult for me during the pandemic. I've been reading ebooks on my phone almost exclusively.) 

But back to the Winnemem Wintu people: Visitors to Mount Shasta sometimes engage in various New Age spiritual practices: Leaving crystals, building makeshift shrines, leaving behind the ashes of their deceased loved ones, and similar behavior. By themselves, there is nothing wrong with these behaviors per se. I'm not judging New Age practitioners. 

The problem with this is that before New Age spirituality existed in California, the Winnemem Wintu were there with their own religion, in which Mount Shasta is sacred ground. Just like you wouldn't walk into a mosque and leave a Christian shrine there, you obviously shouldn't leave spiritual or secular items behind when you visit Mount Shasta. 

If I'm lucky enough to go back to California, I may get to visit Mount Shasta some day. If I do, I'll be sure to observe appropriate behavior for being invited to visit my neighbors' sacred space, just as I did when I visited Serpent Mound. 

By the way, if you can visit Serpent Mound once we get out of this pandemic, you definitely should. What archaeology can tell us about the ancient people of what is now Southern Ohio is fascinating, in addition to the earthwork itself. Plus you're in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, which in summer is deeply green, remote, and gorgeous. 

After 4 years of outrageous disrespect for indigenous people's rights in the U.S., let's let 2021 be a return to recognizing the basic rights of all of our neighbors, no matter which sovereign nation they hail from. 

5 Recommended Podcasts

1. Oh No! Lit Class

With 93 episodes on Spotify as of today, you can probably find your favorite classic discussed among the episodes. The first episode is about Macbeth. More recently, Megan and RJ tackled "A Visit From St. Nicholas" and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. 

2. There Might Be Cupcakes

North Carolina writer Carla Pettigrew Hufstedler lives with multiple disabilities, and as a result her podcasting schedule isn't consistent. But no matter, because every new episode is like a shiny new gift to unwrap. She not only keeps listeners updated on her writing, knitting, drawing, and other creative pursuits, but shares ghost stories, synchronicities, folklore, and other subjects that readers and writers of speculative fiction will love. A personal favorite are Carla's Christmas episodes. In 2019, Carla introduced listeners to the tradition of Victorian Christmas ghost stories and read an early Charles Dickens tale that went on to inspire A Christmas Carol. 

3. Podcast Like It's 1999

This is a fun nostalgia trip for Gen Xers like me. (Relevant to my '90s NBA nostalgia zine? Not directly - yet - but maybe one of these days.) Journalist Brian Raftery argued in his book Best. Movie. Year, Ever: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen that this was film history's greatest year. This podcast discusses individual films in detail, with occasional digressions into music and other 1999 topics. 

An especial favorite episode of mine discusses the movie Stigmata starring my sweet, sweet baby Gabriel Byrne. You may also remember that this podcast made me read A Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson. 

4. Book Vs. Movie

Want to know exactly how Diana Wynne Jones's Howl's Moving Castle is different from the Studio Ghibli movie? Or how closely the movie Clueless mirrors Jane Austen's Emma? The two Margos will not only fill you in on how the written version translated to the big screen but also render their verdict on which one is better. It's not always the book!

5. None of This Is Real

Many, many podcasts will deliver a weekly dose of weirdness, but this one holds a special place in my podcast rotation. It's a comedy podcast about everything weird, from conspiracy theories to cryptids to ancient aliens to historical oddities and monsters. This is everything I liked to read about when I was a kid, in podcast form. 

What other podcasts should I listen to?