joeyrpoole.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

I wrote about Nnedi Okorafor's Noor as part of the Bookmark Planet reading project. open.substack.com/pub/bookmark...

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

"Yes, David Lee Roth is best understood as camp." It strikes me that one might spend a lifetime categorizing 80s hard rock artists by the degree to which they are best understood as camp.

submitted 6 days ago • 2 comments

I used to say "dream publications" don't exist. Then Aaron brought Short Story Long into the world. This is a big deal for me.

submitted 8 days ago • 7 comments

You’d have to pay me a lot of money to listen to that cheese grater voice blow his own horn and blatantly lie to the to the American people, so we finally started Severance last night instead of watching the State of the Union. Both are chilling in different ways.

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

New Malarkey Public Radio episode: @ljabouttown.bsky.social talks with Itoro Bassey about writing and living, and who came before you, and who you come back to… open.substack.com/pub/malarkey...

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

It's been a while since I wrote anything for the Bookmark Planet read-the-world project. Here's the entry for South Korea, Han Kang's The Vegetarian, which touched an unexpected nerve for me. bookmarkplanet.substack.com/p/by-bread-a...

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

Started a rewatch of my favorite popcorn franchise with the fam last night with the first Jurassic Park. I always cheer gleefully when Wayne Knight as Nedry gets eaten by the Dilophosaurus and can't help but yelling Hello Newman when the thing first pops up in front of him.

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

I'm halfway through Han Kang's The Vegetarian. It's good, but the first two sections so far are written from the most frustrating POVs possible given the story. It's a choice that works, but also one I'm sure a lot of readers found it off-putting. I'm trying to think of other books that do this.

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

I have a new short story out! It's a working class comedy about a box jockey trying to go straight The story was taken a while back before I took on the column & interview series I'm doing for them. In case you are wondering why all the Frank Bull stuff of late. mrbullbull.com/newbull/fict...

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

Joe Ely's into TEXAS WIND. You probably should be too. bookshop.org/p/books/texa...

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

There must be no OSHA regulations in the Star Wars universe. All the architecture has skinny-ass catwalks with no handrails running out over empty spaces with thousand-foot drops.

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments

Why are cave diver memes everywhere right now? Did something happen or do they just resonate because we’re all feeling a bit trapped?

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

I'm reading Han Kang's The Vegetarian for my read-around-the-world Bookmark Planet project, and I'm finding it maddening in a way I can't quite put my finger on yet.

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

I haven’t quite closed it down in the other place yet, but it’s coming.

submitted 29 days ago • 1 comment

Beyond thrilled and honored to have my next book coming out from @leftoverbooks.bsky.social next year. It’s the most creative yet restrained writing I’ve done and I’m excited for folks to read it. Many thanks @patricktrotti.bsky.social 🙏✊🖤

submitted 91 days ago • 8 comments

Will try to remember to make a note on our actual website after work this evening, but for the rest of this month every order from our site will come with a free book. If you contribute to the Kickstarter at $20+, also a free book.

submitted 91 days ago • 0 comments

I have a story inspired by Jacques Deray’s The Swimming Pool in this anthology edited by @ABPattersonAuth and @realVernonSmith coming out soon.

submitted 99 days ago • 0 comments

I’m desperate to get my 12 year old, who reads well above his grade level, to fall in love with reading. He’s not digging The Hobbit, which he’s reading for school, and I’m thinking of reading Stephen King’s The Body along with him. Am I remembering the book well? It’s age-appropriate, right?

submitted 100 days ago • 2 comments

Small town SC drama: The whole McColl police force and the chief recently resigned citing “toxic work environment created by one member of city council.” Now the mayor just died in a crash being chased by cops “for his own protection.” He was also under SLED investigation.

submitted 103 days ago • 1 comment

After a recent thrash metal nostalgia rabbit hole, the algorithm that puts articles in the news feed on my phone really thinks I want to read a thousand different articles on why Jason Newstead's bass on And Justice For All is so low in the mix. How many different dudes got paid to write about that?

submitted 106 days ago • 0 comments

In my quest to read a book from every country, it's fascinating to see detective novel/murder mystery tropes translated across cultures. Just finished Arnaldur Indriðason's Jar City (Iceland) and Kwei Quarty's Wife of the Gods (Ghana). Investigator Erlendur and Darko Dawson have a lot in common.

submitted 117 days ago • 1 comment

My kid had a short list of books to choose from for a reading project and chose The Hobbit, which seems like a hefty tome for a 12 year old. I think I'm going to read it along with him. I made an aborted attempt to read the LOTR books as a teenager, so it'll be my first time too.

