Things to read, watch and listen to this weekend
What's got my attention this week #105
SCROLLING
• “I don’t like looking backwards… I like challenges, I want to look ahead.” Debbie Harry, 80, and still going full throttle.
• How Viagra changed sex for older women. (And not necessarily in the way you might expect.)
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• nailing it as usual: “Feminism asked women to become something new. And it asked men to give up something that they didn’t understand they had.” (And once they did, most of them didn’t fancy giving it up…)
• Love this conversation on why plastic surgery social media is ‘spiritually rotten’.
• Two very different looks at marriage: looks back on what would have been her 25th wedding anniversary if she hadn’t left her first marriage, while popped the question after 39 years.
• on making and doing.
• Gorgeous piece by (as usual) on her two favourite Elizabeths: Taylor and Jane Howard.
• What I wish I’d known about my body when I was younger. (£)
• How can I love myself without becoming a selfish person?
• The Silence. A new short story by Zadie Smith. (And here she is on the Grace Paley piece that inspired her.)
• My mother’s food issues became my 30-year eating disorder.
• The 100-year-old psychologist is still listening. (Gift link)
• This house was for joy. Now
• Learning the power of looking at everything. (Gift link)
• Gravity defying boobs are back. (Don’t shoot the messenger.)
• The humblebrag of never having owned a smartphone.
• on the friendship money pit.
• The art, craft and graft of soul-prepping.
• This is 70.
• Uncertain people buy more stuff.
• How I learnt to cook in a fish finger household.
• Your ashwagandha smoothie won’t save you.
(A note about the links: some are free, some are gift links and some are behind a paywall. Almost all that are (eg New Yorker, The Cut, and many, but not all, Substacks…) allow a few free articles if you register. Those that definitely don't are marked £. I do my best to ensure a balance of non-paywalled articles, but this isn’t always within my control.)
READING
Don’t Let Him In, Lisa Jewell
I feel like I hardly need to say anything about this book other than PSA: There’s a new Lisa Jewell out now! So. I’m going to cheat and just repeat what I said, when I included it in my summer reading round up last month: If you are one of the millions who already know and love Lisa’s fiendishly clever, deeply disquieting thrillers (usually with a smart topical edge that propels the story along but never ever gets in the way), I don’t need to say anything other than get yourself to the bookshop now, if you haven’t already. If you don’t, get on the Jewell-train fast with this tale of duplicity, gaslighting and one of the most unsettling characters I’ve encountered in a really long time. I don’t know how she does it – if I did, I’d obviously be a lot richer – but Lisa Jewell just keeps getting better and better. (And bookclubbers, you asked, I answered! So watch this space for exciting news next month…)
• Don’t Let Him In by Lisa Jewell is out now in hardback. Get it from Amazon, The Shift bookshop on bookshop.org, Waterstones or your local indie.
DON’T FORGET THE SHIFT BOOKCLUB LIVE ON TUESDAY!
Don’t miss the online event with Mel Pennant, author of our June pick, A Murder For Miss Hortense, is on Tuesday 8 July at 7pm BST. I’ll be sending out the link to paid subscribers on Monday. Look out for it. (Btw, bookclub membership is open to all paid subscribers.)
WATCHING
We Were Liars, amazon prime
OK, so I went into this feeling a bit ambivalent. I’d read and loved the book a few summers ago and wasn’t 100% sure a) it could do the book, a YA hit by E. Lockhart, justice, but also b) could I stomach eight hours of Aryan privilege. I mean, eight almost hour-long episodes! How was that going to work?! Reader, it turned out I could and I did. I basked in it. Meet the obscenely wealthy (and immaculately tanned and blonde and excruciatingly preppy) Sinclair family who spend every summer on their own private island. Ruled with the iron glove of Logan Roy-esque patriarch, grandfather Harris Sinclair, and grandmother Tipper (who’s not as pastel as she seems) nothing can rock their carefully honed perfection, until, of course, it does. Something happened in the summer of 2016 that changed everything. But what? Switching between summer 2016 and summer 2017, as Cadence (second right) wrestles with PTSD-induced amnesia and goes on a mission to fill in the gaps. (You can tell she’s gone off the rails because by 2017 her hair has been dyed black.) Episode one I was watching prepared to snark, episode two I was hooked, episode three I was ready for a full-on binge. If your idea of heaven is immersing yourself in glossy rich people psychodrama à la Nicole Kidman in The Perfect Couple, this has your name on it.
ON THE SHIFT PODCAST THIS WEEK…
…I’m revisiting some favourite archive episodes while I finish up editing the summer season (coming 22 July). I spent a very happy hour (plus) talking to the legendary Australian novelist Helen Garner about father-daughter relationships, why marriage and she don’t mix, grandmothering and how she couldn’t give a monkeys about the erotic gaze. Plus she’s still really hacked off about the way Australian writers get treated! (And while I have you, if you haven’t read Helen’s incredible collected diaries, How To End A Story, go to it!)
• What are you reading, watching, listening to this month? Please let us know
* A note: this post contains affiliate links, which means that a very small percentage of any sale goes to help fund The Shift. If it’s orange (or underlined if you’re reading in the app), it links! (But not all orange/underlined links are affiliates…)
Sam THANK YOU for your lovely words, I was having a bit of an annoying day and you have instantly transformed it into a good one! Really appreciated.
I found the images of Rachel Reeves so distressing and that she was placed in a position that her distress could be dissected. Surely she should have been excused?