UPCOMING EVENTS FOR A PLACE OF OUR OWN
Monday, June 3: Washington, DC. Politics and Prose, Connecticut Avenue, 7 p.m., in conversation with Christina Cauterucci.
Wednesday, June 5: New York City. P&T Knitwear, Lower East Side, 7 p.m., in conversation with Amelia Possanza.
Thursday, June 6: Toronto Public Library (Virtual Event), 7 p.m. In conversation with Jane Farrow.
Friday, June 14: Edinburgh, Topping & Company, 7:30 p.m., with Alison Bechdel.
Sunday, Aug. 4, 2024: Wilderness Fest, Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire, 2:45 p.m.
Monday, Aug. 19: Minneapolis, Magers & Quinn, with Krista Burton, 7 p.m.
Wednesday, Aug. 21: Chicago, Women & Children First, 7 p.m.
BOOKS I READ IN Q1 OF 2024
- The Craft of Literary Biography, ed. Jeffrey Meyers
- North Korea Confidential, by Daniel Tudor
- Sycamore Row, by John Grisham
- Parisian Lives, by Deirdre Bair
- The Professor and the Parson, by Adam Sisman
- Royal Holiday, by Jasmine Guillory
- The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens, by Claire Tomalin
- Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the making of Modern Asia, by Gary J. Bass
- We Could Be So Good, by Cat Sebastian
- Charles Dickens: A Life, by Claire Tomalin
- The Palace Papers, by Tina Brown
- King: A Life, by Jonathan Eig
- The Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle, by Anna Shechtman
- Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disrupter, by Rachel Shteir
- Betting on the Bird, by Cassandra Medcalf
- A Spy Alone, by Charles Beaumont
- Looking for Lorraine, by Imani Perry
- The New Life, by Tom Crewe
- The Diana Chronicles, by Tina Brown
- High School, by Tegan and Sara Quin
- Keep This Off the Record, by Arden Jay
- Within My Reach, by Amy Blythe
- American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, by Tim Alberta
- Requiem for a Mezzo, by Carola Dunn
- Somehow: Thoughts on Love, by Anne Lamott
- The Secret Life, by Andrew O’Hagan
- Very Bad Company, by Emma Rosenblum
BOOKS I READ IN 2023 (UPDATED)
- Bad Actors, by Mick Herron
- Count Your Lucky Stars, by Alexandra Bellefleur
- Hell Yeah or No, by Derek Sivers
- Written in the Stars, by Alexandra Bellefleur
- Trailed, by Kathryn Miles
- Decluttering at the Speed of Life, by Dana K. White
- The Journalist and the Murderer, by Janet Malcolm (re-read)
- The Private Patient, by PD James (re-read)
- Skip the Line, by James Altucher
- No Man’s Land, by Riley Smith
- Vibrator Nation, by Lynn Comella
- Roller Girl, by Vanessa North
- Sex by Design, by Betty Dodson
- Buzz, by Hallie Lieberman
- Big Death, Little Death, by Susie Bright
- Season of the Witch, by David Talbot
- Sierra City, by Gerri Hill
- Cowboys and Kisses, by Karin Kallmaker
- Comfort and Joy, by Karin Kallmaker
- Watergate, by Garrett M. Graff
- Steal Like an Artist, by Austin Kleon
- Show Your Work, by Austin Kleon
- The More of Less, by Joshua Becker
- Peril, by Bob Woodward
- A Swing at Love, by Harper Bliss
- Supreme Ambition: Brett Kavanaugh and the Conservative Takeover, by Ruth Marcus
- Agent Twister, by Philip Augur and Keely Winston
- Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest to Track Down the Last Remaining Lesbian Bars in America, by Krista Burton
- Nine Black Robes, by Joan Biskupic
- The Pathless Path, by Paul Millerd
- Behind the PIne Curtain, by Gerri Hill
- In a Midnight Wood, by Ellen Hart
- Twisted at the Root, by Ellen Hart
- Ceremonies, by Essex Hemphill (re-read)
- Diving Into the Wreck, by Adrienne Rich (re-read)
- The Power of Adrienne Rich, by Hilary Holiday (re-read)
- Written on the Body, by Jeannette Winterson (re-read)
- Love Unknown: The Life and Worlds of Elizabeth Bishop, by Thomas Travisoro
