Hello friends,
How was your summer? I guess it’s over now (I wish I could add a poorly sung rendition ~ by me ~ of Celine) and we are hop skipping into Autumn at a rate of knots. I for one am delighted because it finally means tights, TIGHTS, and it means leaves turning brown, change and new year resolutions (I do them now rather than in Jan… too bleak).
Autumn always changes my mood for what to read too. I feel different - like I have changed channels and tuned into a new frequency - and as a result, I need to absorb something with a new feel, a comfort that sits apart from the one I sought out when the sun was sort of shining.
It also makes me thinks about aging… go with me here. How lucky we are to age. Maybe it’s reading Glittering a Turd (more on that to come as you scroll) or simply seeing more time on the planet as a fortunate thing, who knows; but it makes me look at how I think, feel, talk about age and myself.
So this week I was delighted to see that this mega babe turned 100 and JUST LOOK AT HER. She is unapologetically brilliant and completely herself. To be 100 and to be a fraction of this, to ooze even a drop of this sass… well how lucky we’d be.
So in the wise words of Iris Apfel…
"There is really no substitute for experience. You must have experience and be open to experience — that helps. That helps a lot. Most importantly, you have to be yourself, be who you are and take time to be open and honest with yourself. That is what it's all about. If you don't know yourself, you'll never have great style. You'll never really live. To me, the worst fashion faux pas is to look in the mirror, and not see yourself."
Happy September wonderful ones,
Em x
✨Book of the month✨
Glittering a Turd - Kris Hallenga
For anyone new to Kris, then you lucky lucky bean because she is going to change your life. I do not say that lightly, trust me. I first met Kris when I ran for CoppaFeel!, the brilliant charity she founded, dressed as a boob. A whole gang of us wearing big boobs filled with balloons, bouncing on our backs, laughing together, running 13.1 miles all in a bid to get people chatting about boobs early.
Kris was diagnosed with breast cancer in her early twenties. It was aggressive, it took more time than it should for it to be taken seriously and it was life changing. Life giving. Kris inspires you to live life now without the diagnosis, to grab your boobs in order to grab hold of life. I laughed, cried, had to close the book to simply absorb what I’d read and not lose it, felt inspired to DO SHIT and re-read it after finishing it in days.
To get a taste for Kris’ style, you can listen to her to chatting to her pal Fearne Cotton on Happy Place about life after the diagnosis. Tune in here.
I don’t want to spoil anything as I want you to open it, dive in and experience it for what it is. But I do want you to read it, so want to give one of you the chance for having a freebie.
🚨All you need to do is comment and tell us whose turd you’d like to metaphorically glitter and why.🚨
Other cracking reads…
Indelicacy - Amina Cain
I absolutely judged this book by it’s cover ~ totally enamored by the mood of the woman watching me. This short book is the story of a cleaning woman at a museum of art and her life ~ her aspirations, her desire to write, her desire to be seen, her desires full stop. She isn’t often likeable in the traditional sense but entirely likeable in how she moves through the world with zero f’s to give. We follow her friendships, her marriage, her writing, her discovery of self and how she navigates the world as she and the world around her changes. It is funny, darkly funny, and whilst it can not always feel relatable, the experience of a woman who is simply trying to survive and attempt to do what she likes feel like, is something so many of us can connect to.
You can read more about Amina Cain in The Paris Review here.
Assembly - Natasha Brown
You will finish this in one sitting, I absolutely guarantee you. It will hook you in and you’ll have read the 100 or so pages before you know it. The narrator of Assembly is a Black British woman, navigating a world through a lens of class, race and loss; brilliantly weaving the day to day alongside a momentous health event that only becomes clear with time.
Assembly has been hailed the breakout hit of the summer and it’s easy to see why. It has depth and texture, each word considered in its use, punchy and precise. Natasha is a force to reckon with.
You can more about Natasha Brown and Assembly in British Vogue here.
Topics of Conversation - Miranda Popkey
I bought this book last year and you know, when sometimes you aren’t quite ready to jump into something and then all of sudden it’s all you can read/think about? Yeah, that. This story spans over almost 20 years ~ key moments in time that shape the narrator’s life and decision making across their adult life. It tells us of the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we only ever feel able to tell strangers and the stories we keep from others entirely.
You can listen to Miranda Popkey talk about Topics of Conversation with The Wild Detectives here.
The Comfort Book - Matt Haig
A brilliant pal of mine bought me this after reading it and wanting all to have the comfort of Matt’s wise words. I read it over a weekend and thumbed maybe 85% of the pages, knowing I’d want to come back to them over time.
For those familiar with Matt’s work, this will feel like putting on a warm, fuzzy jumper; it’s a collection of musings, consolations, meditations, stories; all designed to create a feeling of safety in times of instability.
I love this particular segment…
“You don’t have to cope with everything. You don’t have to handle everything. You don’t have to keep a lid on everything to get through a day.
