how to get smart again: weekly syllabus [september week 1]
books, lectures, essays, podcasts, movies, and video essays for the week
I have this superstition where I feel like I need to have a really excellent and productive month when the first of a month falls on a Monday. Guess what day the first of September falls on? Anyway, I have a train wreck of a week (or year, in my case), so I defaulted to what I do best: obsessively planning my free time. It’s soothing to me, knowing that I can spend an hour or so planning all my free time so my brain can always be on autopilot for the week, so that no stray thoughts or seeds for rumination plant themselves in the folds of my brain and make me have a breakdown. I never said I wasn’t neurotic, but I’ve recently heard it’s an endearing quality of mine.
I have way more free time on my hands these days, so in my continued attempt to fix my attention span and gradual short form content induced brain-rot (and hopefully distract my brain which always spirals when I have any sort of free-thinking time during a depressive episode), I thought I’d plan a weekly syllabus. Here’s a collection of books, essays, podcasts, movies, video essays, and online lectures I’m interested in looking at this week! I planned this thematically by each category.
Hope you can follow along so I can discuss (or post a wrap up at the end of every week)!
playlist of the week
It’s sort of fall but not really but still sort of fall because it’s technically September…I’ve defrosted some of my cold weather playlists while blasting the AC in sweltering humid heat.
books
A week for fiction. Main focus this week are books that are in short vignettes. I’ve been enjoying these a lot lately because I feel like they’re low commitment while never failing to be vividly described and rich with detail. I started reading As I Lay Dying earlier this week and fell in love with it, so I want to finish that and read more books told in vignettes throughout the week. The Employees is a very short read comprised of fictional statements from the employees aboard a ship, and Dept of Speculation is a well loved reread; a quiet, moving meditation on love, marriage, motherhood, and the fleetingness of being human.
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
page count: 288
Faulkner’s harrowing account of the Bundren family’s odyssey across the Mississippi countryside to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Narrated in turn by each of the family members—including Addie herself—as well as others; the novel ranges in mood, from dark comedy to the deepest pathos.