Happy Friday!

I hope you’ll forgive my absence in your inbox last month. I went to Scotland on a 30th birthday pilgrimage of sorts and failed to plan ahead.

I’ve wanted to take a road trip to Skye for years. I’ve seen more of California than I have of Scotland. Evan and I never got around to hiring a car when we lived in Glasgow, through means and circumstances and laziness. But when a friend celebrated her birthday on Lewis, it planted the seed of an idea to do the same thing, a little further south, and invite a few friends to Skye for my 30th. My birthday was in March, but we waited for longer nights, booked the trip and drafted an itinerary. It was the most charmed 4 days – with hikes and whisky and great meals and funny conversations. Evan and I spent 2 days there, followed by another 2 with a few close friends. The weather and the visibility were glorious.

On the way up, I bought John Muir’s book about the Sierra from a Scottish publisher (Canongate) in a Scottish independent bookshop (The Highland Bookshop), and I thought about how lucky I am to be able to split my time between two such spectacularly beautiful places. I love these twin west coasts.

This weekend, we’re heading down to SoCal for a wedding, and had thought to go to Catalina Island, exactly a month after our trip to Skye; but it was too poetic to be.

It’s been awhile. Wanna talk about reading?

EXTREMELY ONLINE

I have the same predicament as Dan Nosowitz – I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore. (Also, this makes me feel kind of old.)

‘Like’ if you support my divorce – Jessica Furseth on the weird predicament of sharing those not-so-celebratory life events.

I’ll Just Have a Coffee.

I Think About This a Lot: The Sliding Doors in Sliding Doors. I really like the idea behind this series.

HISTORY & WORD SALAD

At the Talisker distillery in Skye, the guide referred to their peatiness as “half an Islay”, which made perfect sense to me. (If you’re not a whisky drinker, he meant that they use about half as much peat when treating the barley, so the whisky is about half as peaty as, say, Islay’s Lagavulin.) A week later, I read about a remarkable and harrowing piece of Islay’s history as The Scottish island that buried America’s dead. Further viewing here.

A delightful idea from Austin Kleon, via his father-in-law: Clippings.

I loved this gorgeous piece by Julie Sedivy on The Strange Persistence of First Languages.

Do you prefer your dictionaries prescriptive or descriptive? Annotated tracks how a big shift in American dictionaries occurred in The Dictionary War.

I’ve talked your ear off about Eve Babitz on here. She’s been famously reclusive since the nineties, but here’s A rare interview with Eve Babitz, the long sober, cool again author. (If you haven’t been following along with me, start with All About Eve—and Then Some.)

ON MY SHELF

I’ve been nibbling on a smorgasbord of short reads over the past couple of months. The Penguin Modern box set turned out to be a great investment (especially as I got a significant partial refund after I complained about the state and tardiness of its arrival – yass), and I’ve enjoyed gobbling up snippets of Ralph Ellison, Jean Rhys, and Anaïs Nin, to name a few.

I was charmed and creeped out by Andrés Barba’s Such Small Hands. I marvelled over Deborah Levy’s originality in her partial memoir, Things I Don’t Want to Know. Part two, The Cost of Living, is in the post.

Right now, I’m reading Patti Smith’s M Train – a memoir which she released a few years ago. I bought it a few days after we arrived in California after our permanent move, on the same day I realised that many of my childhood favourites and some other books I’d shipped did not arrive with the shredded box. It was meant to cheer me up; instead, it sat on a shelf for over 18 months. Now that I’m finally reading it, I’m glad I saved it for this moment. She drinks coffee, travels, and ruminates over books and art over the course of about a year, with some memories from earlier life thrown in where relevant. It’s exactly the kind of book that I’m in the mood for right now, and I’m loving it.

What’s on your nightstand? Hit reply and let me know (I really do want to hear about it)!

TIL NEXT MONTH…

Your turn! Read anything good lately? Tweet me, won’t you?

Have a lovely weekend,
Nicola x

P.S. In case you’re wondering, the title refers to the flight I’ve taken, and written on customs forms, a dozen times from London to LAX.

Happy Friday!

It’s been a slightly bummer month. I had horrible cramps for a week. Then we went up to Monterey for a fun weekend. Then I got food poisoning. Then I spent a week on the couch. This week, I decided to shake it off. I booked a haircut. I couldn’t decide whether to go darker or lighter. So I went very, very blonde.