You can’t turn tides. You can’t defy gravity. You can’t go against the grain without getting splinters.
But you can drop the disguise. You can feel what you feel. You can stretch out inside yourself.
You can cry. You can feel. You show what you are.
You can, in fact, be you.”
The Paper Palace - Miranda Cowley Heller
Miranda is new to the book world, emerging from TV writing, and my oh my, has she landed with a positively brilliant thump into navigating fiction. This is a summer belter, containing everything you want or need ~ sensuality and exploration, holidays, complex people and dynamics, lust and desire… oh so much to get your teeth stuck into. The story spans over 50 years and tells us about Elle, her husband Peter and family friend Jonas, and the relationships that have evolved over their lifetimes. The present is set over 24 painstaking hours, where Elle, after a heated encounter with Jonas, must decide what to do with her life ~ stay with her husband and keep her family in the contained state they are currently in or throw caution to the wind and be romantically interwined with Jonas.
I could not put it down, I read it across a weekend and was utterly useless in the moments I wasn’t reading it, because all I wanted to be doing was reading it. I love it when that happens.
You can read more Miranda Cowley Heller and how she approached writing this book in The Guardian here.
✨What’s coming up?✨
Make Bosses Pay - Eve Livingston
I’m still in the middle of reading this utterly triumphant debut but as I was lucky enough to be gifted a proof, and because it’s so ruddy brilliant, I wanted to start chatting about it now.
As a lefty who thought they were pretty engaged with collective change, I ashamedly have had in the past a perspective of unions that is less than positive. I don’t know why, I just had this view of unions that had been engrained from a young age that they were disruptive in the worst of ways, unhelpful for the majority and just a nuisance. I now have a very vocal partner who has schooled me on unions (ok, soapboxed more than anything) and Eve has educated me.
This book is for anyone who isn’t sure about what unions do, why they are important, systemic issues in the workplace, the role of HR (the fact the chapter is called ‘HR are not your friends’ is truly genius) and why the collective voice is the only way to ensure people get what they need to create an equity and fairness in work and ultimately, society. This quote from the chapter on ‘Why unions?’ is every reason why this book is so important…
“Take a step back for a moment and consider that our workplaces, where we spend one third of our lives toiling to prop up the other third not spent sleeping, can also be the places where we’re in most danger, where we’re most exploited, where we’re least in control. One of the relationships which has the most control over our lives is also one of the most fundamentally imbalanced.”
It’s out on 20th September and you can pre-order it at Pluto Press.
Where to go?
I have been scrolling, reading, scrolling, and here are the month’s highlights:
Have you noticed a change in how you treat yourself since the pandemic began? It might be your treat brain… this FT piece unpicks what is going on. Read more here.
Rachel Thompson, author of Rough, shares an extract of this with Refinery29 about strategic consent - what it means, why it happens and why it needs to stop. This book is a powerhouse, talking about sex and it’s evolution and tackles hard hitting issues. Read the extract here.
Sally Rooney, you know, the small time author who you might or might not know, is back with her new fiction. She speak to the Guardian about her relationship with fame and how her life is not public property. A brilliant interview. Read more here.
Talking about unions and the power of the collective, Starbucks in the US have formed their first ever union and it’s momentous. Read more here.
gal-dem write about Afghan women and girls and why focusing on their vulnerability risks the repetition of mistakes previously made. It’s the first piece that’s really spoken in this way, challenging us all to consider how we discuss those living through a conflict and how we can actually make a difference. Read more here.
Stan for Shon Faye whose hotly anticipated and game-changer of a book, The Transgender Issue, is out this week. (You can buy/pre-order here). Huck talk to Shon about the relationship between transphobia and capitalism. You can read it here…
…And The Guardian have shared an extract from the book on the fight for trans kids inclusion and it’s.. well it’s brilliant. Read it here.
David Harewood, newly acclaimed author, talks openly about his experience of psychosis and how mental health and racism is intertwined in a damaging way. Read more here.
Esther Perel, relationship guru and author, speaks to GQ about how the pandemic has changed our thinking and why asking ‘what you achieved’ during it is utter bullshit. Read more here.
Marisa Bate writes for Refinery29 about the discrimination single mothers face, what it looks like, the impact and importantly why it needs to stop. Read more here.
Somewhere good to go…
Ok so ashamedly I am new to the words of Ashley C Ford, and I fell down a rabbit hole of eloquence and wisdom which I feel everyone should get to experience.
First up, Ashley speaks so incredibly beautifully on the Longform podcast and It honestly changed the wiring of my brain. The way she articulates love ~ all kinds of love ~ is really something else. You can listen to her here.
Next up, Ashley has a newsletter that she started up after the release of her bestselling memoir Somebody’s Daughter. It’s a treat and you can read a snippet below…
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