Tree law, Trinity, and a Cartier brooch: the Oliviary for December 2024
It’s been so long since I had a book out that the whole process feels new again — did you know publishers actually send out early copies of one’s sapphic sci-fi mystery, right out in the open for people to read? Shocking but true! Luckily, the fun that I had while writing this novella seems to have translated to the reading experience, and you can pre-order in your format of choice!
Linkery
- A great piece on tree law and arboreal codes
- One of the sharpest and funniest pieces of criticism I’ve seen in the wild in some time — Defector takes a knife to that deeply nonsensical Vanity Fair article about Cormac McCarthy’s muse: Can Someone Please Write Normally About This Fascinating Woman?
- Continuing the theme of how we narrate the past, this stunner from the LA Review of Books about the failures of the Trinity Site as a place of commemoration, full of gut-punch details (like the name and password of Trinity’s wifi, omg): Disaster Triumphant
Crafty
Next Halloween I dream of putting together something like this incredible Veuve Clicquot masquerade gown from 1900.
I spent a month expanding my jewelry-painting skills with Inesa Kalova and highly recommend her courses: they’re beginner-friendly, thorough, and creatively inspiring. Plus, sparkle!
Reading recs
My selection of the year’s best romances (gift link) is live on the NYT. A lot of them are grief-adjacent, and one even ends on a cliffhanger (the scandal!), because it was that kind of year. It is admittedly ridiculous that we let one single person pick a whole list like this, but if it helps you should know I agonize terribly over every single spot and the books left off as well. I could do twenty books, or thirty, and still feel it was incomplete.
See you all in the New Year, and wishing you the best of the calendar’s final days,
Olivia