What's got my attention this week #73
Links and recs to get you through the weekend (after the longest week)
SCROLLING
• I’ve read some great (and some not so great) pieces about the US election results this week, blaming, hypothesising, theorising, panicking, I-told-you-soing… You’ve probably read them too. If not, you can find them all over substack notes, the internet and legacy media. So I decided not to include any here (which made compiling it quite hard!). Then I read this by
• A timely reminder of this July 1940 letter by EB White from .
• A moment of sheer joy from : “witnessing a 50-year marriage”.
• “I came last.” This is one of my favourite pieces in forever. Thank you for writing it .
• Actor Anne-Marie Duff on why “the flaws are the sexy bits”.
• Fascinating article on two women who revolutionised Afghanistan’s cycling scene – until the Taliban came back.
• The older you get, the less time you have for bad books, says .
• How to get rid of almost everything.
• Six writers on procrastination.
• on how a “Lifestyle book of the year” nomination made her consider the way we see “women’s work”.
• Love this by on full length mirrors.
• Even Kate Winslet has had to discover how hard it is to be a woman raising money for so-called “women’s projects”.
• We have nothing to fear from despair. Thank you .
• If all else fails, call your girlfriends, says .
• Can reading make you happier? Worth a try!
• Massive over-identification with this piece on the Cure-aissance.
• Little lessons from growing out my grey. (Gift link.)
• “A writer’s career is choppy, I was 50 when I found success.” Deborah Levy is back!
• The people who mistook their lives for an app. £
• The bliss of cancelled plans.
• 43 monkeys broke out of a research facility in South Carolina, and now they’re on the lam. And who can blame them? (Gift link.)
• Want to clone your pet? Here’s who you should call…
• ‘It’s “Winter Vagina Time” bitches!’ Thank you for this .
(A note about the links: some are behind a paywall, but almost all (eg The New York Times, 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 £.)
READING
Didion & Babitz, Lili Anolik
Like lots of writers I’m obsessed with Joan Didion. Of course, it’s all about the clinical precision of her words, her gimlet unforgiving eye. But also… her style! Her look! That Celine sunglasses ad! I own all her books. I’ve even read them (give or take). And, yes, like almost everyone else in the world my favourite is The Year of Magical Thinking (written in the year after the death of her husband John Gregory Dunne). But it’s not the only one. If you haven’t read her 1965 piece on meeting legendary Cosmopolitan Editor Helen Gurley Brown, I highly recommend it. (It’s in one of Didion’s essay collections but I forget which one and I’m on a train so nowhere near my bookcase.)
Anyway, the way I feel about Didion, Lili Anolik feels about the equally iconic Eve Babitz. We are at opposite ends of the there’s-not-a-lot-she-can-do-wrong spectrum. Anolik was already Babitz’s biographer (Hollywood’s Eve) when, after Babitz’s death, her sister discovered some neatly packed away boxes stuffed with letters and documents, amongst them letters to and from Joan Didion.
What a book that would make, thought Anolik. And what a book it did make. Didion & Babitz is the almost novelesque tale of two incredible women – one flaming hot, the other able to turn cool into an art form. Two women who were more than tangentially connected. Both talented in their extremely different ways. Not exactly friends, not exactly allies, but not exactly not. During the late 60s/ early 70s in which the book is set, they certainly spent a lot of time in each other’s orbit, unquestionably had an impact on each other’s life and, in Didion’s case, on Babitz’s writing.
Anolik is unquestionably team Babitz, I went into it team Didion. But what I mainly learnt from reading this fascinating tale of two women fighting to make their mark, to fit in, to be accepted( and whether it’s possible to do that and still be yourself), in late 60s/ early 70s Hollywood, is that we don’t have to do that. Pick sides, I mean. Why even do we? (I know, misogyny, patriarchy…) The fact that we do, though, is one of the things that makes this book so compelling. Didion & Babitz would make a great series. I’m already fantasy casting.
• DON’T FORGET - The Shift Bookclub Live with at 7pm GMT on Monday 11 November. Paid subscribers should look out for a link over the weekend.
WATCHING
Bad Sisters, season 2 (Apple TV+)
How much did I love the first season of Bad Sisters? Let me count the ways! And I have never needed season 2 (which starts 13 November) more than I do right now. Although the last season wrapped up the murder of “the prick” (JP) neatly, don’t assume that means Sharon Horgan (writing, producing and starring) will have run out of material. Grace (Anne-Marie Duff) is remarrying, JP’s father’s body is dredged from the lake and the sisters face a new threat in the form of Fiona Shaw, as the sister of Grace’s former neighbour, Roger. But above all there are the Garvey sisters (a glorious ensemble of Horgan, Duff, Eve Hewson, Eva Birthistle and Sara Greene) and their tender, tumultuous, hilarious, lethal relationship. This weekend I’ll be catching up with the pitch-black perfection of season 1, so I’m fully prepared for Wednesday.
AND ON THE SHIFT PODCAST THIS WEEK…
…bestselling author of Apple Tree Yard, Louise Doughty joined me to talk about how “overnight” success at 50” transformed her life (mainly she finally started a pension!), why it’s still considered controversial when middle aged women have sex, surviving the menopause-puberty collision and the power and importance of realising you’re not for everyone. And that’s fine.
If you enjoyed this, here are a few more:
* 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, it links! (But not all orange links are affiliates…)
Sam, was I on the list for the Sharon Blackie book? As I haven't received it. No worries if not I am really enjoying Unravelling!