Caroline is Writing

a blog by a writer attempting to live the literary good life on the internet
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Moon, Mice, Mystery: What I Read in December 2024

We have arrived at the final monthly reading record of 2024. I posted these updates for the final third of the year (see them all here). I found it a useful prompt to pay more attention to which books I read cover to cover and which I don't. I hope you found some value in it too, either as a way of finding new titles to try or as a means of comparing your opinions with mine. I plan to keep doing this through 2025, so all being well in twelve months we'll have an entire year to review together.

Sitting down to put this post together, I felt sure I had barely read anything this month. For the first half of the month I was very focused on getting enough podcasts recorded ahead that I could take the Christmas period off, and then once I started my break I have mostly been knitting, cooking and eating rather than reading. My records (aka my Storygraph profile) proved me wrong, though.

The books listed below are ones that I read in their entirety, either for pleasure, for a book club, or as part of a longer-term project. I skim a lot of others or read portions of them as I'm working on articles and podcast scripts, but I'm not counting those as fully "read". I'm presenting them in the order I read them throughout the month. If you'd like to see previous posts in this series, they're available here.


The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett

I said in my November reading update that I had read too many Janice Hallett books in quick succession and had thus killed my enthusiasm for her "documents in the case" style. I did not heed my own advice and lay off her for a while; I in fact read another one, this time the festive-themed novella she published in 2023. Unfortunately I did not find any of the qualities here that made her 2021 debut one of my most absorbing reading experiences this year.

This is billed as a "sequel" to that book, picking up again with some of the same characters and the same amateur dramatics group. In atmosphere and plot, though, the two books are not at all alike. There was little tension here as an obvious mystery with low emotional stakes unfolded. The adept plotting that I perceived in that first title was nowhere to be seen. This felt to me like a book that was turned around quickly to hit the Christmas book-buying market or perhaps to fulfil a contract, rather than something the author passionately wanted to write for its own sake. I must not read another Janice Hallett book for at least a year! Absence might make my heart grow fonder.


The Paddington Mystery by John Rhode

This is the Shedunnit Book Club's chosen read for January, selected because it was published a hundred years ago, in 1925. This slender mystery is set in two London neighbourhoods that were rather down-at-heel in the aftermath of WWI — Paddington in the west and Clerkenwell in the east. A young man returns home after a frustrating night out and discovers a dead body on his bed. This person seems to have swum across the nearby canal, climbed in through the upper-storey window and then expired. Already shunned by his friends and family for his disreputable lifestyle, the young man is quickly condemned by all as a murderer. Only a peculiar professor, Dr Priestley, believes in his innocence.

John Rhode (real name Cecil Street) was a ridiculously prolific author in the first half of the twentieth century. The Paddington Mystery was the first of over 70 books he wrote featuring Priestley, and he had two other pseudonyms/detectives as well. If we imagine a progression from Sherlock Holmes to Hercule Poirot, then R. Austin Freeman's Dr Thorndyke and Rhode's Dr Priestley are the two most important stepping stones in between. I'm not sure I have the stomach to read dozens, but I certainly found this one a light and pleasant read.


Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater

For reasons that I hope will become clear in 2025, I am looking at a lot of historical fantasy at the moment. This is the opening title in a "Regency Faerie" trilogy and centres on a young woman who has part of her soul removed by an evil fae lord when she is a child. Years later she goes to London with her cousin for the season and various adventures ensue. Scissors, as you may be able to tell from the cover, are very important to the plot.

I was disappointed in this book. I generally have a pretty high tolerance for Regency anything, but the thin characterisation and poor development of magical lore frustrated me. "Faerie stuff" is a huge segment of fiction publishing at the moment, although I have yet to see the appeal myself. I tried reading the first A Court of Thorns and Roses book a while ago and was simply baffled by the supposed appeal of a misty, poorly described realm where everything and nothing happens over many hundreds of pages. Maybe I just haven't found the right faerie book yet...


The Holy Thief by Ellis Peters

The first Cadfael book, A Morbid Taste for Bones, is still by far my favourite one in the series. Partly this is because I first read it while staying at Winifred's Well, a beautiful cottage in a location significant to the story, and partly because I like a historical novel to feature some religiously motivated hijinks. I found this new-to-me nineteenth instalment in the series at a secondhand book sale and enjoyed it very much because it acts as a sequel to the events of that first book. The remains of Saint Winifred were brought from Wales to Shrewsbury Abbey at the start of the series, and in this one, her reliquary goes on a madcap cross-country journey involving theft, highwaymen, and pot-stirring nobility. Great fun.


Landline by Rainbow Rowell

I picked up this book in a library sale because I love another of Rowell's early 2010s novels: Attachments, about the workers at a local paper in Nebraska at the end of 1999. Emails play a central role in that plot, so I was intrigued to try another Rowell book that put a piece of ye olde tech — this time, landline phones — at the heart of a story.

This one didn't wow me in the same way as Attachments, which I have re-read multiple times and regularly recommend to journalist friends who feel nostalgic for the pre-internet newsroom. Landline is about an overwhelmed TV writer, Georgie, and her husband Neal, a stay-at-home dad, and their marital difficulties. Georgie needs to stay in LA to work over Christmas on a career-making pitch, messing up their festive plans. Neal takes their kids to visit his mother across the country anyway and seems to be ignoring all of Georgie's calls. Except she can call a version of him from the past via the landline in her old bedroom at her mother's house, where she lived when they were first dating long distance. Without wishing to spoil the ending for anyone who might read this, I'll just say that I felt that the promise of this intriguing premise was not fulfilled.


Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch

Continuing with my audiobook project that I'm mentally nicknaming "Background Ben (Aaronovitch)". I found new things in this repeat encounter with the second title in the Rivers of London series, which was a nice surprise. I had completely forgotten about the moral qualms protagonist Peter Grant expresses about the way the Met in this slightly mystical version of the world polices non-human magical creatures. The philosophical debate about it at the end of the book is interesting and the ending is moving.


A Case of Mice and Murder by Sally Smith

This was a Christmas present from my husband. It's always such a treat to receive a nicely-produced hardback edition of a new novel under the tree. I had no prior knowledge of this author or book, but judging by the fact that I had finished it by 26th December, I think we can say that it made a favourable impression.

This is a mystery set in 1901 in the Inner Temple, the ancient and peculiar community of lawyers in the City of London. I used to work in an office just outside the Temple's gates, ate my lunch in their gardens all the time and regularly sang in the church there, so I found the familiar milieu delightful.

The reluctant detective is one of the Inner Temple's resident barristers, who has a pathological love of routine. When he stumbles across the murdered body of the Lord Chief Justice on his office steps early one morning, his cosy Edwardian lawyerly life is utterly disrupted. The "mouse" of the title, by the way, refers to one of his ongoing cases, in which he is defending the publisher of a children's book about such a creature.

