Reading List: Yes, I Will Be Doing Nothing But Reading The Handmaid’s Tale Sequel This Weekend, Why Do You Ask?
Sweethearts, apologies for my absence! Work was nutty this week, so I’ve hardly had the time to eat, let alone check out all the reasons that I should be yelling at the internet.
And this is a weird way to start, and I promise this is not an ad, but sometimes folks ask me how I am able to write this Missive in about a half an hour every(ish) morning, and a lot of it has to to with the tools I use to flag, read and write. One of those tools, my beloved Instapaper, helps me bookmark stuff and then send those pieces to my Kindle in an easy-to-read-in-the-bath format. When I logged in today to start pulling the longreads that I in no way had time to read this week, I was informed that after an up-and-down few years of being acquired by Pinterest and having what used to be premium services be free and then spun back off into its own company, Instapaper is once again charging for features like send-to-Kindle. And I am damned happy they are, and put my credit card number in SO DAMNED FAST, because I want to support delightful internet services that don’t aspire to take over the world, but instead know what value they bring to their users and work really, really hard to do it well. So TL;DR, support the internet makers who make your lives easier and don’t make you the product.
TO THE LONGREADS!
Margaret Atwood, The Testaments: The Sequel to The Handmaid's Tale - I say this with no exaggeration: my only goal for this weekend is to take this book to the beach or a park and read it in its entirety, possibly more than once.
Greg Keraghosian, The forgotten story of the 1865 San Francisco fireman's riot. (SFGate) - I love obscure local history, and I love discussions of 19th century brawls, and I love that this tale of both has this line: “…while East Coast volunteers such as Baltimore’s had a well-earned reputation for violence, San Francisco’s firemen were noticeably more chill.”
Brandon Ambrosino, ‘Someone’s Gotta Tell the Freakin’ Truth’: Jerry Falwell’s Aides Break Their Silence (POLITICO) - This piece got me going down a rabbit hole about the insanely hypocritical family at the head of Liberty University, and of the damage of power and money in religion.
Natalie Beach, I Was Caroline Calloway (The Cut) - Am I a terrible person that the first thing I thought about when I started reading this was OMG I would be so good at being someone’s social media ghostwriter?
Andrew Ferguson, Malcolm Gladwell Reaches His Tipping Point (The Atlantic) - I just started this review of the latest book of a very-public intellectual, and I’m already hooked with this lede: “It’s a bit embarrassing to finish a book by Malcolm Gladwell… and realize you don’t quite know what he’s driving at.”
Good to be back, my doves. Be kind to each other, ok?
xoxo Amy