Issue 25
touching base, booker prize 2025, and Arpita Singh
recently…
Happy New Year! I hope you all are doing well - or at least hanging in there. It has once again been a minute- or a bit more than a minute. I must say that myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), migraines, facial pain, and ADHD is not an ideal combination for producing pretty much anything. But I have been consuming. I have had a 75% completed issue of this newsletter sitting in my drafts since August. I think about it daily and I am trying very hard not to beat myself up about not keeping up.
A life update: I have been spending the majority of my time reading, watching Real Housewives, especially the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City (which is some of the best television I have ever watched, thank you John Oliver), and watching hockey. Over August and September I read the 2025 longlist for the Booker Prize - it was a very fun and fulfilling experience. I look forward to the longlist for 2026, the judges have already been announced.
I came to the realization in the past few months that I finally feel like a grownup or as grownup as I am ever going to feel - I have as much agency in where I am in life as I possibly could have. As I have said before here, I was a late bloomer. I went through decades of mental health treatments, including months of intensive outpatient hospitalization to find myself on anything that resembles solid ground. Then I got sick and any life plans I had worked so hard to create for myself just disappeared - unlikely to be seen anytime soon. I then started another journey (as you might say) to “radically accepting”- once again - my situation. Though I have seen great improvement in my health journey - it is nowhere near where I was 10 years ago - I have gotten to the point where I can’t even imagine doing any of that again - that person is gone.
The first few years of my drastic fall from normalcy I would sit in my therapist’s office, week after week, and just weep at the fact the I had worked so hard to get my life on track and it all just disintegrated, was for naught, and I was back to square one. It took around 200 hours (I used AI to look up once a week for 5 years - that’s a lot of hours) of saying “radical acceptance” (a tagline that is used in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy that I did for 12 hours a week for three months back in 2017?) that quickly became something I said with rolled eyes and a laugh/sob. Or another favorite “loving what is” - which I strangely could not remember for weeks and would repeatedly ask my therapist “what was that line again?” Now I am a pro and can say it on command.
ANYWAY I feel myself getting off track. I have realized over the past year that those years and tears of emotional work were not in vain, I just wasn’t finished and probably never will be, because life is so hard and wrenches are being thrown everywhere and I have never learned to duck. I don’t know how I could have possibly have survived over the past 5 years without that work and incredible pharmaceuticals. I am just having trouble figuring out where to go from here, how do I grow with such physical limitations? I feel I have hit a ceiling and it is a brick one. I sure hope this isn’t going to take another 200 hours in my therapist’s office. Good thing he finds me funny and I am obviously his favorite patient.
reading backlog
I have been struggling a bit around where to even start with my reading backlog. When the only productive thing I can accomplish is to read, I end up reading a lot. I wasn’t really able to do it for a few years and I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do. Below are some of the travels I have taken on my couch. It felt too overwhelming to add them all - perhaps the next edition.
I will group the Booker Prize books together, a rundown of highlights over the last number of months, and then share some of the most the ones that are still swirling around in my head. I think the most common theme/reminder I found in my reading is that the state of things has been just as bad as they are now throughout history, and were often worse.
I decided to read the 2025 “Booker Dozen” - the 13 books that are on the Booker Prize Longlist of them before September 23 when the shortlist was announced. This is the first time I have wanted to read everything on the list. I ended up reading 11.5 of them - I skipped Jonathan Buckley’s One Boat (the print was inaccessible) and half of Katie Kitamura’s Audition (it felt overly complicated and the characters were insufferable - which is a very unusual thing for me to say about fictional characters). I think the shortlist was bang on and I really loved them all, except Audition - which I may not come back to. Any of them could have won, So I was just fine with David Szalay’s Flesh being the winner. I really enjoyed being able to fully participate in the social media chatter about the longlist and obviously have many opinions about other people’s opinions.
Other books of note that I read since I last reported to you all: Anjet Daanje’s The Remembered Soldier, a shortlister for National Book Award for Translated Literature - it is slow and deliberately repetitive, but it sure does payoff in the end, I did actually appreciate the pace. Rabih Alameddine’s The True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) - National Book Award shorylist - laugh out loud funny, intense, compassionate, and very charming. Ethan Rutherford’s North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther - another National Book Award shortlister - boy was this a dark book, offers a great deal to chew on (metaphorically - obviously) and a great reminder that we are not currently living through the darkest times ever. Scott Anderson’s The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War - a must read and an eye opening history of American Intelligents - very readable. I am looking forward to reading Anderson’s new book on Iran. Buckeye by Patrick Ryan. Wow. I recommend this book to everyone, it is the most visceral book I have read in a long time, I had an emotional hangover for days after finishing it.
something short to read/watch/listen to
Hilton Als on Fresh Air the gift of listening and listening to people’s silences.
This piece by Bel Hawkins about the action of reading and chronic fatigue is extremely well done and it is exactly how I feel.
This guy recorded everything he read from his public library from 1962-2025, 3,00 books. I love to know what people read.
What Went Wrong podcast episode on Grey Garden’s approaches the documentary completely differently than how many have traditionally approached it.
I really needed to read this piece on how being disabled forced me to accept love by Tilly Moses. As an able bodied person it is hard enough to accept help when you need it, so you can imagine (or not imagine) the level of help you need to accept as a disabled person is difficult to swallow, often feels shameful, and close to impossible not to feel like a giant burden to the people you love the most. Many disabled people, me included, become or continue to be physically dependent and financially dependent on loved ones. It can be crippling painful. I am grateful for coming across this article and for Tilly for writing it.
The new National Geographic documentary on the New York Times war photographer Lynsey Addario is a very timely piece.
I have been closely following the conversation around the Chanté Joseph’s British Vogue article “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now?” While much of the article focuses on the social media aspect of boyfriends, it hints at other reasons women see boyfriends as embarrassing. The episode “Is Heterosexuality Cringe?” of Today Explained interviews Joseph.
The Edward Gorey House looks very fun
some more visual enrichment
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I always enjoy reading your newsletter so much! I just read the boyfriend article. Such an interesting thought. Here I am in my 40s with a boyfriend. I do find it slightly embarrassing. Haha! I don't post his face online mainly for safety reasons, but I also feel boastful and having gone through divorce, I know what the relationship fallout is like. I wish there was a better word too... partner, best friend... I haven't found one that captures it yet.
You know I love Edward Gorey!