One of the blurbs on this book referred to it as "Shardlake meets Rumpole", and I will second this as an accurate description. Sally Smith is herself a KC at the Inner Temple, which I think helps with the vivid rendering of the setting and its atmosphere. I note that there is already a sequel slated for July 2025, so I will watch what she does with interest. (Although given my intention to lay off buying new books next year as far as possible — more on this in a "reading plans for 2025" post soon — I might have to hope that I get a similar gift under the tree next Christmas!)


Mystery in the Channel by Freeman Wills Crofts

Freeman Wills Crofts is a bit hard done by as a writer of interwar detective fiction, I think. The later critic Julian Symons lumped him into a subgenre he called "the Humdrums" and Crofts' literary reputation has never really recovered from this insinuation that his work is profoundly boring. He does indeed place a lot of emphasis on train timetables and exact journey times as a way of ruling suspects in or out of a case, but his novels are not dull.

It wasn't until I got stuck into this 1931 story about a double murder discovered aboard an otherwise unmanned boat in the channel that I finally realised why I find Crofts a restful writer to read. It's because his books showcase competence above all else: his detective, Inspector French, is quietly excellent at his job and goes about it in a very persistent manner. It's just nice sometimes to read a well-written linear narrative about someone capably sorting out a mess.


That was my reading for December: eight books, bringing me to a final total of 111 for the year. I easily passed my goal of reading 104 books in 2024 (or two a week). I'll be writing a look back at the whole year soon, with a few recommendations of the best things I read as well as some thoughts about how I'm going to read in 2025.

If you would like to follow along in real time, you can see what I'm reading at any given moment on the Storygraph. I just use that as a tracker, though, I don't publish any reviews there.

Filed under: Reading, Blog, Monthly Reading Review
8 min read Permalink

Ben, Brat, Bruce: What I Read in November 2024

Dear friends,

I aim to send out my monthly reading digests as soon as each month is over, but this one has just sat at the bottom of the to-do list, stubbornly resisting my efforts, for 20 days now. But finally, I have made it! It's the shortest day of the year, it's been dark since 3pm, and there's a huge gale blowing outside, but at least I've finally done this.

Casting my mind back to November... This was a very busy month of reading for work, as I tried to claw my way back from always being behind with new episodes of my podcast. One of the things listeners tell me they like about Shedunnit is how deeply researched it is, and I set myself very high standards for how much I will read about any given subject before I consider publishing anything on it myself. That's all fine, but it does make the lead time for every episode very long and catching up after a break or an illness is quite hard.

One writer dominated this month, for entirely predictable reasons, with four of the books I read being by or about them. I had set myself the goal this year of making four podcast episodes about "lesser-known" writers of early twentieth-century detective fiction, for which I would read all (or nearly all) of their work in preparation. I'm pleased with the four episodes that resulted from this project, but it was A Lot. They are, if you would like to explore them yourself, Lucy, Anthony and Anne about Anthony Gilbert, The Mystery of A.A. Milne, Christianna Brand's Impossible Crimes, and latterly Edmund Crispin's Inside Jokes.

A reminder: the books listed below are ones that I read in their entirety, either for pleasure, for a book club, or as part of a longer-term project. I skim a lot of others or read portions of them as I'm working on articles and podcast scripts, but I'm not counting those as fully "read" for this purpose. I'm presenting them in the order in which I read them throughout the month. If you'd like to see previous posts in this series, they're available here.


Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

I got out of my months-long audiobook rut thanks to a suggestion from a newsletter reader to try the Rivers series in this format. I read the books in print and ebook form a couple of years ago, but Kobna Holdbrook-Smith's narration gave me a whole new level of appreciation for the world. This first book has a fair amount of exposition, what with there being both a system of magic to outline and a pantheon of divinities to introduce, but it never drags. I'm now on the library app waiting list for several of the subsequent titles as audiobooks too, and I'll be keeping one on the go whenever possible to keep me from making depressing podcasts my default background chatter again.


Buried for Pleasure, The Long Divorce and The Glimpses of the Moon by Edmund Crispin

I've put these three together because that's the way I remember them, as one great mass of quips and clues. I had good intentions of spacing out my reading of all nine of Edmund Crispin's detective novels throughout the year before writing my Shedunnit episode about them for November publication, but I didn't manage it. I ended up having to do these final three as audiobooks at the fastest speed I could bear (1.45x) in order to get them all "read" in time. I don't recommend consuming any books this way if you want to enjoy them. I think I liked Buried for Pleasure best, which is the one where Crispin's detective Gervase Fen runs in a parliamentary by-election and then decides, last minute, that he despises democracy and all who sail in her.


The Examiner by Janice Hallett

Alongside my grimly rapid reading of books for work this month, I turned to some lighter relief when I had the opportunity to switch off my brain. My library hold on the newest Hallett finally came good and I enjoyed this mystery set among the students and academics on a dubious-sounding postgraduate art course. It is once again presented in her trademark "documents in the case" style, but it lacked some of the wow factor of her first one, The Appeal, which I read in a single night back in September. I also had to text a friend to help me clarify my thoughts on the ending, which is never a great sign.


Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

More comfort reading! I enjoyed the film adaptation a few years ago, so thought I would try the book. It made for pleasant, quick reading, but I think this might be a rare situation where I preferred the screen version. The changes the screenwriters made to streamline the plot were good and spending more time in the heads of ultra-rich characters didn't make me more inclined to sympathise with them.


The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett

I made the mistake of reading too many Janice Hallett books too close together, I think. I blame the unpredictable nature of the library hold system. Once again, this is done as a series of documents and messages, this time revealing an ongoing investigation being conducted by a true crime author. Some of the cynical jokes about the publishing industry made me chuckle, but the cult-based plot felt completely detached from reality. When the gimmick is realism, via the "real" messages and sources, the events need to match in tone. I think this format might have run its course — Hallett needs to break into something else, soon, or she will be stuck writing these until they flop irrevocably.


China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan

The cross-cultural romance in Crazy Rich Asians was plausible. The nuances that were teased out between a Singaporean-Chinese man and a Chinese-American woman were interesting. This sequel, in which said woman is found to be related to a Chinese-Chinese billionaire, jumped the shark about thirty pages in. I did still read it all, mostly because it required very little effort and I was still feeling a bit disorientated from absorbing so much information about Edmund Crispin in such a short space of time. I'm not in a hurry to read the final part of this trilogy, Rich People Problems.


Who Killed the Curate? by Joan Coggin

This is the Shedunnit Book Club's chosen book for December. Published in 1944 but set in 1937, it follows the fortunes of one Lady Lupin, a ditzy debutante who falls in love with a vicar, marries him, moves to a country parsonage and then has to reinvent herself as the moral and feminine centre of the community. If that wasn't enough, the parish curate gets himself murdered on Christmas Eve. Lupin takes it upon herself to solve that problem too, while hosting a seasonal house party of friends and family. Not to everyone's taste, this frothy style, but as a lover of E.M. Delafield and P.G. Wodehouse, I liked it a lot. There are three more books about Lupin's adventures, and I will be looking out for them with interest.


Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey

I recorded something for BBC Radio 4 about this novel part way through the month, so dashed through a quick re-read to refresh my memory. Every time I read a Josephine Tey book I think "this is the best one, I'm sure", and it happened again. So spare, so emotional, so tense, so spooky — there are such hidden depths to this deceptively simple tale of an inheritance scam that works too well. It's based on the Tichborne Claimant case from the 1860s (also the basis for Zadie Smith's recent novel The Fraud) but is updated for the late 1940s. Is this now my favourite Tey, eclipsing The Franchise Affair? I will have to seriously consider this. I'll share the link to the programme when it goes out in a couple of months, as I think other people are talking in it too so it will be a richer analysis.


Bruce Montgomery/Edmund Crispin: A Life in Music and Books by David Whittle

This scholarly biography of Edmund Crispin was something that I started out using as reference material for my episode about him. I got sucked into reading it cover to cover, though, because of the thoroughness of its research and the long quotations from letters written by Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis (all three were close friends from their student days). They were just so horrible about him, sometimes with provocation, but often not. It made me wonder what this kind of book might be like in fifty years. Will a biographer be able to excavate all the Whatsapps where this kind of material lives now, or will our sniping be lost to history? I'm not sure which outcome is better, honestly.


There we have it, my reading for November. For those who are interested in the data, that was eleven books, bringing me to a total of 103 for the year. So close to my goal for the year of reading 104 books (or two a week). If you would like to follow along in real time, you can see what I'm reading at any given moment on the Storygraph. I just use that as a tracker, though, I don't publish any reviews there.

I'll try to do a December post in a more timely fashion as well as some broader reflection on what I read over the whole year. If you have any feelings about the timings or formats of those posts, let me know.

Thanks for reading this far. If you would like to adjust what kinds of posts you receive from me, you can do that in your account menu. To get in touch, reply to this email.

Until next time,

Caroline

Links to Blackwell's are affiliate links, meaning that I receive a small commission when you purchase a book there (the price remains the same for you). Blackwell’s is a UK bookseller that ships internationally at no extra charge.

Filed under: Reading, Blog, Monthly Reading Review
4 min read Permalink

The Background Nun Playing The Violin

Thirteen things this Thursday that I have read, watched, listened to or otherwise found noteworthy.

Dear friends,

Thank you very much for all the kind responses to my appearance on Fresh Air last week. It meant a lot, sincerely, to have so many strangers tell me they were proud of me.

If you do ever want to talk to me, you can just reply to this email. The most popular link last time was "Wordle and I Are Breaking Up", with "Help, I'm The Loneliest Person In The World!" coming a close second.

What I'm up to: I released my fifth Christmas-themed episode of Shedunnit this week. I am as surprised as you are that I still have things to say about festive murder mysteries. And for the small number of people who like my monthly reading updates, I promise the long-overdue November one will be with you in the next day or so. If you don't currently get those in your inbox and you would like to, toggle on "Reading Updates" in your account menu.


Here are thirteen more things this Thursday that I wanted to share with you:

  1. It feels like List Season has started early this year. I blame Spotify Wrapped, which was at best underwhelming and at worst terrifying for the glimpse behind the AI-generated curtain that it offered. However, I did like this list of "The New Rules Of Media" from the anti-algorithmic publication One Thing. It opens with this, which as a person who tries/is trying to share work with people on the internet felt a little too real:
Everything is a personality cult, and maybe just a cult. You have to cultivate your own, no matter how small. To do so you must always be relatable, but also ideally aspirational. Just don’t get too out of the reach of your cultists.
  1. It turns out, some people (Margaret Thatcher?) are just genetically wired to need less sleep than me, a person who feels exhausted if she doesn't get 8.5 hours a night. Join me in finding them both despicable and fascinating.
  2. Maybe you need to hear this: You don’t actually have to stay on Twitter.
  3. One of the greatest things the internet has ever done is rehabilitate the reputation of Baroness Schraeder from The Sound of Music, mostly via that incredible McSweeney's piece from 2011. Now, comedian and songwriter Riki Lindhome has taken the lore one step further by rewriting "So Long, Farewell" to be from the Baroness's perspective. Her performance video is pitch-perfect, right down to the smallest details of the costume and the background nun playing the violin:
  1. This was interesting: Anne Helen Petersen's "Brief Theory of the Modern Gift Guide" holds that we have all retreated so far into our personality-based niches that mainstream recommendation sites like Wirecutter can no longer adequately serve us.
Photo: Sandy Duthie
  1. Sandy Duthie, pictured above, thinks he landed his new job as a solo lighthouse keeper on a remote Australian island because of his enormous beard. I agree with him.
  2. Why have I only just learned of the BBC Micro Games Archive? I spent a very happy hour the other day playing "Roman Adventure", a text-based game I last saw on a terminal in my primary school in 1994.
  3. Speaking of games, I'm intrigued by "Short Trip", a recently-released illustrated game with a most charming summary — "The cats living along the mountain railway have places to be. You, the sole cat operating the tram, have the delightful duty of transporting them." Here's the trailer:
  1. The train nerd in me enjoyed perusing this performance report that highlights Europe's best and worst train operators on several different factors. To nobody's surprise, the three most costly operators (Avanti, Eurostar and GWR) are in the UK.
  2. Back in September, I finished reading A Radical Romance by Alison Light, a memoir about her marriage to the historian Raphael Samuel. Delving more into Samuel's work after I finished led me to the History Workshop movement. Their website has one of the most interesting "books to read" lists I've seen yet this year, themed as it is around "radical" approaches to memoir, science, craft and more. I added The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine by Rozsika Parker to my to-be-read list so fast after perusing this list.
  3. A victim explains a new type of scam he experienced: a "spamalanche", where the scammer signed him up for hundreds of email mailing lists hoping to conceal the notifications of unauthorised purchases made with his stolen credit card number.
  4. I nodded vigorously through Celine Nguyen's first-year review of her newsletter, personal canon. Even as I've just been gently easing myself back into newslettering the past couple of months I've had several readers ask me for tips on how to do this, and I think in future I will just direct everyone to this post. It's far more comprehensive and helpful than I could ever be. To whit:
"My high-level advice — which supersedes everything below — is that you should decide what you want from your writing, and then completely ignore any advice which detracts from this goal."
  1. Self-explanatory: pics of people taking pics.

I send a few different types of post as part of this newsletter: personal essays, reading updates and book reviews, reflections on my own writing, and links round-ups like this one. If you would like to receive some but not all of these, you can adjust those settings in your account menu.

I'm writing this in my free time, but if you would like to support my work, you have a few options. Forward this newsletter to a friend and encourage them to sign up. Subscribe to my podcast, Shedunnit, in your app of choice, or if you are already a listener, become a member of the Shedunnit Book Club. Buy my books — The Way to the Sea and A Body Made of Glass — or borrow them from your local library. Purchase a subscription for yourself or a friend to The Browser. Thank you for reading.

Until next time,

Caroline

Filed under: Links, Blog
4 min read Permalink

As An Unsuccessful Teenage Oboist...

