A book you bring to the mosh pit
13 things I loved this week
Book Review
1. The novel, I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both by Mariah Stovall.
Losing yourself in the mind of Khaki Oliver and her obsession with her high school best friend, Fiona, is a wild ride. It feels like stumbling into a mosh pit at a punk show with no way out. With limbs thrashing against you, you can either join in the walloping or crawl your way to freedom, and hope you don’t get stomped on. In the end, you’re finishing the book with a bruised eye.
Khaki is a young Black woman going to college, and though she’s been typically excluded from these white-centric hardcore scenes, the thrill of the music and freedom of bodies moving compels her to include herself, even at risk of danger from other people. Through music she claims what is rightfully hers: her rage.
Khaki and Fiona both have issues with wanting to annihilate themselves. Their relationship becomes co-dependent even though it’s based on pure love, but it’s a desperate kind of love, it’s the cloying love of a teenage girl with nowhere else safe to put it. First, it’s Fiona who’s mental illness and eating disorder repeatedly hospitalizes her, but then almost like a cruel joke, when Fiona is recovered and doing well, it’s Khaki who takes a downward spiral. Can they safely find a way back to each other?
Every chapter corresponds with multiples songs curated by the author in the back of the book, called “A Khaki Oliver mix,” to be listened to as you read. Or you could imagine what Khaki is listening to and feeling at that moment in the story.
Read this if you shopped at Hot Topic as a teen.
2. The film Theater Camp (HULU) As expected, a satirical but encouraging story about a theater camp for elite children will have you in stitches. Also, Ayo Edebiri is in this, so yeah, it was great.
3. The series Outer Range (Prime) set in the American West. This is a suspenseful drama about a family on the verge of collapse after a daughter-in-law goes missing. AND THAT’S ALL I’LL SAY! The extremely unique sense of humor is like if the cast of Twin Peaks were all cowboys. And season two only gets better and deepens the questions they pose in season one, especially about the history of colonization that takes place there.
This might be one of my favorite shows I’ve seen in a while. I discovered it by reading the poet Yrsa Daley-Ward’s newsletter, who announced she has a part in the show! Anytime she’s on screen I point and say to Will: she’s a poet, I love her!
4. Siblings are great because we steal each other’s things which prepares you for roommates, or, partners who didn’t order their own fries. My brother “stole” my record player so I gifted him vinyl with eyeballs-and-ass on the cover. Now he has something decent to listen to.
Here’s the first song on the anthology album, salsa your little heart out:
5. “10 Most Anticipated AI-Generated Books” on The Rumpus by Ági Bori. A satire about what stories become when human beings don’t get to write them.