The week in books

Here’s a silly little fact about me: I never found a new dentist when I moved away from home. So every six months I drive an hour over to Durham for the day; my parents and I schedule our dental cleaning appointments back-to-back-to-back in the morning, then we go to lunch together and hang out for a few hours before I have to return home. This time, my IRL book club (which meets in the Durham / Chapel Hill area) happened to schedule our meeting for that same evening, which meant I didn’t have to rush back to Winston and could instead linger a little longer in my childhood home. Guess how I spent a good chunk of that extra time? Yep, finishing the book for said book club meeting. I felt like a kid again, slouched in one of the living room chairs turning page after page while the rhythms of the house hummed pleasantly in the background, Mom quietly balancing her checkbook,1 Dad doing puzzles on his phone and occasionally popping out to work in the garden or look for their cat.

As for the book in question, The Lilac People by Milo Todd is historical fiction about trans and queer folks in Germany during World War II. There are two timelines: one in 1933 pre-war Berlin and the other in the smaller city of Ulm, 1945, as American soldiers are liberating the camps. Main character Bertie is a trans man2 who works for Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld at the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science). After Hitler is named chancellor, work camps are established, and things start getting bad for Bertie and his friends—culminating in the Night of the Long Knives and the looting of the Institute3—he flees with his partner, Sofie, to a farm in Ulm where they might safely wait out the war. In the 1945 timeline, we see them still there when the end is declared, their routine upended by the appearance of a younger trans man named Karl who has escaped Dachau.

There’s a bit of a mystery element here. We meet Bertie’s best friend Gert in the earlier timeline and we know that the farm in the later one belonged to Gert’s grandparents, but something has happened to Gert for which Bertie feels a sense of guilt. I won’t spoil the reveal, but I will say that it wasn’t in proportion with the buildup and narratively felt like a bit of a letdown. The pace also dragged in the middle and I wish Todd had used the pages to round out his characters, some of whom were lacking in dimension, more fully. But small quibbles aside, it was exciting to learn about a well-documented period of history from a new angle. I always love when a novel sends me down Google rabbit holes, and this one definitely did that.

The other book I finished this week was one I’d been very slowly chipping away at for three or four months. When I reached my last allowed library loan renewal, I knew it was finally time to knock it out. Original Sins by Eve L. Ewing is about, as the subtitle perfectly summarizes, “the (mis)education of Black and Native children and the construction of American racism.” It’s been on my radar since it was featured on The Stacks in February 2025 and I got an extra push to pick it up when Greta Johnsen chose it for her book club earlier this year, but it proved to be more of an endeavor than I expected.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a very thoroughly-researched and well-written book and the subject matter is fascinating and important! Ewing opened my eyes to a lot of ideas I hadn’t considered before and I learned a lot about how American schools of today came to be. I guess I just wasn’t prepared for the density of information. There are numerous endnotes, some quite long, and the whole thing reads more like a textbook than the type of narrative nonfiction I normally gravitate toward. I recommend this one, especially for educators and parents, but I do advise the “small chunks” approach if you, like me, don’t have a brain for name- and date-heavy history.

Right now and upcoming

I’m in the middle of Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen and finding it equally compelling and horrifying. On one hand, affirmation: it’s not just me! But on the other, despair: our systems of employment in this country are completely wrecked!

Gretagram book club is reading T Kira Madden’s new novel, Whidbey, this month and I recently got a digital copy from the library, so I think that will be next for me.

What are you reading or looking forward to picking up soon?

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If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I earn a small percentage commission. This is an easy way to support my work at no additional cost, and I appreciate it very much—thank you! ♥︎

The week on screen

Jordan and I just finished the first season of Big Mistakes (2026), Dan Levy’s new crime comedy show on Netflix, and I really liked it. At the start, Nick (Dan Levy) and his sister Morgan (Taylor Ortega) are sent by their mother to buy a gift for their dying grandmother, but in the process they accidentally get caught up in some shady dealings. The situation spirals from there, becoming more and more chaotic and out of control with every episode. Meanwhile their mom is running for mayor and their younger sister is managing her campaign, Nick is hanging on by a thread as pastor of his church with a secret boyfriend on the side, and Morgan is getting bored of the clingy dude she’s been dating since she was seventeen. The vibes are a perfect balance of high stakes and hilarity, like Weeds meets Good Girls, with the chaotic sibling energy of Schitt’s Creek and the completely unhinged mom from The Bear. I hope there’s a second season because I need to know what happens next.

Haiku round-up

This poetic form, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern, originated in Japan and traditionally includes thematic reference to the seasons. Mine vary in topic, but I’ve been writing one each day since the beginning of 2024 as an exercise in structured creativity. Here are this week’s poems:

Monday, May 4

Impatience nudges
at the body from within:
get up, move around

Tuesday, May 5

Oh, the sweet relief
of reestablished routine,
a balance restored

Wednesday, May 6

Best part of childhood:
lazy afternoon hours
lost inside pages

Thursday, May 7

For being too small
and curling up too cutely
you’re under arrest

Friday, May 8

How can one convince
their galloping heart to slow
when it wants to fly?

Saturday, May 9

Trading punny jokes
and layering melodies
We’re improvising

Sunday, May 10

All our belongings
cleared out in preparation
for house surgery

Until next time

We’ve been on a bit of a journey here at our old house. It started with what we thought would be a pretty straightforward water damage remediation project but has since snowballed as other underlying issues have been discovered. Long story short, a crew was here today cutting into the dining room wall to check for wood rot in the support beams, and they had to stop early after finding existing termite damage (unclear if there’s current activity) and roaches living in the wall.

So now we gotta get somebody else in here to do some bug murder, so we can get back to the wall-busting and rotten wood replacing, so at some point we might have a dry and intact home once again. In the meantime, it’s protective plywood on the floors and possessions crammed wherever they’ll fit4 and the futon from the porch brought inside as temporary furniture. And zippered plastic in three different doorways! Moving from room to room right now is like going in and out of a tent. People who camp, you know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, on one hand it feels like a lot, and on the other, I have a home and I definitely don’t take that fact for granted. I’m just looking forward to everything being fixed and back where it should be, to not worrying that the ceiling might cave in on us at any moment. 🙏🏼

See you next week, and until then, here’s a montage of people falling down.

♥︎ Emily

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Read this week

In my ongoing quest to stop buying books only to leave them languishing and gathering metaphorical dust on the shelf, I started the week with something from my Richmond birthday stack,1 Skye Falling by Mia McKenzie. This is a contemporary novel about Skye, a free-spirited Philly native who owns and operates a Black tourism business called We Outchea. She’s almost forty with no partner, kids, or permanent residence—when she’s back in town every month or two between international trips, she stays at her best friend’s bed and breakfast. Everything changes, though, when twelve-year-old Vicky shows up claiming to be the result of an egg that Skye donated back in her twenties. Suddenly she is forced to reckon with past trauma and repair the bridges she has burned, in the process rediscovering her roots and opening herself up to a world of new love.

This is just a really good story. It’s sweet but not saccharine, and funny, and sharp, and it addresses the timely issues of gentrification and police brutality but also the timeless themes of aging and family and queerness and commitment. Skye’s voice is completely her own and it charmed me immediately. She makes some questionable decisions on her journey, but even in her messy moments she’s a true delight to be around; Skye Falling is one of those books that I never wanted to put down, that I was actively thinking about in the gaps between reading sessions and looking forward to picking up again. If you need an easy read that will make you laugh and restore some of your faith in humanity, give this one a try.

I first encountered Manoush Zomorodi’s work back in 2015, when she introduced the “Bored and Brilliant” series on her podcast, Note to Self, a project which was published in book form a few years later (highly recommend). Participating in this process, the main goal of which was to reclaim idle moments for the brain’s creative and restorative processes, was transformative for me at the time. I really appreciated Zomorodi’s attitude toward technology: realistic about its necessity and curious about its potential but also emphatic in her call for boundaries around its usage. So when I saw that she had a new book on its way this month, I couldn’t request a copy fast enough.2

Body Electric, releasing tomorrow (May 5), is also nonfiction, with the subtitle “The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age and New Science to Reclaim Your Well-Being.” In short, it’s about the dangers of our modern sedentary lifestyles, how sitting for long uninterrupted stretches can cause or worsen problems ranging from physical aches and pains to anxiety, heart disease, high cholesterol, depression, strokes, increased risk of dementia, and more. Drawing on abundant medical research, Zomorodi explains the science in very accessible and easy-to-understand language that isn’t woo-woo or preachy. I felt personally attacked to find out that even “active” people like me, who exercise vigorously several times per week, are just as vulnerable to these risks if they spend their downtime parked at a desk or lounging on the couch.

Luckily, the solution is incredibly simple: once every half hour, get up and move around for a few minutes. The science shows that folks who do this see all sorts of health benefits, both mental and physical, in both the short and long term. Anxiety decreases, creativity and productivity are boosted, risk of heart disease and stroke plummet, brain fog dissipates, chance of dementia goes down, and blood sugar regulates,3 just to name a few.4 It doesn’t need to be strenuous, either, just consistent. A little bit of movement at a time, at regular points throughout the day.

I’m giving it a shot myself as I sit here writing this newsletter, and I can confirm that, though the frequent interruptions have required some getting used to, it’s a pretty easy system. Especially since the “25 minutes seated / 5 minutes up and moving around” pattern really lends itself to the pomodoro technique and gives me lots of built-in opportunities to use the bathroom, let my mind wander, bother my cats, get a snack, or work out what I want to say next. When I sit down again I feel ready to dive right back into what I was doing, and it’s easier to stay focused when I know my brain can take another break soon.

As I tore through Body Electric, I was highlighting all over the place, composing a mental list of all the people I love that I’m going to buy a copy for.5 It’s not a long read but the impact, if we pay attention and implement Zomorodi’s advice, could be enormous. If you, like so many people in this era of screens and devices, spend most of your day seated, please please please read this book (or listen to the podcast)! I can’t recommend it highly enough.

If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I earn a small percentage commission. This is an easy way to support my work at no additional cost, and I appreciate it very much—thank you! ♥︎

Seen and heard this week

The timing of The Devil Wears Prada 2’s release was truly perfect—I ended up seeing a matinee showing with one of my best friends on her birthday and we had a great time. This sequel begins with Andy Sachs, now a journalist, losing her job and, through a combination of coincidence and necessity, ending up back at Runway magazine. The plot is updated for our “print media is dying” times, but the general arc and the emotional beats here are very similar to those of the original; there’s the “Miranda Priestly gets vulnerable and we almost feel bad for her” scene, the “Andy tries to warn her boss of something but finds out that she knew about it all along” scene, the “Nigel raids the magazine’s wardrobe department to give Andy fancy new clothes to wear” scene, and so on. It felt fresh enough to be interesting but familiar enough to be comforting, like seeing an old friend again after many years apart. I wasn’t completely blown away, but it was pretty much what I was expecting and I liked it!

And now for my musical obsession of the week: a twenty-year-old college a cappella album by a group at a school I didn’t even go to. Hear me out.

I was randomly reminded this week of “When We Are One,” a song that Jordan and I used to blast in the car and belt along to, but when I opened my a cappella playlist6 on Qobuz and couldn’t find it,7 I worried I’d never be able to track it down again. I couldn’t remember who performed it and my googling was not turning anything up. After thinking on it for a day or two, I could eventually picture an album cover that looked like zooming into the distance and a title that was something like “xenophobia,” and the group’s name, Off the Beat, popped into my head shortly after. Turns out some of their releases are on Qobuz, but not this one (actually called Kenophobia), so I paid ten American dollars to buy it on iTunes8 and then listened to it twice in a row while I baked Jordan a ginger stout cake for his birthday.9

Y’all, it still slaps! If you are a fellow a cappella fan, you know that the main appeal of the art form is marveling at how well (or cringing at how poorly) a group covers a song that you already know. But though I had never heard “When We Are One” before encountering it on this album back in the day, I was immediately into it. I subsequently looked up the original (by Gabriel Mann) and still liked this one better. That, folks, is an indicator of greatness. Kenophobia contains covers of plenty of familiar songs too, like “Question!” (System of a Down), “Fix You” (Coldplay), “Sugar We’re Going Down” (Fall Out Boy), “Because of You” (Kelly Clarkson), and “All These Things That I’ve Done” (The Killers). But my favorite tracks (besides “When We Are One”) are the last two, “The Crowing” (Coheed and Cambria) and “Hide and Seek” (Imogen Heap).

I mean, this song clocks in at almost seven minutes. Do you know how hard it is to stay on pitch and maintain tempo with a whole choir of other humans for that long? Not to mention Coheed’s signature syncopations and changes in rhythm! It’s a marvel of coordination and endurance if nothing else.

TLDR; I am a nerd, and I used to do this kind of singing in college10 and I miss it. This rediscovery brought me a lot of joy.

Haiku round-up

This poetic form, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern, originated in Japan and traditionally includes thematic reference to the seasons. Mine vary in topic, but I’ve been writing one each day since the beginning of 2024 as an exercise in structured creativity. Here are this week’s poems:

Monday, April 27

Trying really hard
to hide all of the effort,
make it look easy

Tuesday, April 28

Each little plate full
of discovery, delight
We laugh and we feast

Wednesday, April 29

Just a wee critter,
but her yelps boom and echo
to voice her dismay

Thursday, April 30

When the bass comes in,
the friction of harmony
vibrating the air

Friday, May 1

Bring down the house lights
feel yourself relax into
an imagined world

Saturday, May 2

Rainbow of ribbons,
a hypnotic tapestry
we weave as we dance

Sunday, May 3

Porch time only ends
at sunset if you let it
Grab a blanket, stay

Until next time

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve taken a bath, and I think that’s where I’m headed as soon as I hit “publish.” I hope Monday has been kind to you so far and maybe you have something fun on deck for this evening. I’d love to hear about what’s been bringing you life lately if you’re willing to share!

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See you next week, and if you need me before then, check the country roads that are almost certainly taking me home.

♥︎ Emily

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10

December 2007. That’s me on the mic and Jordan beatboxing in the back:

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↑ If so, I would love to hear of your adventures and the bounty you took home! ↑

Read this week

When I realized partway through Patrick Cottrell’s new novel that it takes place in the same world as his debut, I decided to go back and treat myself to a re-read of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace. Sorry was originally published in 2017 and follows a pre-transition Dan Moran as he copes with the immediate grief and emotional aftermath of his younger brother’s death by suicide. Though he hasn’t seen his parents in a number of years, he returns to his childhood home to provide support and maybe also investigate the circumstances surrounding the tragedy. These were my thoughts when I read it in 2019:

This is a deep dive into a grieving person's brain, and it is strange and funny and sad and it doesn't always make sense. It took me to a surreal headspace very similar to the one I visited while reading My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh and The Third Hotel by Laura van den Berg. I'm not sure that I completely "got" it, but I'd read it again.

Upon revisiting, I’d say it’s much funnier and more absurd than I originally picked up on. Whereas past Emily was focused more on the seriousness of the situation and the mental illness of the protagonist, this time around I could better recognize the narrator’s unreliability and laugh at the resulting miscommunications and awkward or uncomfortable scenes. If you’re interested in Afternoon Hours of a Hermit, I would recommend treating these two books like a duology and starting with Sorry to Disrupt the Peace.

Alas, though important and satisfying, my re-read side quest meant that I didn’t start House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk (trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones) for NCMA book club until the day before our meeting. And despite a marathon several-hour reading session after my coffee shop shift on Thursday, I showed up for the discussion that evening with about ten pages left to go. Luckily, this is a very vibey, theme- and character-based novel without much of an overarching plot, so I didn’t miss any last-minute reveals or have the ending spoiled for me.

The focus here is a small Polish village where an unnamed narrator settles with her husband. We learn about the land and the community through a tapestry of chapters that alternate between first-person observations, conversations with the protagonist’s mysterious old neighbor, leaps backward in time, and a story-in-parts about a young monk writing about the life of a saint. There’s so much to dig into I can’t possibly do it justice here but the tone and ensemble structure reminded me a bit of Herscht 07769 and When I Sing, Mountains Dance. One of the standout topics that came up in our book club discussion was the idea of binaries or boundaries—life/death, asleep/awake, male/female, Germany/Poland—and the nebulous space between them. I think we could have talked for another hour or more, easy.

And then, whoops, I started Vigil by George Saunders too late to finish it for Gretagram book club on Saturday afternoon,2 but here I come after the fact with some thoughts! This is about a ghost whose job is to comfort people as they’re actively dying so their transition to the afterlife is as smooth as possible. Her newest assignment is K.J. Boone, an old white oil tycoon and climate change denier who is now on his death bed, refusing to acknowledge or apologize for any of the terrible things he did during his career. And here’s my hot take: this should’ve been a short story. Even at only 192 pages, it feels too long, it drags, the message gets repetitive. Don’t get me wrong, George, I agree, climate change is very real, and dire, and people like K.J. need to face the damage they’ve done and continue to do, but like… tighten it up. We get it.