Thirteen things this Thursday that I have read, watched, listened to or otherwise found noteworthy.

Dear friends,

You find me fully in the grip of what I call The December Delusion, in which I believe I can definitely get a lot of work done ahead so I can take time off over Christmas while also going to social events, doing a choir performance most nights, getting all the gifts bought, and sending Christmas cards. My best wishes to all those who also celebrate this annual event.

If you ever want to talk to me, you can just reply to this email. The most popular link last time was whichcountrytomoveto.com, with the well-dressed font man coming second.

What I'm up to: I'm the guest on NPR's Fresh Air today, in conversation about hypochondria with Terry Gross herself! It airs live across the US throughout the afternoon, depending on where you are based, and then will be available to listen back after broadcast here and here too.

Here are thirteen more things this Thursday that I wanted to share with you:

  1. A superb video explaining how to use data visualisation techniques to master the timings of any complicated roast meal.
  2. In the past few weeks, I have been looking critically at my media diet. I am keener than ever to understand politics and policy without having to imbibe a constant flow of psychodrama to get it. I get most of my news from radio and podcasts, so these are the switches I'm making.
    • Music rather than talk radio as my everyday background. For me, that means BBC Radio 3, ClassicFM and BBC Radio 6 Music, depending on the time of day. The brief hourly news bulletins let me know which stories are truly cutting through to the wider population and which are not (and can therefore be safely ignored as Westminster/Washington bubble stuff).
    • Podcasts that broaden my horizons rather than narrow them. For ongoing monitoring and consumption, I like:
      • Monocle's daily show The Globalist, which is made from London but covers all countries equally — ie an election in Iceland or a major new law in Australia gets as much airtime as the latest UK government announcement.
      • Podlitical from BBC Sounds, which comes from the BBC Scotland newsroom in Glasgow and covers UK politics with a Holyrood/Cardiff/Stormont bias.
      • Three feeds from BBC Local Radio/Regions that are infrequently updated but always worth the time when they are: Multi Story, In Detail and In Court. All three aggregate often very good local reporting on big stories that rarely gets much air time on bigger channels. Multi Story sadly hasn't been updated since 2021, but I live in hope.
    • Lastly, I like to drop in temporarily on shows made by outlets based in a place I'm currently interested in. At the time of writing, for instance, the Irish general election has almost finished counting, and I'm listening to Election Daily from the Irish Times to get my information about it.
  1. Are your local community spaces online (Facebook groups) totally flooded with Boaver stuff too? This longread about how big data changed the US dairy industry felt timely.
  2. Fancy architecture, but for dogs:
  1. On breaking up with Wordle.
  2. I remember so vividly that morning after an awful night before, when I had taken a big romantic swing and it had not worked out the way I had hoped. A colleague, immediately understanding the nature of my distress and knowing that we could not discuss it properly while at the office, emailed me an extremely appropriate edition of the "Ask Polly" column (then published at The Awl, RIP) on the hour, every hour, until we could leave and go to the pub for a weepy debrief. Heather Havrilesky, the writer of that column, now publishes it independently and occasionally sends out a classic from the archive. This is how I came to read 'Help, I'm The Loneliest Person In The World!' for the first time in a decade and find myself sobbing at my computer screen. I am so different now, and yet I still need the same advice. Maybe you do too.
  3. Sometimes it's good to stick your face into some very mass culture. This is a playlist of the 100 most streamed songs on Spotify, ever.
  4. The modern equivalent of those chalk figures carved into hills? People are making interesting designs with solar farms.
  5. Paul Graham on how the age of AI is going to divide us into the "writes and the write-nots", because there will be no reason for people who don't enjoy writing or aren't good at it to ever do it. This is bad, by the way.
  6. A well-reported piece about coming to terms with the fact that you might not ever "recover" from burnout.
"Burnout asks me whether I really need to claw at the whole world with both hands. And it suggests that what I’m holding is already more than enough. There is a wealth all around. I need only to dwell within it, and witness it, rather than rushing on to the next thing. And I need people, of course, to care for and receive care from, so that I can continue to remain here as long as my body lets me."
  1. WhenPhoto, a game where you are shown a series of photographs and must guess the year in which each was taken.
  2. I am a sucker for a vlogger who documents an interesting-to-me life. This one is an oboe student at Juilliard. As an unsuccessful teenage oboist, I am hooked.
  3. Buying a TV in 2024 is surprisingly hard, if you want it to a) look good b) work with all your other stuff and c) not spy on you too much.

I send a few different types of post as part of this newsletter: personal essays, reading updates and book reviews, reflections on my own writing, and links round-ups like this one. If you would like to receive some but not all of these, you can adjust those settings in your account menu.

I'm writing this in my free time, but if you would like to support my work, you have a few options. Forward this newsletter to a friend and encourage them to sign up. Subscribe to my podcast, Shedunnit, in your app of choice, or if you are already a listener, become a member of the Shedunnit Book Club. Buy my books — The Way to the Sea and A Body Made of Glass — or borrow them from your local library. Purchase a subscription for yourself or a friend to The Browser. Thank you for reading.

Until next time,

Caroline

Filed under: Links, Blog
4 min read Permalink

A New Chief Scorpion Wrangler Is Sought

Thirteen things this Thursday that I have read, watched, listened to or otherwise found noteworthy.

Dear friends,

Welcome back to my would-be-weekly newsletter, which just took a month's break while I was busy pre-recording all the podcast episodes that will go out while I'm having a break over Christmas.

If you ever want to talk to me, reply to this email. The most popular link last time was the game of Death Roulette, with Hilary Mantel's writing day second.

What I'm up to: White-knuckling it through "Books of the Year" season, honestly. I know these lists are arbitrary, subjective and unimportant in the grand scheme of things, yet it still wounds me a bit every time I see that A Body Made of Glass isn't on one. I'm probably not supposed to admit to that kind of ego-fragility in public, but there we are. It's a very personal book; it often feels like it is me that is under review, not just something I wrote.

The book is out in paperback in both the UK and the US in March, so if you've been holding off until you could have it in a slightly smaller, cheaper package, now's your chance to pre-order. It is otherwise exactly the same book. You can, of course, have the audiobook – read by me — right now.

Enough moping! Here are thirteen more things this Thursday that I wanted to share with you:

  1. L.M. Montgomery's 150th birthday is this Saturday, so there has been some good anniversary-pegged content about her recently. I liked this podcast episode that includes an interview with her granddaughter and a discussion of why Emily of New Moon resonates so much with neurodivergent people today.
  2. Readers of my first book will know that the Isle of Sheppey is the closest thing I have to a point of origin in the UK. Of course, I was delighted to see it make the news for a fun rather than a grim reason: a new “chief scorpion wrangler” is sought to take care of the 200-year-old colony of arachnids that live in the walls of Sheerness Dockyard.
  3. Notes App Epiphanies: I loved this. My favourite screengrabs (everything I write is true):
  1. My favourite post-election take, which is mostly about a recently widowed man losing and then finding a beloved wedding ring.
  2. Some people scroll Instagram reels from sun-drenched islands to find their next holiday destination. I like to get lost in this map that shows everywhere in Europe I could take a night train to. The far north of Sweden? Don't mind if I do.
  3. I recently chanced across the Ephemeral New York blog and have been keeping up with it assiduously since. It has a great combination of current photography of NYC institutions with history. This recent post marking the 200th anniversary of the opening of Fifth Avenue was especially good.
  4. A very stylish man dresses as various fonts.
  5. Thomas Jones in the LRB did a good job of articulating my own views on the Richard Osman crime oeuvre. I love it when critics do that:
"Given what it sets out to do, it’s hard to fault The Thursday Murder Club. It may be the literary equivalent of the ultra-processed snack foods that Chris can’t help gorging himself on, full of ‘empty calories’, but, on their own terms, it’s hard to fault a packet of cheese and onion crisps or a Wispa bar, either."

