h e l l o from t h e o
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this week’s style inspo:
Jonathan, the world’s oldest tortoise. He’s 188 and lives on the remote island of St. Helena.
what I’m clicking:
The joy and agony of being Instagram’s celebrity gossip queen | Inside the world of youtube’s drama channels | Why are we still giving Trish Peytas attention? | The world’s first internet meme turned 20 (remember Ebaum’s world?) | Fake Famous and the tedium of influencer culture | Carl Lentz and the trouble at Hillsong, Justin Bieber’s hipster megachurch | Sex tapes, hush money, and Hollywood’s economy of secrets | The season of the snitch | The dawn of the quaranzine and the downtown shenanigans of The Drunken Canal | The nightmare apartment share | Ultra-fast fashion is eating the world | The agony and the ecstasy of getting mistaken for cis | An anti-trafficking charity’s dangerous mistakes | That smirky olympic gymnast has joined a cult | The many lives of Steven Yeun | Our Asian neighbors are suffering. We need to listen to them | We need to put a name to this violence | It’s time to talk about violent Christian extremism | How to understand the rage economy | Your travel guide to the right-wing web under Trump | We worried about kids and the internet. We should have been worried about adults | How to become an intellectual in Silicon Valley | Mary H.K. Choi on family grief and modern marriage | Jenna Lyons on coming out after 40 | Mara Wilson on the lies Hollywood tells about little girls | Tavi Gevinson on Britney Spears | NFTs are here to ruin everything | Living in New York’s unloved neighborhood | The story of a bad dog | The dream of living in worlds beyond ours | Email is making us miserable (sorry for sending this)
what I’m coveting:
I have scoffed at the chic fanny pack trend until now. I need a Freda Salvador belt bag before my next trip.
what I’m recommending:
Everyone should be taking more baths. I rediscovered Vitabath early on in the pandemic and it has really improved my winter. It’s sort of hard to find in the wild, but you can order it from Ulta or directly from the Vitabath website (which honestly looks sketchy AF but apparently it’s legit because I tagged them in an Instagram story and they offered “my followers” a 20% discount using the code TEDDY20. This is not a joke).
what I’m wanderlusting:
Any destination from Assouline’s entire collection of travel books.
what I’m reading:
Anaïs Nin
Well, this book is creepy as hell. Sure, I guess you could call it “erotica,” but there’s nothing sexy about it (maybe that’s the point?). It’s mostly just old men having disgusting bodily functions near/on/around teenage girls.
Did it make me cry: No, but I definitely grimaced.
Did it make me laugh: Perhaps I guffawed?
Is it a good pandemic book: No.
Would I recommend it: If somebody genuinely recommended this book to me, I would genuinely have to reconsider the vibe I was putting out into society.
Would I read it again: Omg no.
Would it be a good movie: This movie would be illegal.
Ruman Alam
This was one of the most hyped books of 2020 and with good reason. It’s beautiful, frightening, and scarily prescient. However unintentionally, this book has managed to capture the anxiety we’ve all been feeling for the past 12 months, but in a way that doesn’t feel tedious or numbing. I read it in one sitting--It’s that good! I don’t even think I got up to pee. But I was furious when this book ended. I could have had another 100 pages.
Did it make me cry: No, but I was extremely emotionally invested in the outcome.
Did it make me laugh: I don’t think so.
Is it a good pandemic book: It’s possibly the best? pandemic book? that’s not about a pandemic?
Would I recommend it: Buy it now, read it now, and you definitely won’t regret it. (If you do regret it, I promise to let you gracefully unsubscribe from this newsletter, no questions asked.)
Would I read it again: Absolutely.
Would it be a good movie: Oh my god, YES. I’m getting Viola Davis x Denzel Washington vibes.
Carola Lovering
Speaking of books I read in one setting: I was reading another book when Carola kindly sent this to me in the mail (we went to college together!). I was sort of just flipping through it, meaning to add it to the top of my stack, but then I got distracted and read the whole thing in less than 24 hours.
On page 100, I was like “omg I figured out the twist”. But there’s this literary trick that I think was popularized by Gone Girl and Fates and Furies where halfway through the book, the perspective shifts and you’re like wait, WHAT! I’m a sucker and it gets me every time, including this time. The thing I thought I figured out was just the first layer of the big reveal. The ending made me mad, but I think it’s supposed to. And honestly, when have you ever really LOVED an ending? (Serious question, pls tell me a book ending you think is perfect!)
Did it make me cry: No.
Did it make me laugh: No.
