Open Tabs #38

11.02.25 -- reading, watching, listening, googling

Welcome to this week’s edition of Open Tabs, where I share my recent reads, current curiosities, and media consumptions every(ish) Sunday!

Harry Clarke’s Illustrations for Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1919)

I’ve been giving myself permission to send out Open Tabs as frequently or infrequently as I desire, instead of holding myself to a strict deadline of every single week. I wasn’t planning to send another one today, but I consumed so many interesting things this past week and have a lot to say!

The Body Keeps the Score, attachment theory, The Blair Witch Project, one of my favorite audio dramas…this stuff couldn’t wait another week.

I also managed to send out a (rare) Thursday letter, back with another edition of Notes, Quotes, and Reflections for a book I read 6 months ago! Give it a read if you like.

Lastly, I am slowly implementing a sort of “refresh” on this newsletter. Most of the branding elements aren’t immediately visible to email subscribers or app users, but you may spot some changes here and there.

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Reading [Books]

• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk

I’ve always had an aversion to this type of book (perhaps for good reason), but bought it at the start of the year with some grand idea of ~healing~ in my near future. I finally picked it up a couple weeks ago. The first section pulled me in and made me “feel seen”. But the second section raised some red flags, and has put me off a bit. (More about this below, in relation to an essay I read.) I intend to read through the rest of this out of curiosity, though it won’t be my primary read. It is a pretty influential book, so I still want to engage with it (critically) and understand its full scope. I know a lot of people find this book helpful and I don’t want to discount it…but I do think it’s a good example of why I struggle with “self-help” of any kind, and am also critical of the therapy-industrial-complex. I’m not writing that essay right now, though.

• Model Home by Rivers Solomon

I was initially drawn to this novel by the motif of the “haunted house” for a Halloween-week story. I quickly realized how much I underestimated its content! It contains the requisite eeriness and darkness, but it is much deeper, and emotionally darker, than I bargained for. This novel is about adult siblings returning to their childhood home only to discover tragedy, and untangling the roots this event uncovers. It digs into generational trauma, racism, abuse, the nuclear family, the “American dream,” and a lot more. I listened to the audiobook and made my way through quite quickly. I liked this a lot, but it definitely deals with difficult subject matter, so…be warned?

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Reading [Substack]

• Attachment Theory is White Supremacy in a Lab Coat — Structures of Desire

Last year, I became familiar with “attachment theory” for the first time. Or maybe I should say, I became interested in it for the first time. Just as I picked up that insidiously-popular self-help book out of curiosity, this essay popped into my Substack feed. Divine timing indeed! But I didn’t read this essay; instead I read that book (don’t worry—attachment theory only subsumed me for approximately 2 weeks before I snapped out of it). But I finally circled back around to the essay this week because I was starting to have doubts about The Body Keeps the Score (see above). As soon as the author started talking about attachment theory without any analysis, I knew I’d have to be more critical of the book as a whole. That reminded me I had this essay bookmarked deep in my “saved” folder. I had no idea the essay would mention TBKTS, but when it came up, I knew I was on the right track. Divine timing indeed! This is a long read for sure, but very interesting.

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Reading [Short Story]

• The Monkey’s Paw by W.W. Jacobs

This is one of those classic spooky stories I just felt I needed to read—for referential purposes if nothing else. Read it here or listen to it here.

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Watching [YouTube]

• ‘Dark Academia’ has lost all meaning (The Book Leo)

• The true story behind the The Blair Witch Project (The Lore Lodge)

• How to perform an Exorcism (Horses)

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Listening [Podcast]

• Archive 81

I recently re-listened to this found-footage-style audio drama series. I love the simplicity of its eeriness, the effectiveness of its sound design, and the space it leaves for the listener to fill in the story along the way. There is also a Netflix series based on this, which I really enjoyed when it was released a few years ago.

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Googling

• the color of pomegranates

• limerence

• found footage audio dramas

• origins of totalitarianism pdf

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Shuffle

Ten Rules — Corita.org

Ten Rules - Corita.org

Playing around with another recurring section here in Open Tabs. Simply sharing a random bookmark, website, or page of interest for you to peruse (or not) at your leisure.

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Previously…

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