I also appreciated the mention here of all the guilt expressed in those books around food. Quite jarring to be regularly told about someone's biscuit-based shame when trying to enjoy an uncomplicated mystery.

  1. Fascinating piece of writing about genre snobbery. When is a book allowed to "transcend commercial fiction"? What tricks do authors use to signal that what they are writing is literary fiction rather than "just" science fiction or a spy novel?
  2. The Mushroom Colour Atlas is simply gorgeous and must be perused at length.
  1. I have been reading ferociously this month (as subscribers to my reading updates will shortly find out) and I found some of the tips here on how to maximise your reading time helpful. I have yet to keep a book of poetry by my toilet, but never say never.
  2. Considering texts of condolence as their own form of writing, or perhaps of prophecy. "A friend’s brother dies and on the day of his funeral I text, 'I hope it goes as best as can be today, I am thinning of you.' A few weeks after my first chemo, my hair begins to shed."
  3. Where should you emigrate to? Use this handy quiz to find a country that matches your economic, social and cultural preferences.

I send a few different types of post as part of this newsletter: personal essays, reading updates and book reviews, reflections on my own writing, and links round-ups like this one. If you would like to receive some but not all of these, you can adjust those settings in your account menu.

I'm writing this in my free time, but if you would like to support my work, you have a few options. Forward this newsletter to a friend and encourage them to sign up. Subscribe to my podcast, Shedunnit, in your app of choice, or if you are already a listener, become a member of the Shedunnit Book Club. Buy my books — The Way to the Sea and A Body Made of Glass — or borrow them from your local library. Purchase a subscription for yourself or a friend to The Browser. Thank you for reading.

Until next time,

Caroline

Filed under: Links, Blog
6 min read Permalink

Secrets, Spies, Styles: What I Read in October 2024

Dear friends,

October was a disrupted month of reading for me. I spent a good chunk of it dealing with a chest infection that not only made me cough a lot, but also stole my ability to concentrate on a book. Thus, I read less than I usually do, and I prioritised lighter, quicker things that my brain could cope with. I had all sorts of plans to read some seasonally appropriate, witchy literature, but it has not happened yet. Maybe next month. If you would like to look back on September's post, you can do that here.

Before we get into it, a plea for recommendations. If you are a picky audiobook consumer like me (ie, sound quality and narration matter greatly to you) please reply and tell me which ones you have enjoyed recently. Perhaps I'm just becoming more fussy, but I've started and then abandoned so many recently for one reason or another, and an audio diet of only podcasts is not doing my brain any good. I truly don't mind whether it's non-fiction or fiction, and it can be from any genre at all — I just want something I can bear to hear all the way through.

A reminder: the books listed below are ones that I read in their entirety, either for pleasure, for a book club, or as part of a longer-term project. I skim a lot of others or read portions of them as I'm working on articles and podcast scripts, but I'm not counting those as fully "read" for this purpose. I'm presenting them in the order in which I read them through the month.


A Wound Deeper Than Pride by Ali Scott

It is one of my ongoing goals to read every single Pride and Prejudice continuation in existence. This one was new to me and I liked the sound of its premise: it is set not after the plot of Austen's novel, but diverges from it midway through. It imagines what might happen if both Elizabeth and Darcy left Kent after his disastrous first proposal and then met again shortly afterwards in London. This happens when she is nearly run over by a carriage outside his house, neatly setting up a "second chance" plot.

This isn't one of the best continuation contenders I've ever read — Longbourn by Jo Baker is much more creative, for instance — but it suited my bedridden brain very well during my chest infection. Obviously the outcome is a foregone conclusion, but I liked the enhanced role for Maria Lucas in this version and spent a pleasant hour looking up Regency-era maps of the streets around Grosvenor Square to understand how the carriage accident would have happened.


The Secret Place by Tana French

This is the book that the Shedunnit Book Club is reading in November, so I read it early to prepare the bonus podcast episode I was making about it. I thought I had podcasted about the book before in the SRSLY days, but I can't find any evidence of me done so — maybe I'm having a Sinbad moment. Anyway, I loved this Irish crime novel from 2015 about a group of teenage girls at an upscale Dublin boarding school and how they fare after a lad from the corresponding boys' school is found dead in their grounds.

The overlapping chronologies, the highly specific noughties fashion and slang, the hint of the unexplained, the clique-y friendships... It feels wrong to say that a book with some dark elements was a "joy" to read, but it was. To my mind, this is Miss Pym Disposes for the twenty-first century. Given that I have had Tana on Shedunnit to talk about how much she loves Josephine Tey, that comparison feels especially apt.


Slow Horses by Mick Herron

I have watched the Apple TV+ adaptation of this modern-day espionage book series, but unlike everyone else I know I thought it was just OK (and declining in quality season by season). Several people whose taste I trust insisted that the books were much better, though, so I gave this one a go. And they were right! I agree, Herron's spare, occasionally lyrical prose really does elevate the premise.

I appreciated the additional space for character back story and development in particular (this material is almost completely lost in the TV series). The section where a pair of young MI5 operatives talk about how the 7/7 bombings were the catalyst for them wanting to join the service is quite moving, as were some of the revelations about protagonist River's relationship with his mother and grandfather. And the Le Carré-esque psychodrama within the service was much tenser and more shadowy than on screen. I'll definitely be reading the next book in the series, once I get off the library waiting list.


Rivals by Jilly Cooper

For no good reason that I can name, I had always mentally pegged the work of Jilly Cooper as "not for me". Even though I read plenty of romance fiction both old and new, and I've heard her sharp prose and journalistic skills of observation praised for years. But the new TV adaptation of Rivals on Disney+ was perfect sickbed viewing. It's rare that I watch all the episodes of something based on a book and don't then read said book. So I did. And it was magnificently silly and fun.

If you had asked me prior to the single day in which I gulped it down if I wanted to read a novel primarily about commercial television franchise renewal in the 1980s, I would have said no. Now, I think this is the perfect backdrop for a set of awful people to be entertainingly awful to each other. Do I ship Taggie and Rupert? A bit, yes.

