My favourite non-fiction mini books

Part 2a) of my series for the time poor and distracted. Also: Taylor Swift gets Brodesser-Aknered and a four pepper pot to transform your dinner

Esquire has dubbed 2023 the year of the slim volume. (A fun fact, if this source is to be believed: From 2011 to 2017 the average bestseller [on the NYT bestseller list] was over 400 pages in length. However, in 2021, only 38% of bestselling books were more than 400 pages in length… a drop of 29.5% from 2011.) The popularity of short books is a no-brainer and the incentive to everyone (writer, editor, reader) is clear: less time! Liberate time, I say.

I’m a big fan of a little book. The doorstoppers on my own bookshelves are undeniably suffering - as intrigued as I am by Eve by Cat Bohannon, it is simply too heavy to lug anywhere/ hold up with my exhausted paws.

I’ve called this newsletter Part 2a) because these are non-fiction small books and so b) coming up next, will be fiction small books, aka novellas. Part 3 will be bath books/ dippy books, unless I find another segue in this mini-series in which case - stay for the ride.

Disobedient Bodies I had a blast last week interviewing writer and academic Emma Dabiri at Brixton House about her third book, a vibrant and originally wrought entry to the canon of beauty academia. It contains zero Kardashian (!) and lots about the 1750s enclosure acts, witchcraft and occularcentricism (the bias of sight over other senses) and how these all contributed to the Western ideals of beauty. (I also recc Dabiri’s second short book, What White People Can Do Next, which disrupts the earnest social media discourse around race and less importantly, has a really great cover.)

The Song of the Whole Wide World: On Grief, Motherhood & Poetry I read a proof of this (out Feb 2024) in one go, in the stillness of a bath last week. A memoir by the academic and artist Tamarin Norwood about her son Gabriel’s 72 minutes of life and her maternity leave of grief, it is beautiful and undeniably - necessarily - sad. (I’ll be adding it to my running list on books about/ for grief.)

Lean Out A must-read riposte to Sheryl Sandberg’s business book and the idea of “trickle-down feminism”, in which the late writer Dawn Foster posits a new system for change, aka ‘lean out’. A clear-eyed polemic (with another great cover) that dismantles lifestyle politics, choice feminism and middle-class discourse with ease, for EG:

“An obsession with lifestyle … obscures the fact that for huge numbers of women, problems in life aren’t related to being upset about images in magazines, mulling over whether high heels are a symbol of patriarchy, or whether you can enjoy being spanked and still be a feminist.”

Man’s Search for Meaning One of my books of 2022, this short 1949 book by psychoanalayst and Holocaust survivor, Viktor E. Frankl, generously uses his agonising experience in Auschwitz to demonstrate how hope is as necessary to life as food and water and how to re-frame existential problems.

Intimations Thie slimmest of her works, this lockdown mini essay collection is my favourite Zadie Smith’s work. The most memorable essays are on the futile project of comparing suffering, why racism is a virus of contempt and the Debts and Lessons at the end - particularly Number 26, ‘Contingency’, which elegantly lists the many ways in which Smith finds herself fortunate.

“Suffering is not relative; it is absolute… it cannot be easily mediated by a third term like ‘privilege’. If it could, the CEO’s daughter would not starve herself, nor the movie idol ever put a bullet in his own brain.”

Do Humankind’s Best Days Lie Ahead? A transcription of a Munk debate between cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker and libertarian science writer/ economist Matt Ridley (the world is getting better) vs. philosopher Alain de Botton and writer Malcolm Gladwell (the world is getting worse.) Lots of factful food for thought (is freedom external or internal?) and fun to ‘read’ a debate, too.

The Beauty Myth [Vintage Short Edition] Before Naomi Wolf became a conspiracy theorist (Naomi Klein has a new book out about this which I’m intrigued by) she wrote a 1990 cult classic on beauty ideals, which now been abridged for this short form series. Abridging non-fiction is a risky project and some of Wolf’s comparisons were and still are clunky, but this mini series is great (also recc The Second Sex one) and the book succinctly distils how the beauty economy, like all economies, is shaped by politics and patriarchy.

How To Stay Married Ending on a lol (because god we need one). This “User’s guide to wedlock” came on The High Low’s touring bookshelf back in 2020 because this anthology of advice from the ‘60s on how to stay married, by then twenty-something columnist, Jilly Cooper, is a hilarious relic from a bygone era. Tips for keeping hold of your man include plaiting flowers in your pubic hair, answering the door wearing just a fur coat and:

“[I]f your husband does get a crush on holiday - carrying her beachbag, always ready with a large towel when she comes up from the sea - your best answer rather than sulking is to take to the nearest gigolo.”

Also check out:

After The Storm by Emma Jane Unsworth (which I wrote about here)

Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Misogynies by Joan Smith

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BITS

As we all are glued to the news day and night - and every outlet is rolling out constant content - I will not be discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in this newsletter. But please be mindful of where you get your news and if you are able, do donate to MSF and Red Cross, who offer emergency aid without discrimination.

Taylor Swift - finally, sort of - got Brodesser-Aknered. Live from the Eras Tour, renowned celeb interviewer (and Fleishman author) Taffy Brodesser-Akner dives into Swift’s legacy, the cultural mythology of Swiftiedom and how she, perhaps more than any other pop star, is post-press.

“It is probably true that Taylor Swift was too busy to talk to me… It is almost certainly true that she didn’t want to talk to me — celebrities rarely do. But what is definitely true is that she didn’t need to talk to me. On the day I wrote this, Taylor Swift had 468 million followers across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, whereas The New York Times had a mere 92 million… I honestly can’t see a reason that someone who has revolutionized the relationship a singer can have with her fans should want an intermediary. Certainly she has sold enough albums without our help. But also? I don’t know if I could tell a story about Taylor Swift that’s better than the story she tells about herself, through every song, every dance, every video, every social transmission. She is a master not just at the revelation of information but the analysis of each revelation, the scrutiny of that analysis, the contextualization of it all.”

