Show & Tell: Men Are Ruining Cake, a Book I Hate, and Shakespeare.
Unstacked Digest for the week of August 4 -10
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.
This week I went to Ashland, OR for my aunt’s 75th birthday party. It was mostly a family hang kind of trip — lots of pool time — but I did get to check something off my nerdy theatre kid bucket list. I went to see As You Like It at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Considering I have been a lover of Shakespeare since at least high school1, this one felt like a long time coming. As You Like It is not my favorite of Shakespeare’s plays, not by a long shot. It falls in the middle of the pack for me. But this season at OSF left a lot to be desired when it came to the Shakespeare plays they produced — The Merry Wives of Windsor and Julius Caesar. So, I went with a group of six of my aunts best friends to the show2, and I had a lovely time.
The show was pretty good, for a show with a lot going on, they made it exceptionally clear. I would’ve liked the production to have been more consistent with the verse. Something I rail against at most Shakespeare shows I see. The acting was overall pretty good, the casting at times was odd, but it worked. While I don’t love the show at all, I did find the story of a dictator Duke banishing everyone from his kingdom only for them to find a better world is possible to be a sort of balm.
Aside from Shakespeare I also did a four shop bookstore crawl in Ashland, spent a ton of time in the pool with family, and got to catch up with my aunties and beloveds. This group of mostly women are some of the most well read women I know, so I obviously used my time wisely asking them all about their current reads. I also made sure they told me their most hated books because I struggling with that prompt for The Mega Challenge. Matter of fact, what is a book you hate?
It was a really good weekend. However, my week leading up the trip? God awful. Just one of those hellacious weeks with a million things going on, nothing going right, and no time to stop and breathe. Not to mention having to pack!
Why am I telling you this? Well, between the horrible week and the great family time, I was barely online all week. Which is to say, I’m slim on loves this week. I got you covered on the hate. A rising trend I hate.
You can always count on me for some hate.
This Week in The Stacks
Mostly shoe talk? I don’t know, but that is what happened.
The author of The Pacific Circuit,
, came on the podcast to talk about the great city of Oakland, Ultra-Running, and so many books.
For those of you paid subs,
and I did a deep dive into our summer reading guides as a bonus podcast episode. We handed out superlatives, we added books to the lists, we had a good time.
And just in case you missed it, you have until September 22nd to get a copy of my Nonfiction Reading Guide. After that, like summer 2025 itself, the guide will be gone. To get the guide, become a paid subscriber.
Books I Read This Week
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
I finally read my first Barbara Kingsolver, her Pulitzer winner, Demon Copperhead. The novel is a modern retelling of David Copperfield set in 1990s and early aughts Appalachia and follows a boy amidst the onset of the opioid epidemic. It took me almost 20 days and two formats (audio and print) to finish this book. It was a pretty big no for me. First, I thought it was boring. The plotting and pacing were incredibly slow — so much detail for nothing. Even without knowing the source material, I felt miles ahead of Kingsolver the whole way through. Second, the book is oppressively heavy-handed. Kingsolver can’t help but insert her own political sensibilities into the novel. Repeatedly. Which I don’t always mind, but in this case it didn’t fit the voice of the story. The book is told from Demon’s first person perspective, so how he knows about the word “deplorable” being used as a pejorative against rural people in 1998 is beyond me. Kingsolver couldn’t help but editorialize her own novel. And this It happens throughout, a lot. Yawn. I want an author to trust me enough to see the lines they are drawing without hitting me over the head with them.
Rehab: An American Scandal by Shoshana Walter
Walter follows four people whose lives have been touched by the rehab industry as it pertains to opioid addiction, and explores some deaths caused by mismanagement and lack of oversight. This book was fine, a solid overview. I appreciated the thorough research and time Walter spent with her subjects. Her work is evident. However I didn’t find the storytelling particularly deep. She profiles four different people — two folks who were addicted to drugs, one doctor who is trying to help people, and a mother fighting to expose the industry — but their stories all ran together. She doesn’t highlight their differences so much as drive home the similarities which leaves plenty undiscussed and the narrative a bit muddied. I think digging more into the history of the rehab industry and broadening the lens to include AA and other treatment options might have beefed up the book to something with staying power.
Fave of the week!
Housekeeping
I was asked by
3 to recommend a 400+ book to read in the summer, along with a slew of other brilliant book people on Substack. It was such a joy to write briefly about one of my all time favorite books. Plus the all-star lineup of people she got to contribute to the full three part series is not to be missed.
And we’re getting closer to this event with Cleyvis Natera for her novel The Grand Paloma Resort at Reparations Club on August 28th. I started the book this week, and I really can’t wait for this chat.
Mississippi Book Festival is just over a month away. I’ll be there. My panel is amazing. Trust me, you do not want to miss it. September 13th you, me, books, and Jackson, MS.
Things I Love…
Books
I totally forgot to comment on The Booker Prize Longlist, it came out July 29th. I think I skipped talking about it because I am not really a Booker person. Their books are extremely not my kind of fiction4 — vibes based, a little odd, often slow, etc. This year, like almost every other year, I have not finished a single book on the list5. However, what I love most about their list dropping is that it marks my official start of Book Award season. Soon we will be getting the Kirkus Prize lists as well as the National Book Award longlists. Which means you’ll also be getting my totally wrong NBA prediction reels. Tis the season, babes.
Pop Culture
This clip of Marc Maron on the Howie Mandel Does Stuff podcast is so good.
And no, I did not listen to the whole episode. Do you think you could handle one hour and thirteen minutes of Howie Mandel? I don’t care if he had on Barack Obama releasing his books of the summer list. I couldn’t do it.