Monday Miscellany: Late light winking on water

Notes from January 19 - 25

Jan 27, 2026

Hello from the bizarre, untethered-in-time feeling of sickness1 and snow days! It’s Monday, if you weren’t sure. It’s Monday. We were extremely fortunate not to lose power or see any significant damage from the big winter storm that just passed through, but I know a lot of people got hit much harder. If you live in the US, I hope you made it through okay and are safe and warm tonight.

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.

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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.

Views from my walks this week, Friday vs. Sunday