March 30, 2024
Welcome, subscribers and followers, to Crone Life, my FREE newsletter on the vagaries of getting older and living through it. I’ve decided to make the last post of every month a roundup of my content consumption. Enjoy!
Online Hate Read of the Month
There’s just one winner in this category: Grazie Sophia Christie’s Cut essay “The Case For Marrying an Older Man.”1 I can’t even with this, it is just so bizarre and wrong-headed and a self-own and full of deliciously quotable bits, such as the phrase I used for the title of this newsletter. It’s only been a few days and the internet is full of outrage, hilarity and concerned commentary. The eassay’s premise is, I think, that young women can escape the horrors of establishing themselves in the world in their 20s by marrying a rich older man and skipping all that annoying maturity and self-discovery stuff. From the first sentence,
In the summer, in the south of France, my husband and I like to play, rather badly, the lottery.
To the last
Last week, we looked back at old photos and agreed we’d given each other our respective best years. Sometimes real equality is not so obvious, sometimes it takes turns, sometimes it takes almost a decade to reveal itself.
It’s just, I don’t know, completely misguided? Her rationale for playing the lottery “badly” is that she’s already won it by marrying a rich older guy. And then the last sentence I’m not sure about but I think she’s implying she made the right decision to marry him for reasons she doesn’t fully elucidate. I think the idea here is that she gave him her “youth” (they married when she was 23, after she graduated from Harvard and had some kind of post-grad fellowship in Europe) and he gave her, I guess, sophistication and worldliness and cushy unemployment? They’ve been married for 7 years and they haven’t figured out what’s wrong with this picture? I sputter in disbelief.
There are over 500 comments on The Cut website which I can’t read because I don’t subscribe, so let me link you to some good stuff from the subReddit r/blogsnark and this substack response from
. You can also read the original essay, but I warn you, it will hurt your head and cause your gut to roil. Also, she is clearly trying to win a competition with her mother over, idk, something. They have the same first name, apparently, which god knows is irritating.What (Else) I Read and How I Read It
Because of previous injuries to my hands and wrists, I don’t always feel comfortable holding up a large physical book. In theory, ebooks and a reader should be the solution. But I also have a fraught relationship with ebooks. Sometimes I read them on my phone or my ancient Mini iPad 2. Sometimes reading on a screen, any screen, feels like the dumbest thing in the world.
Here is a list of my (book) reading for March2, what medium I read it in, and comments, if any.
Erasure (ebook) by Percival Everett: I borrowed this on Libby and then didn’t read it because I watched the movie based on it (“American Fiction,” see below) but then I read this from @Delia Cai’s @DeezLinks new Hate Read series and changed my mind. Stil tbr.
Ink Blood Sister Scribe (book) by Emma Törzs: It’s OK, there’s a lot of unnecessary jetting around (eventually replaced by magical mirror travel) and the big reveal is kind of obvious from the start. I liked the premise though.
The Book of Love (book) by Kelly Link: I enjoyed it greatly, it reminded me of Pamela Dean (a fave!) and American Gods (not so much) but skews young and edgy. Hard to put down, but I don’t think I’m the intended audience, although I do think the intended audience is very much “people who watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer within the past couple of decades” and I certainly fit in that category.
The Famished Road (book) by Ben Okri: Haven’t actually started this yet, still fully intend to. It looks kind of heavy though (in both meanings of the word).
The Terraformers (book) by Annalee Newitz: I like Newitz in general, despite her strong Becky Chambers energy.3
The Surviving Sky (book) by Kritika H Rao: Uneven, has faults, but not unreadable. I wouldn’t recommend it, but I wouldn’t warn you away either.
Enchanted Forest Chronicles (ebook) by Patricia C. Wrede and Seraphina (ebook) by Rachel Hartman: For dragon lovers. I like dragons, but probably won’t finish either of these, they are a tad bit too YA for this mature reader.
Friday Night Family Movie
Every Friday night, my family (me, husband, adult son) watches a movie together on one of the several streaming services we subscribed to. We’ve been doing this for years, starting with videos and moving on to dvds. Each of us selects a list of films in turn, we watch the trailer (if there is one) and decide as a group what we will watch. There are disadvantages to this; I want to watch movies with women as heroines and principals and my husband and son derisively call them “rom-coms” and reject them. I do not want to watch anything about WWII4 or that features Charlie Chaplin or Jerry Lewis. My son isn’t sure what he wants to watch but he generally likes old movies. My husband likes obscure British films from the 30s.
In March, we watched these:
The Cold Blue (2018): documentary consisting of contemporary clips on American daylight bombing raids over Europe in the early 40s and interviews with some of the surviving pilots and crew (now in their 90s). Quite rah-rah but good prep for Masters of the Air (see next section). Husband pick.