However, I'm still not sure that I'm a full Jilly Cooper stan yet. There was a chapter preview for another book included at the end of this ebook (from Tackle! I think) and I did not vibe with it all — a lot of shouting about horses and betting lingo that I did not understand. I am definitely not a horse girl. If anyone who knows her work well has a "you loved Rivals so you'll love X" type of recommendation for me, I'm all ears.


The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

I reread this, Agatha Christie's first detective novel from 1920, for an upcoming episode of Shedunnit. My thoughts will shortly be available on the show in full, so I won't spoil them too heavily here. Suffice to say, I can't think of a better debut by an author who went on to great success.


Holy Disorders by Edmund Crispin

Another podcast-related read and one of many Crispins that I have read this year (with so many still to go). I'm trying to read all of his work before I make an episode about him. This one from 1945 concerns shenanigans in a small cathedral town and repeated murderous attacks on organists. Perhaps it is because I've overdosed on his style a little, but Crispin's comic flair was beginning to feel a bit brittle in this one and the meta, self-referential footnotes annoyed me on occasion. Still, a decent read from the tail-end of the golden age of detective fiction.


There we have it, my reading for October. For those who are interested in the data, that was six books, bringing me to a total of 92 for the year. If you would like to follow along in real time, you can see what I'm reading at any given moment on the Storygraph. I just use that as a tracker, though, I don't publish any reviews there.

Thanks for reading this far. If you would like to adjust what kinds of post you receive from me, you can do that in your account menu.

Until next time,

Caroline

Links to Blackwell's are affiliate links, meaning that I receive a small commission when you purchase a book there (the price remains the same for you). Blackwell’s is a UK bookseller that ships internationally at no extra charge.

Filed under: Reading, Blog, Monthly Reading Review
4 min read Permalink

Difficult, Often Expensive, Sometimes Soul-Crushing

Thirteen things this Thursday that I have read, watched, listened to or otherwise found noteworthy.

Dear friends,

Welcome back to another one of these. If you do ever want to talk to me, you can just reply to this email. The most popular link last time was the auto-generated compliment, with this piece about the Criterion Collection coming second.

What I'm up to: I find asking people to support my work financially, especially when I'm not launching something new and shiny, extremely awkward and embarrassing! But I am currently in the season where I do that for my podcast Shedunnit, so if you are inclined to check that out I would appreciate it.

Here are thirteen more things this Thursday that I wanted to share with you:

  1. Although trying to emulate other writers' routines is a classic red herring in this business (using the same pen as Stephen King will not make you Stephen King, etc etc), I do really like this 2016 account of her day by Hilary Mantel. Her insistence on being left alone to wake up in her own time is truly inspiring.
  2. Spin the wheel of 17th Century Death Roulette and find out what you would have died of in 1665 in this game built on real records. I was Scalded in a Brewers Mash, at St. Giles Cripplegate!
  3. This is an interesting essay on a phenomenon I have felt myself, which in my head I call being a "pick me patient" — where as a frequent medical flyer you start to work hard at getting your doctor to like you the best of all their patients.
  4. I applaud and am slightly afraid of Ben Grosser's transparency about his TikTok addiction. You can check whether he is scrolling at any time here, as well as seeing his stats. As he says: "Think of it as a last-ditch effort, a sort of public confessional as therapeutic tool aimed at defusing the intense compulsion I feel every day to endlessly scroll the world’s most popular video app."
  5. Seasonally appropriate, part one: William Hope's amazing photographs of ghosts from the 1930s:
Image: JStor
  1. I am still working up the courage to knit my first pair of socks, so of course I am doing a lot of hyperfixation reading about the process. What could be better than a data-driven analysis about how hard it is to do?
  2. "All nonfiction writers can end up writing incorrect or controversial things, but why does every Gladwell book push half-formed and inaccurate theories?" Reading reviews that debunk Malcolm Gladwell is a favourite hobby of mine, and this is a good one. Bonus companion podcast: If Books Could Kill on Outliers.
  3. It was this post — On Being Butthurt — that finally caused me to "get" the work of Elif Batuman. This piece is meta, cyclical, defensive, self-aware, relentless: just like the phenomenon she is describing. And also somehow about the ever-present writerly advice to "keep a notebook"? Magnificent stuff.
  4. The route to my school went past a boring motorway-adjacent road named "Simone Weil Avenue" and I often idly wondered who Simone was. Later, I learned that she was a French philosopher and activist who had died at the age of 34 in a sanatorium nearby. Now, she is one of my favourite people to research in an idle moment, so I was intrigued to learn recently that she is coming back into vogue as an enigmatic literary inspiration.
Image: Wellcome Collection, CC BY
  1. Seasonally appropriate, part two: this examination of why ghosts always appear wearing sheets or clothes. Why aren't ghosts naked? This would be more cohesive with the spiritualist idea of a ghost as an expression of a returning soul... And souls presumably don't choose an outfit prior to a visitation.
  2. Alex Sujong Laughlin, a writer I have followed and admired for years, paid her own money to take a "TikTok class" taught by an influencer and it sparked some fascinating thoughts about ethics, algorithms and parasocial appeal. This sentence will be living rent-free in my head for a while: "I don’t have to tell you that posting on the internet is a weird thing to do."
  3. Eighteen life lessons learned from eighteen years of blogging. These come across as both earnest and sincere, two things that I'm trying these days to receive without cynicism. Topics covered include: forgiveness, prestige, generosity and boredom.
  4. A refreshingly hopeful take on the ridiculous finances of publishing even a well-received non-fiction book. "There is a big difference between becoming an author and becoming a celebrity author. For 99.9% of people who manage to do it, writing and publishing a book is more like going to grad school. It’s difficult, often expensive, sometimes soul-crushing, but potentially life-changing nonetheless."

I send a few different types of post as part of this newsletter: personal essays, reading updates and book reviews, reflections on my own writing, and links round-ups like this one. If you would like to receive some but not all of these, you can adjust those settings in your account menu. Tomorrow, my reading round-up for the month of October will be going out, so if you want to read that make sure you have that setting enabled.

I'm writing this in my free time, but if you would like to support my work, you have a few options. Forward this newsletter to a friend and encourage them to sign up. Subscribe to my podcast, Shedunnit, in your app of choice, or if you are already a listener, become a member of the Shedunnit Book Club. Buy my books — The Way to the Sea and A Body Made of Glass — or borrow them from your local library. Purchase a subscription for yourself or a friend to The Browser. Thank you for reading.

Until next time,

Caroline

Filed under: Links, Blog
4 min read Permalink

Would You Like An Auto-Generated Compliment?

Thirteen things this Thursday that I have read, watched, listened to or otherwise found noteworthy.

Dear friends,

It's Thursday again. The clocks go back in the UK this Sunday. I've just finished a knitting project I've been working on, sporadically, for 18 months. All is well.

If you do ever want to talk to me, you can just reply to this email. The most popular link last time was Katie Stone's post "I Don't Drink", with this piece about the tradwives' terrible bread a distant second.

