January 2023 media
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Priestdaddy: Patricia Lockwood’s memoir, with an especial focus on her time spent living with her family as an adult. It reminded me of David Sedaris’s essays on his own motley family, though with a sharper edge and, frankly, better writing—I think Lockwood is an impeccable stylist. I was also a big fan of her debut novel, and now I may need to dive into her poetry as well.
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Addiction by Design: A work of cultural anthropology about gambling, which reveals that industry to be so much worse than you probably think. It will, as the hosts of the Game Studies Study Buddies podcast pointed out last year, radicalize you against gambling; it may even radicalize you against modern video games, as the parallels between the two are unnervingly conspicuous.
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Marcel the Shell With Shoes On: Who knew that those old stop-motion viral videos from a decade ago could be turned into a full-length film? And who knew that it would be so effective? There were occasional glimpses of profound wisdom and insight in the original videos, but they were incidental and played for laughs; the movie is still very funny, but it plays those moments straight.