Category: Book Review

As Per My Last Email…

Post author By mandymessina
Post date January 23, 2021
Categories In Book Review, Email Newsletter, Media Influences, Popular Culture
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Been feeling unproductive and got bent out of shape about it. Read Odell’s How to Do Nothing beginning of the month and keep forgetting key principles, having to re-adjust my default settings from a methodical produceproduceproduce to maintenancemaintenancemaintenance [i]n nature, things that grow unchecked are often parasitic or cancerous. And yet, we inhabit a culture […]

As Per My Last Email…

Post author By mandymessina
Post date January 8, 2021
Categories In Book Review, Email Newsletter, Film Sketching, Illustrations, Media Influences, Popular Culture, Worldbuilding
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These first two weeks of January has required some HEAVY ESCAPISM: Lorrain Hansberry was an intellectual-badass and radical; How many big dreams can you fit in a Chicago kitchenette-apartment?; Highly recommended day-trip to supernaturally-integrated Cairo c.1912 Imani Perry wrote a thorough, and evocative biography on the brief life and ambitious work of Lorraine Hansberry. There’s […]

Give Up Ghost 3/4

Post author By mandymessina
Post date December 19, 2020
Categories In Book Review, Comics, Email Newsletter, Illustrations, Language Acquisition, Popular Culture, Research
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As we round in on the last half of the years TBR list, I’m currently at 86% lol and in no real hurry to finish some of the stories I’m engrossed in. Better luck next year, hey? 51. Picture This: The Near-Sighted Monkey Book / Lynda Barry Helpful techniques for writing and picture making #LyndaBarry […]

Give Up Ghost (1/4)

Post author By mandymessina
Post date December 3, 2020
Categories In Book Review, Email Newsletter, Media Influences, Popular Culture
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It’s the end of 2020. It’s finally giving up the ghost. In celebration, I figured I’d do an end of year special for the newsletter. I set out to read 100 books this year (quantity vs. quality debate, hey?) – as of yet I’m 81% done… Not sure if I’ll make it, but here’s this […]

As Per My Last Email…

Post author By mandymessina
Post date November 28, 2020
Categories In Book Review, Email Newsletter, Illustrations, Media Influences, Popular Culture
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Whoops – late email and post, because remote holidays still take up space and time lol. As does the digesting of buttery-sedation-pap (mash potatoes). I keep losing time around it. One Hundred Years of Solitude, oddly enough, maintains the thread of all the morphic resonance ideas that’s been floating around my media consumption. Gabo’s inter-generational […]

As Per My Last Email…

Post author By mandymessina
Post date November 21, 2020
Categories In Book Review, Email Newsletter, Illustrations, Language Acquisition, Media Influences, Popular Culture, Research
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Rupert Sheldrake, Science and Spiritual Practices: Transformative Experiences and Their Effects on Our Bodies, Brains, and Health I first became aware of Sheldrake through a Philip Pullman interview, and then found this Joe Rogan podcast interview with him in which they discuss morphic resonance in lab rats and (anecdotally) Rogan’s own progeny. At first I […]

As Per My Last Email…

Post author By mandymessina
Post date November 14, 2020
Categories In Book Review, Email Newsletter, Illustrations, Media Influences, Popular Culture
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Fiela se Kind (Dalene Matthee) Fiela Komotie is basically my mother with the piss and vinegar turned up. So… I can’t remember if we actually read the book in high school Afrikaans class or if a substitute teacher put on the movie. What I do remember are lines from the book/film being meme’d outside of […]