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Reading recommendations and a mini And Just Like That review
Welcome!
This week Iâm sharing a bumper pack of recommendations of things to read, watch and otherwise consume, complete with my thoughts about them. And if you make it all the way to the end, youâll find a mini-review of And Just Like That đ.
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âHe bought $3 million in distressed bonds. He gave another $5 million away to charity. He was $18 million up for the day. He was $6 million down. He was beating the market again by mid-morning, losing at lunch, winning an hour later, and then losing again. âDoes it make any sense?â he asked himself, watching the numbers change on his screen. âTo sit inside all day in front of a machine, making money I donât need so I can give it to someone I donât know?ââ. This profile of Leon Cooperman, one of Americaâs 745 billionaires, was brilliant. The reporter lets us plod through Coopermanâs day, as he tries to reconcile his belief that heâs living proof that capitalism works with the reality that for so many today, it isnât working. His insights were as jarring as they were thought-provoking.
Why could Agatha Christie afford a maid and a nanny but not a car? This isnât a riddle, itâs the basis for economist Timothy B Leeâs nuanced and detailed examination of rising costs of living and how declaring that people today are better/worse off than at a previous point in history is not just about statistics. If youâre interested in economic analysis that is a joy to read, I canât recommend Leeâs newsletter enough.
âI've spent a long time trying to articulate the precise strain of brain rot that afflicts the average contract worker â or at least contract workers like me, who tend to write two or three times a week. It renders you something of a digital hunter-gatherer; ears pricked up for even the faintest sign of an exploitable trend. You detect a loose assembly of vaguely related tweets, centered on The Thing People Are Talking About Right Now, and dive in for the kill. By the end of the year, when you survey the clips left in your wake, you'll find a colorful array of stories that are fatally bound to ancient, decaying discourses that seem to disintegrate at the touch.â There were many brutal home truths in Luke Winkieâs newsletter post about the Wordle discourse and the realities of writing things online in exchange for money. Honestly, the mindset he describes is perhaps the real reason I shifted away from writing quick-turnaround pieces, I just couldnât cope with its negative effects
Speaking of word games, I loved the New Yorker crossword puzzle editor Anna Shechtman's essay about black-and-white thinking. She writes so powerfully about the parallels between the thinking that makes her so good at compiling word puzzles but also that keeps her locked in her eating disorder. âIt was this paradoxâthe promise of control and transcendenceâwhich first drew me to the prototypically modern grid: the crossword puzzle.â
This piece in HBR about identity paralysis, a feeling of being stuck following a major life change, was fascinating. Itâs framed as a listicle for how to overcome such a situation (!), but I took more from the anecdotes from the people whoâve felt unable to move past disruptive events that are peppered throughout
A ridiculous story about apartment hunting in New York? About considering renting a place with no toilet? For $2000 a month? Stick it in my veins
This American Lifeâs two-part special about a couple in Michigan who, while house-hunting, stumbled into a police officerâs property where they found something deeply disturbing and the story of what happened next
I really enjoyed listening to BrĂ©ne Brown on Elizabeth Dayâs How To Fail podcast, in particular, what she had to say about her experience of publishing her first book. On a similar theme, Iâm halfway through Olivia Sudjicâs Exposure, which is a post-mortem of the anxiety that followed the release of her debut novel
I had some leftover sweet potatoes this week and I used them up to make this vegan, gluten-free brownie recipe. I know, âvegan, gluten-free brownieâ sounds like an oxymoron but I guarantee that youâll be shocked at how delicious they are; especially at 3.30 pm with a deadline looming
The sweetest story on the internet: An 8-year-old kid from Idaho self-published his debut graphic novel (âThe Adventures of Dillon Helbigâs Crismisâ) by leaving it on a library shelf. When the librarians discovered it, they loved the book and Helbigâs tenacity, so they barcoded it and included it in the libraryâs collection. Now people are queuing up to borrow it and thereâs a years-long wait to get hold of it.
đ ICYMI: Last week I wrote about how doing less is a lot of work
đș As for what Iâve been watching lately, I saved this commentary for last, because there are spoilers for the season finale of And Just Like That below!
I watched the first two episodes of And Just Like That with my bum clenched and my hands over my eyes. But then the show found its rhythm, as did I. It gave me exactly what I needed: something familiar to talk about with friends. To me, it still feels like the same show (I just call it Sex and the City in the group chat). The characters live in a disgustingly privileged bubble in New York and they had major blindspots the first time around and continue to have them now. As far as the effort to correct the showâs overtly white, heteronormative writing, thatâs been undeniably awkward, to say the least. âOverbearing wokeness,â as the author Candice Brathwaite called it. But just like Brathwaite, Iâm hopeful the show will get there in the end. If only for the simple reason that just as it was ground-breaking in its deception of the lives of 30-something women in the 1990s, a show about 50-something women in the 2020s is still something to be celebrated.
Itâs also a reboot and needs to be viewed within that genre. Much like there was uproar at how awful Rory was in the Gilmore Girls reboot, Carrie was also always terrible, our nostalgia just wiped that from our memories. I like that Carrie is still the same self-centred, bad friend who is only happy when she has a love interest to talk about. Speaking of which, the hot podcast dude! I blinked and missed him earlier in the season, but Iâm delighted the show is finally giving us a glimmer of vintage SATC: a passionate crush for Carrie to fixate on and who makes her make bad decisions.
As for the real ghost of the season, Samantha, I miss her terribly, but that text thing? A cheap shot! We all know that Kim Cattrall is not coming back, so just let that die and letâs move on. I donât need that cliffhanger to tempt me into a second season, Iâm already signed up for it.
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I just love reading you ! thank you Anna
The Wordle newsletter is so perfectly true đ©đđ»