What I Clicked on in July (Best Reads, Links & Listens)

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Hello!

It’s July, which is terrifying. At least if you’re the sort of person who keeps track of that kind of thing. To recap, it’s a cold winter in Argentina and this week I went swimming (briefly) in a pool of icicles! I also watched reality television (solo) and Inside Out (with my kids) and finished Committed: On Meaning and Mad Women, which I loved. The Ministry of Time is halfway gone on my kindle, and I’ve enjoyed it, despite it being lighter than I anticipated. Sipsworth, the fave of many, was not my jam, but I recognize its sweetness. I made banana bread, and it sucked.

Now, links!

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for people who like quotes

“Everywhere, Mrs. Hawkins find evil; with aplomb, however, she confidently sets about putting things to order.”

-A Far Cry from Kensington, Muriel Spark-

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

for people who like to look good

How not to get a bob. (As I can attest, it’s harder than you think.)

A deep dive into shirts with buttons.

So You Want To Dress Like a 1992 J. Crew Catalogue Model

for people who like food

How to host a dinner party for nine using food from the a food-waste app

How to host salon dinners (with food you buy)

You have no idea what pepper tastes like. (This pains me! And where do I get it now?!)

for people who are no longer trying to be productive

Every article I’ve ever written about my morning routing

A pickleball fight

for people who travel

You Can Stay in Yves Saint Laurent’s Former Home at This Boutique Hotel in Tangier

The wild business of desert island tourism

How’s Running a 49-Room, 18th Century Irish Country House?

for people who read

The 7 Grueling Months to Reclaim the Bookstore Dream a Fire Stole

Where to start with Iris Murdoch: A guide to her best novels

What are you reading? (Click for humor!)

I read one of my favorite author’s new book. You should, too.

Alexandra Fuller learned the art of denial from her gloriously dysfunctional parents. “Mum’s having a bit of a wobbly,” Dad would explain, that dangerous British habit of underestimating the gravity of any given situation until you were eating the last sled dog and writing your final diary entries.

In “Fi,” her latest memoir (she’s published four, including “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight,” which was a Times Notable Book of 2002), Fuller writes, “It was normal for people in our circles to prefer their animals over their children and to die young — of gin, guns and other accidents of the soul. Certainly no one we knew outlived their hips or knees; we were raised in the expectation of short, colorful lives.”

An example of the family’s stoicism: Fuller experienced the funeral of her toddler sister “with no displays of real emotion.”

She warns the reader that it will get so much worse after that, “the body count.”

It does.

Her mother tried to kill herself — “all the pills, waving a gun; everyone was talking about it” — and then her granny tried too. But, Fuller writes, “the less said the better my mother told us, a phrase we heard a lot as kids: under the table, under the rug, under wraps.”

In “Fi,” Fuller leaves nothing under the table, under the rug or under wraps. Even when things continue to get so much worse, when the body count includes her beloved son, Fi (pronounced Fee).

There was no warning or explanation. There had been seizures but Fi had been pronounced fine.

He was 21.

A writer you haven’t heard of died recently. Anne Innis Dagg had a whirlwind life doing whirlwind things and also managed to write one of the better titled books I’ve come across in a long while: Pursuing Giraffe.

The end.

Did you see anything great? My tabs need more friends!

Claire