If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I earn a small percentage commission. This is an easy way to support my work at no additional cost, and I appreciate it very much—thank you! ♥︎

Seen and heard this week

I caught two last feature films on Thursday and Friday as the second week of RiverRun International Film Festival came to a close:

Over Your Dead Body (2026) is a horror comedy about a married couple who set off for a weekend at a lake cabin, ostensibly to relax together and repair their rapidly disintegrating relationship. But a secret murder plan is afoot, one that immediately goes awry, setting off a whole chain of unexpected and increasingly bloody events. It starts out ridiculous, and every time I thought the chaos had peaked I was proven wrong. The gore and special effects in this movie are not for the faint of heart/stomach, but they are balanced by a lot of funny moments. The vibes reminded me of Ready or Not (2019)3 and Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010). This one is in theaters nationwide right now and I highly recommend seeing it on the big screen—the best part of the experience for me was gasping and laughing and reacting in community. What a ride.

In Transit (2025) tells the story of Lucy, a young bartender in Maine who meets a visiting artist one night at work and agrees to be a model for some new sketches and paintings she’s creating. Their encounters stir up unexamined feelings in both women and ultimately lead to a crossroads moment for Lucy—what does she really want to do with her life? This is a quiet film, shot beautifully and acted well, but the ending left me hanging, desperate to know what came next.4

I’ve only listened to it all the way through once so I don’t have capital-o Opinions just yet, but METRIC’S NEW ALBUM IS OUT! It’s called Romanticize the Dive and it’s easily one of my most anticipated releases of the year, especially since Jordan and I got tickets to their “All the Feelings” tour with Broken Social Scene and Stars this summer. For now I will just say that the song I immediately latched onto during my first play-through was “Tremolo,” which is all about resisting the “what if?” rabbit hole (a struggle I personally know very well).

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

With the tremolo soft and the guitar clean
I can take your mind off what could have been

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Why didn't I take another path at the crossroads?
Crystal ball nobody can see
All of these question marks, what could've been
Leave it on the slippery dance floor, dance with me

Ugh, it resonates so much. I think Emily Haines might’ve written this one specifically for me.

New vocab just dropped

And now a short list of unfamiliar words I’ve encountered in my recent reading, because why not?

• Klatsch (noun): Gossip or casual conversation

• Persipan (noun): A confection made from marzipan and fruit puree, typically used in cakes and pastries

• Gamelan (noun): An Indonesian musical ensemble usually featuring a variety of metal percussion instruments

• Truculent (adjective): Aggressively savage or ferocious

Haiku round-up

This poetic form, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern, originated in Japan and traditionally includes thematic reference to the seasons. Mine vary in topic, but I’ve been writing one each day since the beginning of 2024 as an exercise in structured creativity. Here are this week’s poems:

Monday, April 20

Must finish my work
in time to take a hot bath
ahead of dinner

Tuesday, April 21

Ordering online
could never replace browsing
in a local shop

Wednesday, April 22

This Earth Day birthday
is fitting; you’re my planet
my haven, my home

Thursday, April 23

Past the bounds of fear
lies quiet satisfaction
if you stay open

Friday, April 24

These feet will take me
wherever I need to go
The city is mine

Saturday, April 25

Turn another page
as raindrops patter on glass
and tea warms your bones

Sunday, April 26

It’s transformative,
the warmth and weight of feeling
truly seen and loved

Until next time

In an email about Romanticize the Dive’s release, Emily Haines5 wrote of “Tremolo”:

It’s about breaking free of a fixation on what could have been and accepting how things are, how little we can control and the painfully arbitrary nature of fate.

This is something I’ve been stewing on for a long time, sparked anew by her words. We only get one run-through, yes? And by the nature of choices, there will always be alternate lives, billions of them, branching off from the path we’re taking. I used to feel oppressed picturing all of these possibilities, paralyzed any time I was presented with multiple options and forced to pick between them, because what if I went with the wrong one? Is this where I’m supposed to be? Am I doing it right?

But, hello, there is no “supposed to”! There is no “right”! I’m starting to understand the freedom in embracing this type of unknown. One timeline vs. another: neither one is superior, both simply different, which means my time is best spent not ruminating or panicking, but welcoming with curiosity and openness the experiences that arise as a result of life’s mysterious blend of personal agency and random chance. Here I find myself, doing this. What if I accepted my reality instead of resisting it? Could I explore its details and edges, settle in, be present, and even enjoy myself?

Easier said than done sometimes, I know, but damn it, I’m out here trying.

See you next week, and until then, let’s all throw our phones into the sea.6

♥︎ Emily

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Mild ear infection and sense of disorientation aside, it’s been a pretty solid week for me. Jordan and I took a quick trip to Richmond for my birthday, I finished a couple of good books, and RiverRun International Film Festival kicked off here in Winston, which is always an exciting time.

Read this week

I’m not a Lauren Groff completist quite yet,2 but she is absolutely one of my auto-read authors and I’ve been eagerly anticipating Brawler, her newest story collection that came out in February. Let me tell you: it did not disappoint, and in fact might have exceeded my expectations??

Each of these stories is distinct in its characters and plot details, but they all share a tinge of darkness that I found really tasty. There’s violence, generational trauma, bad choices regarding substances, and a lot of packing up and running away. As a collection it’s just so deliciously scrappy. Every piece pulled me in immediately and made me feel like part of the world Groff was creating; there were truly no skips and no misses.

In other 2026 release news, Patrick Cottrell’s sophomore novel, Afternoon Hours of a Hermit, comes out tomorrow and I was lucky enough to read an early copy.3 This one caught me by surprise a month or two ago—I remember enjoying his 2017 debut, Sorry to Disrupt the Peace, back in 2019, but had been blissfully unaware that another one was coming.

Afternoon Hours has autobiographical elements but is fiction, existing in the same world as Cottrell’s previous book. Protagonist Dan Moran is a trans, Korean teacher and writer and amateur detective whose adoptive brother died by suicide five years earlier (which is the central subject of Sorry). Here we find him returning to his childhood home for the anniversary of this sad event, hoping to uncover more information about exactly what happened to cause the death. His family, most of whom he hasn’t seen in the intervening years, don’t know how to act around him. Many of them misgender him, and some don’t even realize who he is at first. The interactions are uncomfortable, Dan’s loneliness and grief still very palpable. And yet there’s a dry humor underneath it all that I really appreciated, a certain quality to Dan’s voice that compelled me to keep reading. As soon as I finished this one I picked up a copy of its predecessor to revisit; I’ll tell you about it next time.

If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I earn a small percentage commission. This is an easy way to support my work at no additional cost, and I appreciate it very much—thank you! ♥︎

Currently watching

This week featured a nice balance of comfort rewatches and brand new films! First, the familiar stuff:

If you’re a fan of The Lonely Island, or such classic SNL digital shorts as Lazy Sunday, Natalie Raps, Threw it on the Ground, etc and you somehow missed Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016), fling whatever device you’re reading this on aside and go watch. It’s a mockumentary about Conner 4 Real, a former member of pop group The Style Boyz who has gone solo and been insanely successful—until his newest record flops and his life falls apart and he has to reckon with and repair the bridges he has burned. The humor is deeply stupid but right up my alley, the songs are hilariously problematic and catchy as hell, the cast is insane, and at one point Seal gets attacked by wolves. What else could one want in these trying times?

Perhaps a bit of tenderness, you might respond? Okay, sure. In that case, get thee to Schitt’s Creek (2015-2020) posthaste. This is maybe THE funniest and most heartwarming show I’ve ever seen. If you’re unfamiliar, it follows the Rose family, formerly rich but brought low by the devious misdeeds of their onetime business manager, forced to make a new home in the small town of Schitt’s Creek. Though initially resistant, they eventually come to befriend their neighbors, the type of people they used to make fun of and look down on, all the while strengthening their bond as a family and figuring out a way forward.

Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy are masters of endearing comedy and their group dynamic with Annie Murphy and Dan Levy is spot on. Just thinking about certain scenes from this show can make me laugh and/or well up. Seriously, if you somehow haven’t seen it yet, GET ON THAT.

And now for a few RiverRun delights!

If I Go Will They Miss Me (2026) was one of the festival’s opening films on Friday night. It’s largely focused on Lil Ant, a young Black boy living in Los Angeles whose father, Big Ant, has just returned home from prison. The two have a complicated relationship: Lil Ant idolizes his dad and only wants his approval and love, but Big Ant doesn’t know how to fill this role and ends up withdrawing in response to the attention. I found the airplane imagery to be a little heavy-handed, but the cinematography is gorgeous and I loved the soundtrack and the tenderness of the story.

Of the very strong short film program I saw Saturday night, Scissors (2026) was a stand-out favorite. It’s a horror comedy about a male would-be slasher who makes the mistake of invading a house full of lesbians. The legitimately tense moments are balanced by perfectly-delivered lines, self-aware gestures to queer archetypes, and visual humor. RiverRun is screening this whole late-night lineup virtually through May 3 and you can buy tickets here.

If you’re reading this newsletter, you’re probably at least somewhat plugged into the book world and have heard about all the bans and attempted bans happening in school libraries over the past few years. That’s what the documentary The Librarians (2025) is about, with a particular focus on the origins of this upsetting wave of activity in Texas circa 2021. To those of us who value acceptance, safety, and intellectual freedom, it is discouraging and heavy. But the heroic librarians being highlighted here also serve as a hopeful reminder that even during dark times, even in hate-filled spaces where logic and reason seem to have completely vanished, there are people speaking up and fighting for what is right. This is such an important film.

Haiku round-up

This poetic form, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern, originated in Japan and traditionally includes thematic reference to the seasons. Mine vary in topic, but I’ve been writing one each day since the beginning of 2024 as an exercise in structured creativity. Here are this week’s poems:

Monday, April 13

Office for the day
doesn’t have walls or ceiling,
just green leaves, fresh air

Tuesday, April 14

Hurry, pack a bag
We’re off on an aventure,
to see what unfolds

Wednesday, April 15

All I ever want
for my birthday is freedom
to follow my whims

Thursday, April 16

Thin, crisp layers of
buttery, golden pastry
filled with chocolat

Friday, April 17

Theater abuzz
with the hum of audience
eager to begin

Saturday, April 18

Might I recommend
a glass of vinho verde
and a bookstore browse

Sunday, April 19

Imagine your life
being threatened for helping
children find good books

Until next time

One of the best parts of our brief stay in Richmond was wandering down a hill at Maymont and discovering a Japanese garden, nestled around a small lake and tucked away like a secret. With so much to look at and take in, I nearly missed the enormous bullfrog hidden amongst the cypress knees. But once I spotted it, I noticed another one, and another, then three more a few feet farther down the path, and I don’t know why, but these little guys absolutely made my day. Oh, to be belly-deep in cool water on a ninety-degree afternoon.

See you next week, and until then, please enjoy this pygmy slow loris moment of zen.

♥︎ Emily

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□ The Monsters of Templeton
□ Delicate Edible Birds (stories)
□ Arcadia 
⌧ Fates and Furies
⌧ Florida (stories)
⌧ Matrix
⌧ The Vaster Wilds
⌧ Brawler (stories)

Once again I’m thinking about free will, this time in the context of aging, of shedding a bit more self-consciousness with each passing year, of following my whims when it comes to appearance and figuring out how to feel more and more like myself as I get older. Life is short, I’m realizing. So I got bangs!

Read this week

It’s been a decade since Maria Semple released a novel, and a little more than that since I first read and fell in love with her breakout Where’d You Go, Bernadette. So I am delighted to tell you about her new one, Go Gentle, which comes out tomorrow!1 Like Bernadette, this one has a bit of a mystery at its core. And it’s very quirky. It won’t be for everyone, but I had a good time.

Go Gentle follows Adora Hazzard, a middle-aged philosopher, mother, and divorcée, who lives in a historic old building in New York with her “coven” of fellow single women2 and serves as moral tutor to the twin sons of an extremely rich and famous family. Her focus is Stoicism, and any time a problem arises, she has the exact Epictetus, Seneca, or Marcus Aurelius quote necessary to solve it. But when she meets a handsome stranger seemingly by chance, in line for the ballet of all places, she suddenly feels something unfamiliar, something that flies in the face of her beloved Stoics: desire. And as she learns more about this man, how he might be connected to her employers, a suspicious art deal they’re brokering, and even her own past, she has to figure out how her emotions fit in to her previously simple and cerebral life.

I don’t know that I ever fully came to understand Adora as a character, but I love how weird and smart and multi-faceted she is. While scrolling Maria Semple’s wikipedia page I found out that she wrote for Arrested Development and had a tiny part in I Heart Huckabees, and now I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Go Gentle gets adapted because the vibes are totally in line with both of those things and I could absolutely see it as a movie.

Having somehow met almost all my April release deadlines (one more to go, but that’s for next week), I took a break after Go Gentle to read something from my older unread shelf: Dig by A.S. King. This was a used bookstore find back in 2021 and is freshly on my radar because the author will be visiting my local bookstore for an event this week.3

Dig is the story of a family, kind of, but a super dysfunctional and fragmented one. We bounce between multiple different perspectives as identities are slowly revealed and connections gradually established. It’s about whiteness, racism, privilege, and complicity, and though sometimes those themes felt a little forced or heavy-handed, I liked the emphasis on breaking generational cycles and being the change. There is also a bit of magic at play, which adds intrigue and keeps the pages turning. I think I would’ve really eaten this up as a teenager.

If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I earn a small percentage commission. This is an easy way to support my work at no additional cost, and I appreciate it very much—thank you! ♥︎

Watched this week

Let me add my voice to the chorus: Project Hail Mary (2026) is so good! The adaptation is pretty faithful, hitting most of the major plot points of the book and not changing anything too egregiously. The casting is spot-on, Ryan Gosling simultaneously smart and funny and self-deprecating and earnest, his friendship with Rocky silly and tender. The visuals and music are stunning. I loved the addition of Carl, played by Lionel Boyce from The Bear. At 2 hours and 36 minutes, it’s a long film, but I was captivated throughout and never once checked my watch. Andy Weir’s blend of high stakes, humor, and emotion translates perfectly to the screen, and I left the theater teary and smiling, with my hand on my heart. I can’t wait to see it again.

This week I made it my beeswax to watch The Devil Wears Prada (2006) since the sequel is opening in a few short weeks! It was as I remembered: an upsetting amount of fat jokes,4 but also Meryl Streep serving peak ice queen, a classic Anne Hathaway glow-up montage featuring Stanley Tucci as fairy godmother of the Runway sample closet, a super nostalgic early 2000s soundtrack, and so many excellent Emily Blunt moments. It holds up. Now I kind of want to re-read the book, too.

I recently found The Lego Movie (2014) on blu-ray for cheap at the used bookstore and snatched it up to finally watch since I remember hearing good things about it when it came out.5 And yeah, ‘twas fun! Full disclosure, I got too cozy on the couch and might have drifted off a little toward the end, but the 92% I was conscious for was a great time. I liked the characters, and the lego animation, and how the live action section pulled everything together in a heartwarming way. And it was nice, after having known the song “Everything is Awesome” for many years, to experience it in its original context.

Haiku round-up

This poetic form, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern, originated in Japan and traditionally includes thematic reference to the seasons. Mine vary in topic, but I’ve been writing one each day since the beginning of 2024 as an exercise in structured creativity. Here are this week’s poems:

Monday, April 6

Good morning! Lock in!
Let your focus waver not.
We’ve a job to do.

Tuesday, April 7

Nervous excitement
Deep breath in, then hard exhale
Face, freshly adorned

Wednesday, April 8

This body is yours,
so settle in, decorate,
make it feel like you

Thursday, April 9

It’s never as hard
when you face it together
Don’t be a hero

Friday, April 10

Almost forty and
still trying to make you proud—
I hope it’s working

Saturday, April 11

Your long limbs wrapped tight,
the koala to my tree
standing strong and sure

Sunday, April 12

We order takeout,
I nod off during a film:
A perfect evening

Until next time

One of the little things that brings me joy this time of year is completing the transition from flannel sheets to cool cotton. There’s simply nothing better than the smell of a fresh set, the feeling of sliding into their welcoming chill at the end of a humid spring day, under the lazy spinning of a ceiling fan. Sending you the nighttime serenade of crickets, owls, and tree frogs through an open window, and sweet, restful slumbers.

That’s it for now! See you Monday, boss.

