#076: Area woman rediscovers knitting.
Pop culture and cosy nonsense for March, somehow.
The front door
Hello and welcome to The Brew.
We will be moving house soon so I have been going through the requisite household purge, and in the course of my purging have rediscovered the gallery of craft projects and hobbies that have lain dormant since we moved into this house.
Now, spurred on by Leena Norms’ videos, a deeply restrictive budget, and several new podcast interests, I have decided to throw myself back into the world of crafting, mending, sewing, knitting, and I will finally teach myself to crochet and to cross stitch.
Some of you may recall the Tamarack quilted jacket that I sewed myself last Easter. Well it’s nearly Easter again, so it must be time for another dip into the world of grey weekends at the kitchen table, unpicking seams and fending my cat off the freshly-ironed fabric. My Pinterest boards are awash with inspo - it is time!
Library
Books
Nonfiction books I’m looking forward to in 2024!
I realised that last issue’s book listicle consisted of only titles with very similar themes and premises (dark, gritty, witchy fantasy fiction) and that from seeing that list alone you, dear reader, would have no clue that I actually decided I wanted to read more nonfiction books this year. Yes, really.
So here is a listicle of the nonfiction books I’ve been collating on my long TBR for 2024:
Everybody: A Book about Freedom (2021) by Olivia Laing
The body is a source of pleasure and of pain, at once hopelessly vulnerable and radiant with power. Author Olivia Laing charts an electrifying course through the long struggle for bodily freedom, using the life of the renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to explore gay rights and sexual liberation, feminism, and the civil rights movement.
Arriving at a moment in which basic bodily rights are once again imperiled, Everybody is an investigation into the forces arranged against freedom and a celebration of how ordinary human bodies can resist oppression and reshape the world.
Butts: A Backstory (2022) by Heather Radke
Whether we love them or hate them, think they’re sexy, think they’re strange, consider them too big, too small, or anywhere in between, humans have a complicated relationship with butts. It is a body part unique to humans, critical to our evolution and survival, and yet it has come to signify so much more: sex, desire, comedy, shame. A woman’s butt, in particular, is forever being assessed, criticized, and objectified. But why?
Butts is an entertaining, illuminating, and thoughtful examination of why certain silhouettes come in and out of fashion—and how larger ideas about race, control, liberation, and power affect our most private feelings about ourselves and others.
Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet (2023) by Taylor Lorenz
A groundbreaking social history of the internet—revealing how online influence and the creators who amass it have reshaped our world, online and off.
Extremely Online reveals how online influence came to upend the world, demolishing traditional barriers and creating whole new sectors of the economy. Lorenz shows this phenomenon to be one of the most disruptive changes in modern capitalism.
By tracing how the internet has changed what we want and how we go about getting it, Lorenz unearths how social platforms’ power users radically altered our expectations of content, connection, purchasing, and power. Lorenz documents how moms who started blogging were among the first to monetize their personal brands online, how bored teens who began posting selfie videos reinvented fame as we know it, and how young creators on TikTok are leveraging opportunities to opt out of the traditional career pipeline. It’s the real social history of the internet.
Extremely Online is the inside, untold story of what we have done to the internet, and what it has done to us.
Exhausted: An A–Z for the Weary (2024) by Anna Katharina Schaffner
Burnout is said to be the defining feeling of the post-pandemic world - but why are we all so exhausted? Some of us struggle with perfectionism, while others are simply overwhelmed by the demands of modern life. But whatever you're feeling, you are not alone - and this liberating, enlightening guide to exhaustion in all its forms will help you find the energy to beat burnout and weariness.
From confronting our inner critics to how our desire to be productive stops us from being free, Schaffner brings together science, medicine, literature and philosophy to explore the causes and history of exhaustion and burnout.
Lounge
Games
Little Known Galaxy
The eagle-eyed among you may have picked up that I’m a Stardew Valley lover, and so I say this with the gravity of Jupiter after a funeral: Little-Known Galaxy really is just like SDV but set in space, and it’s amazing.
Instead of starting off on an inherited farm that you need to fix up, you start a job as a captain on a spaceship that has been neglected, full of crew who have been holding down the fort, waiting for the arrival of a captain who cares.
You collect materials from around the ship and space-walking on the hull to grow produce and repair the ship; go on expeditions to the planet that your ship is orbiting to collect rarer materials; boost crew morale and win them over by showing that you care about them; and generally have a cosy, cute, caring time out in space.
This game is a goddamn delight.
The full game isn’t available yet, but the desktop demo can be downloaded for free on Steam right now, so if you like the sound of it, give it a go - there’s nothing to lose and only kawaii to gain!
And another thing…
Some linkies:
And a memie:
Find more of my book stuff on Instagram @jemofthebrew
I create and send The Brew from the lands of the Gunaikurnai people, where I also live, work, and drink lots of hot beverages. I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of this land, and pay my respects to the Elders, past and present.