Halfway through the year: summer reading vibe check & inspiration!
Charge your Kindle and pour your iced coffee.
This letter is free, fun and frivolous! There will be a more in depth issue for paid subscribers next week, but as you open this I will be with my besties, blissfully hangin’ at my best friend’s mom’s Cape house. There will be rosé, there will be lobster, it’s my first time there and I’m really excited, even if the forecast is 100% rain literally every day we are there…
The New York Times did an excellent package on the city’s best sandwiches. Worth a scroll even if you aren’t a New Yorker, major inspiration for your at-home sandwich game.
Once again
nailed my feelings on “anti-aging” treatments, youth, injectables, etc…Everyone is talking about having a “boring girl summer” and I can’t see why you wouldn’t want to.
Via
: the ways the egg freezing industry are using fear and shame to market to young women are pretty nuts. One of my principles as a marketer when I was a founder of a sustainable marketplace was that we would never use fear or shame or guilt to get people to care about sustainability or spend more on sustainable products. I only wanted us to use emotions like joy, delight, pleasure and glee. Spoiler alert: this is part of why I failed. Shame is the best marketing tool, it works better than Meta ads.1
What better a breeding ground for shame than the female body? What an insane cocktail for success for these egg freezing companies, think about everything (just even hetero) Gen-Z women are dealing with right now:Too much access to the comparison trap of other women’s bodies via social
A broken dating system: a generational blocker around meeting or engaging with new people in real life, a dependence on apps to produce romantic relationships, an ecosystem that’s allergic to monogamy even for those who want it
Men who are, for the first time in American history, downwardly mobile2
A shitty economy/job market/sack of student loan debt/tons of consumer debt, all of which signal that there will be no digging yourself out of the hole and so there’s almost no point in curbing spending
A doomed climate that would probably be better off if none of us had kids
I mean, yeah… that’s a great landscape in which to weaponize all that guilt and shame, plus doubt, plus the existing guilt and shame around the female body in order to get you to spend $11,000-$35,000 on what is marketed as an “insurance policy” but really is actually not an airtight insurance policy, but only what it litearlly is: putting some— maybe not the best, maybe not the worst— eggs you have on ice. FWIW, if you can afford to get your eggs frozen and you want to, go off. I am team women should get to do whatever the fuck they want with their bodies, always: that means egg freezing, abortion, an ass tattoo of a flaming dragon, a Brazilian wax or whatever the hell else you want. But let’s be real about what’s happening here: capitalism.I wrote about advertising on Substack, then Modern Retail went ahead and wrote about advertising on Substack too.
Anyone else following Bilt, the credit card designed for you to pay your rent with it and earn points/rewards on your biggest expenditure? Wells Fargo (who I didn’t realize backed Bilt) is losing assloads of money now. Basically, Wells Fargo is pissed that Bilt customers tend to be financially savvy rich people with no debt who pay off their balance in full a few days after charging their rent. Maybe should have seen that one coming, but I get why in this climate they did not…
WSJ wrote about the White Skirt phenomenon we’re living through. In April or May I was jonesing to get on this trend— and actually, for what it’s worth, I don’t think this is a trend. You can own and wear and style this item forever. There are 72 year old women in a fishing town rocking this look, there are 12 year olds enrolled in prep school rocking this look. There are lengths, materials and fabrics of every ilk to flatter every body. You could wear the White Skirt with a beat up teeshirt from your summer camp 20 years ago or an expensive crop top. Essentially, you can do you, but with more breeze between your legs.
Someone, I can’t remember who— fellow Substack App power users, if you remember please drop the author in the comments— wrote a great piece on the Doen white skirt and how easy it was to find vintage, well-made versions on eBay that are identical.3 It certainly is. I love eBay for accessories, but for bottoms (which I find a little more challenging to fit right), I do like to oftentimes purchase from places I know I can return from.
I ordered and tried on A BUNCH of them. Here’s my master BIG WHITE SKIRT EDIT: almost all sizes (xxs to 6x), all price points ($19.99 to $350), all materials, vintage and new.
If you’re a bullet points person, some notes below:Doen x Gap one is gorgeous, albeit see-through pretty much entirely below the pelvic region. Runs TTS/on the larger side.
This Alex Mill skirt for $53 on The Outnet feels like a great steal.
Abercrombie’s is excellent, almost kept this one but had already fallen in love with my ultimate draft pick which is…
Moon River, which I snagged for $60 on Shopbop. Now sold out there, but you can find it elsewhere, albeit for not as good of a steal as I got it. The price was far and away the best of what I tried on and the quality was still good. I felt less scared to wear this out— I don’t like to own anything so expensive that I can’t recklessly have fun in it. Otherwise it will never get worn!
