Bits #1
Things to read, watch and listen to
Hi! Starting this letter with some housekeeping. (Terrible phrase but what’s the alternative - PSA? “Some news?” All ghastly.)
It’s been 18 months since I started Books+Bits and it feels like the right time to re-jig the format. I was getting a bit confused about what to put in Tuesday’s letter and what to put in Friday’s and so for clarity, there will now be:
A letter every Tuesday, which is entirely free to read - this is the ‘Books’ part and it will be a write-through piece on a book (or books), an essay on reading/ popular culture, or an interview with a person of interest.
A letter every Friday, which will be mostly paywalled - this is the ‘Bits’ part and it will be a big stack of recs from me: things to listen to, watch and read. Plus the effluvia of my brain: a meme that I can’t stop thinking about, a foodstuff I’m bananas about, a pointless discovery that has nonetheless fascinated me - for eg, did you know that the ear canal is also called the Aural Meatus? I found this out yesterday during a hearing test. That basically translates as SOUND MEAT.
Once every couple of months (this is on an ad hoc basis) I will drop a Book Chat with Bobby, also for paying subs.
So that’s 4 newsletters a month - plus a small preview of Friday’s ‘Bits’ - for free subscribers and 8-9 newsletters a month for paying subscribers. It’s actually more letters than it was before, but they aren’t so lengthy. Which I think makes it easier on both of us and will likely guarantee better content from me.
As ever, if you are a student, or out of work/ tight on disposable income, please e-mail me and I’ll comp you a paid sub.
It may change again in the future, but this feels like a good fit for now. Thank you for bearing with <3
I posted my Q2 book stack on Instagram a few days ago and the book recs underneath are so great - there are 100+ nestled in the comment section! Helpfully reminded me about lots of books I’d been meaning to read but had forgotten about, like Patti Smith’s Just Kids (which has been on my bookshelf for years) and V. V. Ganeshanathan’s Brotherless Night (which just won the Women’s Fiction Prize). So if you’re still not sure what to read next, take a look under the post.
I lolled at Harriet Walker’s recent suggestion in The Times that fake tan is the new hemline index - before wondering if she might be on to something:
“Although most of us — particularly the hyper-vigilant skincare fanatics of Gen Z, who are slathered in factor 50 — are now wise enough to use protection, the siren call of a great tan seems louder than ever. You’ve heard of the hemline index, whereby skirts get shorter when the good times roll and longer during economic gloom. Now here’s the tan line index: the glow gets darker as the outlook does. The future might not be bright but it is certainly orange.”
Am not remotely surprised to learn that according to a recent Piz Buin survey, 31% of men found suncream ‘unmasculine’. Hope those dinos are staying in the shade this summer.
This piece by Freddie deBoer on the contradiction of poptimism - particularly the idea that Taylor Swift/ Charlie XCX etc could possibly be called underdogs - is so good.“Underdogs cannot dominate! Definitionally! If they are dominating, they are not underdogs!” De Boer traces the evolution of pop’s cultural imprint from something sidelined, artistically speaking, to the omnipotent, omniscient, omnivore it is today. I’d never read Kelefa Sanneh’s 2004 essay for New York Magazine before - which deBoer calls the “influential cri de coeur” for pop to be taken as seriously as other genres of music - and it’s fascinating to consider a time (given where we are now with Swiftian economics) when pop music and pop stars did not rule the cultural roost.
I also found Viv Chen’s piece on western fashion’s chromophobia fascinating. After a trip to Mexico City, filled with glorious pinks and greens and oranges, Chen observes:
“We are conditioned to dress in neutral, masculine colors when we want to convey professionalism or authority. It’s this fear and anxiety experienced on a mass scale that creates homogenous minimalist aesthetics and beigescape IG grids. In his book Chromophobia, art writer David Batchelor analyzes how Western culture has (literally) tried to whitewash art and architecture by pathologizing color as infantile, savage, vulgar, oriental, feminine, etc. In modern times, this manifests when colorful dress is criticized for looking folksy, low taste, tacky, etc.”
I’d never watched any Entourage before but when its 20th anniversary came around in July, my husband decided to re-watch the boxset and I thought hell - I’ll join him for the first episode. See what all the controversy is about.