Read With Me: July 2019
read with me!
books
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Anita Loos
Read this book if you like glitz, glamour, interwar period literature (think Great Gatsby without the misogyny), and women who DGAF. I also watched the 1953 film/musical starring Marilyn Monroe after I finished the book, which I highly recommend. I’m now obsessed with Anita Loos (who was a prolific screen and caption writer) and am devouring everything I can get my hands on. If you want to read more about Anita Loos' groundbreaking approach to silent film caption writing, read modernist scholar Laura Frost’s analysis.
The Outline Trilogy by Rachel Cusk
Read these books if you want to read writing that just…. rings true. I’ve read one book a year from this series over the last three years and finally finished up with Kudos, the last and my favorite book of the trilogy. Rachel Cusk is a genius who manages to capture the nuances of twenty-first-century womanhood, motherhood, writing culture, book culture, and art with subtlety and humor.
Read this book if you’re tarot curious. Michelle Tea is a well-known memoirist (I loved her most recent book, Against Memoir) who makes tarot approachable. She also offers “spells” to help manifest certain cards (yes, think crystals and tea potions. It’s fun! I swear!) Over the last month, I’ve been pulling a card in the morning when I wake up and at night before I go to bed as a method to assist my journaling and self-reflection. Right now, I’m using this tarot set.
Sleepless Nights, Elizabeth Hardwick
Read this book if you want to read cutting vignettes that dig into humans most unsavory qualities. I’ve been meaning to read this book for a while, especially after I read Lauren Groff’s laudatory praise of Hardwick, and I finally got around to it this month. It seems like a precursor to some of the contemporary autofiction I’ve read recently (a la Sheila Heti and Rachel Cusk) and is brimming with originality.
other reading i've enjoyed
The Lingering of Loss, Jill Lepore
“How do you do it? people sometimes ask me, people often ask me, people always ask me. And why: Why the books? Why the babies? Why the essays? Why so many, why so fast? What’s the rush? Where’s the fire? Jane is the how, the why, the rush, and the fire. She never got to do any of the things we both wanted. Only I did.”
Who Owns South Africa, Ariel Levy
“The failure of land reform is one of the reasons that South Africa is among the most unequal societies on earth. Unemployment is at thirty-seven percent. Only thirteen per cent of South Africans earn more than six thousand dollars a year. The education system is in shambles: nearly eighty percent of nine- and ten-year-olds fail simple tests of reading comprehension. To add to the woes of South Africans, some seventeen billion dollars disappeared from state coffers under Jacob Zuma, and is still being pursued by the courts.”
my month was better because
LA strip mall korean restaurant: go pocha el buen comer in SF the last black man in san francisco Outer Orbit’s octopus carpaccio one art - elizabeth bishop via laura olin cocchi americano with a splash of seltzer and orange and cocchi vermouth di torino used in delicious manhattans. I’ve been drinking a lot of delicious wine this month. some of my favorites: hermit ram pinot noir, Vini Rabasco natural white wine,Cirelli la Collina Biologica Trebbiano d'Abruzzo 2017, and pax mahle winery (we loved all of the Syrahs we tried and the 2018 trousseau Gris) this banana bread recipe, far west cider, summer grilling: grilled cajun chicken, roasted tomatoes, sauteed mushrooms over polenta, muji bullet journal and bullet journaling in general wine face podcast Invisibilia episode about pain
share with anyone you think would enjoy and let me know what you're reading!