Is it a good pandemic book: I think a lot of us are having trouble focusing on anything in what seems like the 47th month of the pandemic, but this book does a pretty good job of grabbing and holding your attention right from the start.
Would I recommend it: I would definitely recommend this to people who loved Girl on the Train and Luckiest Girl Alive.
Would I read it again: You can’t really read a book like this twice since you’ll never be able to replicate that “oh shit!” moment.
Would it be a good movie: Netflix limited series for this one, I think. Can we cast Anya Taylor-Joy from Queen’s Gambit?
Patricia Lockwood
I read the first page of this book and I was like oh ok it’s one of thoooose books. And then I read the next fifty pages and I was like I have no idea what’s going on, but I was really into it, as strange as it was. And then somewhere near the end, a plot started to emerge and unfold in a way that was absolutely devastating. I feel like I’m still processing even though I finished it a week ago.
Did it make me cry: No, but it was strange because I should have cried. It’s a really sad story, but the way it’s presented you’re like “is this really happening?” and then when you realize it’s real, it’s too late to cry.
Did it make me laugh: I laughed out loud many, many times.
Is it a good pandemic book: No, it made me feel kind of claustrophobic and anxious. Save this one for sunnier days.
Would I recommend it: If I haven’t already talked to you about this book, I probably would not recommend it to you. I think it’s a love it or hate it kind of thing and I’m afraid to endorse it because I have a feeling you’ll hate it.
Would I read it again: No, but I have some pages bookmarked cause they made me chuckle.
Would it be a good movie: Absolutely not, no way.
Diksha Basu
Ostensibly, this book is not great. Plot holes galore, weird red herring storylines, incredibly bad or nonexistent descriptions of the setting, and characters who are pretty one dimensional. But did I love it anyways? Yes. Hard yes. It was everything I hoped it would be, but nothing more. Extremely flawed, but perfect in my eyes.
Did it make me cry: No, but it’s not supposed to.
Did it make me laugh: No, but I probably had a stupid gleeful look on my face the whole time. You know the one.
Is it a good pandemic book: Oh, most definitely. Fluff, fancy clothes, far-flung destinations. Everything I want right now.
Would I recommend it: Did you love Crazy Rich Asians?
Would I read it again: This might be embarrassing to admit, but yes, probably.
Would it be a good movie: I would watch this movie So. Many. Times. Please make this movie!
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
Mohsin Hamid
With the words “Asia” and “rich” in the title, I was like sick, this is my kinda book. It was not my kinda book.
Did it make me cry: No. It’s a sad story and I think it’s supposed to make you feel despondent in a sort of hopeless way, but I just couldn’t connect to this book. It was so flat.
Did it make me laugh: No.
Is it a good pandemic book: It’s really not a good anytime book.
Would I recommend it: No, but I would HIGHLY recommend two of his other books that I loved: Exit West and The Reluctant Fundamentalist.
Would I read it again: No.
Would it be a good movie: No.
Diane Johnson
If this book is satire—I kinda liked it. If it’s not—I fucking loathed it. I have little patience for idiotic and unlikeable protagonists, especially when the book is written in first person and you have to live inside their insipid little brain. I bought this book because I thought it would provide some sappy wanderlust about a city I would love to visit again. I was wrong. Please don’t waste your time with this book. (Side note: taking recs for any breezy novels set in Marrakech.)
Did it make me cry: No.
Did it make me laugh: No.
Is it a good pandemic book: No.
Would I recommend it: No.
Would I read it again: No.
Would it be a good movie: No. (Side note: taking recs for any good movies set in Marrakech.)
Teju Cole
This book certainly wins for best cover I’ve seen all year. But does the substance of the book match the graphic design? Um, not really. At moments I was like “ooh, what a fascinating snapshot of Lagos” and other times I just got so bored with the narrator’s snobbery. Sometimes it felt like an uncharacteristically eloquent Lonely Planet guidebook written by a disgruntled white guy. Overall the writing was good, but I was honestly so curious about the lives of the other characters in the book that I just felt unsatisfied and a bit bored by what was actually written.
Did it make me cry: No.
Did it make me laugh: No.
Is it a good pandemic book: No.
Would I recommend it: No, not really but I am definitely interested in reading other books by him.
Would I read it again: Ok, so there are some specifics of like cool record stores and book stores in Lagos so I would flip through this to find those names and places if I ever planned a trip there.
Would it be a good movie: No, nothing happens.
what I’m writing:
I contributed the Idaho writeup (with recommendations from some local friends) for Tripsavvy’s Best Staycation in Every State.