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I love oatmeal! We have it almost every day. We started our oatmeal habit when my partner had stomach problems due to work stress a few years back and it was the only thing that calmed his upset stomach. We still eat and enjoy it, usually with some fresh fruit on top (banana, blueberries, kiwi, or whatever is in season), sometimes some chia seeds or nuts, or make some compote (Amy Chaplin has some great, easy recipes in Whole Food Cooking Everyday).

A book suggestion: Gnomon by Nick Harkway, political SCIFI not set in the US :).

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I am dying to make oats a habit but can’t get past the texture. What kind of oats do you use? And do you have a way to prepare them so they are not mooshy-e?

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I love oatmeal, too and eat it occasionally, but I may consider including it more frequently, thank you for the inspiration. I use whole oat groats from Janie’s Mill and prepare them with plain water in the slow cooker setting of my insta-pot. Perfect texture the next morning. I like them with raisins and raw coconut butter.

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Also a freak for auto fiction and autotheory. I’ve loved Myriam Gurba’s MEAN and Carmen Maria Machado’s In The Dream House. Highly highly recommend both.

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congrats on finishing the manuscript!!

book recs from a fellow autofiction freak:

"When I Hit You; Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife" by Meena Kandasamy -- really good, but very viscerally about being in a physically & emotionally abusive relationship so keep that in mind before picking it up. It's more generally about her sense of self in (& getting out of) that relationship, I loved it but it is definitely a heavy read.

"little scratch" by Rebecca Watson, also super good. It's a very fast read; it's written as a like dissected stream of consciousness, breaking apart and coming back together in places. This one has increasingly more direct descriptions of sexual assault throughout but again is mostly about the narrator's day and her perception of her self in that day. Ok, also, I don't think the author has said this is specifically autofiction or based on something that actually happened to her, but the narrator is at least in a roughly similar position as the author in terms of job, age, being a writer, etc.

"Sounds like Titanic" by Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman -- autofiction-ish memoir-ish about a student violinist who joins a (real) fake orchestra led by a nationally renowned conductor. Half (or more? I can't remember) is written in the second person, and it works really well. Plus unlike the other two, no content warning for interpersonal violence needed (that I remember) -- just a plain ole interesting & well written book.

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