That’s all I have to say about that. Here’s what I have to say about what I’ve been reading and watching lately.

ON ICE

While I was sick last week, I dove head first into the Winter Olympics, probably for the first time in my life. I got pretty into figure skating in particular. Virtue and Moir, the Canadian champions in ice dancing, were a clear highlight. Everyone is obsessed with their sexual chemistry on the ice. I think it’s both a testament to, and a distraction from, their mastery of the form. But no-one would argue that they aren’t a ton of fun to watch. Here’s their final free skate (without commentary).

Also, did you know that Short-Track Speedskaters Are Lopsided?

I love Jessica Furseth’s creative article ideas, and thoroughly enjoyed her latest for Atlas Obscura, Remembering When London’s Pubs Were Full at 7 a.m.

I’m returning to Glasgow in April, and a friend and neighbour is renting out her place, so I’ll be staying in my old neighbourhood. It has given me a little pause, however, since I read Dyan Flores on the weird feelings that arise When Your Friend Moves Into Your Old Apartment.

“The question I, and many of my writer friends, have been asking in recent years is not whether to be active on social media, but how to do so without damaging the soft, fragile, interior place from which the work itself emerges.” – Dani Shapiro on the Hard Art of Balancing Writing and Social Media.

BY SEA (& ON SCREEN)

I wish I had more updates on Oscar nominees for you, but I’ve only seen one more Best Picture-nominated film since I last wrote. It was The Shape of Water, directed by Guillermo Del Toro. It’s nominated in 13 categories. While it’s luscious to look at, well-cast and, on the whole, well put together, the story really let it down for me. The moments of threat were flat, I wasn’t invested in any of the characters, and some of the subplots grew like weeds. I’m not convinced that the performances were as good as they could have been: Michael Shannon and Michael Stuhlbarg are great even when they’re on autopilot, and they seemed to be squeezing every last drop of meaning they could out of the limp script.

Some people seem to love it, though. It also spurred this great piece about Women Masturbating on Film.

I also tried to see The Post… twice. The first time, my friend and I were running late and ended up seeing Pitch Perfect 3 (which is terrible, but still fun if you like the franchise). Since then I’ve been ill so I still have some catching up to do. The final 3 Best Picture nominees I need to catch, The Post, The Darkest Hour, and Dunkirk, are all playing at my local cinema this week and I’m aiming to catch them all before the Academy Awards. More to come!

ON MY SHELF

As I mentioned last time, I’ve been out of stride with my reading for the past few months. In particular, I’ve struggled to find novels I’m interested in. A few things that helped were: reading The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson with my friend Eva (who is super into evil houses in fiction and also has an excellent Tinyletter), ditching the book club book that I suggested but ended up hating, and starting a novel that I’ve been meaning to read for many years.

The latter is the book I’m currently reading, and thoroughly into: White Oleander by Janet Fitch.

I also read The Pisces by Melissa Broder, whose name you may recognise from So Sad Today. (I’d heard of the site, but haven’t followed it.) The novel is narrated by Lucy, a 38-year-old PhD candidate whose life has stagnated and who, on a whim, suggests she and her boyfriend of thirteen years break up. It takes. After a break-down, she goes to house- and dog-sit for her sister, where she joins a therapy group, goes on Tinder dates, and strikes up an affair with a merman. Um, yeah. It’s part examination of depression and attachment, part erotic fiction. I loved its energy early on, but it felt long (even at 220 pages) and, towards the end, it spent a lot of time wrapping up answers to questions I didn’t have. It’s released on 1st May from Hogarth Press in the USA and 3rd May from Bloomsbury in the UK.

In non-fiction, I read Upstream by Mary Oliver, which was a rather delightful selection of nature essays – some of them gently heartbreaking. Since then, I have begun to dabble in The Abundance by Annie Dillard. This best-of collection opens with her fantastic essay, Total Eclipse, which I saw being shared around during the last total eclipse but failed to read. Please don’t be as foolish as I was.

What’s on your nightstand? Hit reply and let me know!

TIL NEXT MONTH…

Your turn! Read anything good lately? Hit reply or tweet me, won’t you?

Have a lovely weekend,
Nicola x