Monday Miscellany: A high five from destiny

Notes from May 19 - 25

May 26, 2025

For me, most Mondays start with a run on our nearby greenway trail. But this morning I woke up to rain, so I sat down to write. It’s been a busy week here, but a satisfying one, full of good food and a lot of time spent with friends—everything from a fancy dinner at a Beard award semi-finalist restaurant to a simple chocolate chip muffin and cup of decaf at a new-to-me coffee shop. And there’s more in store this afternoon, kebabs that we’ll eat indoors while channeling cookout vibes despite the weather. If you’re in the US and celebrating Memorial Day today, I hope you have a good one.

Read this week

(Content warnings for addiction and attempted suicide in this first book; please take care of yourself.)

Ocean Vuong’s new novel, The Emperor of Gladness, was easily one of my most anticipated reads of this year. I bought a signed copy at my local indie bookstore1 on release day and dove in almost immediately, taking my time with it over the course of a full week.

This book is hard to talk about in a “review” capacity because I’m having trouble separating the quality of the writing (gorgeous, poetic, funny, true) from the feelings the story evoked in me (tenderness, despair, heartbreak). It’s so very well done, and my god, just devastating. The opening chapter, an extended lyrical description of a small New England town, is both beautiful and depressing, a dichotomy that the main character Hai embodies from the moment we first meet him, about to jump from a bridge into the river.

Hai has just left a rehab facility and, for various reasons unable to return home and live with his mother, doesn’t know where else to turn. An older woman whose house overlooks the river fortunately spots him atop the bridge, and after coaxing him down, strikes up a conversation that will quickly turn into an unlikely roommate situation and deep friendship. The rest of the story follows Hai and Grazina as they, individually and together, navigate his lack of life’s purpose and her ever-progressing dementia.

“To be alive and try to be a decent person, and not turn it into anything big or grand, that’s the hardest thing of all.” (251)

I finished The Emperor of Gladness on Thursday, and as I’ve sat with it over the past few days I’ve struggled to be okay with where we leave Hai at the end. My impulse is to crave an undeniably hopeful conclusion for a character I feel so tenderly toward—everything doesn’t need to be neatly tied up with a bow, but I want to imagine a future of warm possibility—but his story, like life itself, is simply too uncertain to offer that. So I’m left worried and unsettled, yet cheering him on, heart aching as I return again to the novel’s opening line:

The hardest thing in the world is to live only once. But it’s beautiful here, even the ghosts agree. (1)

Saturday morning I sat on my bench along the strollway path and finished Defy by Dr. Sunita Sah. I hadn’t heard of this title before

greta johnsen

chose it for her book club this month, but I’m so glad I picked it up. Sah is a medically trained doctor who studies the psychology of compliance and consent, and Defy is all about these topics—why we go along with things we don’t agree with, why it’s so hard to stand up for our values, and how we can become more comfortable speaking out against injustices big and small. As she states in an author Q&A at the end,

This book is for anyone who grew up being told to be “good,” to be polite, to not make a scene, and to do as they were told. It’s for those of us who have felt our voices silenced, who regret not taking action, who wonder why we did something that we did not agree with. (225)

Sah’s writing style is very warm and accessible and she uses many real-world examples to illustrate her points, from the murder of George Floyd and the rookie cops complicit in it, to the activism of people like Greta Thunberg, Malala Yousefzai, and Rosa Parks. There are also several helpful diagrams throughout that visualize the processes and techniques outlined in the text. I split my reading time between hardcover and audio editions and can recommend both.

If you purchase a book through the bookshop.org affiliate links in this post, I may 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 listening

As predicted, the majority of my music listening this past week was, again, SABLE, fABLE by Bon Iver. I mentioned in last week’s newsletter that the vibe changes partway through; the first three tracks, SABLE, are introspective and dark and stripped down, before the rest of the record, fABLE, opens up into a more ebullient and hopeful sound. There’s a description on Bon Iver’s website that walks through the whole thing very thoroughly and eloquently, so if you’re interested, give that a read.

My friend Dan got me excited about trying it out on vinyl—this format splits SABLE and fABLE into two discs, the first played at 45rpm and the second at 33rpm. So in addition to the shift in mood between the two, you quite literally have to switch gears when you move from one to the other. The symbolism! What a choice for Justin Vernon to make.

Plus! When I went to the record store to buy a copy, I found a used one in excellent shape for $10 less than it would’ve been new, which felt like a high five from destiny. We love a small win.

And another thing

This article about the reemergence of coyotes in San Francisco includes striking images and video and made me unexpectedly emotional. We humans have such a hard time coexisting with wild animals, but it’s so necessary that we learn how.
You might have heard about the partially AI-generated summer reading list published in multiple major newspapers that recommended numerous nonexistent books. Might I instead offer some guides created by real humans with excellent taste in books? Here are a few of Book Riot’s anticipated summer titles, some nonfiction recommendations from Traci Thomas, an excellent roundup of summer suggestions from Rosamond Reads, paperback selections from Sara Hildreth, and the Modern Mrs. Darcy summer reading guide from Anne Bogel. Some are behind paywalls, but let me tell you, they’re the well-considered and thoughtfully prepared products of a lot of hard work and they’re absolutely worth your dollars.
Scrolling through these photos of gardens and outdoor landscapes brought me peace this week. Julianne Moore’s overgrown Queen Anne’s lace is truly aspirational. I want to go to all of these places.

Speaking of which, this little garden caught my eye yesterday on a walk through Old Salem. Can you spot the two goldfinches?