Upcoming Workshops and Offerings
The Book Club for Writers will discuss Mason Currey’s book Daily Rituals: Women at Work on Sunday, July 30. All paid subscribers are invited to attend book club meetings on Zoom.
Upcoming workshops will be announced in the newsletter soon!
I typically conclude each month by rounding up the top 10 things I read. But recently, I had the thought: why stop at 10? Here’s every single thing I read and adored in June.
Books
Travel time + beach time = lots of reading time.
Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden by Camille Dungy
This memoir has so much to offer. On the surface, it’s an ode to native plant gardening—something I’ve gotten very into this year—but when you dig deeper, it’s really a story of environmental justice. This was my first time reading Dungy’s writing, and I’m looking forward to diving into her poems soon.
Don’t Call Me Home: A Memoir by Alexandra Auder
The way Alexandra Auder writes about her fascinating childhood in the Chelsea Hotel with her mother, an Andy Warhol muse, is vivid and striking. I listened to the audiobook, which I couldn’t recommend more highly for your summer road trips: it’s one of the best audiobooks I’ve ever heard. In a Q&A recently, Auder said that the book didn’t feel complete to her until she narrated the audio herself, and that love and finality really shows in the narration.
Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms translated by Matvei Yankelevich
If you’d told me at the beginning of the year that I would both read and enjoy a collection of Soviet-era poems translated from Russian, I wouldn’t have believed you. It’s all thanks to a reading I heard Matvei Yankelevich give at Bread Loaf a few weeks ago. Yankelevich had to keep stopping in the middle of reading because the audience was laughing so hard at these poems.
You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir by Maggie Smith
This book is worthy of every single bit of the hype it’s been getting, and I say it’s because of the structure. It’s as much a book about the process of writing a memoir as it is a divorce memoir itself. Read an excerpt here.
The Last Suspicious Holdout: Stories by Ladee Hubbard
It’s been a while since I’ve read a book of short stories, and this one was really unique. The collection spans 25 years in the same Southern suburban setting, and I loved the experience of following characters and their family members across each of the 12 stories.
Daily Rituals: Women at Work by Mason Currey
I had a great time re-reading Mason Currey’s delightful accounts of women artists’ daily routines. This title is our summer Book Club for Writers selection, and it’s bound to give us a lot to talk about! Find more info about the book club at the bottom of this email.
From Around the Internet
Here are my favorite quick reads from June.
That Summer Feeling by Spencer Tweedy
Great writing on one of my favorite songs of all time: Jonathan Richman’s “That Summer Feeling.”
Jonathan singing “one more thing!” not once but twice in the song, let alone at all, is one of my favorite things in music ever. The joy, exuberance, like he just can’t wait tell us the next thought, I love.
Spencer Tweedy (son of Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy) recently produced a poignant Elizabeth Moen cover of this tune:
excerpt from The Burden of Joy by Lexi Kent-Monning
Lexi Kent-Monning’s debut novel is among my most-anticipated books of 2023. I loved this excerpt from it, via Autofocus:
It’s a dangerous hobby, keeping track of others. Knowing them better than they know themselves, better than you know yourself. Intellectually I know this: don’t keep people as hobbies. Keep them as friends and lovers. Don’t keep strange things, like a piece of rubber from the sole of my ex-husband’s shoe that lives on my nightstand[...] Let some things happen without keeping a record. Without turning it into your possession.
Off the Clock by Emma Goldberg
Part book review, part ode to the Sabbath, this New York Times essay attempts to answer one of the world’s seemingly favorite questions: how do we align our aspirations with pleasure rather than productivity? I’m eager to read the two books Goldberg refers to as “inversions of beach reads, invitations not to escape but to luxuriate — books in search of a new texture for time.”
A Token of My Affection by Elise Johnston
I gasped so loud at the end of this short story about a woman whose frequent rendezvous with a possum have gotten a little out of hand.
GRWM to Die of Dysentery: A Modern Woman Takes On The Oregon Trail by Catherine Spino
Fans of The Oregon Trail are destined to love this essay, but even I, a delicate bookworm whose video game experience begins and ends with Mario Kart and The Sims, absolutely loved this essay. It’s about hope and evolution and writers’ block: the holy trinity!
and finally, a TikTok, which definitely counts as reading
Of all the brilliant Titanic submersible content I saw, this took the cake.
Things I Wrote This Month
Lots of music writing this month! I interviewed Rick Colado of The Julius Airwave about the band’s then-and-now gear picks. I also reviewed a new Teal Peel single as well as one of Sylvan Esso’s Live At Electric Lady tracks.
Summer Book Club Meeting: July 30
The Book Club for Writers will discuss Mason Currey’s book Daily Rituals: Women at Work in July. If you’re a creative process nerd like me, you’ll love this book, which provides the routines of 143 artists working in different mediums, including writing.
Here’s how you can join the Book Club for Writers:
Join for $5 for the month of July, or subscribe for the whole year and save 27%. Upgrade your subscription by clicking below:
Get the book via Bookshop, Amazon, or your local library.
Add the book club meeting to your calendar and read the book in July.
As you read, take notes on the artist routines that stand out to you. Hunt for patterns.
Join the discussion live on Zoom on Sunday, July 30 at 1PM EST. Paid subscribers will receive a Zoom link the day before our meeting.
Can’t make it live? Our recorded discussion will be available on Zoom afterward.
Thanks for reading!
💛 Hurley