Show & Tell: Christmas Music and a Sale!
Unstacked Digest for the week of December 9-15
This is 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.
It’s the holiday season and while I am one step away from full grinch, I did launch a sale for Unstacked annual memberships. Which translates to $10 off. This is only good for new memberships, but it does work toward gift memberships. The sale lasts through December 24th. But know, if you get a gift membership you can schedule when it is delivered so you can get the discount and still have it land in your beloveds inbox on Christmas or the fourth night of Chanukkah or whatever works best for you. You can print out this little cutie gift card so people know what the fuck you signed them up for.
When you upgrade to paid membership you get access to all my posts and archives, including the shit talking parts of Show & Tell, monthly bonus episodes, my reading rankings, and special one off perks like voting in The Stackies, and the Nonfiction Reading Guide.
Also, and this can’t be overstated, paid subscriptions are essential to The Stacks (and The Stacks universe) existing at all. The Stacks is my full time job. Your subscriptions also pay for Christian Dueñas, our editor and sound engineer, the person who makes anything audio sounds so damn good. Paid subscriptions also pay Megan Caballero who assists me on all things from booking guests to linking to all those damn show notes, and a lot a lot more. I could not do what I do without these two wonderful humans.
As a reminder, there will be no Show & Tell for the next two weeks. Monday the 23rd voting for Battle of the Books will kick off on Instagram. Fill out your brackets here. Monday the 30th there will be something else special for you to check out. I will be back with Show & Tell on Monday January 6th.
This Week on Unstacked
The Battle of the Books is here. Be sure to fill out your bracket and vote with us over on IG.
Details on the gift subscription (which is on sale right now) and a link to download the card to print for your recipient.
A lot on year end lists.
Books I Read This Week
I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition by Lucy Sante
This memoir about Lucy Sante’s life and transition after living for 60+ years in a body that never felt quite right. I Heard Her Call My Name has been lauded as a book of the year according to many outlets, and while I liked the book generally I do not fully get the fervor. What I appreciate about the book most is that we rarely get the stories of folks who transition in their 50s and 60s and that perspective is fascinating. Where the book felt slightly off for me, and I’m struggling to articulate this, is how it operates with a transphobic audience in mind. The idea of her needing to be explained and examined felt omnipresent in the text (some of the transphobia is admittedly Sante’s own). And therefore, the logic would go, the book is important because it has the air of dispelling a thing that is inherently fucked up and doesn’t deserve so much consideration. Because of this Sante spends a lot of time, it seems, removed from herself in order to remain neutral enough for a certain reader. That coolness and a distance rang hallow, because it read as a certain kind of authority that Sante proclaims not to have. However, some of this distance comes from Sante’s own grappling with her life and her story, and in many ways it includes her grappling with what it means to write and self-mythologizing. Those parts were the most interesting.
In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space by Irvin Weathersby Jr.
This book marks my official entry into 2025 reads! In Open Contempt is a reckoning with art, public monuments, and white supremacy. I love the concept of the book and found it to be a very ambitious and thoughtful debut. For the most part Weathersby was successful in exploring what it means to make art and carve out space to commemorate in the face of America’s racist past. There are sections that rely too heavily on memoir and lose track of the art and cultural criticism. Those parts felt the weakest, not because Weathersby doesn’t have a personal story to tell, but because the focus is immediately blurred when he turns the pen on himself.
Favorite of the week!
Housekeeping
This week Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha came on the podcast to discuss his new collection Forest of Noise and talk about life in Gaza. It is an extremely powerful episode and I am beyond honored he shared his time with us.
Every year on Shereads.com I write about the books of the year according to me as told through the lens of the podcast. This years list is up including the two books I loved, the one I hated, and a lot more.
launched their inaugural Adaptation list (books Hollywood execs would most like to see turned into film & TV) and I got to talk about all things adaptations with and Franklin Leonard. It was a real blast.
I talked about goals for young readers on KQED’s Mindshift Podcast this week.
Speaking of young readers I shared a whole bunch of fails as a parent on this show, One Bad Mother.
Things I Love…
Book News
In sad news, the great Nikki Giovanni passed away at the age of 81. I have loved seeing the many meaningful tributes to her work from some of my favorite writers. This post from Hanif Abdurraqib is, unsurprisingly, great. If you’ve never read any Nikki Giovanni I suggest you start here. Her poems are incredibly potent and accessible and what I love most about her work is her sense of humor. Many poets are funny in life but devoid of that on the page. And as you know, getting that joke off is incredibly important to me. I also suggest you watch this conversation between her and James Baldwin if you’ve never seen it.
May her memory be a blessing.
Pop Culture
The Golden Globes nominations came out which means it is officially award season here in Hollywood. I love this time of year because it is when all of my LA friends tell me how good xyz movie is and then I say “I’ve never heard of it” then I start watching it and fall asleep within 26 minutes. Then I tune into the award show to look at the outfits and pretend I have any clue who should win. But don’t you worry, whether I watched the thing or not, I will fully have an opinion on who should win.
I do know this, Say Nothing1, was snubbed in every way possible and the Hollywood Foreign Press should be ashamed of themselves. Not for the reasons they normally are, but still, shame!
I will still be tuning in to the awards on Sunday January 5th. Maybe we can do a live chat for it like we did for the Oscars last year. Stay tuned.