209. READ. LOOK. THINK.

Private and select, King of the Writers, the wife figure flashes, all-in pav, more and more immaterial

If you know you know

Hi friends,

Still reeling from my trip to Australia — heaven.

READ.

Some books I am loving or loved: Alison by Lizzy Stewart; Monsters by Claire Dederer (so cleverly constructed, taking us on a journey of her thinking something through); Spare by HRHPH (I'm consuming this on Audible — he is a great reader!).

'Reading was so personal, it needed to feel a little private, or at least select.'

‘I mean, it’s not as if I wake up in my mink bed and I look over all the accolades and my Pulitzer and my National Book Award to go, “yes, I am the king of the writers.” I look at my life very practically, and I don’t connect.’

An interview with the Simplified Chinese translator of Sally Rooney's books.

'It was fun/not-fun having a layer of myself that felt mature and balanced and, on top of that, a layer that was ugly-crying in coffee shops.'

Alan Bennett's Diary is out for 2022.

Learnt a lot in Kira’s Q and A I somehow didn't know about my friend Lisa and her novel Not Working despite routinely being in IRL and online comms with her across 18 hours per day.

Emily has a new newsletter for The Cut called Making It: Conversations about craft, cash, and compromise. Subscribe!

Helen Charman @helen_charman

Vivian Gornick on Henry Miller, Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth. ‘Nowhere in this novel does the bilious quality of projected life—as opposed to felt life—come through more clearly than in the creation of the women’.

LOOK.

Did I share this last time? Maybe I thought it was too controversial... Adam Liaw's all-in pavlova method.

I saw ‘Orlando’ at the Garrick and found it stimulating and exciting - there are still tix!

Solange's loft in Apartamento.

Burner at the club.

The most perfect Sydney beach house accessible only by boat.

Walked past Nadine Keegan's shopfront in Melbourne, I would love some of her stained glass!

I used this rocky road recipe to make an entirely absurd pudding for a lunch on the weekend and it was good.

In Australia I bought two beautiful cookbooks though I was desperate to get more (eg Chinese-ish). Tenderheart by Hetty Lui McKinnon, stunning, stunning vegetables. And Beatrix Bakes by Natalie Paull, the kind of cakes I might actually be able to make…?

Got an entire box of my favourite pens in Australia only to find they’re actually available on UK Amazon. So glad I dragged the children to two Officeworks for that.

THINK.

‘For me the only point of going to school is to have friends and find out if there’s anything that interests you. Just that. Education is all about sociability. You go to school to make friends and practise sociability. The learning bit is pretext. It is really about what you enjoy about other people, how you get to enjoy people’s company and what inhibits you from doing that.’

Social media linked to brain changes in teens | makes children dislike their own bodies. The internet is a failure (an anti-civilizational engine).

‘Things were getting more and more delicious, more and more expensive, and all the while, more and more immaterial. Umami is what you got when you didn’t get anything.’

Extinction Rebellion issued a surprise (to me) statement in Jan: 'This year, we prioritise attendance over arrest and relationships over roadblocks, as we stand together and become impossible to ignore.' The next big XR climate action will be April 21 at Westminster; I'm going to get involved with this one, are you up for it?

Jess

X

PS to be honest this edition of RLT is a bit boring (is it because Twitter is so bad now? haven’t found enough good stuff?) — if you’ve only just subbed maybe look at this one, it’s a bit better.