Weekend reads

Some Substack recommendations and a new story by me.

Early American primer, via CSU Northridge Library

I’m celebrating one month of publishing on Substack! Thanks to everyone who has subscribed, “liked” posts, and left comments. Tell your friends!

I promise this post isn’t going to be about me—mostly—except for this: Earlier this week I published my 76th story on Medium, where I make a tiny bit of money thanks to the largesse of paid-up Medium “members.” (Read my take on “monetization.”) The new story is about a piece of fiction I read and loved when I was 10, even though nothing about the story or its characters “represented” me, as the current jargon has it. It’s important, I think, not to expect stories to be mere mirrors. Read “The Story I Wasn’t Supposed to Read.” And if you like it, clap repeatedly; Medium’s inscrutable algorithm allows up to 50 claps per story.

And that is (mostly) enough about me.

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I continue to make delightful and humbling discoveries here in the Substack Universe. So many famous names! So much generosity! Here are some of my current favorite newsletters:

Mary Gaitskill, the American novelist and short-story writer, just announced that she’s stepping away from her newsletter, “Out of It,” for a few months to focus on a book project. But you can still read several months of her archives, which cover “subjects from fiction to incel phenomenon to gorgeous worms at the bottom of the ocean.”

Ruth Reichl writes about food—she’s the former editor of Gourmet and the author of several acclaimed food-centric memoirs—and her newsletter, “La Briffe,” is a mulligatawny of recipes, recollections, and insights into food culture. Disclaimer: I met Ruth when we were both employed by New West magazine—she was a restaurant critic, and I was, nominally, her editor. (She rarely required editing.) I’m grateful to her for all those expense-account restaurant meals. Research!

Shalom Auslander, the American novelist, memoirist, and former Orthodox Jew (the last being an important part of his story), publishes a newsletter called “Fetal Position” in which he shares, among other goodies, excerpts from his novel-in-progress, It’s Hell, Charlie Brown.

Elizabeth McCracken is another American novelist and memoirist! Her newsletter has an excellent name, “Release McCracken,” and it’s mostly not about writing. It’s mostly about swimming in Barton Springs, in Texas. I am also, as most of you know, a swimmer who writes, so of course I find this irresistible.

Dashka Slater, the author of The 57 Bus and the recently released Accountable, is a swimmer-writer, too! (I’ve chatted with her at the Dolphin Club, where she occasionally swims as a guest.) Her newsletter is called “When They Told Me to Write, I Bowed,” and her recent post about swimming and writing includes a list of, yes, books about swimming.

Rebecca Bird Grigsby is an artist with a non-tech day job in the tech world. Her newsletter, “Lost Pigeon Productions,” reminds me of the early days of blogging: It’s a grab bag, in the best possible way, of links and musings, elevated by Becky’s elegant, confident prose. (I feel qualified to call her Becky because we met IRL years ago, when she had an Etsy business and my friend Síle Convery was organizing craft shows.)

James Fallows, the journalist, private pilot, and former presidential speechwriter, writes “Breaking the News,” where he discusses, among other things, why journalism is broken and how it can be fixed. Funny true story: When I was a copywriter at Banana Republic, we used to get famous adventurous folks to write product reviews for our catalog. I was assigned Fallows and given a phone number (this was before email, believe it or not). I hadn’t calculated the time difference between San Francisco and Kuala Lumpur (15 hours, for the record), so I evidently woke him up. He was groggy but terribly gracious, and he wrote a wonderful review of whatever product it was we sent him. (I could look it up, but I’ll spare you, and me.) Thanks, Mr. Fallows!

Tiia VM (I don’t know her full surname) lives in Helsinki, where she owns a vintage-clothing boutique. She has stepped away from Instagram, where I discovered her, the better to pour her energies into her superb newsletter, “Sunday Style Thoughts,” in which she considers how we shop, why some of us overshop, and how class and status influence our shopping habits and self-presentation.

Jack Shepherd, the former editorial director at BuzzFeed, writes “On Words and Up Words,” which is about “words, wordplay, the history of words, language, grammar, and word puzzles.” Did you know that “shambles” was originally the singular “shamble,” which meant “footstool”? Neither did I. Now we both know.