♥︎ Emily

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But before I launch (accidental space pun) into it, what have you been enjoying lately—books, music, podcasts, hobbies, recipes, etc? How are you staying alive and sane?

Leave a comment

Read this week

Alas, I haven’t gotten around to seeing the movie yet, but as I hinted in last week’s newsletter, Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir was a truly delightful reading experience. I went into it relatively unspoiled and liked it that way, so I won’t say too much about the plot—only that the story begins with our protagonist waking up from a coma and slowly piecing together who and where he is, which turns out to be a middle school science teacher named Ryland Grace, on a space ship headed toward a distant star. And maybe he has to figure out how to save all of humanity back on Earth?? It’s casual. Andy Weir has a real talent for including lots of Technical Science Stuff without it being overwhelming to Non-Science People (me) or distracting from the emotional core of the narrative, and for perfectly balancing high stakes with humor. I can’t wait to see Ryland’s adventures played out on the big screen.

My book club’s pick for this month’s meeting was Culpability by Bruce Holsinger. As the title suggests, this is a novel all about blame and responsibility, and it centers around a collision that the Cassidy-Shaw family experiences in their autonomous minivan, one that is unfortunately fatal for the elderly couple in the other car. Teenage son Charlie is in the driver’s seat, dad Noah is the passenger up front, and mom Lorelai is in back with daughters Izzy and Alice, and right before impact Charlie jerks the wheel to avoid a hazard, which disables the vehicle’s self-driving system. So who is at fault here? The answer might seem clear at first, but over the course of the book we find out more about each family member and their potential contribution to what happened, and things become much murkier. Holsinger is taking a subtly suspenseful look at a timely topic, which I summed up at our club conversation as “compelling but also kinda made me want to die?”1 This is a page-turner for sure, with plenty to discuss.

Speaking of wanting to die,2 I was so locked into Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead by Mai Nguyen that I went out to read on the front porch after my nephew’s birthday party on Saturday, just planning on “a few minutes before I make dinner,” and then accidentally stayed a full hour and a half to finish it. The premise is heartbreaking (content warning for loss of an infant): Cleo and her best friend Paloma both become pregnant around the same time and, even luckier, go into labor almost simultaneously—but while Paloma comes home with a healthy baby, Cleo’s does not survive. To put it mildly, she is wrecked. She isn’t due back at work for a year, but she doesn’t know how to fill her days; being in the house near the well-stocked nursery full of things her daughter will never use feels impossible. So when a new job opportunity pops up unexpectedly, assistant to the director at the funeral home where they held her baby’s service, Cleo figures why the hell not and accepts. While terrible, her journey through grief is also tender, and bizarre, and sometimes funny, and ultimately full of warmth and hope. The vibes reminded me a little of Emily Austin’s work, which of course I adore, and if you’re a fan of hers, or of tough-but-rewarding stories about lovable weirdos, I definitely recommend checking it out when it releases on April 14.3

So remember last Monday when I said I might’ve overcommitted re: early copies of upcoming releases for this month? Well after I finished that post, two more that I’d forgotten requesting showed up in the mail, both of which come out tomorrow, and damned if I didn’t make it through them in less than 48 hours combined. 😅 Fortunately they were short!

The jacket copy calls Body Double by Hanna Johansson4 (translated from the Swedish by Kira Josefsson) “a Hitchcockian literary thriller,” but I would summarize it a bit more crassly as “the best kind of mindfuck.” It’s about a couple of women, Naomi and Laura, who meet by chance in a department store when one of them accicentally takes the other’s nearly identical coat. From there we alternate between their perspectives as they go about their daily lives, one working at a radio station and the other typing up transcriptions for a ghostwriter, the two coincidentally crossing paths a few more times before eventually becoming friends (or more?) and moving in together. It gets weird! Time is wobbly—is this linear, or are certain sections flashbacks? Naomi and Laura start to look more alike, but who is imitating whom, and why? What is going on here?? And the best part is that there are no clear answers! Just delicious ambiguity and the opportunity for intense speculation. YUM. Everyone go read this and let’s talk.

Last but not least, I made my way through Transcription by Ben Lerner in one sitting this morning and figured I’d go ahead and tell you about it since it’s coming out tomorrow! I was encouraged to request it from the publisher5 after reading ’s intriguing review, which mentions memory, technology, and the crisis of a broken phone. Indeed, the opening section—one of three, each centered around and named for a different hotel, something I haven’t yet cracked the meaning of but am pondering—is immediately gripping in its urgency. The narrator, right before a final interview with his 90-year-old mentor and former professor, drops his phone in the hotel sink, rendering it unusable and stranding himself without a recording device to capture the conversation. His instant sense of panic, of being completely unmoored, is tangible and upsettingly relatable.6 What follows is largely thought- and dialogue-based and reminded me a bit of Larisa Pham’s Discipline from earlier this year; but where Pham muses about art, nostalgia, and the passage of time, Lerner is more focused on memory, technology, and truth. It’s only 130 pages, but there’s a lot to think about here and I can see myself mulling over these ideas for quite a while to come.

If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I earn a small percentage commission. This is an easy way to support my work at no additional cost, and I appreciate it very much—thank you! ♥︎

Recent listening

When it rains, it pours! For the last few weeks I’ve been working through a backlog of new episodes from the podcasts I subscribe to, but now that I’m caught up, I have more headphone time available for music. Which is good because there’s a freaking BOUNTY of it right now. This little round-up of four new and new-to-me albums barely scratches the surface of what’s on my list to check out.

Bleeds by Wednesday has been in heavy rotation this week because they played a show in Winston last night7 and I had to prepare! What impressed me most about these songs was their range—one minute the vibes are down-tempo folksy americana (“Elderberry Wine,” “The Way Love Goes”) and the next everything is distortion and yelling (“Pick Up That Knife,” “Wasp”). Something for everyone, indeed. In her September 2025 review for NPR, a really thoughtful and beautifully written piece, Ann Powers estimated it to be the rock album of the year. If you’re a fan of Waxahatchee you will definitely like Wednesday.

In other concert-prep news, The New Pornographers’ new album, The Former Site Of, released on March 26 and I really like it! The songs are uptempo and poppy but the slightest bit subdued compared to some of their earlier releases. The vocal harmonies are bright and perfect. The vibes are akin to Challengers, maybe my favorite of their records, and though I can’t explain exactly why, it’s bringing me a lot of joy. I’m looking forward to many more listens as next month’s show at Haw River Ballroom gets closer.

VOLUMES: ONE by Bon Iver is finally here and I’m sure “Heavenly Father” is relieved for its siblings to be out in the world and available to share the burden of my enthusiasm.8 Now I can also obsessively listen to masterful live performances of “666,” “Man Like U,” “Hey, Ma,” and “33 ‘GOD’,” just to name a few! The two Bon Iver shows I’ve been lucky enough to experience have been some of the most impressive and memorable of my adult life so far—and so what a treasure, the feeling of being there preserved on vinyl to revisit whenever I wish. I hope that, as the title suggests, there will be more to come in this curated live series.

I had no idea that a new Robyn album was on its way, so when I opened Qobuz a couple Fridays ago and saw Sexistential among the new releases, I literally gasped in surprise and delight. Our tiny otherworldly robot queen! Yes!! Even though these tracks are all about middle age and motherhood and other such Serious Topics, they are just as catchy as her songs of yore. Give them a listen and if you don’t instantly find yourself illuminated by purple flashing lights doing the electric slide on the surface of the moon, I owe you $5.

Haiku round-up

This poetic form, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern, originated in Japan and traditionally includes thematic reference to the seasons. Mine vary in topic, but I’ve been writing one each day since the beginning of 2024 as an exercise in structured creativity. Here are this week’s poems:

Monday, March 30

Echoing across,
chuckle like a ringing bell
from your yard to mine

Tuesday, March 31

If you stay inside
what is known, your comfort zone
you’ll miss the expanse

Wednesday, April 1

The combination
of espresso and cocoa
is simply unmatched

Thursday, April 2

What a relief, to
move unhurried through a chore
to resist the rush

Friday, April 3

Wandering, aimless
guided by impulses, not
written agenda

Saturday, April 4

Gap-toothed, beanpole boy
I lift you up, spin around
Please don’t outgrow me

Sunday, April 5

Heads bob and pit churns
This gathering of heathens—
just what I needed

Until next time

We are in prime running season right now: it’s sunny enough for shorts but cool enough to prevent sweating to death. And my favorite greenway trail is lined with beautiful blooming trees! Since it won’t get dark for another couple of hours, perhaps I’ll go for a little jog after I post this newsletter. I hope you have something to look forward to this evening, too. Sending blue skies and cherry blossoms your way.

See you next Monday, and until then, the doctor prescribes Chopin and abundant rest.

♥︎ Emily

P.S. If you especially enjoyed today’s newsletter but a paid subscription isn’t possible:

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But I’m here now, and I’m excited to tell you about the one sentence1 I read this week, and the jams that literally made me run faster, and all the stuff I’m looking forward to in the near future.

Read this week

Honestly, Herscht 07769 by Lásló Krasznahorkai is not something I would’ve picked up on my own. It’s long, and in translation, and comprised of one extended run-on sentence, and the cover isn’t really giving “book I’d be into.” But it was chosen for art museum book club, and we know I’m a dork who loves a homework assignment, so I buckled up and gave it a try.

I’d call this an ensemble piece. It most closely follows Florian Herscht, the “gentle giant” of his east German town, who has been taking night classes in physics and is now convinced that the universe could end at any moment. When he isn’t at his day job erasing graffiti with his father-figure Boss (who is also a Nazi on the side!), he is writing letters to Angela Merkel, the only one he thinks can help save the world from imminent disaster. But the narrative jumps seamlessly between many other people in Florian’s world too, detailing the minutiae of their days and exploring the connections between them. In that aspect, it reminded me a bit of Toni Morrison’s Paradise.

There’s so much going on here—a disappearance or two, a serial graffiti vandal, a wolf attack, an obsession with J.S. Bach, an overabundance of honey for sale. Krasznahorkai uses the lack of sentence breaks to create a frenetic sense of urgency that builds on itself as the book progresses, and the cycling of characters into and out of the reader’s field of vision mimics the behavior of subatomic particles.2 The frequent transitions from person to person bring Virginia Woolf’s writing to mind; I love how the focus on a large group of individuals not only provides insights into each of them but also simultaneously builds a tapestry-like understanding of the community as a whole.

And while I’d call this more of a plot book than a language one, I did write down some good out-of-context quotes:

• “there’s nothing better than tomatoes on the vine, he said to Jacob-Friedrich, for this it is worthwhile to survive the winter”

• “not too long ago he had discovered the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, and he felt that contained within this discovery were instructions in the event of a catastrophe, but he only felt this, he didn’t know the exact contents of these instructions”

• “I don’t believe in the kind of life that’s being forced on us, always buying new stuff and then tossing it out, well what kind of behavior is that? what kind of thinking is that?!”

• “there was no cure for weeping and it was not regulated by any kind of law”

Herscht 07769 is not an easy read, but it’s less intimidating than I initially feared, and really compelling in both granular and big-picture ways—it left me thinking about order and chaos and evil and complicity, and it made me itch to sit down at the piano and re-learn some of my old favorite Bach inventions.3 Group conversation definitely improved my understanding and appreciation of it, so if you’re interested in tackling this one, maybe rope a friend or two into book-clubbing it with you!

On the horizon…

• After wrapping up Project Hail Mary this morning, I’m looking forward to catching the adaptation in theaters soon so I can hopefully talk about both book and movie next week

• I might’ve slightly over-committed myself, but here are the April releases I have early copies of that I’ll be telling you about in the next little bit:

  • Body Double by Hanna Johansson (trans. Kira Josefsson)

  • Go Gentle by Maria Semple

  • Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead by Mai Nguyen

  • Afternoon Hours of a Hermit by Patrick Cottrell

• Jenny Lawson’s new book, How to Be Okay When Nothing is Okay is coming out tomorrow! It snuck up on me but I’m so pumped and will be buying a copy immediately! I simply love her.

• I found out JUST THIS MORNING that another of my favorite authors, Dave Eggers, has a new release coming in June! And I might have snagged an early copy, so stay tuned for thoughts—I doubt I’ll be able to wait very long before diving into it.

If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I earn a small percentage commission. This is an easy way to support my work at no additional cost, and I appreciate it very much—thank you! ♥︎

Seen and heard this week

I’ve mentioned that Jordan and I rewatched the original run of Dexter and have been working our way through the spinoffs and continuations that came after, but I forgot to share our most recent update! We finished Dexter: Original Sin, which is only ten episodes. The whole thing is a flashback to Dexter’s early twenties as he’s just getting started on his serial killer journey, and the interior monologue voiceovers are Michael C. Hall but the younger versions of all the original characters are played by new actors. It’s… fine? I enjoyed the novelty of it for an episode or two, but after that I just wanted the “real” versions of all my people back. And by the end I was annoyed that the initial framing of the show, that is, a near-death Dexter at the end of New Blood having a life-flashing-before-his-eyes experience, was completely discarded? or forgotten? Anyway. Onwards and upwards to Dexter: Resurrection, which picks up where New Blood left off and feels much truer to the show I know and love.

On the music front: do you guys remember Girl Talk?? My friend Caleb just reminded me of the album Night Ripper (2007) and revisiting it made me so happy. If you’re unfamiliar, this is basically forty-two minutes of nonstop, seamless mashup medleys, featuring pop, hip-hop, rap, and alternative hits from the early 2000s. It took me right back to my college days. And, fun fact that I learned when I blasted it in my earbuds on a recent run, the first several tracks match my stride almost exactly. After months of exclusively listening to podcasts while I exercised, this shaved a full minute off my average mile pace. Okay!

Haiku round-up

This poetic form, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern, originated in Japan and traditionally includes thematic reference to the seasons. Mine vary in topic, but I’ve been writing one each day since the beginning of 2024 as an exercise in structured creativity. Here are this week’s poems:

Monday, March 23

Human becomes art
a living installation
in this golden light

Tuesday, March 24

Each deviation
makes returning to routine
all the more welcome

Wednesday, March 25

Solving one problem
unearths a new looming threat
In all things, balance

Thursday, March 26

An endurance read,
a marathon of phrases
Where is my trophy?

Friday, March 27

Heart light and feet quick
propelled by nostalgia and
beats that just won’t quit

Saturday, March 28

It’s easy to purge
possessions when they’re covered
in fine plaster dust

Sunday, March 29

Change into real clothes
venture out into the world
in search of a scent

Until next time

Truly all I want to do these days is sit on my porch with a snack and a book and a stick of incense. If you need to find me, check here.

See you next Monday, and until then, take it easy, big dog.

♥︎ Emily

P.S. If you especially enjoyed today’s newsletter but a paid subscription isn’t possible:

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Read this week

“I don’t know by what accident the builders had managed it, but instead of a remodeled bathroom attached to my bedroom, they had installed a prison cell.” So begins The Renovation by Kenan Orhan, the story of a woman named Dilara whose home improvement project, necessitated by her father moving in so she can care for him as his Alzheimer’s progresses, goes awry. She calls her contractor to report the mistake and have it corrected, but when she repeatedly fails to get an answer she eventually gives up and the prison cell slowly becomes part of her life. Through its strange constant presence and Dilara’s evolving relationship to it, Orhan delves into ideas about exile, home, fascism, womanhood, family, community, and longing. What I appreciated most about this book, though, and what left the biggest impression, probably due to my own family’s history with dementia, were the beautiful meditations on language, communication, caregiving, and memory. This observation about Dilara’s father hit hard, as it’s something I’ve noticed and felt during conversations with my own mom:

His thoughts had become slippery as eels in silvery rivers and the words to wrangle them had wriggled out of his head, leaving precious few phrases that now had to stand in for so much more, for all the sputtering thoughts that he could no longer articulate. (16)

And as I continue my gradual education in French, spanning many years at this point and still ongoing, I’m thinking about how that knowledge might be fundamentally changing who I am:

As we learn a new language, [an article that Dilara recalls reading in a psychology newsletter] explained, we become a different person. As we access different linguistic structures, our personalities shift: to reflect the different concepts available to us through different words, but also because of the new company we keep in a new language, and because of our preconceived notions about the language—all these things alter who we become under it. (34)

For Dilara the idea of language comes into play because she and her family are political exiles from their home country of Turkey, transplanted in Italy and slowly losing their native Turkish as they rely more frequently on Italian. The way this weaves together with her father’s medical loss of memory and increasing inability to communicate is masterful. The other aspect of The Renovation that felt especially relatable and timely in this moment was its focus on authoritarianism and political unrest. As the United States becomes an ever scarier and less predictable place by the day, I’m holding onto this tentative yet stubborn sense of optimism:

I was positively effervescent with hope. The country needed desperation, it needed resentment and rage, to shake it out of its fatal apathy. (173)

Note to self: don’t let the onslaught of worsening news numb you. Keep fighting, keep feeling.

