244. READ. LOOK. THINK.
Some links! Plus: scroll for a 25% off code for pre-orders of 'Consider Yourself Kissed' at Waterstones
The 25% off Waterstones pre-order code is at the bottom of this email 😊
READ.
“She doesn’t have a book coming out,” [Katie Kitamura’s] daughter insisted, “I’ve never seen her write!” “And that,” Kitamura says, “feels like a very accurate description of my life.”
“So you don’t experience your own novels as political at all?” I asked. The moment the words left my mouth, I understood that she was going to bring up the aquarium.
“I do not want any human thoughts to soil my aquarium.”
“I do not want . . . any human thoughts . . . to soil my aquarium,” I repeated, jotting the line in my notebook.
Joan Didion therapy diary.
I’m a bit envious of this book promo video by Leo Robson, it’s so funny.
All the books I’m reading are for my next novel so I asked my 11yo what she would recc for people her age. (Got some feedback that my 9 and 8 yo’ recc of Rollergirl really landed with other kids!) She said: Things a Bright Girl Can Do | Listen to the Moon | Being Miss Nobody and Girl | Love Frankie and Katy. And for slightly more mature readers: Amelia Westlake (I loved this too!) | When the World Tips Over | The Good Girls Guide to Murder series by Holly Jackson — this seems to be a mega phenomenon for tweens and above.
A left-field hit for 11yo and 9yo together is this book All About Theatre which they have combed through very seriously and decided which jobs they’ll have in theatre — etc!
I haven’t asked my 8yo but he would say Loki. He has also been loving Adventure Time, the graphic novel and TV show!
LOOK.
Why do I want this quite impractical bag?
I don’t know what this red Ikea bookshelf looks like in real life but I love the tilted display for books.
I still haven’t bought a cork noticeboard but now I am also considering a peg board…?
Hacks 4 is out! Already! Thank God because I love them so much.
THINK.
‘The paranoid […] are doom scrollers on steroids: it’s not just that they can’t look away: they’re actively looking for doom. They are the people who are compulsively reading the news (heaven forbid.) Why do they need to know about the news right away, when they can rarely do anything about it? To avoid the Bad Surprise.’
‘How do we break this apocalyptic fever? First, we help each other face the depth of the depravity that has gripped the hard right in all of our countries. To move forward with focus, we must first understand this simple fact: we are up against an ideology that has given up not only on the premise and promise of liberal democracy but on the livability of our shared world – on its beauty, on its people, on our children, on other species.’
Rebecca May Johnson on the last time she visits a certain butcher.
‘I find myself slowing changing from an agent of change to an agent of care. I’m less confident in the impact my activism might have on policy than I am about the impact my care may have on other human beings, as well as how they might trickle up to the systems that need changing.’
‘I wish I had answers. I have no answers. I really like [DW] Winnicott, who became a kind of underground hero in the book. People think of him as the nice child psychoanalyst, but he’s really weird when you actually read him. Like, he says, “I don’t know what a mind is. I think some people have them, but it’s a kind of mistake.” Because for him, everything is just psyche-soma. Even knowledge for him is a symptomatic mistake. It’s some precocious attempt to get ahead of impingements from the world. You’re like, “Well, if I understand it, then I can make it stop.” But that’s slightly delusional and it’s a trauma response. He said the most traumatized people are the most precociously intelligent, and while it might get them certain places, it will never help them with just being in the world. And it seems really hard at this moment when we do feel incredibly under threat to advocate for just being. It feels wrong, but at the same time there is something very important in it. If we’re going to figure anything out, it’s not going to be from the place of just utter threat or an illusion of mastery.’
Why do I dread all plans?
MY BOOK.
In the UK, Consider Yourself Kissed comes out in THREE weeks! The hardback has shiny letters — that is what I am trying to indicate with this video.
If you’d like to pre-order at Waterstones, before end of April, you can use the code STANLEY25! (comically, the exclamation mark is part of the code, not just me being annoying).
I just want to take this moment to thank the people who have made time to review the book on the Waterstones site — these are the only reviews I’ve seen outside of friend tags on Instagram (I’m being a baby about reading about myself) and I LOVE them and I am so grateful! ❤️
In Australia/NZ, Consider Yourself Kissed has been out for two weeks! I can’t wait to be in Melbourne (and Sorrento, and then Sydney) so soon! Here are my events again, hope to see you there?
April 23 6.30pm Fitzroy library author talk. FREE TIX.
April 26 4.30pm Sorrento Writers' Festival: Writers on Writing. FREE TIX.
April 26 6pm Sorrento Writers' Festival: Let's Talk Love. $30 TIX.
April 27 1.30pm Sorrento Writers' Festival: My New Book. $30 TIX.
April 28 6.15pm Melbourne Launch of Consider Yourself Kissed at Brunswick Bound. FREE, PLEASE COME!
April 29 6.30pm Sydney launch of Consider Yourself Kissed in conversation with Sophie Roberts (Highly Enthused) at Better Read Than Dead. BOOK $5 TIX or $40 with book!
Jess
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I'm a yes on the bag and the peg board.
I too dread all plans (GET THE BAG) ♥️