Curated links.

Favorite Essays I Read in the Past Two Weeks:

• The Night 17 Million Precious Military Records Went Up in Smoke
• Obituary for a Quiet Life
• Xúc động
• The Depths to Which We Go

I didn’t think I would love reading about absolute darkness in a cave but I’m glad I did. This immersing piece has stunning insights about memory, things we forget, and the relationship between humans and rocks. After I finished reading I wanted to read it again.

Favorite Writing Advice I Read in the Past Two Weeks:

• The 10 Dos and Don’ts of Being Rejected, Writer’s Digest

Favorite Flash Fictions I Read in the Past Two Weeks:

• The Nights I Spend Reading to a Rescue Horse Named Emmeline, Pat Foran
• Her Deleted Scenes, Catherine O’ Brien
• Hunger, Matt Barrett

Favorite Short Stories I Read in the Past Two Weeks:

• I Am My Country, Kenan Orhan
• Heavenly Bodies, Virgie Townsend

Favorite Sentences I Read in the Past Two Weeks:

“We don’t just want to hear stories, we want to own them, profit from them, even if they’re not ours to begin with.” –The Depths to Which We Go

“We rarely notice our bodies until it fails us.” –Observations on Ice

“Our relationship with the sun is going to change one way or another; now is the time to make it our salvation.” –No human has ever seen it hotter

Favorite Paragraphs I Read in the Past Two Weeks:

“Forgetting is a part of living. This issue of mine is more of an inconvenience and less of a cause for alarm. But an inconvenience it is, and I worry about the future, when my mom is gone, maybe my dad too, and there’s no one to fill in the blanks for me, no more geologists trying to complete the story. I won’t remember how many times I went to summer camp or when I started horseback riding or how to catch fireflies in mason jars in the hot Alabama evenings.” –The Depths to Which We Go

“After the music fades, we are asked to clap for the people who have fought for our freedom, particularly the ones who lost their lives. There is no mention of the stories of Pre-Columbian Native Americans who used these caves as shelter, or the enslaved peoples who used it as a stop on the Underground Railroad. We don’t talk about how Philippe François Renault, the man falsely credited with the discovery of these caves, was also the man who first brought enslaved Africans to this part of the continent. This American story is full of holes. Our reluctant claps hit the contours of the cave and then disappear.” –The Depths to Which We Go

“Nearby, there was a young white man, also opening his letters. He had the ruddy, entitled demeanor of a lacrosse player probably because he was a lacrosse player and when he heard me sharing my news with another classmate, his face rearranged itself with disgust and he told me I was only going to a good school because of affirmative action. He was wealthy, probably had a trust fund, would absolutely go to college somewhere, but because I had gotten into the schools he preferred, he was profoundly aggrieved. As an aside, isn’t it interesting who we consider fragile and who we don’t?” –Roxane Gay, Terrible Precedents

“When the notable figures of our day pass away, they wind up on our screens, short clips documenting their achievements, talking heads discussing their influence. The quiet lives, though, pass on soundlessly in the background. And yet those are the lives in our skin, guiding us from breakfast to bed. They’re the lives that have made us, that keep the world turning.” –Obituary for a Quiet Life

“A mega-successful songwriter friend of mine wallpapered her attic walls with all the music industry rejection letters she received when she was just starting out. It’s a brilliant example of acceptance. Own those publisher rejections! Find a proverbial wall to stick them to and look them in the face every day! And then go write another book—if only to prove everyone wrong.” –The 10 Dos and Don’ts of Being Rejected

Etcetera

• Black women are being erased in book publishing
• Did you call your father today?
• Nobody smiles anymore
• The sun that’s cooking us could cool us too