Speaking of feeling—I finished Lindy West’s new memoir, Adult Braces, yesterday and it punched me squarely in my emotions in the VERY BEST WAY. I first fell in love with Lindy West when I read Shrill in 2019 and watched the Hulu adaptation with my friend Anna shortly after. Later that same year, The Witches are Coming was released and I gobbled that one up as well. Lindy1 is my favorite kind of writer: funny as hell (like, actual laughter), but also smart, and sharp, and deeply lovable too. She cares about a lot of the same things I do and it’s clear that she just gets it. I haven’t yet read her third book, Shit, Actually, and I kind of lost track of her during the weird time warp years of COVID, so it was extra exciting to find out a few months ago that not only was a new one on its way, but also SHE HERSELF would be stopping in my city on book tour.

First let me tell you about the event, since that happened on Tuesday, before I started Adult Braces. Lindy and her conversation partner, Ron, rolled into town a few minutes late, so the whole thing started with a slightly chaotic, out-of-breath energy and there was a lot of laughter as she read a section of the “Adult Braces” chapter aloud. I was immediately charmed. The discussion went so many great places after that—figuring out who you are apart from your relationship(s), learning not to just tolerate but to love your body (and to feel sexy even?!), taking inspiration from other media,2 going on a road trip and becoming “part girl, part van” followed by the bittersweetness of returning home afterward, being able to write this latest book in “a normal adult way” instead of during a panicked all-nighter right before deadline, taking immense pride in good work despite the discourse in response to it. And no one (me) cried when she talked about how, before receiving an ADHD diagnosis in adulthood, she always just thought she was a lazy person who couldn’t follow through on anything!!

Despite our shared anxious tendencies and general signing line ambivalence, Anna and I got our books personalized and chatted with Lindy for a few minutes after the event, and I’m so glad we did. I hadn’t had the best day, but this hour was exactly the medicine I needed; I left feeling positively buoyant.

So obviously I had to ride this high and dive into Adult Braces as soon as possible.3 Let me tell you, if I didn’t have a “job” and “responsibilities,” I would have inhaled this book in one sitting. It is hard—the whole thing is that, after finding out that her husband has been acting on his polyamorous nature without her knowledge for some time, and then having something of a midlife identity crisis as she approaches forty,4 she rents a van and embarks on a solo roadtrip from her home in Seattle to Key West and back. Along the way she wrestles with a lot of emotional buildup and codependent tendencies5 and feelings about her body and doubts about herself. But I will say again: it’s SO FUNNY. And so vulnerable, and so real. Just a big-hearted, deeply affirming, expansively hopeful, truly good time. I was sad when it ended. I already want to start it again. Please, go read this book.

If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I earn a small percentage commission. This is an easy way to support my work at no additional cost, and I appreciate it very much—thank you! ♥︎

Haiku round-up

This poetic form, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern, originated in Japan and traditionally includes thematic reference to the seasons. Mine vary in topic, but I’ve been writing one each day since the beginning of 2024 as an exercise in structured creativity. Here are this week’s poems:

Monday, March 16

Stay present, stay calm
Don’t jump to catastrophe
when none yet exists

Tuesday, March 17

When a stranger’s words—
so familiar, so pointed—
could have been your own

Wednesday, March 18

Cry it all out, then
wake up from disappointment
and begin anew

Thursday, March 19

There’s something tender
to transitional moments—
these, the good old days

Friday, March 20

Birdsong at sundown
darkening bruise-purple sky
and me, on my porch

Saturday, March 21

A cake so tasty
that a thief couldn’t resist
absconding with it

Sunday, March 22

I become machine—
keen eye detects blemishes,
rag wipes them away

Until next time

“See America while crying!” on the side of Lindy West’s tour van made me giggle, but it has also stuck with me. As a sensitive person who is sometimes depressed, I often make decisions about my day based on my mindset and emotions. Do I feel good enough to do that? Do I have the energy? Am I capable? But now I’m wondering, what if I did the thing anyway—saw the metaphorical country despite my metaphorical tears, through my metaphorical tears, and let the experience change me, likely for the better? Maybe easier said than done, especially from my current vantage point of relatively stable mental health. I’ll be thinking about it, though, next time my brain chemistry tries to keep me wallowing inside. If Lindy can do it…

See you next Monday, and until then, LOOK UPON THESE BABY SAND CATS!!

♥︎ Emily

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Read this week

I had missed the fact that Nedra Glover Tawwab put a new book out, but when I saw a slightly damaged copy on the shelf of prizes at book trivia last month, I snatched it right up. This one’s called The Balancing Act and it’s about how we connect with the people in our lives, be they friends, family members, romantic partners, or acquaintances. There are chapters about different types of dependency, enmeshed relationships, how past trauma can affect our present-day attachment styles, surface connections versus deep ones, balancing independence with dependence, and more.

My favorite section is focused on the importance of vulnerability and asking for support; I’m not always the best in those areas, but as with her other books, Tawwab provides lots of ideas and specific examples to make real-life application of the information easy and straightforward. I wouldn’t call anything here groundbreaking, but there are many good reminders and tidbits, laid out simply and intuitively, and I know this book will be a useful reference to return to in the future when I need a refresher. If you ever find yourself overthinking your interactions, questioning certain relationships, or worrying that you’re too dependent (or too detached), it might also be just what you need.

It’s Toni Morrison month in The Stacks book club and this year we’re reading Paradise, the story of an all-Black town in Oklahoma, a small nearby community of outcast women, and the ways the two interact, both amongst themselves and with each other, the situation eventually building to a violent conclusion. From this complete banger of an opening sentence, the ending scene is set:

They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time.

We then jump back in time and Morrison gradually shows us how things got to this point. Because I checked out a digital copy from the library, I didn’t realize how long it was until I was a good ways in—but I ended up taking it slowly, over the course of the whole week, really getting familiar with the world she has created in these pages. There are lots of characters and seemingly infinite relationships between them: siblings, married couples, friends, cousins, newcomers, family. If I ever read this one again, I will do so with a pen in my hand so I can draw a sprawling tree of these connections and maybe have a chance of keeping them all straight in my head. As it was, I did sometimes end up just letting sections of prose wash over me when I couldn’t quite remember who a character was or how they tied into what was going on; it would usually come back within a page or two and I’d be able to reorient myself once again in the complex web of the Ruby and Convent communities.

This is definitely one of the more challenging Morrison novels that I’ve read so far, but it’s rich and rewarding, too. I’m looking forward to listening to the Stacks discussion episode later this month and hopefully filling in some gaps in my personal understanding of it.

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Currently listening

As predicted last time, I spent some time with Francis of Delirium’s new single, “It’s a Beautiful Life,” this week. Musically it’s a little faster paced than a lot of her other songs, with an almost frenetic, unhinged vibe to it. And lyrically that makes sense, because it’s about the crazy-making parts of existence and our reactions to them, the way extreme heat and doomscrolling take us out of ourselves, the feeling of wanting to run away from everything or cut off all your hair. And yet, and yet. We keep going.

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All alone stuck in my room
Scrolling through hell,
inhaling doom
Oh, loneliness is rife
It’s a beautiful life

In other upcoming album and new single news: we finally have a widely available recording of “Heavenly Father” by Bon Iver!!! This is one of my FAVORITE things Justin Vernon has ever done, but I believe it was originally created for the film Wish I Was Here (2014) and never released outside of that soundtrack, which has been frustratingly hard to find on streaming platforms.1 So that’s why this is so exciting—an incredible live version is the first single off of Volumes: One, a compilation of selections from Bon Iver’s shows between 2019 and 2023 that’ll be out early next month. And friends, it is good! My “undefeated in making me cry” playlist heartily welcomes the new addition.

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I just been up here for goddamn years
(can you see now?)
filling up hulls with goddamn fears
(I am free now) 
I know about it darling,
I been standing here
Heavenly father
is all that he offers
a safety in the end?

And finally, a moment of serendipity at the used bookstore yesterday afternoon:

My eyes drifted over to the new arrivals in the vinyl section, landing on an album cover that looked instantly familiar. When I approached and picked it up for inspection, I think I audibly gasped—it was Metric’s Art of Doubt (2018), an album of theirs that I’m less familiar with and didn’t yet own in physical form. Since we’re seeing them live this summer,2 what a perfect time to add it to my collection and get to know it better! I listened immediately when I got home and recognized some of the tracks (“Dark Saturday,” “Now or Never Now”), but also found some new-to-me favorites (“Underline the Black,” “Risk”). This will definitely be on heavy rotation as the concert gets closer.

Haiku round-up

This poetic form, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern, originated in Japan and traditionally includes thematic reference to the seasons. Mine vary in topic, but I’ve been writing one each day since the beginning of 2024 as an exercise in structured creativity. Here are this week’s poems:

Monday, March 9

Measure a morning
in accumulating ash,
in vanilla smoke

Tuesday, March 10

Left alone to sit
illuminated aslant
in day’s final glow

Wednesday, March 11

Eyes might’ve slid past
this imperfection in bark,
but look closer: frog!

Thursday, March 12

Rise up from the grave
of foregone conclusions and
claim your agency

Friday, March 13

Why not take a chance?
Maybe this time it works out,
the exact right thing

Saturday, March 14

Bleary-eyed, giddy,
the path awash in high-beams
On my way to you

Sunday, March 15

Jagged white outline
on background of solid black
has me in its thrall

Until next time

When Jordan got home on Saturday night from a week or so of travel, one of the first things he said was “the daffodils are blooming!” And yes, I didn’t realize it had happened so suddenly, but spring seems to have arrived3 here in North Carolina. The forsythia bushes are covered in the most perfect yellow, the crocuses have popped up, and there is new growth on our hydrangea. There are still cold days here and there (and stormy ones, like today),4 but for the most part I just want to be out on the front porch, all the time. This is the delicious window between the cold and depression of winter and the existential dread-inducing heat of summer, when it’s just warm enough to be pleasant, all the plants are coming alive, and the mosquitos haven’t yet gotten the memo that it’s time to once again ruin my life on the daily. Gotta take advantage while I can.

See you next Monday, and until then, ockooo!

♥︎ Emily

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Read this week

Okay, we know that I’m not a huge historical fiction person by nature, and for that matter, not a huge romance person either—or, more accurately: I can enjoy both of these genres, and have indeed even loved them, I’m just picky. So take my comments about Indigo by Beverly Jenkins, the Stacks book club pick for February, a classic work of historical romance that unfortunately turned out to be a miss for me, with a grain of salt.

This is the story of Hester Wyatt, a free Black woman in Michigan who works on the Underground Railroad. She is charged at the beginning of the story with hiding and caring for an injured fellow conductor, known mysteriously as the Black Daniel. Though he is uncooperative and rude at first, the two quickly develop a physical and emotional attraction to each other, and from there, the romance tropes do what they do. What I liked most about the story was the historical element, which was well-researched and informative; it was particularly fun to encounter a reference to Ellen and William Craft, whom I learned about in detail from a previous The Stacks nonfiction pick, Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo. What didn’t work as well for me were the completely cringey sex scenes and body part euphemisms, which, combined with the novel being much too long, had me wanting to throw it across the room by the end. If I never in my life read about any more nipples that are “hard as jewels,” it will be too soon.

It felt extra awesome, then, to pick up Awake by Jen Hatmaker directly afterward and read the entire thing in a day. Hatmaker has been a huge name in the evangelical Christian community for many years and this is her memoir about finding out in 2020 that her husband was cheating on her, then divorcing him, drifting away from the church, and figuring out who she really was deep down as she rebuilt her life in the wake of all of this. It is a quick, compelling read, maybe verging on woo-woo in places but beautiful and affirming on the whole.

I can’t wait for better timing or better circumstances. I won’t wait for anything that depends on someone else, because that is neutralizing my power. I’m done sleepwalking through my own story.

The Good Life is now, and I am its co-creator. So I will create it. (224)

Though it would’ve been easy to blame the crumbling of her marriage solely on her ex’s infidelity, I appreciated that Hatmaker takes a long look at herself, too, and thoroughly addresses her own behavioral patterns and tendencies. Having grown up in the Baptist world myself before separating from it as an adult and maintaining complicated feelings about that to this day, I deeply related to a lot of her struggles and thought processes. Going through all of it with her in these pages, seeing how she worked so doggedly to heal and grow despite the intense pain, was an emotional, cathartic, and ultimately joyous experience.

The week’s reading wrapped up with a return to a classic that I remember as formative in my baby feminist high school years—The Awakening by Kate Chopin. This was my March selection from my older unread shelf, a copy I’d bought at Politics & Prose on a trip to DC back in 2017. It tells the story of Edna Pontellier, a 28-year-old wife and mother who slowly realizes that she feels trapped inside her marriage and her role in society. After returning to the city after a summer spent at the shore, she decides to stop receiving the customary Tuesday callers at her home, to go out when she wants to, and to follow her own whims, expectations and conventions be damned.

She perceived that her will had blazed up, stubborn and resistant. She could not at that moment have done other than denied and resisted. (66)

For the first half or so, I was very much like “girl, hell yeah, your twelve-years-older-than-you husband sucks, leave his ass.” You’re deeply unhappy, you’re being crushed under the constraints of your rigid existence. Get outta there. But as the narrative continued, I felt myself sinking into frustration and boredom. The action really drops off as Edna’s life narrows; her two kids go off to live with their grandmother and, seemingly free, she spends all her time pining after Robert, the younger man she had befriended over the summer, before he went off to Mexico for vague reasons relating to business (question mark). While she’s missing Robert, she’s also casually hooking up (another question mark) with this other, known womanizer-type guy, Alcée. It’s all so ennui, so pending, so unsatisfying. By the final scene (which I won’t spoil but which I will say is tragic), I was simply done with her. Did she really break free of a stifling marriage just to run into the arms of another man (or two)? Are men the only option here? Can we not dream bigger?? Sad!

But on the other hand, maybe that was the point? Is Kate Chopin highlighting a woman’s internal feminist uprising, her urge to escape her oppression, only to then illustrate that such an escape is impossible? Perhaps.1 This short novel was originally published in 1899, so I have to give it props for its subversion, even though the conclusion it draws is bleak as hell. If you haven’t read this one before and enjoy a Virginia Woolf-esque style of hazy, stream-of-conscious writing, it’s worth checking out. Some of the sentences are gorgeous, true knockouts. Just brace yourself for it to drag a bit as it goes, and don’t expect a happy ending.

If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I earn a small percentage commission. This is an easy way to support my work at no additional cost, and I appreciate it very much—thank you! ♥︎

Seen and heard this week

On Friday I chose Bring It On (2000) to keep me company while I was at home doing some design work. It had been a while, but I could still recite the entire opening sequence2 and despite many moments that don’t hold up a quarter century later, the rest was just as nostalgic as I remembered. Hell yeah to earnestly embracing something that you were initially snobbish toward. Hell yeah to originality even when it’s hard, even when pleading ignorance of plagiarism would be easier and demand less of you. And HELL yeah to a final competition montage.

Last night some friends and I watched Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (2009), but I use the word “watched” very loosely here. My eyes and ears took it in (I think?) and yet nothing about the plot or the acting choices made any logical sense. There are horrible accents, so much talk about “slums,” an unexpected and very jarring “birth” scene, a sExY LaDy dEteCtiVe, some unexplained illness, and a fully unnecessary shoot-out in a nightclub. Also Chris Kline is there, squinting a lot and being the worst Interpol agent I’ve ever seen depicted onscreen. We love a bad movie in this family, but wow, this one was a doozy—the longest ninety minutes and most thorough live roast I’ve experienced in quite a while.

In music news: Metric released another single, “Time is a Bomb,” from their upcoming album, Romanticize the Dive! I pretty much love everything Emily Haines does, so I’m probably biased, but I think it’s great.

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I am always up, and I am always down
Any time I hear your voice I fall in love with the sound

Metric is so good at driving beats, at dancey hooks, at building energy and seamlessly switching between sections of a song. One of my favorite parts of this one comes at the end, when everything drops out and it’s just Emily is singing over the piano, yeah yeahhh, airy and pure. It’s been stuck in my head for the last several days and I’m extremely okay with that.

Anticipation station

If you’ve been here a while, you might remember me being very into a Francis of Delirium album called Lighthouse a year or two ago.