There are many newsletters that do this even better than I can attempt—
(who literally just published an identical and perhaps better version of what I write below), and come to mind.I’ve been absolutely crushing my Goodreads reading goal for 2024, and that feels just fantastic. I downloaded Goodreads and started last May, at the behest of my friend Emily, and set a reading goal of 50 books. I got there, barely, by the skin of my teeth.
This year, I dared aspire to read 60 books, and I am pleased to say I am absolutely poised to accomplish the task, I am nearing 50 and it’s only June. I check my progress manically, like many people check their step count for the day, and wave my phone around in my boyfriend’s face at every opportunity.
In many past issues, I’ve soft-complained about how much is on my plate. How, you might ask, does one prioritize a lofty reading goal amid * all that * ?
My tools of the trade to read more, phone less:
First, get a Kindle. I know, I know— I love actual books and pages. I love having a gorgeous book shelf. But the practicality of a Kindle can’t be beat! You can carry around 500 books at a time and tuck them into your purse at less than a pound. Being able to bring that many books with me everywhere I go, effortlessly starting a new one after I finish one (which you would have to carry around a whole library in order to do without the Kindle), allows me to read way more. Yes, I recommend getting a Kindle cover that DELIGHTS you. That helps too.
No phone in the morning. If I’m tired and I don’t immediately leap out of bed to journal and then workout when the clock strikes 6:45, I pick up the Kindle. I allow myself to read for however long I want! You’d feel bad if you lied in bed from 6:45 to 8:45 on your phone… but crushing a delicious book? That’s worth getting a late start for…4
I don’t read at night, but you certainly could before bed instead of watching TV! I’m sorry to tell you that despite all my other forms of discipline, I’m a heathen, and we have a TV in our room that is absolutely on for hours after we fall asleep. I find it hard to fall asleep without the background noise of Sex and the City, Seinfeld, Friends, The Office, [insert nostalgic aughts or 90’s sitcom here]. Lately, it is Summer House. 😈
Now, without further ado, here are some of the best things I’ve devoured in the last year. If you’re looking for beach reads, hoping to read more and watch TikTok less, or simply are curious, you are in the right place!
Did You Hear About Kitty Karr? // This book far surpassed my expectations and I feel the jacket description doesn’t do it justice. I loved the descriptions of the past, Old Hollywood, and a story that felt so rooted in time and place that you felt like you were with Kitty as she navigated her insane life. (I didn’t love the present day characters the same way, I loved this book in spite of them not because of them— you read it for the journey, not the ending.)
Big Swiss // Easily one of if not my favorite book I read last year. Bizarre, funny, unique as hell. Not for those with a bad sense of humor.
Come & Get It // I can’t say I’ve read anything else like this. I almost have nothing to add! It stands alone…
Bye, Baby // I am not a fan of Carola Lovering’s most popular work, Tell Me Lies, and hate the eating disorder motif in a lot of her novels. Good news: that’s not at all what this book is about. I love how it explores influencer culture, revenge, marriage, the way friendships change in your 30s… it’s campy, good beach read.
Hula // There aren’t enough books about the colonization and occupation of Hawaii and the trickle down generational trauma— this book is written almost as poetry. It was a hard read but a beautiful read ultimately about “breaking” the cycle of generational trauma and fighting for your home.
Martyr! // One of the only books I’ve read about Iranian-American-ness, but it’s actually so much more. I really loved it. It’s dark, but funny and twisty.
Splinters // I love any collection of personal essays from Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams is one of my favorite books. I’m overdue for a re-read.
The Other Half // I’m told this is the first in a series of forthcoming mysteries set in upper crust London. I quite enjoyed the mystery portion, though the end left me wanting. I will absolutely read more in the series! Great vacation read.
Rouge // This book is unlike anything I’ve read and is in my top 2 favorites from the last year. It’s bizarre, feverish, wild, wacky, kind of grotesque. Adore it!!
The Paris Novel // I have a weird formative memory of shooting a Ruth Reichl recipe at Food52. I don’t think I was aware of her greatness at the time, other than the fact that she was revered around the office. Only now do I see how lucky I was to even be even within spitting distance of some extension of her orbit. This book has the exact same tenor as her other novel. Any food girlies, this is a must. I love the way Ruth writes about cooking and food— it’s utterly unpretentious, even if she’s writing about foie gras or an ortolan. In her world, the pleasure of food and cooking are for everyone— a far cry from the weird chef-ification of food media that we lived through in the last decade and also why I’m so proud to have worked at Food52, a publication that was at the time by home cooks and for home cooks, with no mind to “famous chefs” or “experts.”