Her bit on the Taylor Swift ‘microeconomy’ is also fascinating.

“Her mere presence contributed more than $30 million to the [Santa Clara] economy [during her tour]. “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wanted in on some of that action, so he tweeted at her to add some of that sweet Taylor Swift microeconomy to Canada; she complied by setting some dates in 2024.”

Reading this led me to Brodesser-Akner’s 2017 interview with Tom Hiddleston, Swift’s once paramour (and the subject of fierce paparazzi attention at that point) for GQ. I suspect Hiddleston strongly regrets both the tank top and interview, but his candid earnestness is touching. Ripe for a re-read.

I have been flicking through Opinions, Roxane Gay’s new anthology of essays and one which really stayed with me is her 2022 interview with the artist Jordan Casteel for The Cut. At just 32, Casteel has already received a MacArthur Genius Grant and her art is now extraordinarily covetable (one 2013 painting sold for over $600k, while another has entered MoMA’s permanent collection). As her success and position in the art world grows apace, Casteel’s deliberate attempts to produce less work and manage who owns her work, is really interesting.

Happy Meal by Jordan Casteel, 2021

101 must-watch documentaries is a collated list by Maybe Baby’s Haley Nahman, crowd-sourced from her many readers. So many on this list I now want to watch.

There’s a new episode of Book Chat on Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, which both came out in 1970. We talk about whether the portrayal of girlhood in AYTGIMM by “poet laureate of puberty” Judy Blume holds up over a century later (and why I feel so much more compassion for her mother this time round); and why Morrison’s story about Pecola Breedlove - which also feels like a story about the senses - still feels so courageous and formative today.

Bobby also informs me of the longest audio book ever recorded by one person: War and Peace narrated by Thandiwe Newton, which is…. SIXTY HOURS LONG. Imagine how dry her mouth was at the end.

I am an occasional rather than regular listener to Desert Island Discs, but when it’s good, it is so good. This episode with comedian Ade Edmondson is magic. I think Ade Edmondson might be the consistently magic part, because his recent interview in Red magazine to promote his new memoir was sweet:

“The thing about happiness is that it’s not automatic. It doesn’t just happen, so don’t expect it just to come to you. You have to create an environment for it to happen. It’s like making yogurt.. You’ve got to nurture it, give it time.”

To yoghurt-making.

This piece by Laura Thomas RD on the demonisation of Ultra Processed Foods (UPFs) for Vittles is a must-read. I am such a fan of all that Thomas does for widening the lense when we talk about food and eating (I was lucky enough to interview her for How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right?) and if you liked this, I recc her own newsletter, Can I Have Another Snack?

“In nutritional science, we have historically focused on individual nutrients… it made sense to isolate vitamins and minerals when we learned that a deficiency of vitamin C led to scurvy and that too little vitamin D caused rickets. But as nutritional science has evolved, we have learned that focusing on individual nutrients isn’t always helpful, because people don’t eat nutrients, they eat food. (Besides, a myopic focus on individual nutrients can cause fear and anxiety – remember when everyone thought eggs were ‘bad’ because they contained cholesterol?) When we reduce food down to its constituent parts, we lose sight of the infinite complex reactions and interactions that happen when we eat, including those that can’t easily be measured or captured by science.”

The best thing about running The High Low was* the communities that came out of it. In 2020, Rachel Wilson, grieving the loss of her mother, wrote in to the show to ask if there were any other listeners who had been orphaned by their mid-twenties. The response was vast and from that, Wilson built The Grief Network, which has now turned into a book, Losing Young: How to Grieve When Your Life is Just Beginning. I have only read the Introduction, but what I have read so far is beautifully written and I will be adding to my list of grief resources.

*was or were? I have spent 10 mins trying to figure this one out and am still unsure

I’ve had this Ask Philippa column floating around my desk for the last month; I really liked her reply to a 29-year-old who feels like she’s wasting her life. It’s not new advice, for the most part, but I love the way Philippa Perry writes (I can’t wait to tuck into her highly anticipated follow-up to The Book You Wish…) and it’s always useful to be reminded of this: “Don’t think of life as milestones that must be met by certain ages”. The non-existent milestones aren’t all external, either. Sometimes the most prized are internal.

I had never heard of Yevonde before my former podwife Dolly took me and my daughter to her illuminating exhibition at The National Portrait Gallery. The first photographer to use colour photography in her portraiture in the 1930s, she was also known for her love of light effects, like stars and moons. If you are around central London, do go visit.

Lady Glendevon by Yevonde, 1936

I’m having a fun-affair with gourds, which look like mini pumpkins. £1 each from the supermarket (quadruple that if you buy them from the farmers market.) Not sure how tasty they would be to eat, but they give good bang for their buck in the Halloween decorative stakes. (I am all in, now I have tiny keen trick or treaters.

Speaking of eating, I have to pay forward this recc for the four pepper and salt pinch pot, which was recommended to me by my friend Matilda who is a professional cook and whose food notes I treat with reverence. I am intolerant to garlic and onion and with this seasoning, I can keep even the most ardent allium-mates in my life happy.

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Paid subs, don’t forget to check out September’s extra offering: this piece on comfort reading (and why sometimes you just need a book to wash over you), an edition of The List inc. a great new vintage jacket outlet and a Book Thoughts on Susannah Constantine’s memoir.