Charade (1963): Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant are always watchable but this film is problematic (mostly due to age, of both the film and the principals) but the Parisian aspect is great fun, especially since it allowed husband to show off his French by translating signs and the two of us to tell our son about trips to Paris before he was born. Son pick.
American Fiction (2023): Won Oscar for best adapted screenplay. Very puzzling to watch. It seems to abandon its stated premise ¾ of the way through without in any way signifying it. Jeffrey Wright is oddly bland. Sterling K. Brown steals all his scenes. My pick.
Some Like it Hot (1959): I’m sure you’ve seen this. Remarkable for Marilyn Monroe’s mesmerizing tits, Tony Curtis’s eyelashes and Jack Lemmon’s nonchalant cross-dressing. Husband pick.
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939): You’ve probably seen this too. Supposedly the best of the Rathbone series but somewhat ruined by being so obviously shot on a Hollywood soundstage. Character actors all excellent, but that dog would have benefitted from CGI because it wasn’t all that scary. Son pick.
Streaming TV
Masters of the Air (Apple TV+): Watched eps 1 and 2 with hubs the WWII expert. Had watched “The Cold Blue" about the bomber pilots so at least had some idea of what was going on. My immediate thought was, while the cast is mostly hot, they didn’t really establish who characters were meant to be, Austin Butler was way too Elvis, the actors were too old (those pilots averaged age 20) and I didn’t understand why the Americans insisted on daytime raids and precision bombing when the attrition rate (of both men and machines) was so high. I asked the hubs and he responded “the Americans had great faith in their Norden bombsight” which didn’t explain much. His overall take: too clichéd and too much CGI.
Shogun (Hulu): For those who fall squarely into the category of loving both Game of Thrones and anime. Watching with son, up to ep. 3.
Moonlighting (Hulu) vs. Cybill (?): Watched the first ep of “Moonlighting” and then realized the Cybill Shepherd series I remember fondly was actually “Cybill,” which came later and which is not offered by any of the main ad-free streamers (99¢ per ep on Amazon though). Might be able to watch it for free/without ads on Hoopla.
In My Ears
I listen to playlists on Apple Music, usually Calm, Chill, or Dance (for physical therapy). Recently discovered “Crate Junkies" which seems to consist of minor hits and cover versions from 50s-70s. Reminds me of an easy-listening station from the 80s, which I hated with the white-hot fiery heat of a thousand suns at the time, but now I find it kind of soothing.
Beyoncé’s new country album. Have every intention of listening to this, loved “Daddy Lessons.”
Consequences
This was a rough week for me, for various reasons.
My car insurance company is dropping me because of my driving record, the bastards.
Physical therapist got too enthusiastic about manipulating the soft tissue in my knee on Friday. I couldn’t bend it as a result and then threw a fit because I felt nobody was taking care of me and yelled at everyone and threatened to walk out “but I can’t even put my shoe back on.” Today my knee will bend but is also sore and swollen. Torn between feeling utterly pissed off that this happened and embarrassed that I made a fuss. Hits directly on my sensitive spot of feeling I can’t trust people who are supposed to be taking care of me.
Relieve my sadness by clicking the heart to show you still like me. Share with anyone you think might enjoy this. Subscribe or follow, I guess, I prefer if people subscribe because then I get more data, but you do you. Comment comment comment so I know I’m not just posting into the void.
Archive link
Some I just intended to read
Becky Chambers is fine but one book was enough for me
I make exceptions, but if they involve Nazis directly often I regret it
ouch, so sorry about the PT setback. So hard not to take pain personally (which I mean in my case, alternating between blaming myself for doing something that causes set back or blaming others for thinking they know my body better than I do and making a problem worse. And oh the constant compromises my husband and I go through each night as we try to find the part of the Venn diagram where his likes and mine for movies and shows intersect!!!
What’s CGI? Did you watch Game of Thrones? I’m watching The Wire because I read it’s the best television of all time. Have you seen it? You’ve not had the best week. My car insurance co also dropped me. Right now I don’t have a car, so issue is mute. Shop around—I was going to go with Progressive. As for PT what are you supposed to do? Be polite? — “uhm I’m really sorry uh but I think that exercise hurt my knee? Oh that’s normal? Oh ok my bad.” I’m not going to read the Lolita article. I am working on the Bible (never read it) and going to Bible study with a smart group of women my age and up. The priest (Episcopal) is smart and snarky. Realize I’m starved for intellectual stimulation. Mostly at home due to orthostatic hypotension, and grief. Very much a drag.