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From Newsletter Issue No. 25:
I’m a fan of Will Guidara, former owner of the NYC restaurant Eleven Madison Park, author of Unreasonable Hospitality, and — apparently — cameo-achiever on The Bear. (Haven’t watched the third season yet!) I get his periodic Pre-Meal email dispatches, and they are simple, short, catchy — and pretty darn edifying.
Here’s a roundup of nonfiction I’ve read in the last few months:
Distance makes the heart grow fonder. Or allows us to forget. Somewhere in the middle is just “there” — out in the ether, summoning no strong opinions one way or another.
“I was more a trampoline park kind of mom.” So said my extremely awesome + adventurous friend this weekend when we were somewhere where it seemed like it would be utterly exhausting — albeit très hip — to have a kid with you. I loved her even more for that comment. You gotta bend when you have kids — it doesn’t mean you’ve forfeited your entire being.
I finished Wreck by Catherine Newman and Season 3 ofShrinking in the same week and what that means is that I feel like pulling a Roberto Benigni and running up and down my street screaming “Life is Beautiful!” while simultaneously crying my eyes out.
Reader: “A person who reads.” (But also: wine [?] + my trusty glasses. I put those images below in stories yesterday after I realized we were coincidentally hosting our “parlor read” on International Book Day…)
A book is this inflexible thing. What’s on the pages, what’s in the pages — it is what it is? No matter who wrote it? Or where they wrote it? Or why?
I had bought this book — a used copy of Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (of Fleishman is in Trouble fame) — to put in our Little Free Library. (It’s now there.)
10:04 is a hard book to take a picture of because the cover art is a somewhat indecipherable/inverted dark image of Lower Manhattan with part of the electric power grid out. Also, it’s sporting a plastic library dust jacket. (If you saw all the pics where you could see me in the book’s reflection…) But if you viewed this book IRL, it would look essentially the same as what you’re seeing here — it’s not as if this image is some massive distortion. It’s the same even if you’re looking at it through a different lens.
From Newsletter Issue No. 24:
“Helena Kim, a stay-at-home mother in Chula Vista, Calif., decided that when she turned 59, she no longer wanted to cook. ‘I was getting groceries delivered anyway,’ she said, ‘so if I am going to order groceries I may as well order the whole meal.’ She tips well and gives drivers high ratings… Ms. Kim, now 60, adores her automated life. ‘I get Amazon delivery, I get food delivery, I get grocery delivery, I get pet food delivery,’ she said. When she does leave the house, ‘I drive a Tesla and I use self-driving mode. If I could get a robot housekeeper, that would be perfect.’”
Beep-boop, beep-boop, let’s hear it for an automated life.
When it comes to the snooze button (which, have you noticed, is ginormous on the most updated iPhone OS?), here is my philosophy, at least with my own snooze button activity: The point is not so much to get more sleep; the point is to have an awareness that I am getting more sleep. I think that fundamentally, humans want to actively know that they are receiving or experiencing a benefit. Is being granted a bit of extra sleep without being alerted to it the same as actively choosing to get that extra time? I don’t think so. (Stay tuned for my exhilarating dispatches on my philosophy of laundry.)
The Brick came up in conversation with friends the other night. You know, this thing (?) that is heavily advertised as a way to curtail phone use. (Cue all the Brick ads in our feeds, starting now.) It was relayed that “I have my life back!” was the refrain from a person in his 20s who used a Brick. (Wow?)
I didn’t know that Annie Hartnett was a philosophy major, but I learned that after reading her bio today.
I came across this Carson McCullers gem today:
“There’s nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.”
When I tell you that I truly did gasp when this scene appeared as we were watching Sentimental Value…
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**.
The Guardian recently published a piece about tropes. You know, the prescribed templates that are staples of romance, a genre I don’t read but I’m clued in enough to understand the gist.
When I interviewed my niece for my homesick project, I asked her what homesickness feels like. Among other things, I loved that she very specifically said, “I feel it in my sternum.” Because there’s a real physicality to emotion, right? See: pit in stomach, butterflies in chest, etc.
Oh, this ol’ thang? I’m sitting at this desk that we bought at the Dublin IKEA after moving from NYC.