submitted 120 days ago • 1 comment

Is there anybody in here? Just nod if you can hear me.

submitted 124 days ago • 4 comments

I've been writing about a project to read a book from every country in the world. open.substack.com/pub/bookmark...

submitted 188 days ago • 0 comments

I'm almost a decade late to this party, but we finished Fargo season 2 last night, and I'm now devoting my writing life to writing Ed and Peggy Blumquist fan fiction.

submitted 391 days ago • 0 comments

Local birders are excited to see orioles, a rare occurence in our area, at their feeders. I offered some oranges, but the only action I've seen is a red-tailed hawk taking a squirrel trying to puzzle out how to get the oranges. The hawk's fed, so I guess the bird feeder worked.

submitted 391 days ago • 0 comments

Everybody wants to talk about the saddest songs of all time, but what about the most terrifying? I nominate this one. Every day is a fight against cynicism and despair, and that struggle is all we got, but here Leonard Cohen makes it seems so alluring, a siren call urging me to just give it up.

submitted 393 days ago • 0 comments

Read # 4 for the year will be Kayli Scholtz’s St. Grit from @ghoulish.bsky.social in eBook form. I was fortunate to read an early draft of this one and I have a story alongside one of Kayli’s in the Nightmare Diaries anthology coming later this year from @moonstruckbooks.bsky.social, so here we go.

submitted 404 days ago • 0 comments

Anyone watch Netflix's Bodies? I dug it, but I got some questions.

submitted 429 days ago • 0 comments

This year some of the rotating Cinema Chop Shop crew and I issued a movie challenge to each other, selecting 52 categories to be filled with fitting films of our choice. Feel free play along on #Letterboxd if you’d like. letterboxd.com/jrpoole/list...

submitted 435 days ago • 0 comments

Minor Christmas miracle: I assembled my son’s new basketball goal with no busted knuckles and only a modicum of cussing.

submitted 443 days ago • 0 comments

Y’all leave Mariah Carey alone. I can think of 25 more annoying Christmas songs without even trying.

submitted 448 days ago • 0 comments

I’ve blocked and muted so many accounts across social media recently, not just MAGA trolls, but people I more or less agree with too. I just don’t have bandwidth for culture war stuff. So much of it’s just shrill posturing to score internet points, not aimed at real dialogue.

submitted 452 days ago • 0 comments

Scene from a marriage— Wife, fretting in the passenger seat: I’m running late, so can we hurry? Me: [speeds up] Wife: Oh my God. Don’t drive so fast. Me: So I should hurry but not actually go faster? Wife: Yes. [End Scene]

submitted 454 days ago • 0 comments

I can’t say our rooting interests were ever aligned, but much respect to #GamecockJesus, such a fixture in the baseline seats since the days of the old Carolina Coliseum. I’m glad we’re playing the Cocks in Clemson tonight. www.wistv.com/2023/12/06/m...

submitted 462 days ago • 0 comments

What do you consider your benchmark for #Wordle? If I get it by the 4th chance or better, I feel like it’s a going to be a good day. I solemnly promise I will never post a pic of my stats if you’re worried about that.

submitted 462 days ago • 0 comments

I just don’t think I can sit through Home Alone again this year, y’all.

submitted 463 days ago • 1 comment

I hate writing pitch copy, but here goes: Buried, a horror novel about a woman who enacts vengeance on her sister's killer, a US senator, after being turned into what she can only assume is a vampire by a one-night stand with a man who just might be Hank Williams Sr.

submitted 469 days ago • 0 comments

Old guy to the bartender at the brewery yesterday: “Son, this beer is like a sore peter—it’s hard to beat.” That’s gonna show up in dialogue soon.

submitted 472 days ago • 0 comments

Movie nerds -- do you pronounce "biopic" like BIO-Pick or as if it rhymes with myopic?

submitted 478 days ago • 0 comments

Lenore’s story continues. Unkindness waits for you.

submitted 484 days ago • 0 comments

Partly because I’ve been working on one with a writing partner, I’ve been going down a rabbit hole with country concept albums. Of course there’s Red-Headed Stranger, but there are way more than I realized. Are there any I should check out? And don’t worry; you’ll never have to hear mine. 😀

submitted 484 days ago • 1 comment

After watching David Fincher's The Killer, I have a theory about why so many people are drawn to stories about detached, calculating sociopaths. It's just super-hero-style fantasy wish fulfilment since most of us are bumbling, emotional train wrecks.

submitted 485 days ago • 0 comments