Here are thirteen more things this Thursday that I wanted to share with you:

  1. A fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the Criterion Collection, a film series that in the age of streaming fatigue has become a handy shortcut for finding good things to watch. But who decides what is "good"?
  2. There I was, merrily listening to Spotify's "Spooky" playlist while I did some tedious data entry, when I was hit in the ears by the voice of Gia Ford, an artist I had never heard of before. She sounds a like a bluesy early Lana Del Rey. There's a dark, cinematic quality to her album Transparent Things that I am totally hooked on. If they ever make another Bond film, she should be in the running to do the title song. Try my favourite track, album closer "Our Mutual Friend".
Aishwarya Rai in Bride and Prejudice
  1. I am always in the market for a new Pride and Prejudice take, and this one — Why Aishwarya Rai in Bride and Prejudice is the best Elizabeth Bennet — does not disappoint.
  2. "I just quietly suffered, and quietly achieved. It was not the same as thriving, but when I look back to that period, it is proof of life." Katherine May is very moving on what it's like to grow up autistic and live to receive a diagnosis in adulthood.
  3. Who Gets Shipped And Why? A fanfiction data analysis.
  4. The BBC documentary series 40 Minutes, which ran on BBC Two between 1981 and 1994, is truly wonderful. Offbeat subjects, handled with minimal narration, unspooling over an amount of time that is the correct length for a meal. Plenty of episodes are still available to watch on iPlayer, and I would particularly recommend the one about Angel tube station, the one about the Great North Road, and "The Mighty Leek", which documents the attempts of some retired old men in the north east of England trying to grow the world's biggest leek.
  5. Game of the week: Doubles. You have to double a number, then double it again, and again, and again, against the clock. Really tunes up those mental maths skills...
  6. A poem by Margaret Atwood that I like a lot: "Now":
I love you now, right now
inside this one word now, the one you’re reading
now. And then of course this means
I love you now forever, just as
long as you can stay inside
this lemon egg of time
Photos: Felipe Hernández
  1. Street Nuns by Felipe Hernández — a photography project that is just... paparazzi shots of nuns out and about.
  2. Cheating allegations rocked the men's world conker championships. The winner, an 82-year-old man fulfilling a role known as "King Conker" during the competition, was found to have a replica steel conker in his pocket. The outrage! He has since been cleared of suspicion: apparently he had the fake in his pocket to show to people as a joke.
  3. On the dark, divided life of L.M. Montgomery. "Ultimately, Anne of Green Gables is a Rorschach test. Readers interpret the text through their own worldview. Is it a squeaky-clean, optimistic tale of overcoming adversity, espousing traditional values? Or is it a subversive, proto-feminist work reflecting the psychological struggles and frustrated Sapphic tendencies of the author? Two things can be true."
  4. If you need a little positivity to add into your media diet, the humanprogress.org site might work. It is backed by the US libertarian think tank the Cato Institute, so bear that in mind, but it will alert you to cool breakthroughs such as the elimination of trachoma as a public health problem in India.
  5. Would you like an auto-generated compliment read to you at the touch of a button? This website can help with that.

I send a few different types of post as part of this newsletter: personal essays, reading updates and book reviews, reflections on my own writing, and links round-ups like this one. If you would like to receive some but not all of these, you can adjust those settings in your account menu.

I'm writing this in my free time, but if you would like to support my work, you have a few options. Forward this newsletter to a friend and encourage them to sign up. Subscribe to my podcast, Shedunnit, in your app of choice, or if you are already a listener, become a member of the Shedunnit Book Club. Buy my books — The Way to the Sea and A Body Made of Glass — or borrow them from your local library. Purchase a subscription for yourself or a friend to The Browser. Thank you for reading.

Until next time,

Caroline

Filed under: Links, Blog
5 min read Permalink

A Pat Answer To The Inevitable Question

Thirteen things this Thursday that I have read, watched, listened to or otherwise found noteworthy.

Dear friends,

Welcome to all the new/old subscribers who have joined us after I did that post to the old No Complaints list — it was both delightful and moving to see so many names roll in that I recognised from my newslettering a decade ago.

Thank you for being here. I didn't get this out last week as planned because I was busy having the kind of cold that makes strangers on the street fearfully ask if you are planning on coughing up a lung. Now that it has simmered down to something more appropriate to your average Victorian street urchin, I am back at my screens.

If you do ever want to talk to me, you can just reply to this email. The most popular link last time was the Alpha Guess game, with Paul Graham's "How To Do Great Work" essay coming second.

What I'm up to: I was on the Cluster F Theory Podcast talking about hypochondria. A Body Made of Glass made this Publishers Weekly list of "20 Books Our Editors Don't Want You To Miss This Year", which was nice. And the annual Pledge Drive for my podcast Shedunnit began yesterday, so if you are inclined to check that out I would appreciate it.

Here are thirteen more things this Thursday that I wanted to share with you:

  1. While I was in my sickbed, I spent some time wearing my best headphones immersed in The Greatest Matter podcast. Self-described as a "Victorian Gothic Audio Drama", this is a serialised fiction show set in 19C Dublin about a criminologist visiting the city who ends up getting drawn into a murder investigation. Everything about the show is pitch-perfect, in my opinion — the writing is excellent, the sound quality is superb, and the mixing/mastering is exceptional. As someone who has edited many hundreds of hours of mediocre audio, let me tell you that there is not a footstep or a breath out of place in this one. It's by an erstwhile Shedunnit collaborator of mine, Conor Reid, of the wonderful Words To That Effect podcast, and I know that he has been working on bringing this project to our ears for many years. It was definitely worth the wait.
  2. I love to read about a storm-in-a-teacup within a highly specific online community. This row over the classification of anime on the film reviewing platform Letterboxd is a great example. It's made more fun by the fact that a lot of film industry types, some of them very high profile eg Francis Ford Coppola, are users of the site.
  3. I've so far steered clear of having epigraphs at the start of chapters in my books for two reasons. One, clearing copyright permissions for them is both time consuming and expensive. Two, I'm not sure they add much. Do people even read them? This examination suggests that they are divisive, but that they are ultimately there for readers, not writers: "The pleasure the epigraph is meant to fulfil is not the writer’s own."
  4. This is the kind of surveillance culture I can get behind. The "Bop Spotter" is a solar-powered box on a pole in the Mission district of San Francisco, containing an Android phone running the Shazam app continually. The website lists all of the songs it picks up in the atmosphere, whether being played by passing cars, people with phones, shops, and so on. Inspired by the grim "shot spotters" that US law enforcement use to get early warning of gun violence, this device is meant to capture the shifting soundscape of what people in the area are really listening to, independent of algorithms or charts. I love the mission statement: "This is culture surveillance. No one notices, no one consents. But it's not about catching criminals. It's about catching vibes. A constant feed of what’s popping off in real-time."
  5. The Story of Drawing in Six Images is well worth a look. This depiction of a cat and a mouse is from c.1295-1075 BCE. I think all of the universal New Yorker cartoon captions work here.
Photograph: Gavin Ashworth, Brooklyn Museum
  1. I found this short story about an intense long-distance running camp in China to be compelling reading: My Five-Thousand-Meter Years.
  2. It is rapidly becoming a newsletter tradition that I must find a new addicting, frustrating online game for each edition. This time, it is "What Came First?" from Google's Arts & Culture vertical. You are offered two cultural artefacts or moments and must pick which one came first. I was confident, but it's surprisingly hard. Do you know whether Dick Van Dyke, who was very old when I was a child, pre-dates Van Gogh's "Head of a Skeleton with a Burning Cigarette"? I didn't.
  3. Long time readers will remember how much I love a medieval illumination. And I've got a new favourite: the "yellow silence" from a 12C copy of the Tractatus de Apocalipsin, an earlier commentary on the Book of Revelation. The artist chose to represent the moment when the final seal is broken and silence reigns in heaven for half an hour in the most perfect possible way:
  1. I really enjoy the fact that most of the online tradwife influencers are making truly terrible bread.
  2. I spent a long time with this series of short articles about "Digital Divinity", which looks at all the different ways internet technology are used by different faiths and religions. There's an AR app to help you always pray towards Mecca! Priests in the Phillippines are very serious about TikTok! In China, you can virtually sweep a tomb to pay your respects to the dead!
  3. If I am in London and at a loose end before 16th February, I will definitely be going to this exhibition of replica Japanese food at Japan House. It does, indeed, look delicious.
  4. A statistical analysis of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game. (Extra points if you, like me, prefer on a long car journey to play the John Nettles-adjacent version of this game popularised by the comedian Will Smith on his 2007 radio show Tao of Bergerac.)
  5. I enjoyed this take on not drinking, from someone like me who avoids all alcohol for no more reason than it doesn't taste nice and causes near-instant queasiness. Nobody should ever have to explain why they don't want an alcoholic drink or be made to feel uncomfortable for not ordering one, but it can be handy to have a pat answer to the inevitable question.

