Show & Tell: Celine, Dusty, and Walz, Oh My!
Unstacked Digest for the week of July 22-28
I had a birthday. The olympics started. It is Leo season. Shit, I even finished a few books. Not too shabby. Read all about it below.
Welcome to another edition of Show & Tell where I tell you some things I loved from the week and the one thing I hated, plus round up everything else going on around these parts. The first half of Show & Tell is free to all. The adoration and hateration are for paid subscribers only.
This Week on Unstacked
My first thoughts on Kamala Harris as the presumptive nominee.
Brea Baker talks about her debut book, Rooted, and the books that made her book possible (spoiler alert: they’re some of my faves).
Books I Read This Week
Blood at the Root by LaDarrion Williams
A YA fantasy novel about a teenaged boy, Malik, who has magical powers and ends up enrolled at a magical HBCU. It’s been marketed as “the Black Harry Potter” I have never read HP so I don’t know how accurate that comparison is, but it did get me to pick up the book. This wasn’t my favorite, mostly because it was too long and repetitive. I loved what Williams was trying to do — write a story for Black boys that gives them a main character with an opportunity to be a hero. I also really liked the way Black history is woven through the book. However in the end, I was always way ahead of the story and Malik. And while I was rooting for Malik and company, I never really cared about the characters and what happened to them.
Consent by Jill Ciment
A memoir from writer Jill Ciment that asks if we can judge past behavior through the standards of today. When Ciment was 17 she entered a relationship with her art teacher who was 30 years her senior. They married when Ciment was in her 20’s and remained married until her husband died when Ciment was 63. I was pretty taken with this book. It is clinical and cold. An autopsy on a time and a relationship and, in a more vague sense, the value of memory. Ciment asks questions that are provocative for her reader without baiting herself into saying too much. I personally wish she had shared more of her own thoughts and feelings on reflecting on her life and marriage in this way. The book feels sterile, by design, and that works stylistically, but it left me wanting more when I got to the ending. Which, on a sentence level, is perfection.
The Rent Collectors: Exploitation, Murder, and Redemption in Immigrant LA by Jesse Katz
This is the story of a 2007 botched gang-related murder that leaves an infant dead, and the aftermath of the hit. The Rent Collectors is about a lot of other things, too. We’ve got RICO charges, reprisal crimes, snitches, extraditions, LAPD practices, immigration policy, street vendors, and so much more. We get a good mix of true crime and investigative journalism, and Katz digs into what created the environment that lead to this story. While the pacing sometimes gets tripped up, Katz is weaving together a lot and sometimes he loses his flow (especially the ending), this book is an entertaining jaunt into the world of LA gangs, undocumented Angelenos, and of course, law enforcement. I’ll give Katz credit for resisting the urge to go full out copaganda on this one (though there are a few agents he goes the extra mile for), and giving the reader a glimpse into a few different subcultures.
Fave of the week!
Housekeeping
Novelist Mateo Askaripour is back on The Stacks talking about his second novel, This Great Hemisphere. We talk about genre, world building, and the books that inspired his. If you missed his first appearance on the podcast for his debut Black Buck you can catch that here.
Things I Love…
Pop Culture
I watched Presumed Innocent, the new Apple TV show with Jake Gyllenhaal, Ruth Negga, and Peter Sarsgaard. I had a great time with it. Watched it all in two days (I am still in a reading slump, thanks for asking). The acting is so good.
In case you wanted to know if I am in fact as genius, I did figure out who did it before the final episode. Wow. Brilliant.
Politics
Last week I told you I was all in for Mark Kelly for VP. Since then I have had a birthday and now I am older and wiser, and I am all in for Tim Walz*, baby! This dude is great. He is funny and has big joyful energy. He might just be the most progressive Governor in the country. He’s the one who started calling Donald Trump and JD Vance “weird” which, to me, is next level brilliant. I can tolerate a mega-villain threat to democracy, but a fucking weirdo for president? Hard pass.
Here are just some of the things he’s gotten done in his home state of Minnesota.
Now, I know Tim Walz is a politician. He is not my hero. He is not perfect. He was not great on policing stuff in Minnesota post George Floyd for one.
He is my personal pick for VP mostly because I like the vibes. But also because I think he brings something not harmful to the ticket like some of these other guys (Shapiro looking very not good right now). He is more progressive than Harris which balances out the ticket instead of moving it further right. It is an olive branch to younger voters, Bernie bro types, and many of us who have felt ignored on a slew of promises that Biden/Harris made in 2020.
And for those of you who are obsessed with the VP needs to deliver their home swing state narrative, it actually doesn’t happen that often according to the data and the people who study it. I found this Al Jazeera piece really illuminating.
*All VP opinions subject to change at any moment for any reason.