Reading the Room Ep. 4 w/ CJ Reads! | The "Depressed Woman Moving" Industrial Complex 

I also think you “book influencers” have given people a big gift, which is discovering a love for reading. I know for me, I’ve never read this much in my life because I didn’t have “role models” to inspire me to read, or to find books that I love. So THANK YOU for that gift. 💜

You guys should do a Virginia Woolf reading project together. I would love to hear you discuss her work - she is one of the original DWMs! Loved the video 💫

Well, putting my 2 cents into this, I’m intrigued that ‘Gen Z fiction’ as a genre you see as BEING by Gen Z. Only as I see ‘Millennial Fiction’ as a genre doesn’t need to be by Millennials. I’d say Lockwood’s novel is probably ‘Gen Z Fiction”? This erratic shift between online and offline life. Great convo 😊 Loving this series Jay 🙌

loved this!! My guess is that gen Z will become less and less online, I think with the general trend of presenting oneself online, especially on tiktok emphasizing vulnerability, it will sort of cutaway at things like influencer culture, or maybe just enhance general existential malaise lol. Or even worse, the new trend will be to make oneself present as if they're not as much online(?) I think about this with how supposedly things like Instagram is phasing out, in light of the "make instagram casual again" idea sort of weeding out influencer culture too, photo dump posts becoming more commonplace, unedited pics, etc, But even that feels like a bubble, since obviously there are people in the world not chronically online that have been using instagram like this even back in 2012 before any of us realized what instagram was for other than to edit our pics with their filters lol. I don't know what to make of things book wise. My guess is like how CJ said in a couple years publishing will start to understand that readers are wanting those person-to-person focused suggestions from seemingly ordinary people, but then that leans into aesthetic culture too, which is sort of influence-y since it's all based on public conceptions of the aesthetic, so it's warped and a cycle (??) ANYWAYS I'm blabbering but great to hear from you both!! This really whizzed by, it made me accidentally forget to come back from my work lunch on time, woops! : )

I've had longterm depression on and off in my life, add to that I'm an introvert and likely reasons why I read a good deal of books like these. I lean heavily towards them, like they're my people.

Thank you for your thoughtful and thought-provoking discussion of books and more. You talk about DWMs and millennial fiction. Here is a quintessential DWM by a woman much older and not from the English-speaking world, which I would be immensely interested to hear both of your opinions on: City of Angels, or The Overcoat of Dr. Freud. This is the story of a German woman moving as a visitor through Los Angeles in the 1990s. It has been criticized as "too in the mind" and hailed as "one of the most important books of the present". There is no real plot, the language is unique (at least in the original German). It is all about her interior life: she is plagued by her people's less than savory history, she mourns the loss of her country (East Germany), she tries to come to terms with her own history, and so much more.

loved this discussion so much, you're both so insightful and articulate. i hadn't thought about gen z trends influencing publishing much before this but i think its such an interesting thing to consider. i'm gen z (1999) and have the same ick-feeling as you guys about tiktok/booktok and the way it glamorizes reading/mental illness (the way those two intersect is something too). so much of this has to do with what the algorithm chooses to show you though. when i get on tiktok allll i see is moshfegh/levy/dwm books so it feels very prevalent in the book world to me, but thats really just an illusion that tiktok builds specifically for me and readers like me. and it gives me such a narrow view of contemporary publishing that i feel like i have no ground to stand on when trying to address trends at large. but i have a feeling gen z fiction will be relatively the same as millennial fiction. these different spheres will always exist and there will just be more versions of the experimentation we're already seeing. like literature has always been evolving and theres always gems within that evolution. i don't think the death of good literature or whatever will ever happen, no matter how scary or challenging social media & the internet are capable of being. i do think the urgency surrounding the world ending will appear more and more across different genres, and maybe result in more popularity of kind of genre-defying/crossing books (i'm thinking of "leave the world behind" as one example). which could give literary fiction an even wider readership as younger readers are more or less forced to contend with the state of living in the world. (and yes tiktok is evil). my b for the essay lol

Wow. When I first heard CJ explain her term DWM, I never would've imagined I would get this in-depth, nuanced breakdown of what that literary trope is, what it's doing and where it's going. So many interesting points explored here! I think that some of the generational differences we are seeing are maybe the consequence of the normalization of mental health issues that we all want to see and have been fighting for. It's amazing that it IS being normalized but does that mean it has to be aestheticized and commodified? Can it be normalized to suffer from depression without it also becoming trendy? A lot of it stems from the comfort we get in no longer feeling so alone in our depression when we find that it's actually all over TikTok lol. Just the fact that conversations like this are being had on social media platforms makes me feel better about it though. As long as we have thoughtful and reflective discussion like this from creators like CJ and Jaylen who are honest and self-aware, I feel good about each generation getting to work through their anxieties and experiences with the world by investigating, embracing and expressing them through books. It's also SO helpful to then be able to interact with others who connect to similar themes and thought processes. It's so great to be able to investigate our complicated relationships with Literature in a video like this. Very well done, you two! Love you both!

Hey y'all stoked to watch this! Also this podcast series is awesome Jaylen. I've gotten a lot of insight from these convos.

love u bestie!!!!!!!!!

Super interesting chat. Your brains are mahoosive!

Okay! Sooo I'm a border Millennial /GenZ (1997) and I guess, I do am fascinated by the discussion a lot mostly on the account that I recently tried reading Infinite Country and a month back, Fake accounts but still have to finish them as my interest is quite slow!!! I'm new to audiobooks and both I'm listening to, sooo that might be the case but I loved Hunger/RG and I guess that would be a DWM tooo!!!! With woke millennial literary fiction...some of us just think that one should have been more careful with prejudices and empathy and maybe the romantics also get monotoned but for that I must read more and finish the two books. The buk_tok is weird tho, cause there are various countries where Tik Tok is banned like India sooo don't know about the influence although it was a #situation here! Awesome Discussion 👌🆒️🙌

So this was great and you are both so freaking smart and insightful. Loved this. Only child dwm fan here. Totes related to the only child commenrentry. 🙌

Millennial, only child, DWM reader here 💀😬 I feel like DWM and millennial fiction is all tied into alienation, apathy and hopelessness. All feeling like a response or brought on by trauma and/or capitalism. Our lives in many ways harder than our parents were whether they are Gen X or Boomer. Lack of social mobility and security feeds into it. Like I feel like many millennials are anxious about the future. Whether that's personal, societal or the planet. Honestly my fav genre and I'm glad CJ gave it a name 😊

love this discussion! what's the overlap between DWM and motherhood? Because to me it seems like these are mostly separate categories (maybe because a lot of millennial women aren't mothers), but I'm not as well read as you two! any recommendations for a merger between DWM and mothering?

Hey!! Is infinite country...dwm??? Awesome Discussion tho👍👌😇😇❤

Only child DWM lover here..👍

Another only child DWM lover here 👋