Okay first off, I am sorry for the confusion! Last week I said I was happy because I finished a draft of my book. This is still true! But I do not have a book deal for it, so it existing in any real and tangible way in the world is unfortunately many, many moons away. That said, I am still proud! I hope one day you will get to read it.

I am on vacation this week, so there will be no newsletter next week! As a reward for your patience, I will tell you where I went when I return and show you some of the things I’m sure I will have bought. What is the point of going on vacation if not to purchase small things for your home?

This week I wrote about Ed Sheeran and then about Ed Sheeran again. I hate Ed Sheeran! I also contributed to our in memoriam post for Annie Dillard.

Anyway, on to the links!

1. Important! Reader Hannah found the adorable stool that I sent last week on Wayfair.com but for less money and in more colors! We are blessed.

2. Read Giri Nathan on the State of the U.S. Open

   “Phone dictates how they make decisions about how to spend their money and move through the world. Phone compels them to travel to Flushing, Queens, site of a sporting event they do not really care about, and post the evidence on social media.”

3. Oooooh fancy connect-four game

4. I like this online game where you try to pick rarer answers to trivia questions than everyone else

5. See The Algorithm’s Dark Gleam In The Hunter Biden-Andrew Callaghan Crypto Scam Email Whoopsie

6. Nobody writes like Annie Dillard. I re-read just a few pages of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek whenever I need inspiration. RIP Annie.

7. If you don’t want to read a whole book, I recommend Annie’s meditation on the full solar eclipse. This circulated a few years ago when there was another solar eclipse, but it rules.

Seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him, or as flying in an airplane does to falling out of an airplane. Although the one experience precedes the other, it in no way prepares you for it.

8. I also recommend Alexander Chee’s essay from How to Write an Autobiographical Novel about learning from Dillard.

   You are the only one of you, she said of it. Your unique perspective, at this time, in our age, whether it’s on Tunis or the trees outside your window, is what matters. Don’t worry about being original, she said dismissively. Yes, everything’s been written, but also, the thing you want to write, before you wrote it, was impossible to write. Otherwise it would already exist. You writing it makes it possible.

9. I had dinner with my colleague and buddy David Roth at Crevette in NYC last week. Everything whipped but my Bite of the Night (TM) was the slice of raw bluefin tuna on top of a little hashbrown. I loved it!

10. “The Moon got whacked. The Moon gets whacked a lot, honestly. You can just look at its beaten, cratered surface to see that. But these days we're pretty good at counting its scars.”

11. NEW EMILY GOULD DROPPED

12. Two weekends ago (as mentioned) I went to a great wedding. One of the readings at the wedding was this short story by Richard Brautigan that I can’t stop thinking about. Congrats Britt and Luke!

    

13. I liked reading this Sophie Kemp piece in Granta about going through a bad breakup and then driving across the damn country alone! She also talks to a bunch of teen girls about love and heartbreak.

14. Cardinal night light!

15. How I feel going on vacation

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A few of you have emailed me asking to see the archive. The archive does not exist except for in your own heart and inbox. It is always the present here at Kelsey McKinney Newsletter.