Well I am overjoyed to tell you that the band has just announced a NEW ALBUM coming at the end of May!! It’s called Run, Run Pure Beauty, and a new single, “It’s a Beautiful Life” is out now (don’t be surprised if/when I talk about it more next week). Run, Run will also include the song “Little Black Dress” from last September, which I wrote about here:

Speaking of beloved creators announcing upcoming work, WE’RE GETTING A NEW BECKY CHAMBERS NOVEL IN OCTOBER! This is not a drill. It’s called As You Wake, Break the Shell and you can preorder the ebook here. I’ve read and loved everything she has published thus far, so to say I am excited for this is an understatement.

Haiku round-up

This poetic form, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern, originated in Japan and traditionally includes thematic reference to the seasons. Mine vary in topic, but I’ve been writing one each day since the beginning of 2024 as an exercise in structured creativity. Here are this week’s poems:

Monday, March 2

Racing the sunset
but words won’t come fast enough
I can’t halt this night

Tuesday, March 3

Voices raised over
the sizzling of meat in oil:
a new family

Wednesday, March 4

Sharp call in the dark
as I read by twinklelight
clear, resounding hoots

Thursday, March 5

Your absence looming,
I speak worries through my feet,
leave them on the trail

Friday, March 6

Awaken smiling
dust off your independence
and sit down to work

Saturday, March 7

Overnight, this change
pink velvet petals open
to greet the season

Sunday, March 8

Soft couch, hot pizza
A gathering of like minds
to laugh and talk shit

Until next time

It’s 7:30pm and I’m on the front porch doing a last read-through before I send this letter off into the evening. The sun has set but the sky is not yet dark. Birds are chirping and kids are playing somewhere nearby—I can hear their happy squeals and shouts over the hum of traffic. As much as I love sunshine in the mornings, being a person who opens a coffee shop a few days per week, this extra evening light isn’t so bad either. Welcome, early spring.

See you next Monday, and until then, you gotta stay doinking, man.3

♥︎ Emily

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This was my first time seeing the ocean in over a year and it was so nice to be back. Highly recommend renting a beach house in the off-season—it’s super affordable, the shore is practically empty, and the views are simply to die for. The weather was nice enough for us to walk down to the pier and back, but also chilly enough to justify lots of indoor relaxation time. Talk about a win/win.

Read this week

On Saturday afternoon we blocked out a couple of hours to gorge on charcuterie and discuss our most recent pick, The Catch by Yrsa Daley-Ward. I suggested this one because it was the inaugural book published under the Well-Read Black Girl x Liveright collaboration and I’d read and enjoyed some of Daley-Ward’s previous poetic work. The premise of her debut novel is absolutely killer. When their mother drowns in the Thames, infant twins Clara and Dempsey are separated and sent to live with different families. They see each other periodically as they grow up but are mostly estranged, Clara becoming a successful author and public speaker with an alcohol problem, Dempsey turning into somewhat of a recluse obsessed with her own wellness. One day as she’s leaving a department store, Clara spots a woman she’s convinced is her and Dempsey’s late mother—though by all appearances she’s the same age as the twins.

I was captivated from the jump. Who is this mystery woman—a stranger? a con artist? the mother Clara thinks she is? a time traveler? a metaphor? a delusion? Books that allow for, or even encourage, individual readers’ own interpretations are some of my favorites. An unreliable narrator? Hell yeah. Three or more of them? HELL yeah. There’s so much to dig into and break apart here, so much fruitful book club discussion material.

Ultimately what kept The Catch from being a slam dunk, what frustrated my friends and me the most, was the conclusion. The pace is pretty consistent for the first three quarters of the book, the tension and weirdness building at a steady clip, but the last bit goes suddenly and unexpectedly off the rails and from that point nothing makes sense, even within the structure of this unsettled and dreamlike world. There’s even a list at the end that spells out all the different ways one might interpret what happened, and… I don’t want that? Let me revel in the ambiguity and talk through it with other readers and tease out my own understanding! Having enjoyed the rest of the reading experience, I was extra disappointed at the way it wrapped up. That said, if you’ve read this one, please hit me with your reactions and theories!

Leave a comment

Another book club I’ve been participating in through the local art museum met this week to discuss The Vegetarian by Han Kang, a short novel that has been on my to-read list for years. I was so thankful for the push to finally pick it up. This one follows a young South Korean woman, Yeong-hye, who has a particularly violent dream and as a result decides to stop eating meat. Her husband and family do not take the news well, reacting with confusion, disgust, and anger, and their attempts to make her change her mind get more and more extreme as time goes on. Kang writes in a very spare and straightforward style, the book clocking in at less than 200 pages, and yet she’s unpacking some intense and weighty topics through Yeong-hye’s story: societal expectations, misogyny, patriarchy, violence, greed, sexism, bodily autonomy, capitalism, sexual assault, and more. It’s ripe for conversation and will likely also make a rewarding future re-read.

If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I earn a small percentage commission. This is an easy way to support my work at no additional cost, and I appreciate it very much—thank you! ♥︎

Seen and heard this week

Oh hey, have you heard of Heated Rivalry (2025)?? My book club put the first episode on before dinner on Saturday, and then oops, didn’t stop until we finished the entire season. I think I’m probably the last person alive to watch this show, the mega-popular screen adaptation of Rachel Reid’s mega-popular gay hockey romance books. I had planned to get around to it eventually and wasn’t avoiding it on purpose, but maybe the overwhelming hype made me subconsciously resistant? Whatever the case, thank goodness for friends who sit us down and force-feed us beautiful experiences. We laughed, we blushed, we wiped away tears. I will be rewatching as soon as possible.

As Jordan and I have been reading through This Year, John Darnielle’s new book of annotated Mountain Goats lyrics, I’ve been exposed to a lot of songs from the band’s formative years that I didn’t previously know very well.1 One of those, “Going to Scotland,” from the Nothing for Juice compilation, has since become a bit of a favorite/fixation,2 and I think this is why:

• It opens with a barn owl trapped in the rafters

• The vocal harmonies between John and his then-bandmate Rachel are simple and perfect

• There is an actual chorus that repeats a few times, a rarity in the early catalog

• The chord progression is predictable yet deeply satisfying, especially on the line “but that was the only thing we knew” at the end of the refrain

• It’s sensual?? “I took your hips in my hands and I drew you down to the newfound rich brown deep wet ground, had a vision of you burning on my mind.” JOHN, okay!

• The tight two-minute duration is long enough to hook me in but short enough to leave me wanting more, so I’ll put it on once and twenty minutes later realize that I’ve looped it ten times

Haiku round-up

This poetic form, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern, originated in Japan and traditionally includes thematic reference to the seasons. Mine vary in topic, but I’ve been writing one each day since the beginning of 2024 as an exercise in structured creativity. Here are this week’s poems:

Monday, February 23

Attempt to open
an infinite nesting doll,
never reach the end

Tuesday, February 24

A thud and away,
prey limp in your quiet claws,
awe left in your wake

Wednesday, February 25

Wind roars in earbuds
as, head down, I pick up speed
racing toward an end

Thursday, February 26

Abandon all hope
of a slow, relaxing start
They’re storming the gates

Friday, February 27

Let’s hear it for the
unexpected roadside fields
of purple flowers

Saturday, February 28

Palette of pastels
fading with the setting sun
This evening is art

Sunday, March 1

Shorebirds gather close,
bobbing gently on the sea
as they greet the dawn

Until next time

One of the things I love about traveling, aside from the experience itself, is the way it briefly interrupts my routine, shakes me out of the rut I might’ve unintentionally fallen into, and reminds me that I have free will. While I do crave a certain level of predictability in my day-to-day, that can also become a trap—and suddenly life is just work, dinner, the same activities and habits, the same TV show, sleep, repeat. But going to the beach for the past few days felt like visiting a different world, one that’s a mere four-hour drive away. If I can fit that into my schedule, why can’t I regularly manage some smaller adventures too? What’s stopping me from going thrifting on an afternoon after a barista shift? Or taking myself to a favorite coffee shop on one of my mornings off? Or reading and writing at the library instead of on my couch, for a change of scenery? Truly nothing, beyond my own inertia.

So I guess what I’m saying is: here’s to remembering to break free of the established patterns from time to time. I think it would do all of us some good.

See you next Monday, and until then, I like the way you do that right thurr!

♥︎ Emily

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Read this week

If you know the name Tayari Jones, I’m betting it’s because of her breakout novel An American Marriage, which released in 2018 and was chosen for Oprah’s book club. That was my first introduction, too, thanks to my local bookstore’s signed first edition club. After being deliciously ripped apart by Celestial and Roy’s story, a heartbreaking look at what happens when a Black man is wrongfully convicted of a crime and subsequently imprisoned for years, I went back and read Silver Sparrow, which centers on two half-sisters from the same father, one “legitimate” and one kept secret. I don’t know if I’ve ever encountered a writer as masterful as Jones at handling nuance and complexity. She puts her readers right into her characters’ heads, making us feel like we know them intimately, like their motivations are our own—which makes conflict and misfortune extra heartbreaking in the end because we can see and empathize with all sides. In her newest book, Kin,1 she has pulled off the same impressive trick, this time with two orphaned “cradle friends,” Annie and Niecy, who met as babies and bonded over their shared lack of a mother, quickly coming to rely on each other as family.

Though their lives diverge when Annie unexpectedly escapes their small Louisiana town for new adventures in Memphis, their bond remains strong through letters, occasional visits, and the kind of loving support that one can just feel in the air, radiating across miles. Together, apart, they weather disappointments, fall in love, face new experiences in school or at their jobs, navigate relationships and breakups, contemplate marriage and pregnancy, and forever long for the mamas they’ve never had and always needed.

The plot is important, but Jones’ characterization of these two women is what truly shines in this book; what happens to them provides the canvas, and they are the paint. What we’re left with at the end is a years-long portrait of two overlapping lives, full of heartbreak but also a glorious testament to the beauty of deep and lasting friendship.

How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder by Nina McConigley is another examination of a close relationship between girls, in this case biological sisters Georgie and Agatha Krishna. They live in rural Wyoming during the late 1980s, where their Indian family is singular amidst a majority white population and thus has to deal with invasive questions and microaggressions on a regular basis. When some of their relatives come over from India and temporarily move in with them, the girls face a new danger in the form of a sexually abusive uncle—and like Earl in the classic Chicks song, Vinny Uncle has to die. As you might guess from this setup, the content of Georgie’s story goes to some pretty dark places.

Killing my uncle was like screaming. And we had to scream. At the end of the day, we knew that no acknowledgment, no apology, no rewriting of our history could ever change how we felt. We didn’t want a sorry. We wanted it to stop. (137)

But for the most part, the tone of the writing is on the lighter side, with fourth-wall-breaking chapters addressed to “you” (the reader) and teen magazine style quizzes interspersed among the chronological narrative. I wasn’t always clear on what Nina McConigley was trying to accomplish with certain elements of this novel, but on the whole I enjoyed the reading experience2 and had a good time discussing it in Gretagram book club. I would recommend it especially to folks who enjoyed My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite.

Finally, I finished a memoir yesterday that will be releasing tomorrow3 alongside Kin, which I was drawn to because it’s about the author’s experience hiking the Camino in Spain.4 Everything Changes Everything by Lauren Kessler starts out on the path before drifting back in time to explain how Kessler ended up there—her husband and daughter have both died, and in their absence she is desperate for a challenge that will tire her body and quiet her mind.

There is a heft to grief […] that cannot be explained or therapized (or written) away. It must be borne. Like the damned backpack.

Several narratives emerge, one following her present-day progress as a pilgrim headed for Santiago de Compostela, the others in her memory, tracing the arcs of her husband’s illness and her daughter’s addiction. All of it is filled with difficulty and doubt and heartbreak.5 But I couldn’t put this book down. The way she describes the physical and mental struggles of so much walking, but the moments of trail magic too, put me right there with her. Her process of working through guilt and grief, of coming to terms with the losses she and her family suffered, is immediate and tangible and relatable.

This, also, is a lesson of the Camino that translates directly to life: that occasionally and gloriously, there are true aha moments, but mostly there is the long slog toward making sense of who you are.

If partner illness and death, addiction, abusive relationships, or child death are dealbreakers for you, absolutely skip it, but if you’re in a place where you can read about these difficult subjects, knowing that there is healing and hope on the other side, I highly recommend this memoir.

If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I earn a small percentage commission. This is an easy way to support my work at no additional cost, and I appreciate it very much—thank you! ♥︎

Watched this week

About six months ago, we somewhat impulsively launched into a rewatch of the original Dexter in its entirety, which we finally finished a few weeks ago. Parts of it definitely didn’t hold up,6 but, and I think this is a direct quote of what I said to some friends about it, “murder-wise, it still hits.” I remembered the general arc of the series but had forgotten so many details about the individual seasons that I got to feel shocked and scared all over again. Do recommend having a terrible memory of particulars for this exact reason—what a lovely gift to yourself, to revisit an old favorite piece of media and experience it as if for the first time!

All that to say: when we finished the first eight seasons, obviously the move was to then explore the rest of the franchise, which now includes three separate spin-offs.

First up, Dexter: New Blood (2021). This mini series picks up about ten years after the events of the original Dexter finale, and finds Dexter living in Iron Lake, NY and going by the name Jim Lindsay. He hasn’t killed in a decade and he’s living a simple life—working at a hunting supply store, maintaining his cabin in the woods, dating the local police chief. He’s known and loved in his community. And then, someone shows up in town whose presence sets off a whole chain of increasingly troubling events, quickly turning Dexter’s quiet life into a terrifying mess. There are some plot holes and inconsistencies with the original show that annoy me a little if I think about them too hard,7 but generally I like what New Blood is doing and I appreciated its surprising yet deeply correct ending.8

Also! During the credits of one of the early New Blood episodes, I went “WAIT, is that Michael C. Hall singing?” and reader, yes, it was. I’d come across this information before, but had since forgotten—my dude is in a band called Princess Goes (formerly Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum), and the song was “Ketamine.” This realization cued up a lengthy Wikipedia rabbit hole about Hall’s life so far, which has been surprisingly eclectic and interesting. If you have ten minutes to kill, there are worse ways you could spend them.

Haiku round-up

Monday, February 16

Plainly written down,
a list of tasks to complete
Through each one, a line

Tuesday, February 17

By your bravery,
a particular panic
disappears for good

Wednesday, February 18

Just like I taught you:
switch off the safety, breathe out
and aim for the heart

Thursday, February 19

It’s rarer these days
a clear expanse of evening
to fill as we please

Friday, February 20

While I was away
snowed in, sick, or just too tired
did the trail miss me?

Saturday, February 21

Warm incandescence
and overlapping chatter
Spontaneity 

Sunday, February 22

Ambition aside,
one can only do so much
in a stretch of time

And another thing

• Right after Kin reminded me how much I love stories about friendships, I came across this Lit Hub article with eight book recommendations on that very topic! I’m especially interested in So Old, So Young by Grant Ginder and list curator Lillian Li’s new novel, Bad Asians.

• The National Book Critics Circle Awards short lists are out, and I was surprised and delighted to realize that I’ve read four of the five fiction nominees.

Until next time

This weekend a beloved local mediterranean restaurant, which closed back in 2020 after being a Winston-Salem staple since 2009, did a two-night-only pop-up event and I was lucky enough make it before the falafel ran out. The evening I went, the line to order stretched outside the building, doubled back on itself in the parking lot, and extended down the street a bit. While my friends and I waited, we saw so many familiar faces—a few favorite regulars from my coffee shop, folks who have rung me up at the used bookstore countless times, former coworkers, trivia teammates, and OG townies who just always show up to support our little community’s artistic and culinary endeavors. The food was great, obviously, even more so after the years we’ve gone without, but what really struck me was the shared excitement radiating from the crowd. Being there felt a little bit electric.9 I’m so deeply thankful for moments like this with people like these.

See you next Monday, and until then, I wish you the happiness of an otter scootin’ around in the snow.

♥︎ Emily

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9

Bonus points if you read this to the tune/rhythm of “A Little Bit Alexis.”

That is to say, I’ve spent the week immersed in the world of Wuthering Heights and I’m certainly not sad about it. Accidentally gothic-themed newsletter, commence!

Read this week

Time is a circle, and books find their way to you when the moment is right. Wuthering Heights is a classic that I somehow missed; it wasn’t ever assigned to me in school and I never found a particular reason to pick it up afterward. When I saw the 2022 film Emily, though, a story of Emily Brontë based equally in history and imagination, I finally felt the urge to experience this famous author’s sole published work, and I chose the Modern Library Torchbearers edition because (1) introduction by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and (2) LOOK AT THAT COVER. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, even with books I’m legitimately eager to read, it sat waiting on my shelf for a full four years—until this week, when Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” “adaptation” (a word choice I will address in more detail below) released in cinemas to great discussion and debate. As my friend Anna and I were planning to see the film on Galentine’s Day,1 I figured it was finally, no seriously, finally time to read the book.