The Sicilian Inheritance // I was intrigued to learn that some of this is actually based on the author’s search to learn about her own grandmother’s murder (heard about it on
& ’s podcast linked here!). What I actually thought was super well done was how the author brought a really nuanced approach to the actual life of Sicilians instead of the glamorous tourist edit or the American POV that Italy is all perfect and idyllic 100% of the time and we ought to all move there tomorrow.Very Bad Company // I love books about rich people behaving badly. This is about an over-funded start-up’s executive retreat and all the executives are hiding something. It’s deliciously bad.
Lies and Weddings // From the author of Crazy Rich Asians, another incredible book that I gobbled down in a single sitting.
The Magnolia Parks Universe // This is a series of 5 self-published books that went viral on TikTok and I discovered through
Greenlights // If you are not listening to this audiobook by Matthew Mcconnaughey at least once a quarter, you are living your life wrong. I don’t make the rules, I’m just telling you. It will change you.
The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality // I have mentioned this book before, but it does a great job of explaining some of the fallacies and heuristics and coping mechanisms our brains have developed in the (too much) information age. A good and easy listen!
The Marriage Portrait // While technically fiction, I listened to this on audiobook. I can’t explain why but it’s lingered in my mind since then, despite several months having passed. It’s historical fiction, and I’m not particularly familiar with the history of the de Medicis… I’d like to be, so if you have book recommendations, please do share! I love a book with a twist that gives a young woman agency at a time when society granted her none.
Dune // After seeing the movie, I wanted more, and I’ve listened to Dune and Dune Messiah (the sequel) on audiobook— in this case, I actually recommend reading the real books since the audiobook narration and voice actor casting can be pretty confusing. That said, I really enjoyed it. It was escapism in the AirPods at its finest.
This summer would be an awesome time to revisit the dystopian girly fiction that Otessa Moshfegh does best.
My Year of Rest & Relaxation (one of my favorites of hers)
Death in Her Hands (so creepy!)
I ride for Elin Hilderbrand and thought this ranking of all of her books was fantastic, even if I’d shuffle a few around. I have downloaded Swan Song and cannot wait to read! I loved Blue Bistro, Hotel Nantucket, The Matchmaker, and The Five-Star Weekend.
Horse girls should consider picking up a copy of Girls and Their Horses, a murder mystery set in a horse girl community.
Jennifer Weiner’s Big Summer hits.
I loved the reimagining of a Western with space for queer folx and women, Whiskey When We’re Dry.
Any of Carley Fortune’s books besides the one just released I’ve yet to read— Every Summer After and Meet Me at the Lake.
Re-reading Eve Babitz makes me feel glamorous and fabulous, even in the mundane parts of daily life or just driving somewhere: Sex and Rage and Black Swans are my most-read.
Longtime readers know I love dystopian girly fiction (see above re: Otessa Moshfegh) and Mrs. March by Virginia Feito is no exception. The Guest, by Emma Cline, has gotten plenty of recommendations and doesn’t need mine, I think it’s good and worth reading but perhaps now overdone by hype and Instagram. My Husband, by Maud Ventura, and Aesthetica, by Allie Rowbottom, are other favorites in this genre.
I love my tattered copy of Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston, a hand me down from my mom and perfect for a woman having a Big Summer of Change— I have one particular friend in mind.
Lucy Foley’s murder mysteries are fun, including The Guest List.
Bad Summer People is an excellent book by Emma Rosenblum about rich people behaving badly at the beach.
Many more I read that I didn’t want to wholeheartedly recommend but you can always add me on Goodreads here!
xx
Now imagine pairing the two…
I linked one of Scott Galloway’s longer conversations with an educator in the space, but he’s done countless interviews and podcasts about this and is publishing a book on it soon. If you’re intrigued, it’s worth doing your own homework.
Aaaaand WSJ wrote about it several weeks later. Second time in this newsletter I’ve mentioned that a media outlet covered something after it appeared in an independent Substackers work— I find this is happening much more often and now writers employed at media companies are reaching out to me for story ideas, which I’m sure is happening to other Substackers too…
In honor of summer, I have now moved the Kindle outside in an effort to get as much outdoors time listening to the sound of the waves crashing as humanly possible.
Not sure it’s what you’re thinking, but Aja wrote recently about shopping Etsy for Doen-esque look-a-likes! https://platonicloveletter.substack.com/p/better-than-doen-a-treasure-trove 🧡
Three cheers for reading recs! Now I just need to get out of my reading rut so that I can read some of these!