- Loving Robert Lowell, by Sandra Hochman
- Traffic, by Ben Smith
- Simply the Best, by Karin Kallmaker
- Touchwood, by Karen Kallmaker
- Portrait of a Thief, by Grace D. Li
- Lesbian Death, by Mairead Sullivan
- Burn It Down, by Maureen Ryan
- The Passage of Power, by Robert Caro
- Love & Other Disasters, by Anita Kelly
- Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser
- Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For (Audible version)
- It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work, by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier
- Austral, by Carlos Fonseca
- Vintage Contemporaries, by Dan Kois
- Bad Summer People, by Emma Rosenblum
- The One Thing, by Gary Keller w/Jay Papasan
- Companion Piece, by Ali Smith
- Homegrown, by Jeffrey Toobin
- American Spy, by Lauren Wilkinson
- We Set the Night on Fire, by Martha Shelley
- There are the Dawning, by Barbara J. Love
- SPQR, by Mary Beard
- Becoming Kim Jong Un, by Jung H. Pak
- Circus of Dreams: Adventures in the 1980s Literary World, by John Walsh
- A Thread of Violence, by Mark O’Connell
- Break-Up: How Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon Went to War, by David Clegg and Kieran Andrews
- Country of the Blind, by Christopher Brookmyre
- The Book of Evidence, by John Banville (re-read)
- The Cold, Cold, Ground, by Adrian McKinty
- The Darien Disaster, by John Prebble
- I Hear the Sirens in the Street, by Adrian McKinty
- The Art of the Idea, by John Hunt
- In the Morning I’ll be Gone, by Adrian McKinty
- Gun Street Girl, by Adrian McKinty
- Rain Dogs, by Adrian McKinty
- A True Account, by Katherine Howe
- Astor, by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe
- Police at the Station and They Don’t Look Friendly, by Adrian McKinty
- The Secret Hours, by Mick Herron
- The Fall: The End of Fox News, by Michael Wolff
- Past Lying, by Val McDermid
- The Falls, by Ian Rankin
- The Detective Up Late, by Adrian McKinty
- Lost & Hound, by Rita Mae Brown
- Salvation of a Saint, by Keigo Higashino
- Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Hollywood Media Company, by James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams
- One Summer Night, by Gerri Hill
- We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America, by Roxanna Asgarian
- The Vanity Fair Diaries, 1986-1993, by Tina Brown
- A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carré
- The Secret Life of John le Carré, by Adam Sisman
- The Pigeon Tunnel, by John le Carré
- American Classicist: The Life and Loves of Edith Hamilton, by Victoria Houseman
- After Sappho, by Selby Wynn Schwartz
- Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wilde Rise & Staggering Fall, by Zeke Faux
- The Night Brother, by Rosie Garland
- Northern Spy, by Flynn Berry
- A Life of My Own, by Claire Tomalin
- The Possibility of Life, by Jaime Green (read in October, but inexplicably left off the earlier list)
THE BOOKS I READ IN 2023 (AS OF DEC. 15)
- Bad Actors, by Mick Herron
- Count Your Lucky Stars, by Alexandra Bellefleur
- Hell Yeah or No, by Derek Sivers
- Written in the Stars, by Alexandra Bellefleur
- Trailed, by Kathryn Miles
- Decluttering at the Speed of Life, by Dana K. White
- The Journalist and the Murderer, by Janet Malcolm (reread)
- The Private Patient, by PD James (reread)
- Skip the Line, by James Altucher
- No Man’s Land, by Riley Smith
- Vibrator Nation, by Lynn Comella
- Roller Girl, by Vanessa North
- Sex by Design, by Betty Dodson
- Buzz, by Hallie Lieberman
- Big Death, Little Death, by Susie Bright
- Season of the Witch, by David Talbot
- Sierra City, by Gerri Hill
- Cowboys and Kisses, by Karin Kallmaker
