Good morning!
This is Issue 69.3 of Digestable, your thrice-weekly mouthful of things happening in the world.
Today’s news, fermented:
Alright folks, this is it! As I mentioned on Monday, Digestable will be taking a break for the month of August. We’ll be back in your inboxes on September 1st.
My morning read is Gasworks: lost and found. It’s about the US’s first gas industry, and is fun to consider alongside the news that a county in Washington state has become the first to ban all new fossil fuel infrastructure.
In August, I’ll be working on the latest episode of the Polyculture Podcast, which Gabriel and I co-host, ~possibly~ trying my hand at writing fiction about the climate apocalypse, and doing my best to not wake up and immediately force-feed myself the news.
I hope you each find some time to step away from the screen and enjoy being a mortal vessel on this complex beautiful planet. Till September, friends!
(via)
DJ toMoR0’s low-key Music Show
I don’t know how your summer is going (I hope so great!) but mine’s been very busy - between work, being outside as much as possible, and trying to fit in all the fun x2 to make up for last summer….it’s been hard to keep up my regular DJ game. But don’t think for a second I’m not dreaming about all the cool new music that’s still coming out, and all the tunes and melodies I want to share with the Digestible community. But you’ll have to wait for some new music until next week, because, as last you heard from me, I am all about the audiobooks, a moment that has taken my life by storm.
It started with the Night Circus (solid story, good magic, and narrated by the one and only Jim Dale.) That was quickly followed by the newest members of the His Dark Materials family - the more recent of which, just published in 2019, follows Lyra as a 20-year-old college student. If you grew up with these books and haven’t yet caught up on the new installments, what are you waiting for? The soundscape is cinematic, as the original trilogy was also more of a production than just an audiobook, being fully cast and narrated by the author, Philip Pullman (“It’s like watching a movie in your head” - *eloquent redditor*). Check out the Belle Sauvage and The Secret Commonwealth, and stay tuned for the third yet to be published in this updated trilogy.
If you didn’t grow up with His Dark Materials (I didn’t read them until I was an adult) there couldn’t be a better time to fall in love with them than now (the new HBO series is pretty decent and certainly better than the movie which isn’t even worth linking to, but neither are substitute for the written word). These books, and the world they are set in, is incredibly rich with allegory and wit and love and humanity. It’s about ethics and philosophy and religion, but also real magic. It’s a parable for a changing world.
Speaking of tales for our time, I became consumed over the course of one weekend with Parable of the Sower by the incomparable Octavia Butler, which had always been on my list but somehow just entered my life. Highly advise the audio version, whether it’s your first read or hundredth. My main recommendation here is you don’t skip this story, especially as we move through a changing ecology and social paradigm seemingly alongside the characters.
Check out your local library with apps like Libby and Hoopla to make audiobooks more accessible if stories are calling you right now. Got a favorite audiobook? I want to hear about it!