What To Read

I was asked recently what I do when I need to indulge in some self-care, and my answer was the same answer I give when asked about my hobbies, my interests, and however else I spend my spare time.

I read.

So here are a few things I’ve read recently that I’ve enjoyed:

Offline

The Library of Botanical Witchcraft, by Jasmine Wigham. Unfortunately, you’ll have to pre-order this one as I got to read it early. But if you like Stay For A Spell, this one’s for you: non-magical Thalia gets a job in the magical botanical library, hoping to find a spell to cure her (secretly) cursed sister. She has to team up with a standoffish (he’s really just shy!) post-doc witch, and… well, discovers that he’s really just shy. Warm, sweet and gentle, this is about as cosy as they come. And yes, of course, there’s a cat…

The Fatal Unpleasantness At Netherfield, by Claudia Gray: The fifth (and hopefully not final) installment in a gentle series of Austen-inspired mysteries, featuring the extremely long courtship between Jonathan Darcy (son of Elizabeth and Mr.) and Juliet Tilney (daughter of Catherine and Mr.). Austen characters abound, feelings are felt, and upper lips are kept appropriately stiff. I pre-order these as ebooks and read them the day they’re delivered to my Kindle, and then spend a year agonsing about what’ll happen next. (I make myown fun.)

Ghosts of Everest: The Search for Mallory and Irvine, by Jochen Hemmlebb, Larry A Johnson & Eric R Simonson. Like all risk-averse homebodies, I am obsessed with Mt Everest. This narrative non-ficton tells the story of an ambitious search for the bodies of Andrew Irvine and Geroge Malllory along Everest’s perilous north face in 1999. (They found Mallory; another narrative, about a later search for Irvine, can be read in The Third Pole, by Mark Synnott.) The question motivating these searches is: did Mallory and Irvine make it to the summit? The answer is: we don’t know and we probably never will. If you’d rather read Everest-set fiction, try Sarah Lotz’s The White Road.

Online

The Case of the Eleven Blue Men, The New Yorker (paywalled)

An article from 1948 which is almost un-New Yorker-ish in its brevity: eleven old men were discovered in a state of medical emergency, and turning blue. The article lays out the quick work various health inspectors and medical inspectors went through to figure out what happened. (Happily, all but one patient recovered.) I particularly liked this not just because it was delightfully short (if written today, it’d have been 10,000 words), but becuase it occurred in that incredible period of time between the 19th century’s casual relationship with really poisonous stubstances and the extraordinary medical advancements of the early 20th century. The tragedy is one that is unlikely to happen today in part because of investigations like the one outlined in this article.

Nice Books and Not Too Trashy Websites, Evil Witches

Evil Witches is one of my favourite newsletters, and this one is particularly useful if, like me, you miss the old internet so much. Lots of places to go, things to read, and links to click.

Emily’s Cartoons:

Cartoonist Emily McGovern made her name with her wonderful, hilarious “My Life As A Background Slytherin” comics; these days, you can find her on Patreon. Many of her comics are free, and all are wonderful.

A vist to the Sutro Tower, SF Gate:

I have a lifelong fondness for San Francisco’s Sutro Tower, the giant radio antenna looming over Twin Peaks. It’s currently undergoing a facelift. This article, about going up the “pan” (yikes) with the mantinence crew, has it all: history, veiws, and the proper reverence for this underrated local icon/eyesore.

‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ Doesn’t Tell The Real Story, Drew Magery:

An older oped from Drew Magery, but one I have found myself reflecting on a lot since reading it. Magery worked at GQ when Anna Wintour was promoted to Conde Nast’s Creative Director, overseeing all their properties, including GQ. Magery overtly holds Wintour responsible for decimating GQ, and hates the way her filmic standin, Miranda Priestly, “saves” the fictional magazines she controls by discovering the value of journalism and befriending a benevolent billionaire. Wintour has manged to salvage a lot of credibility from the success of the ‘Prada’ mythology despite the very real damage she inflicted on the media industry; I was heartened to see her finally held accountable, in some small way.

Just One More Thing

I’ll be on the panel “The Rise of Cosy Fantasy” on Saturday, 4 July, at the Bradford Literature Fest. If you’re in the UK and haven’t given Bradford a go, it’s a genuinely wonderful festival: acessible, open, inexpensive and hugely representative of the true diversity of literature out there (which isn’t always true of every literature festival). I’ll also be moderating a number of panels; I’ll list those in a later newsletter.

Thanks for reading! x

Sutro Tower photo by Griffin Wooldridge on Unsplash