- Comfort and Joy, by Karin Kallmaker
- Watergate, by Garrett M. Graff
- Steal Like an Artist, by Austin Kleon
- Show Your Work, by Austin Kleon
- The More of Less, by Joshua Becker
- Peril, by Bob Woodward
- A Swing at Love, by Harper Bliss
- Supreme Ambition: Brett Kavanaugh and the Conservative Takeover, by Ruth Marcus
- Agent Twister, by Philip Augur and Keely Winston
- Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest to Track Down the Last Remaining Lesbian Bars in America, by Krista Burton
- Nine Black Robes, by Joan Biskupic
- The Pathless Path, by Paul Millerd
- Behind the PIne Curtain, by Gerri Hill
- In a Midnight Wood, by Ellen Hart
- Twisted at the Root, by Ellen Hart
- Ceremonies, by Essex Hemphill (re-read)
- Diving Into the Wreck, by Adrienne Rich (re-read)
- The Power of Adrienne Rich, by Hilary Holiday (re-read)
- Written on the Body, by Jeannette Winterson (re-read)
- Love Unknown: The Life and Worlds of Elizabeth Bishop, by Thomas Travisoro
- Loving Robert Lowell, by Sandra Hochman
- Traffic, by Ben Smith
- Simply the Best, by Karin Kallmaker
- Touchwood, by Karen Kallmaker
- Portrait of a Thief, by Grace D. Li
- Lesbian Death, by Mairead Sullivan
- Burn It Down, by Maureen Ryan
- The Passage of Power, by Robert Caro
- Love & Other Disasters, by Anita Kelly
- Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser
- Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For (Audible version)
- It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work, by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier
- Austral, by Carlos Fonseca
- Vintage Contemporaries, by Dan Kois
- Bad Summer People, by Emma Rosenblum
- The One Thing, by Gary Keller w/Jay Papasan
- Companion Piece, by Ali Smith
- Homegrown, by Jeffrey Toobin
- AMerican Spy, by Lauren Wilkinson
- We Set the Night on Fire, by Martha Shelley
- There are the Dawning, by Barbara J. Love
- SPQR, by Mary Beard
- Becoming Kim Jong Un, by Jung H. Pak
- Circus of Dreams: Adventures in the 1980s Literary World, by John Walsh
- A Thread of Violence, by Mark O’Connell
- Break-Up: How Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon Went to War, by David Clegg and Kieran Andrews
- Country of the Blind, by Christopher Brookmyre
- The Book of Evidence, by John Banville (re-read)
- The Cold, Cold, Ground, by Adrian McKinty
- The Darien Disaster, by John Prebble
- I hear the Sirens in the Street, by Adrian McKinty
- The Art of the Idea, by John Hunt
- In the Morning I’ll be Gone, by Adrian McKinty
- Gun Street Girl, by Adrian McKinty
- Rain Dogs, by Adrian McKinty
- A True Account, by Katherine Howe
- Astor, by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe
- Police at the Station and They Don’t Look Friendly, by Adrian McKinty
- The Secret Hours, by Mick Herron
- The Fall: The End of Fox News, by Michael Wolff
- Past Lying, by Val McDermid
- The Falls, by Ian Rankin
- The Detective Up Late, by Adrian McKinty
- Lost & Hound, by Rita Mae Brown
- Salvation of a Saint, by Keigo Higashino
- Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Hollywood Media Company, by James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams
- One Summer Night, by Gerri Hill
- We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America, by Roxanna Asgarian
- The Vanity Fair Diaries, 1986-1993, by Tina Brown
- A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carré
- The Secret Life of John le Carré, by Adam Sisman
- The Pigeon Tunnel, by John le Carré
What a lovely obit. I remember that book so well, though I never owned it. www.nytimes.com/2023/04/2…
This sculpture outside the Edinburgh Council building is called “Everyman,” but is anyone else getting Jerry’s dad vibes?