Above all, I would call Wuthering Heights a story of deep hurt and longing, of the insurmountable walls put up by societal othering and the damage they can cause over the span of decades. There’s love at its core, but there’s also abuse of many sorts, of both substances and people, and heartbreak in place of happy ever after. I’ll confess to having a bit of trouble keeping things straight in my head at first, as there are multiple characters with the same (or similar) names, characters referred to by several different names, and frequent flashbacks and experiences reported secondhand. But now that I understand the general scope of the narrative, I think a future re-read would be much easier to follow along with and sink into. Despite the gloomy complexity of it all, there are lots of gorgeous descriptions and a masterful use of prose, and I can see why this is a beloved classic. I’m so glad it came to me at long last.

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Watched this week

So that word adaptation. I think it deserves some measure of fidelity, no? Some degree of respect for and accuracy regarding the source material? If yes, “Wuthering Heights” (2026) plainly, simply, isn’t one, and I think it does itself a disservice by pretending to be. I’m sure you’ve seen all of the takes floating around the internet, the backlash against casting a white actor to play Heathcliff, who is explicitly described as dark-skinned, the blatant disregard for certain plot points, and the invention of others that just aren’t there in the book. All of that—valid, completely. If you’re going into this film expecting to see Emily Brontë’s novel played out on the big screen, you’re setting yourself up for major disappointment and possibly some anger.

But!

If you remove the idea of “adaptation” from your mind and replace it with something like “reinterpretation,” or “reimagining,” or even “loosey-goosey fangirl homage,”2 you might quite enjoy it. I did. The visuals are dark and stunning, the costumes (period inaccurate but) gorgeous and bold. Everything is crafted to the HEIGHT OF DRAMA—the gazes are long and intense, the music is sharp and shrieking and string-heavy, the sex is super frequent and erotic without being explicit (which felt masterful to me), and somehow it is always raining. And oh, the longing. THE LONGING. It will not stop.

The headline of this Vulture piece, which I bookmarked but haven’t yet read, got it right, I think: “Finally, a Smooth-Brained Wuthering Heights.” It fails horribly as an adaptation, but if you and your best gal just want to go watch toxic hotties be messily sexy at each other for a couple of hours, this is your movie. I loved seeing it in a full theater, hearing everyone’s “oooo”s and gasps and laughter. Get ready for Jacob Elordi’s muscular torso, Margot Robbie’s heaving bosom, lots of tongues, and some dog-collar kink, too!

Of course, reading the classic novel and seeing Fennell’s take made me want to revisit Emily (2022), the film that sparked my renewed interest in the first place several years ago. It shares some emotional DNA with these other two works: it’s dark, wild, a bit out of control at times, full of bittersweet yearning. Writer and director Frances O’Connor uses factual pieces of Emily Brontë’s biography and family history as a base, and yes, imagines and embellishes quite a bit as well, especially concerning the unlikely relationship with curate William Weightman that the film portrays. But unlike the new “Wuthering Heights,” her work retains some nuance and doesn’t come across quite as one-note. She’s more upfront with her creative liberties, which stay a little more within the realm of reasonable speculation—this most likely isn’t what actually happened, but what if Brontë’s novel were based on the emotional gravity of a relationship the author herself experienced? The title, Emily,3 reminds us that we’re straying from strict historical truth, and yet, it’s fun to contemplate and fantasize.

As a companion piece, I greatly enjoyed this Smithsonian article, full of letters and drawings and other historical artifacts, that helpfully breaks down what is known about the Brontë family and what the film has embellished or made up.

Haiku round-up

Monday, February 9

Mysterious shape,
a shadow behind the clouds
Nope, I shan’t stay here

Tuesday, February 10

With each hole mended,
the purpose I’ve been seeking
appears, strand by strand

Wednesday, February 11

By soft candles’ glow
we gather to soak up your
infectious gladness

Thursday, February 12

This room lights up with
an enthusiast’s broad grin
Soon we’re smiling too

Friday, February 13

A moment to pause
and savor the marriage of
espresso and milk

Saturday, February 14

Our new friends flit, fly,
delivering delight but
never staying long

Sunday, February 15

A day like mourning—
The sky is clothed in dull grey
its tears do not cease

Until next time

As I left home for an author event at the local bookstore on Thursday evening the hints of pink and orange in the darkening sky made me reach for my camera, and it hit me just how long it’d been since I noticed a sunset—with all the snow, ice, and rain we’ve had over the past month, I couldn’t remember the last one I’d photographed like this. Unbeknownst to me, grey skies had become the accepted new normal as I, the oblivious frog, sat blithely awaiting death in the metaphorical pot of slowly-heating water. Well, no more. Welcome back, colorful displays. I hope you visit again soon. I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out.

See you next Monday, and until then, you look so freakin’ cute.4

♥︎ Emily

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1

Only the best day of the year.

Read this week

While I’m aware of fetish as a concept, I don’t have any personal experience in that realm and I know very little about it—so I was completely intrigued by Anastasiia Fedorova’s nonfictional dive into “the worlds of fetish, kink, and deviant desire,” Second Skin.1 In chapters focusing on specific topics like leather, latex, feet, and the gimp, Fedorova thoroughly examines desire: where it comes from, why it might be stimulated by certain objects and materials, and how we as humans express it. She draws from personal experience as well as interviews, history, art, and existing scholarship, and writes in an informative yet highly welcoming tone. I especially appreciated her holistic approach to sexual and commodity fetish and her nuanced look at the complex overlap between the two types.

It’s easy to see how a sought-after model which commands a six-figure price tag signifies status, wealth and power. But there is more to it than status and aspiration: our ideas of gender, pleasure, technology, change, conformity, nostalgia and connection are all filtered through the car. Our sexuality, in some sense, is linked to something we often do not even perceive as straightforwardly sexual. (163)

Second Skin turned out to be one of my favorite types of reading experiences, a book that I didn’t realize I’d be interested in but that, in the end, had me googling works of art and objects and people, going down fun fact rabbit holes, widely expanding my horizons and greatly enjoying myself in the process.

We Love You, Charlie Freeman by Kaitlyn Greenidge was this month’s pick from my backlist unread shelf. It originally released in 2016, and according to the used bookstore receipt that I found tucked within its pages, I bought my copy in November 2021.2 Greenidge tells the story of the Freemans, a Black family who are chosen by a primate research facility, the Toneybee Institute, to move in with a chimpanzee named Charlie and teach him to communicate using sign language. Things start unraveling pretty quickly—Charlie develops a potentially unhealthy attachment to Laurel, the mom of the family, while sisters Charlotte and Callie have polar opposite reactions to his new role as their brother. When details about the institute’s origin and past transgressions come to light, the situation reaches a breaking point, echoes of which will be felt throughout the family for years to come. This story went notably darker than I was expecting based on the premise, but I really appreciated it—a strong debut to be sure. Greenidge’s newer novel, Libertie, is definitely on my to-read list now as well.

Side note: It’s rare that a book introduces me to a word I was completely unfamiliar with, and this one taught me three.

• Fulgurate (v.) - to flash or emit flashes of light; to sparkle

• Pabulum (n.) - intellectual sustenance or food for thought

• Mondegreen (n.) - a misinterpretation of a phrase or lyric due to homophony, which often creates a new meaning

There is a specific word for the mishearing of lyrics! I love knowing this!

If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I earn a small percentage commission. This is an easy way to support my work at no additional cost, and I appreciate it very much—thank you! ♥︎

Recent listening

Any fellow fans of The Format in the house? Remember them? Or maybe you were more familiar with Nate Ruess’s later project, fun., whose singles “Some Nights” and “We Are Young” were annoyingly inescapable circa 2013? I was introduced to The Format in college when they opened for Guster at a show on our campus, and after that I remember playing the heck out of Interventions + Lullabies (2003). All that to say: they’re back, bay-bee!

The new album is called Boycott Heaven (2026), and it manages simultaneously to feel recognizable and familiar to existing fans of the band and to sound fresh, grown-up, and modern. Thematically, there’s a lot of anger and disillusionment here, but also a certain confidence in the choice to break from past allegiances and forge ahead on one’s own. The first track, “No Gold at the Top,” starts slow before building to a cathartic peak where Ruess shout-sings “there’s no gold at the top, just vultures waiting for you to die,” a driving kick drum beat carrying us through to the end as he reassures that “I’m alright, just had another bad night, but I’m alright.” It’s cathartic, the kind of song that just begs to be yelled along to in the car, eyes shining, alone.

The album wrestles with genocide and complicity in “Leave it Alone (Till the Morning),” takes a catchy and upbeat approach to mental health struggles in “Depressed,” and fires shots at toxic organized religion in “Boycott Heaven.” I so deeply appreciate an album that goes hard musically and also resonates lyrically, and whew, this is one.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Lost my motivation, wasn't much for chasing the cross
Boycott heaven 'cause there's gotta be somewhere better, far from the sun
Holy roller, please, the damage to your knees is something that cannot be undone
So boycott Heaven 'cause they never, ever gave a fuck about us

If you’ve been here awhile, you’ve already heard me shouting about I’m With Her—I included their album Wild and Clear and Blue (2025) in two consecutive newsletters when it came out:

Seeing them live at an amphitheater in Cary with my parents this past summer was a highlight of my year.

So you can understand how unwell I was this week when they announced their upcoming live album from that tour and released a cover of Paul Simon’s “The Obvious Child” as a first single.

Friends, the way these three take a famously vocally spare, percussion-focused song and make it sound like it was written for banjo, fiddle, guitar, and three richly-layered voices is just astounding. Their instrumental skills are, as always, perfection, and their harmonies so intentional, so controlled, so tight that they vibrate in the air. You can see that Colbert performance here, but I prefer this one from their Seattle tour stop since it really showcases their talent in the live concert setting. They really do sound this good, no studio or editing required.

Sorry in advance for my inevitable insufferability when the whole album drops in April (HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME). But also, not sorry. You’re welcome.

Haiku round-up

Monday, February 2

Our journey stretches
over multiple decades—
may it continue

Tuesday, February 3

Liquid, a life source
hydrating necessity
Solid, a weapon

Wednesday, February 4

Another mother
I alone remain empty
breathing through the doubt

Thursday, February 5

We are the butter,
from our special shelf on high
observing, judging

Friday, February 6

Who would say no to
the spontaneous request
for a wee tipple?

Saturday, February 7

Lyrics break through fog
where they meet me in a dream,
melody looping

Sunday, February 8

My bath is too cold
so you ask, kettle or pot
and set to boiling

And another thing

• My bestie John Darnielle was interviewed for Flaunt Magazine and it’s very worth a read even if you’re not a Mountain Goats fan. I loved what he had to say about freedom,3 running, aging,4 the current ICE raids,5 and resistance, among other things.

• I’ve never been one for a mass market—I’m more of a trade paperback girlie myself—but this obituary of sorts really made me feel something about the format’s discontinuation.

• Football doesn’t appeal to me at all, but I will show up to your watch party for a tasty dip! A spinach and artichoke yogurt-based one caught my eye this week.

• This profile of Patricia Lockwood has been open in a tab for months waiting for me to get to it, and I’m so happy I finally did. What a person. What a mind. It’s long, but you won’t be sad you invested the time.

• The Millions book previews never disappoint, and the winter 2026 edition is no exception—Pedro the Vast (Simón Lopez Trujillo, trans. Robin Myers), The Silent Period (Francesca Manfredi, trans. Ekin Oklap), The Natural Way of Things (Charlotte Wood), and The Life You Want (Adam Phillips) were all brand new to me and immediately went on my to-read list.

• Electric Lit’s roundup of books by women of color to read in 2026 also added a few to my radar: The Hour of the Wolf (Fatima Bhutto), Missing Sam (Thrity Umrigar), With the Heart of a Ghost (Lim Sunwoo), and Daughter of Mother-of-Pearl (Mandy-Suzanne Wong).6

Until next time

Jordan and I went with a friend to see Bad Bad Hats in concert on Thursday and the venue had a small balcony where we were able to snag a spot with a couple of stools. Tall people, you will not understand this, so feel free to skip ahead. But my short homies, you get it—my 5’2” self got to sit down for most of the show and I had an unobstructed view the entire time. What a rarity, what a treat. I wish us all an abundance of such little wins this week.

See you next Monday, and until then, bang, bang, bang, on the door, baby!7

♥︎ Emily

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Read this week

The premise of Emily Habeck’s novel Shark Heart is what initially drew me to it, along with glowing reviews from Bria Grant of Reading Glasses podcast and a few other trusted reader friends. What if, Habeck wonders, human beings occasionally transformed into animals? How would this affect their lives, their careers, their families, their marriages? To be clear, these transformations aren’t the stuff of Animorphs fantasy, the ability to change one’s shape when convenient or necessary and then quickly resume life as a human. They are involuntary and permanent, and once complete, they require the subject to be put down or released into the wild. Imagine, then, how jarring and sad it must be when main character Lewis, having discovered a softening and flattening of his nose, is diagnosed with one of the rarest and most dangerous of these, the carcharodon carcharias mutation—over a period of nine months, he will become a great white shark. Shark Heart follows his period of transition, his release, and the aftermath stretching over a span of years.

Through the music’s swells, they swayed, and they knew, and they held each other, and they knew, and they melted, and they knew, and they knew, and they knew: Everything would be different and difficult soon.

The chapters are extremely short, which gives the book a strong sense of momentum and propulsion. Though it is 400+ pages long, I probably could have sped through it in an afternoon if I’d had the hours to devote all at once. Habeck’s writing is lyrical and poignant—the one tiny qualm I had toward the end was the prose’s verging into overly sappy territory, the story beginning to feel emotionally manipulative. But on the whole I appreciate the thought experiment at play here and the gravity with which it is treated; Shark Heart is definitely unlike anything I’ve read before.

Sophie Gilbert had me in my feelings this week as well, with her collection of nonfiction essays, Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves. These pieces delve into cultural trends of the late 1990s and early 2000s, cataloguing developments and changes in areas like fashion, the internet, porn, and social media, and unpacking their effects on society’s perception and treatment of women and girls. As a millennial woman myself, I came of age during the period of time Gilbert is examining and lived through this particular history—it felt simultaneously horrifying and comforting to revisit it, reframing my understanding of certain events with the context I didn’t have as a kid.

“A lot of what the ‘90s was about was this huge question of ‘How do we live as women within some kind of idea of the feminine but not have it wreck us?’” is how the music critic Ann Powers once characterized the era. (20)

Did you know that YouTube was invented after one of its creators was searching for a video of Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” at the 2004 Super Bowl and couldn’t easily find one? Or that Google Images came about in direct response to the massive amount of searches for the green Versace dress that Jennifer Lopez wore to the Grammys in 2000? There are so many facts in this book that disgusted me in retrospect, that made me ache for the young girl I was at that time. I’m shocked that I’ve emerged into middle age as intact as I have, and deeply sad for the millions of women and AFAB folks, celebrities and regular-degulars alike, who can’t say the same.

I’ve always wondered why people diminish girlhood as somehow cosseted or twee, when the reality of coming-of-age as a young woman is so raw, filled with emotional violence and literal blood. (8)

This is not an easy read, especially if you lived this history, but it’s worthwhile for sure. I’d recommend it both to members of this generation and demographic, and to others who want to better understand the societal forces that shaped (and continue to shape) girls who came of age at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I earn a small percentage commission. This is an easy way to support my work at no additional cost, and I appreciate it very much—thank you! ♥︎

Snow!!

A second winter storm rolled through this weekend, and it was everything that the one last weekend wished it could have been—somewhere between seven and nine inches of soft, glistening powder, no iced-over trees or power lines to be found. It snowed for maybe eighteen hours straight on Saturday and I felt like a little kid, tromping around in it and marveling at my good fortune. We met friends at our neighborhood pub, we wandered through the park, we returned home rosy-cheeked and tingly to thaw out and eat some soup. Here are some photographs of these past few days.

Haiku round-up

Monday, January 26

Up past my bedtime
self-aware yet defiant
these moments are mine

Tuesday, January 27

Walk to the corner
scarf pulled up over my face
I wait in the cold

Wednesday, January 28

The way that weather
brings neighbors outside to chat
while shoveling stairs

Thursday, January 29

Butter melted down,
aromatics simmering
From this grows a meal

Friday, January 30

Much-needed deep clean,
long-awaited reunion,
hot soup, deep laughter

Saturday, January 31

“Snow will continue
for the next several hours”
A wonderland, this

Sunday, February 1

The magical breeze
sweeps powder from rooftops, turns
air into glitter

Until next time

I was lucky enough to find my person when I was nineteen years old. On this day back in 2006, we went out to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in theaters, and when we got back to our college campus and he dropped me off at my house, Jordan asked “so are we like… dating? because I’d be cool with that.” I said yes, and the rest is history.