I send a few different types of post as part of this newsletter: personal essays, reading updates and book reviews, reflections on my own writing, and links round-ups like this one. If you would like to receive some but not all of these, you can adjust those settings in your account menu.

I'm writing this in my free time, but if you would like to support my work, you have a few options. Forward this newsletter to a friend and encourage them to sign up. Subscribe to my podcast, Shedunnit, in your app of choice, or if you are already a listener, become a member of the Shedunnit Book Club. Buy my books — The Way to the Sea and A Body Made of Glass — or borrow them from your local library. Purchase a subscription for yourself or a friend to The Browser. Thank you for reading.

Until next time,

Caroline

Filed under: Links, Blog
4 min read Permalink

My New Favourite Wellness Nonsense

Thirteen things this Thursday that I have read, watched, listened to or otherwise found noteworthy.

Dear friends,

Thank you for being here and reading this as I work out how I want to exist on the internet. If you do ever want to talk to me, you can just reply to this email. Last week's most popular link was this story: "When Book Covers Outshine Their Pages", with the Scrambled Maps game a close second.

What I'm up to: I'm speaking at the Liverpool Literary Festival on Saturday 5th October at 1pm, tickets available here. There's also a new episode of Shedunnit just out, a Green Penguin Book Club discussion about The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkeley.

Here are thirteen more things this Thursday that I wanted to share with you:

  1. This deep dive into when, why and how food writing became all cutesy, using words like garlicky, buttery and jammy to describe recipes, is a good read. (Slight spoiler, it is mostly Alison Roman's fault.) Then follow it up by looking at this data visualisation showing when certain "-y" adjectives were most commonly used in the New York Times cooking section. 2019 was a big year for "runny"; "buttery" was huge in 2023.
  2. On Taylor Swift's revisionist autobiographical project, including a close reading of the lyrics of "All Too Well (Ten Minute Version)": "There’s a conundrum posed by these album rereleases and how Swift is retroactively framing each of their 'era', because really, each album has two eras: the time during which it was written and recorded, and the promotional period shortly before and after it was released, when Swift based her entire aesthetic and media presence around its central thesis."
  3. I identified quite closely with Megan Nolan's take on the "trauma" of publishing her novel. I, too, feel quite crazy as I grapple with the fact that I put A Body Made of Glass out into the world almost exactly six months ago. I was better prepared for the emotional rollercoaster this time, having already published one somewhat personal book, but knowing something is likely to be painful does not stop it from being painful. Saying no still takes time and mental effort, especially when the whole system seems to be built around endless yeses, no matter the private cost. I think I will write more about this in a future newsletter, maybe. As Nolan says:
"When you’re promoting a piece of creative work, no one tells you that you can object to anything, that you can and probably should say no to things. The implication you will have absorbed by this point is that you are operating inside of a scarcity economy where each crumb of publicity will go to one of the other dozen authors with debuts out that week if you turn it down. And who are you to decide what interviews are important or not? This is not your world."
  1. Examining the sentimental feelings we have about online data storage, prompted by the news that an old university email account is scheduled for deletion.
  2. The Brontë sisters finally got their umlauts (or diaereses, if you want to be pedantic) on their memorial in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey!
Photograph: Aaron Chown/PA
  1. I'm on a roll with discovering excellent time-wasting internet games. My latest is Alpha Guess, which merely asks you to guess that day's word. Each time you guess, it will tell you if the correct answer comes "before" or "after" your attempt in the alphabet. Infuriating yet fun!
  2. I did not know that early circumnavigators thought that their ill health on these long sea voyages was because of "earthsickness" — a condition where their bodies degraded the longer they were away from familiar land. A poetic idea, but it was actually just scurvy.
  3. My new favourite wellness nonsense to read about is extreme fruitarianism.
  4. I'm always on the look-out for an interesting typeface. "Conveyer Belt Font" takes its inspiration from... well, conveyer belts:
  1. I have recently become obsessed with the idea of "fastest known times", which are unofficial records for various trails and routes worldwide. The FKT for the Appalachian Trail has recently been broken by one Tara Dower, who completed the over 2,000-mile route in 40 days. This piece explains how she did it, including such time-saving highlights as getting up at 3am, taking 90-second naps lying on the muddy ground, and only taking three showers during her whole trip.
  2. If you can make it through this lengthy essay on "how to do great work" you have arguably already done some. There's a lot more subtlety to it, but many of the barriers examined here are mental. Doing great work is difficult and you have to keep choosing that difficult thing, over and over again.
"The factors in doing great work are factors in the literal, mathematical sense, and they are: ability, interest, effort, and luck. Luck by definition you can't do anything about, so we can ignore that. And we can assume effort, if you do in fact want to do great work. So the problem boils down to ability and interest. Can you find a kind of work where your ability and interest will combine to yield an explosion of new ideas?"
  1. We aren't just making it up: women really do get more autoimmune diseases (four in five diagnoses are in women). This research suggests it could be genetic.
  2. I've been asking myself this a lot recently. What does success look like? And do I want it? "We’d be naive to believe that sales don’t matter to writers; we write to get paid – no man but a blockhead, Samuel Johnson famously said, ever wrote except for money."

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Until next time,

Caroline

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