So cool to see my latest zine (somehow mine is not “Rebel Dykes”) at the Edinburgh Zine Fest communal table. Open through Sunday evening at the Fruitmarket.
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Three years! I miss my misspent youth!
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A really interesting insight from Hanif Kureishi’s Kureishi Chronicles newsletter hanifkureishi.substack.com/p/a-crick…
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Sorry, boss, we can’t just use the Scottish ads in other markets …
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Sorry, boss, we can’t just re-use the Scottish ad in any other markets …
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The latest episode of Working Overtime has some really good ideas for how you can reprime the creative pump. If they worked for Claes Oldenburg in the 1960s, they should work for us now, right? slate.com/podcasts/…
I’ll take two artisanal haggis, please!
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Judging by today’s “In Memoriam” section on Hyperallergic, a career as an artist appears to correlate strongly with a long life.
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That feeling when you know that the way to tackle a big, overwhelming task is to break it down into small parts, but you’re not quite sure what the parts should be!
I sent some zines to friends in the US last week. Pretty sure all are stalled by the cyberattack that has meant no international mail has left Britain in the last week or so. www.bbc.com/news/busi…
In the however many days it has been since the various Twitter clients stopped working, I must’ve reflexively checked Echofon hundreds of times. It’ll take some serious retraining to reprogram that reflex.
I’ve been away from New York for four months, and I’ve already forgotten EVERYTHING. I’m trying to make a list for a friend who’s heading there next week, and it took me 5 minutes to come up with “Bryant Park.” (I still remember the names and locations of all the stationery stores, though.)
I admit to being charmed by the sight of burly blokes eating while wearing paper crowns.
Having lunch in an Edinburgh restaurant in the company holiday lunch period means eating to the crackle of Christmas crackers!
Wanted to share some of my Gelli print journals, @onewildcrow
We moved at the end of August, but our stuff is still in transit. We just got a general sense of when it will arrive, and while I’ll be glad to be reunited with some possessions, it has been nice to be a minimalist, at least for a little while. I’m guessing we’ll be donating a bunch of the new arrivals. I don’t feel owned by my stuff the way I have at some points in the not too distant past, and I love it.
I’ve been a bit under the weather for the last few days–one of those I’m not so sick I can only lie in bed and bemoan my fate but I’m really not myself situations. Subject to weird mood swings and I’m better, no wait, I’m really not uncertainties. Needless to say, though, I’m very glad I’m in this weird liminal place than what the Brits call “proper sick.”
Maintaining a Duolingo streak has been much easier since the pandemic, and more recently our move. On the other hand, we haven’t been able to visit Japan since 2018 (finally got a refund for a May 2020 trip deep into 2021), so while it’s easier for me to study, I haven’t had a chance to use what I’ve been learning.
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(NO Diamine Invent 2022 spoilers in this post, be assured.) I bought the Diamine Inkvent calendar for the first time this year, and I decided NOT to wait until December to open it up. Like a lot of people, I’ll be traveling for a few days that month, I know I’ll have a ton of work on my plate, and there are no kids in the house. Instead, I’ve been allowing myself to open a bottle a night–in order, I’m not a complete monster!–as a kind of reward when a) I get “enough” work done on my book, and b) I generally have time to enjoy the opening process. I honestly don’t know if it’s much of a motivator–it’s an impending deadline that keeps me sat at my desk for hours, not the prospect of ripping the plastic seal off a little bottle of ink–but it sure is fun. So, my question to the world (or maybe to Diamine): Why wait for December and “advent”? If Diamine, or anyone else except Noodler’s, put out 31 mini bottles of ink in some kind of mystery packaging, I’d gladly buy it and use it as a reward to myself for good behavior at any point in the year. No need to come up with new formulations–that does seem like a LOT of work–just surprise me! 🖋
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