I’m so grateful for the past twenty years and I can’t wait for all the adventures to come. When you find something good in this life, my god, hang on tight and don’t let it go.

See you next Monday, and until then, pour one out for Catherine O’Hara.

♥︎ Emily

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Read this week

If there’s one thing I love, it’s a project—and this year I decided to task myself with reading at least one book off my “deep backlist” unread shelf per month. I’m talking about the ones that have been around for multiple years, some so long that they’ve just become part of the scenery, my eyes glossing over them when I scan the spines. Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures by Emma Straub was January’s selection. I’ve been on the Emma Straub train for quite a while now and have stayed current with her past few new releases,2 but this one, her debut novel, has been on my shelf since I found it at the used bookstore at the beginning of 2021.

Much of Straub’s fiction is contemporary in setting, but Laura Lamont is historical—it follows Elsa Emerson, the youngest of three sisters growing up in Door County, Wisconsin in the 1920s. Her parents own and operate the Cherry County Playhouse, so the family spends their time working on stage and behind the scenes, getting to know the out-of-town actors who reside on their property, living and breathing theater. I won’t give away what happens in the meantime, but ultimately, Elsa escapes to Los Angeles, changing her name to Laura Lamont and hoping to become a movie star, and what follows is a melancholy examination of fame, expectations, and the self-imposed pressure to succeed. There’s a lot of suffering here, and my heart broke repeatedly for Elsa’s relationship with her family, more and more strained with every passing year—but ultimately she finds some of the meaning and fulfillment she’s been seeking, and her story ends on a hopeful note. I really enjoyed this one and am pleased to be an Emma Straub completist now.

Along with chipping away at my older unread books, I’m trying to stay on top of the new ones coming in and read them while my excitement is fresh. So next I picked up something I bought at Firestorm on my way through Asheville a few weeks ago—Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi. There’s no easy way to describe this novel, because it feels like a richly-layered dream. The writing is super accessible and easy to understand, but the plot details go absolutely crazy—two newlyweds (kind of), Otto and Xavier, board a locomotive called The Lucky Day for a honeymoon ride, accompanied by their pet mongoose, Árpád XXX and uncertain of their actual destination. There are only a few other people on the train, all of whom are gradually revealed to be connected in unexpected ways, and everything is covered in a sheen of the surreal. In the end I was left wondering what the hell I’d just read, but in the most delicious way—I had a great time on the journey and will continue to read whatever Oyeyemi writes.

Finally, the kind folks at Farrar, Straus and Giroux sent over a copy of Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash last week,3 and when I saw the jacket copy comparing it to “if the Royal Tenenbaums were middle-class and likable,” I dove right in. It’s about the Flynns, a family of hot messes whose shit is all over the place—Catherine unhappy in her marriage to Bud and wanting to open things up so she can maybe sleep with their neighbor, Bud floundering at work and spending his nights in the family’s minivan in the garage, one daughter dating someone whose nickname is literally War Crimes Wes, another uncovering a conspiracy at their father’s company, and the third possibly planning something illegal in response to being kicked out of the church’s inner beauty pageant. And that’s only scratching the surface. The pace is quick, the writing is witty and wry, and despite disagreeing with practically every choice made by every character, I loved going along on their various misadventures and I deeply appreciated the way it all wrapped up in the end. It’s been a while since I’ve read something this smart and funny and easy to inhale—if you, too, are always chasing the childhood high of getting immediately swept up and lost in a story, this might be that book.

If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I earn a small percentage commission. This is an easy way to support my work at no additional cost, and I appreciate it very much—thank you! ♥︎

Watched this week

I know Barbie (2023) isn’t the Pinnacle Of Feminism that some folks hailed it to be when it came out, but can we agree that it’s still a fun hang? The colors, the costumes, the mother-daughter story arc, that moment on the bench when Margot Robbie tells the older lady she’s beautiful and the old lady answers “I know it,” the speech America Ferrera gives about the inherent contradictions of being a woman, KATE McKINNON AS WEIRD BARBIE? Honestly, I think I’m mostly just here for Kate McKinnon as weird Barbie. Always choose the Birkenstock. Always.

In my memory I saw 28 Days Later (2002) in theaters as a teenager, but after watching it with some friends this week I’m unsure. None of it felt familiar. But wow, what a time—and what a time capsule. If we ever fully descend into rage zombie hellscape status, please somebody just put me down right away. There’s no way I’m surviving all the madness baby Cillian Murphy and his crew have to go through in this film.

After Bridesmaids last week, it seems I’m on an accidental Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Chris O’Dowd, and Jon Hamm roll. Friends With Kids (2011) is about an experiment: what if, to avoid the strain that having children often puts on a traditional marriage or partnership, one instead had a baby with one’s platonic friend? That way, the child off with their other parent half the time, one would be free to then find one’s soulmate, the romance unsullied by the mess and chaos of parenthood! SIMPLE, RIGHT?? Who are we kidding, nothing is ever that tidy, and no mere friendship is going to survive the level of intimacy and thoughtfulness that coparenting requires without blossoming into something more, at least not in a movie like this one. Think friends-to-lovers trope with a few extra twists, and a classic tearful rom-com speech from Adam Scott at the end.

Haiku round-up

Monday, January 19

Steps, the percussion
nonsense lyrics populate
over treadmill drone

Tuesday, January 20

Nipping at my six
jagged sounds and puffs of air
I’m just out of reach

Wednesday, January 21

The tickle has bloomed
its spores dispersing through lungs
villainous, unseen

Thursday, January 22

Come into the light
your smooth surface glinting, new
Bumblebee restored

Friday, January 23

The wispy gloaming,
late light winking on water
No hint of what’s nigh

Saturday, January 24

Unsettled, itchy
I can’t speed up what’s coming
I simply must wait

Sunday, January 25

Across white expanse,
each tentative step makes a
satisfying crunch

Until next time

I’ve been plugging away at my mending pile, continuing to find a sense of calm and control in the slow process of repairing holes and tears. There’s absolutely a metaphor there, something about needing to feel useful, like I can point to what’s wrong and then fix it, like I’m not just preaching to the choir or yelling into the void or throwing up my hands in despair. It’s tangible and beautiful, and I really need that right now. I hope you have something that soothes you in a similar way amidst all the brokenness and horror we’re living through at this moment—and I’d love to hear about it if you’re willing to share.

See you next Monday, and until then, I’m wishing you this level of zen.

♥︎ Emily

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Read this week

Steppe by Oksana Vasyakina (trans. Elina Alter) is a beautiful new novel2 coming out from Catapult tomorrow. The main character is a queer literature student whose father, a long-haul trucker, walked out on her family a decade ago, and the story follows her as she rides along with him across the Russian plains (the steppe). Woven into the present-day narrative are flashbacks to her childhood, before her dad left, and leaps ahead to the future, after he has passed away from AIDS. The focus is largely interior, the narrator sorting through a lot of sadness and guilt as she works to understand herself and the family she came from, but in the background Vasyakina paints a rich portrait of Russia in the 1990s with all its patriarchal and violent political dynamics. There’s a healthy dose of bleakness here:

I felt shame and unbearable pity for all of us, that we had wound up here. There was no power that could reverse what was happening. There was no instrument to slice away a section of time and space and, wrapping them in a piece of paper, toss them out, the farther the better, someplace over the fence. (182-183)

But the writing is gorgeous and this book is very worth reading for the sentences alone.

Being on the road, as you know, isn’t just another span of time. The road has to be accepted and endured. It won’t tolerate anxiety or hurry. The road wants to become part of you, to be assimilated and absorbed without any stray thoughts of the place you’ve left behind or dreams of your destination. The road loves itself, and it turns you into itself, too. (126)

Time slowed. I had no desire to get up. I didn’t want to do anything that would interrupt our mute lingering. (29)

This is Vasyakina’s second novel to be translated into English, and though it easily stands alone, I hear that it’s something of a sequel to the first, Wound, which I am now also very curious to read.

The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis is my book club’s pick for this month and I can’t wait to talk about it with friends. Listen to the setup: the five Mansfield sisters live with their grandfather in the village of Little Nettlebed, and word has started to spread that, in the wake of their grandmother’s death, the girls have started transforming into dogs. What?? Yes! If The Virgin Suicides, Nightbitch, and Mary Toft; Or, the Rabbit Queen had a glorious threesome, the resulting lovechild would be this novel. It’s all about gossip, and femininity, and expectations, and freedom, and in my mind the rural setting looks like the countryside where Emma and Harriet take their walks in the 2020 Autumn de Wilde adaptation.

In addition to the girls and their grandfather, there’s Thomas, a young man in town for the season to help with the grandfather’s haymaking; two unmarried sisters who serve as maids in the grandfather’s house; a sober bartender named Temperance, and a nosy ferryman whose job is in jeopardy thanks to an extended drought.

“The truth is like a water creature,” he continued. “Too large for any single man to catch. He can take hold of one tentacle, or a silver tail, or a fin, but he’ll never catch the whole creature, not on his own.” (56%)

Though the story is anchored in a nebulous past era, the themes are still all too relevant. I could’ve lingered in this atmospheric world for a lot longer than the 240 pages we’re given.

If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I earn a small percentage commission. This is an easy way to support my work at no additional cost, and I appreciate it very much—thank you! ♥︎

Watched this week

After Cinderella last week, I decided to keep the Disney live action remake train rolling with Beauty and the Beast (2017). My main takeaways from this rewatch are as follows:

• The part where the beast asks Belle if she could ever be happy in his castle and she responds “can anybody be happy if they aren’t free?” hits particularly hard in the current context of ICE raids and Trump bullshit. It really is that simple—people just want, and deserve, to be free.

• Speaking of villains and evil behavior, we aren’t shouting “YOU WON’T GET AWAY WITH THIS” nearly often enough. Let’s bring that back.

• “Evermore,” one of the new songs written for this version, which the beast sings from atop his tower as Belle leaves to save her dad from Gaston, still slaps SO hard. As an alto myself, I love that the melody goes low where you think it’ll go high, that Dan Stevens doesn’t rely on flashy vocal embellishments or reaching outside of his range to convey the depth of emotion he’s feeling.

• As I stare down my approaching 40th birthday, lamenting the passage of time and occasionally worrying that my life has gotten stuck in a rut despite my simultaneous need for routine and safety, I’m feeling really targeted by the line “bittersweet and strange, finding you can change.” Bittersweet and strange, indeed. Exciting as well. Here’s to contentment, but here’s also to continuing to grow and learn as we age.

Bridesmaids (2011) is just a forever favorite, period. I was talking about it with a friend at work on Friday and realized it had been a while, so I watched it again when I got home from my shift. Turns out, Kristen Wiig remains the comedy queen of my life. I had forgotten just how many little lines and references from this movie have burrowed into the fabric of my daily existence.

Last night I got to introduce some friends to Save the Last Dance (2001), a classic from my youth.3 It is, let’s say, very of its time—hip-hop! single teen moms! drive-by shootings! going-out tops! interracial relationships! There’s not a ton of nuance to be found, but the soundtrack is amazing and it’s delightfully cringy to watch Julia Stiles embarrass herself as she, A Sheltered White Teen Ballerina, learns to loosen up and embrace a new style of dance.

Revisiting the world of high school during this time period also made me want to watch Center Stage (2000) and Bring it On (2000) immediately. Oh, the butterfly clips of it all!

Haiku round-up

Haiku is a poetic form that originated in Japan, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern. At the beginning of 2024, I started writing one every day, and while traditional examples include thematic reference to the seasons, mine tend to be a bit more all over the place. Here are this week’s efforts—enjoy!

Monday, January 12

Work finished, and time
remaining before the light
fades from gold to black

Tuesday, January 13

Arrival in pink—
insisting on attention,
silencing the blues

Wednesday, January 14

A tickle portends
the sickness we’ve been dodging
Time to batten down

Thursday, January 15

Some hurdles loom large
on the horizon, then shrink,
effortlessly cleared

Friday, January 164

The body revolts,
invents trouble where there’s none
Breathe and it will pass

Saturday, January 17

Legs cry out to run
while setting sun paints the sky
lilac and amber

Sunday, January 18

Absence is heavy
Not that I’ve been counting, but
two weeks is too long

And another thing

• I know I’ve mentioned it briefly in previous newsletters, but I’ve been really getting into visible mending lately! I bought this book for myself a few months ago, received this one as a Christmas gift from my in-laws, and this week finally sat down to play with this gadget that Jordan gave me. It feels good to give old things new life instead of tossing them out and replacing them, and I love having something to do with my hands while I’m watching TV or listening to a podcast.

• Speaking of fiber arts, I’ve just bookmarked this shawl as a potential next knitting project after seeing wearing one in her instagram stories and asking for more info about it. Look at the subtle striping! Look how squishy!

Until next time

It seems I never notice how long it’s been consecutively grey and overcast until the sun comes back—and then something in my body goes ohh, and my bones are instantly warmer and hope floods my chest and I feel like a plant in a Planet Earth time lapse. Walking into my bedroom after work on Friday I saw a parallelogram of light slanting across our duvet, and without conscious thought I lay down in it, closed my eyes, and just let my mind drift for twenty minutes or so. At some point Louise joined me, a tiny weighted blanket positioned perfectly across my hips. It was exactly right.

I wish for more sunshine this week for all of us, real or metaphorical. Light therapy lamps count, too. We will make it through this winter, fellow north hemispherians.

See you next Monday, and until then, I think we all need a Waffles in our life.

♥︎ Emily

P.S. If you especially enjoyed today’s newsletter, your support would mean so much to me, in whatever form it takes.

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And yet, we’re here. There are neighbors who need our help, and there are good things to live and fight for. I hope you are taking care of yourself however you need to. Here are some books and movies that have been getting me through:

Read this week

I fell in love with Emily Austin’s writing back in 2022 when I read her debut novel, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead. Since then she has published two more novels, both of which I devoured, and now her fourth, Is This a Cry for Help?, comes out tomorrow. Since I knew I would love it, I’ve been saving my early copy1 as a treat for the beginning of this year—and my god, did that turn out to be the right call. This one is about a 30-something lesbian librarian named Darcy who is newly back at work following a mental health crisis leave of absence. As she continues to process the unexpected death of an ex, the incident that sent her spiraling, she also faces the fresh hell of super vocal conservatives who object to certain library policies and want to remove LGBTQIA+ books from circulation,2 and she’s doing all of it alone—her wife’s sister has just given birth, so her wife is away helping with the new baby. On the surface, it’s a lot. But Austin’s tone is gentle and funny, and the amount of care and empathy she shows to these characters more than balance the heaviness of what they’re going through. This book, like her others, is a warm hug when everything feels like too much, and it’s exactly what I needed right now.

Speaking of hope in the face of dire circumstances, might I recommend a story about a ragtag crew of robots who start a noodle shop in the war-torn San Francisco of the future? Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz is a novella about about Staybehind, Cayenne, Sweetie, and Hands, all of whom power up to discover that while they’ve been offline, the ghost kitchen where they work has flooded. Finding no trace of the shop’s former human owners, they band together to repair the damage and get a new restaurant operation up and running. The story is action-packed and full of heart, all about acceptance and cooperation and persistence in the face of hate. If you like Becky Chambers, this will be right up your alley.3

Past Emily might have gone a little overboard at the end of 2025 requesting early copies of new titles, but so far none of them have been duds, so I guess I can’t be too mad at her. Discipline by Larissa Pham4 is another such upcoming release, set for January 20. It’s about a young woman, Christine, who is touring to support the novel she has just released, an imagined revenge tale based on her real-life relationship with a much older painting professor during her art student days. There isn’t a ton of plot, but the vibes are everything. We’re in Christine’s head as she travels and ponders, having thoughtful conversations with the people she meets along the way and musing about everything from art to nostalgia to the passage of time and all the different versions of the self that make up a life. The dreamlike stream-of-consciousness quality of the writing reminded me of Ayşegül Savaş, whose book Walking on the Ceiling I loved a few years ago and whose other work I’m eagerly looking forward to reading.

Firmly in an art mood after finishing the Pham novel, I decided to pick up Amie McNee’s We Need Your Art next. This is nonfiction, a motivational manifesto encouraging the reader, whatever their creative medium, to “stop messing around and make something,” and as a perpetually procrastinating lettering artist myself, I thought it might be just the kick in the pants I needed at the start of the year. I was right.

My favorite question to ask myself when I am avoiding my art is this: What am I running from? (71)

McNee strikes the perfect balance between conversational writing and scientifically-backed content, providing useful information about such topics as art’s effect on human thought processes and stress levels, the ebbs and flows of motivation, why we procrastinate, what perfectionism does to our brains in the long term, and how to rebuild trust in ourselves and our abilities by establishing consistent habits. As I type this, I’m noticing the urge to read back over my words and edit them as I go, and yet simultaneously remembering McNee’s advice to let yourself be imperfect, to complete the draft and edit later, to know when something is good enough. It is a struggle. She outlines a simple two-week reset toward the beginning of the book and I’m already making plans to start mine. If you work in a creative capacity or make any sort of art as a hobby, you will likely find some much-needed encouragement here.

If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I earn a small percentage commission. This is an easy way to support my work at no additional cost, and I appreciate it very much—thank you! ♥︎

Watched this week

Upgrading our DVD collection to Blu-ray has become a full-blown project for this year! And as I’m finding replacements at the used bookstore, I’m trying to watch through them before putting them on the shelf. It has been fun to revisit some older films this way and I’m looking forward to continuing the process.5

Your Sister’s Sister (2011) is about a cabin retreat that’s meant to allow Jack solitude and space to grieve his brother’s death, but the plot thickens when he arrives to find that the place isn’t empty—the friend who invited him to stay didn’t realize her sister would be there too, processing her own recent breakup. What follows is the best kind of romantic dramedy, full of misunderstandings, secrets, newly realized crushes, and big feelings. It’s hopeful and queer and reimagines what a family might look like.

Cinderella (2015) is a visual treat, plain and simple. The costumes, the setting, the Lily James and Cate Blanchett of it all. With the despair of winter and the horror of current events really weighing on me lately, it was so nice to escape for a little while to a magical place where kindness ultimately prevails.

I missed Flow (2024) when it played at our local indie theater, so I was delighted to find a Criterion Collection copy to bring home! It’s an animated story about a cat who bands together with a capybara, a lemur, a golden retriever, and a large mythical bird to survive a flood. There’s no dialogue, just music and sound effects, and I loved the art style and color palette. Aside from a few acutely stressful moments (so help me, kitten, if you drown!) that ultimately resolved, I found it meditative and hopeful.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) is back on the big screen at our aforementioned indie theater for a few showings this week, and we got to see it Saturday night! Along with The Royal Tenenbaums, this is one of the Wes Anderson films I know best and love most. Ralph Fiennes as M. Gustave is just a perfect character, the architecture and visuals are stunning, and there are too many good moments to name. If I could live inside this film, I would.

50/50 (2011) is about cancer, and friendship, and family, and hope. It features Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, and Anna Kendrick at the height of their early-2010’s rom-com powers, plus Anjelica Huston perfectly cast as main character Adam’s seemingly-overbearing-but-it’s-just-because-she’s-lonely-and-misunderstood mother. This is another solid bet if you need a reminder that all is not lost and there’s still good in the world.

Haiku round-up

Haiku is a poetic form that originated in Japan, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern. At the beginning of 2024, I started writing one every day, and while traditional examples include thematic reference to the seasons, mine tend to be a bit more all over the place. Here are this week’s efforts—enjoy!

Monday, January 5

What once was solid
now shattered, knocked out, caved in
You sweep up the shards

Tuesday, January 6

Temporary, this
tableau of winter wonder
Lovely while it lasts

Wednesday, January 7

Inhale and recall—
time exists for the taking
Stop rushing, be still

Thursday, January 8

An early release!
The cold afternoon beckons,
the day not yet spent

Friday, January 9

Make a ritual
of these words and this music
Secular scripture

Saturday, January 10

Gathered together
reacting in unison,
air charged with delight

Sunday, January 11

Stave off the scaries
with comfort food, a movie
No parents, no rules

Until next time

If everything feels scary right now, please know that you’re not alone. Read the news, but don’t forget to go outside, listen to music, eat your favorite food, soak in a hot bath, move your body, get enough rest. Take after Phoebe—have a nap with a friend, and keep your emotional support snake close by at all times.

See you next Monday, and until then, there’s nothing like the pure joy of a great song.

♥︎ Emily

P.S. If you especially enjoyed today’s newsletter, your support would mean the world to me, in whatever form it takes.

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There’s just something about the quiet and familiarity of one’s own space, the company of one’s cats, and the clean slate of a new year that can’t be beat. I hope your January is off to a calm and comfortable start, friends.

Read this week

Flashlight by Susan Choi was one of my most anticipated books of 2025 because of how much I appreciated Choi’s previous novel, Trust Exercise. I tried to avoid learning much about it, since I like going in cold and being surprised by plot details, but the little I knew—that it begins with a father and daughter walking on the beach and the father going missing—made it sound like a literary thriller akin to Happiness Falls by Angie Kim, which I very much enjoyed a few years ago.

In short, I was wrong. It was much more disjointed and wide-ranging, jumping from character to character over a span of years, from the present timeline to decades in the past and back again. A big part of the story concerns the relationship between the daughter, Louisa, and her mother, Anne, which is contentious and bleak. The whole book felt very cold to me, understandably so considering the period of Japanese and Korean history that it centers around, but it wasn’t what I was expecting or prepared for in the moment. It’s worth a read, just make sure to steel yourself for a long journey through a sprawling metaphorical forest of despair with not much redemption at the end.

Will There Ever Be Another You by Patricia Lockwood was also at the top of my 2025 priority list. I’m a huge fan of Lockwood’s and have read several of her other books—Priestdaddy is an all-time favorite memoir, and No One is Talking About This wrecked me in the best way a few years back. This newest one is technically a novel but definitely has autobiographical roots. It’s about Lockwood’s experience getting long COVID and losing her mind for an extended period while she was sick. It is dreamlike and strange, and peppered with some of the most beautifully rendered thoughts I’ve encountered in quite a while.

Maybe the soul was just that dearness nestled in the center of the body, like a chosen pebble in the palm of a hand. When you held someone it was that dearness you felt, that closeness. (6)

Let me emphasize, though: this is a weird book. I was able to follow it for the most part because I was already loosely familiar with details about Lockwood’s family and background from her earlier work. But without those grounding facts, it would’ve been much less approachable and significantly harder to parse. If you want to give this one a try, I would strongly recommend checking out her memoir and previous novel first.

I chose Intentional by Chris Bailey1 as my first book of 2026 because it sounded like exactly the motivational nonfiction I wanted to set the tone for the year. The subtitle is “How to Finish What You Start,” which is something I really am trying to improve on. Bailey serves up a few helpful tidbits and reminders, like:

• Review your goals regularly to make sure they’re still in line with your personal values and worth the effort you’re putting into them, and adjust or scrap accordingly

• If you find yourself procrastinating on an aversive task, try meditating or journaling about why you’re resisting it as a way to get over the mental hump

• When you’re considering what remains to be done, counterbalance negative self-talk and put things in perspective by remembering everything you’ve achieved already

Ultimately though, Intentional could have been condensed into a shorter form. At times it felt unnecessarily bloated, and the tone swung back and forth between overly jargon-y and weirdly informal. I never fully sank into it. If the subject matter sounds interesting to you, I would recommend Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman, which quite literally reframed the way I looked at life when I read it a few years ago.

If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I earn a small percentage commission. This is an easy way to support my work at no additional cost, and I appreciate it very much—thank you! ♥︎

Seen and heard this week

Have you watched The Chair Company (2025) yet? I first learned about Tim Robinson when he was on SNL in 2012, but I don’t remember him being in a ton of sketches, so he didn’t stand out to me at the time. My household really got into his work when his own sketch show, I Think You Should Leave, came out in 2019, and then we went back and streamed Detroiters (2017), and saw Friendship (2024) while it was in theaters. His humor is so strange and distinctive—he combines the mundane with the outrageous in ways that are unexpected and delightful. So of course the new show was a must. We watched the entire first season a little while ago and started it again over the weekend with some friends. Turns out it’s just as weird the second time around! I need people to talk to me about the ending, please. What, what, WHAT2 is that ending?

My big Christmas gift to Jordan was tickets to see The New Pornographers in May, so of course they’re freshly on my mind. My favorite album of theirs is probably Challengers, but I listened to Twin Cinema (2005) this week and was reminded of how great it is too. Most especially “The Bleeding Heart Show,” which has one of the best build-ups ever. It starts calm, with a really satisfying drum punctuation—

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

I leapt across three or four beds into your arms (thunk THUNK)
where I had hidden myself somewhere in your charms (thunk THUNK)

And then it grows slowly, picking up emotional speed before opening into a chorus of vocal oooo’s, more urgent percussion, and then some beautifully harmonized hey-lah’s and a final repeating line: we have arrived too late to play the bleeding heart show…

It’s impossible to describe the way this song makes me feel, but it’s something like my ribcage starting to crack as my chest expands, the sense of possibility and freedom getting bigger with every beat. Anything can happen. We have arrived.

Haiku round-up

Haiku is a poetic form that originated in Japan, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern. At the beginning of 2024, I started writing one every day, and while traditional examples include thematic reference to the seasons, mine tend to be a bit more all over the place. Here are this week’s efforts—enjoy!

Monday, December 29

Objects in mirror—
purple clouds, gold sun setting—
recede into night

Tuesday, December 30

Accomplishment, yes
but first and most important:
rest, recovery

Wednesday, December 31

Sending out the year
with a hot oven, fresh dough
A last offering

Thursday, January 1

Clear blue sky stretches
across these ancient mountains
We can see for miles

Friday, January 2

Night breeze through the pines
softly chanting you are safe
while dogs, distant, howl

Saturday, January 3

Slow breaths, in and out
A mug of steaming coffee
The morning begins

Sunday, January 4

Twelve gentle giants
blissfully oblivious
to their audience

Until next time

We stopped at the North Carolina Arboretum in Asheville on our way home from the mountains yesterday and got to see some of Thomas Dambo’s giant troll sculptures! I’d come across photos of them before, but to experience them in person was a real treat. They made me think of the creatures in Where the Wild Things Are and I loved their air of kind playfulness. These guys are hiding in various places across the United States and Europe—here’s a map that’ll show you where to look.

See you next Monday, and until then, I got you some baby otter chirps!!

♥︎ Emily

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Read this week

We recently started watching Ted Lasso, and then I read Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger for The Stacks book club, so basically I’M A SPORTS GIRLIE NOW. Also, because I read a digital copy from the library, I didn’t realize how long this book was when I started it! Out here accidentally participating in doorstop December.

But yes, high school football. Texas. Communities united by a shared rival. Racism. Economic inequality. Physical injury thwarting youthful potential.

Bissinger lived in Odessa for a year to learn about, get to know, and report on the 1988 Permian High School Panthers, and here are the thoughts I’m left with after mulling over his account for a bit:

• The injuries these boys played through and the way they were treated when they expressed the pain they were feeling were shocking. Certain scenes had me physically squirming in my seat.

  • Are conditions different for high school players today, almost thirty years later? I sure hope so.

  • Regardless, I’m glad I don’t have a son whose dream is to be a football star.

• I played varsity volleyball and made it to state semifinals my senior year, but I’m so grateful that those days were not my peak. It feels deeply sad to imagine young people SO focused on one extremely niche and temporary dream that they don’t receive the support and education and skills necessary for a full life after their athletic days are over.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy, meanwhile, is climate fiction about the Salt family, who live on a remote island and tend to the research facility and seed vault located there. A mysterious element comes into play when a woman, Rowan, washes up on shore, horribly injured but alive, and over the course of the story we figure out who she is and why she has come. Chapters alternate between her point of view and that of various members of the family, and some of these are more effective than others. Much of the suspense relies on characters intentionally holding back information, which doesn’t work as well in first person as it might have in close third—if we’re inside a person’s head hearing what they’re thinking, it doesn’t make sense for those thoughts to be strategically censored.

That nitpick aside, I enjoyed this one. The tone is somehow both bleak and hopeful, there are lots of interesting plant and animal facts, and the relationship that develops between Rowan and the Salts1 is really quite beautiful. McConaghy is an expert at creating atmosphere—I felt cold and vaguely damp the whole time I was reading, which seems correct.

If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I earn a small percentage commission. This is an easy way to support my work at no additional cost, and I appreciate it very much—thank you! ♥︎

Watched this week

When Harry Met Sally (1989) popped into my head recently because the pivotal last scene takes place on New Year’s Eve, but watching it right now also felt correct because of Rob Reiner’s recent passing. I don’t have any fresh takes beyond “what a good movie, you guys,” but I did learn something new about it from Reiner’s obituary. He met his second wife, Michele, while working on the film and AS A RESULT OF THEIR LOVE he changed the ending, from Harry and Sally splitting up to the two reconciling and staying together. Stop it, Rob. Too sweet.

I’ve seen Happiest Season (2020) a few times now and it continues to grow on me with each rewatch. Originally I think I was a little “meh” on the coming-out of it all (must queer stories always be about this?) but ultimately the cast fully won me over. I’d follow Kristen Stewart and Dan Levy anywhere, but add Aubrey Plaza and Alison Brie to the mix too? Unstoppable. My other favorite thing about this one is the weird sister character, Jane, and the way she stands up for herself in the end. Justice for Jane.

What is there to say about The Family Stone (2005) that hasn’t already been said by much more eloquent people? Honestly not much. If I had to choose one holiday movie to watch every year it would be this one. I come from a very small family but the Stones always make me wish I had a bigger one, made of people who know each other completely and might sometimes be assholes but underneath are accepting and full of love and ready to protect their own at all costs. This article is a sweet read and articulates a lot of what makes this such a beautiful film that so many people return to annually.

I’m new to The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) as an adult—Jordan grew up watching it and he introduced me several years ago. It has quickly become a must, often on Christmas Eve before he and I open our stockings. The songs are so good. The absolute gravitas Michael Caine brings to the Ebenezer Scrooge role is so good. And something about little Kermit Bob Crachit standing in the street alone singing “after all, there’s only one more sleep ‘til Christmas Day” never fails to bring a wee tear to mine eye.

Haiku round-up

Haiku is a poetic form that originated in Japan, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern. At the beginning of 2024, I started writing one every day, and while traditional examples include thematic reference to the seasons, mine tend to be a bit more all over the place. Here are this week’s efforts—enjoy!

Monday, December 22

Yellow apron: check
Ingredients: all lined up
Let’s make some magic

Tuesday, December 23

To play a small role
in someone else’s delight
is its own deep joy

Wednesday, December 24

Gifts wrapped, cookies baked,
we venture out in our sleigh
Elf mode, activate

Thursday, December 25

Aunt, lap, jungle gym
I hold you, and these days, dear
They’ll be gone too soon

Friday, December 26

Gentle sentinel
keeps watch over travelers,
peering from a height

Saturday, December 27

Our demons expelled,
bodies left empty and weak
Ready to rebuild

Sunday, December 28

Never an object
but a thought, a remembrance
What I most desire

SPECIAL BONUS HAIKU BY JORDAN, about me writing haiku

Count on your fingers
‘til the syllables total
five, seven, and five

Until next time

The holiday season at my age looks a lot different than it did when I was a kid, and the changes, though gradual, have brought with them big emotional shifts. I’ve been thinking recently about how painful it can be to transition from childhood feelings of tradition, of protection, of unquestioning belief in magic, to the responsibility in adulthood of creating memorable moments for yourself. It’s bittersweet, the understanding that gifts don’t simply appear on Christmas morning, that invisible hands no longer adorn the house with favorite decorations in the weeks leading up to the holiday, that Santa and the person baking cookies for him are both, in the end, you.

My tendency is to despair in this knowing, because I can’t do it all, I’m just a baby, adrift in a big wide world. But another, hopefully bigger, part of me finds freedom here, and potential, and excitement. No, I don’t play piano duet arrangements of Christmas carols with my mom anymore at her church on Christmas Eve. The grandparents who always cooked dinner for the family afterward in their cozy, familiar home have all passed away.

But I know how to make my grandpa’s eggnog milkshakes, and in lieu of a candlelight service I can walk with my love through our neighborhood, marveling at the seasonal light displays, and while I soak in a festively scented bath later, fondly remembering Mee-Maw Poe’s chicken and dumplings and twice-baked potato casserole, he will make us a delicious meal of his own creation to surprise me with when I emerge from the tub. And the next morning, we will be the ones to load up the car with presents and treats, to show up at our nephews’ house, to breakfast on my brother’s homemade biscuits and see what Santa has brought.

Here’s to growing older, to grieving what we’ve lost yet still showing up to make our own holiday magic.

See you next Monday, and until then, stay warm—I suspect there are Toros in the atmosphere.

♥︎ Emily

P.S. WE DID IT, with 5% battery to spare!

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