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Been a while since I’ve done one of these. (Self-aware pattern recognition: I guess I say that every time.) Here’s a roundup of nonfiction I’ve read lately**.
From Newsletter Issue No. 23:
On New Year’s Eve, we got together with friends. Aside from the general joviality of a post-Christmas catch-up with some of our favorite people, we played a game called Priorities. It’s fast and easy, and the basic gist is that one player at a time is given five cards, each with a very specific “thing” on it, and then proceeds to prioritize them in order of how much they value/like these things.
E.E Cummings (or e e cummings if you wish) + his visual poetry, the formatting of which Instagram can *almost* handle:
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
Reading is cool. The fashion world can’t get enough. This is what GQ says, and the rag would like to know why. I admit I wanted to hate this article that was fed to me by way of Algorithm (this would be a good name for a print pub, btw), but it turned out to be pretty good! (It’s free to read here.) Sorry to come in so preemptively annoyed and jaded, but a lot of discourse around books is as trite as those “reading socks” that B&N sells. (I do have a pair. But I just call them…slippers.)
Birthday Book Recs: 26/50
TalkTalk: A Children’s Book Author Speaks to Grown-Ups by E.L. Konigsburg
When you scan the books scattered among the shelves for something
— you haven’t yet read
— isn’t anything like this collection of autofiction* that all at once became ready to pick up at the library and is now accumulating on your side of the bed
The 2020s are so weird and there is absolutely no denying that. But when Matt and I watched Ken Burns’ documentary on prohibition a few years ago, all I kept thinking was that the 1920s seemed pretty weird too.
Birthday Book Recs: 22/50
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson
December 22 seems like a terrible, set-yourself-up-for-disappointment kind of day to try to pound out something worthwhile, but cheers to a space that is truly m*i*n*e* (and finally somewhat organized).
Birthday Book Recs: 16/50
The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White (aka “Strunk and White’s Elements of Style”) {this edition illustrated by the fabulous Maira Kalman}
Birthday Book Recs: 12-14/50
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan