The winter of our discontent
Winter 2025: wrapped
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Hi friends,
There’s about 4 inches of snow on the ground. For the next few days, the high will be 12 degrees, which means the wind chill will be in the negatives. I’m down again with some variant of the flu / head cold/ another sinus nightmare. In other words, winter is far from wrapped in Chicago. But it’s time for my trimonthly1 newsletter, so here we are “wrapping” up my winter updates. Let’s get right to it!
Like everything else in my life, my currently reading pile is in absolute disarray. For months, I’ve been flitting from one book to another without finishing anything. In an effort to stop the madness, I’ve finally set my list in order. Here’s where I landed.
📱= ebook | 📖 = physical book | 🎧 = audiobook
Finished
Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs | Memoir | 🎧 | Loved it - I scored a copy of this book at my favorite used bookstore years ago, but I’ve hesitated to pick it up since I’m not a Steve Jobs enthusiast. Although his genius has always been evident, the stories of him yelling insults at his employees have long put me off from learning more about him. His first daughter’s book didn’t change my impression of him, but it was so beautiful that I wish I’d picked it up years earlier. In visceral detail, Brennan-Jobs examines her fractured relationship with her father, her constant longing to be close with him, and how she became who she is today. Brennan-Jobs’s ability to weave multiple themes through her narrative made for a compelling coming of age story that captured the acute heartbreak of strained parental relationships. Highly recommend!
Currently reading
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez | 🎧 | Nonfiction - Examining the “centrality of popular culture in contemporary American evangelicalism,” this book illustrates how evangelicalism became the religion of toxic masculine power. This one rose to the top of my list after the election, so I got the audiobook from the library as soon as it was available.
Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America by Paola Ramos | 🎧 | Nonfiction - Ramos travels across the country speaking to far right Latino voters, examining “what motivates them to vote for and support issues that seem so at odds with their self-interest.” Are you sensing a theme here?
The Fixed Stars by Molly Wizenberg |📱| Memoir - When the author finds herself attracted to a female attorney during a brief stint on jury duty, she begins examining her decade-long marriage with her husband and who she knows herself to be. This one has sucked me right in, and after a few days of reading, I’m already 20% through the book.
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee |📖| Literary fiction - I’ve been longing to read this epic family story for years. A friend and I agreed to buddy read it this winter while we hide from the cold, and I’ve enjoyed the sweeping look at generations of one Korean family.
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald |📱| Memoir - Partly focused on Macdonald’s journey to adopt and train a goshawk and partly focused on her father’s death, this book has absolutely wowed me with its nature descriptions and deep beauty. It’s been a slow burn for me, but I like it that way.
Pausing
On Immunity: An Inoculation by Eula Biss - This is a question of the wrong book at the wrong time. I love Eula Biss, so I’m confident I’ll return to this one when I have a bit more bandwidth.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey - This book is gorgeous, but my scattered life requires a bit more plot at the moment.
Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood by Lucy Jones - I am obsessed with Jones’s examination of what it means to become a mother, but my library hold expired before I could finish, so I’m patiently waiting for this one to come around again.
The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again by Sven Birkerts - I’ll be picking this one back up as soon as I finish up a few of my current reads.
DNFing
What Happened To You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey - I bought this audiobook years ago on recommendation from a colleague. Since I own it, I thought I should finally listen to it. The first few chapters were interesting enough, but I was dubious about some of the brain science in this book, as much of the assertsions sound uncomfortably similar to pseudoscience claims. Whenever I found a few moments to read, I never wanted to pick this up, so I decided to put it down for good.
In January, I launched a writing challenge called the Write More Collective with the purpose of — you guessed it — writing more in the new year. I had dreams of “getting ahead” on my biweekly newsletter posts, and finishing an essay for a nonfiction competition, and diving back into my memoir manuscript. Sadly, sickness continues to absolutely wreck our lives, so I’ve barely written anything since the beginning of the year. To say this is beyond frustrating is an understatement. Thus, I’m declaring this year over. As soon as the weather is warm, I’ll start again, tackling my writing goals in earnest. Who’s with me?
In other news, I’m once again trying to write during the early morning hours. After multiple previous attempts, I finally gave up the notion a becoming a morning writer years ago. After some time, you just have to accept who you really are.
Then I had a kid, and I came to the realization that early mornings are the only time I have any hope of utilizing my brain. After a full day of work, chores, running after a toddler, and washing his high chair tray four times (just so it can get dirty again), I’m too exhausted to do any writing. That leaves early morning, long before the sun inches over the horizon and my dogs start to nudge the house awake. To add to the fun, my alarm somehow manages to wake up my son even through the highest setting on his white noise machine, so I’ve been using a sunrise alarm clock and the vibrating alarm on my Apple Watch to get me up. So far, my progress has been tepid at best. I’ll let you know if I gain any traction in this hopeless endeavor.
As mentioned, our winter has been dominated by sickness. Aside from annihilating multiple boxes of tissues, cough drops, and Mucinex, here’s what I’ve been up to.
Flying across the world with a baby (literally). As someone with flight anxiety, there’s many things I’d rather do than fly 20 hours one-way with a tiny child. Thankfully, there was lots of time with family, delicious food, filter coffee, freshly fried chips, chai in earthen pots, and bookstore trips to make up for it. It’ll be a long time before I do that again, though.
Living my best life across the world: food, books, coffee Creating a note-taking system on Notion. Given my inability to put thoughts to paper lately, I’ve been experimenting with a different way to keep notes so I can capture my insights and quickly come back to them later. Inspired by the zettelkasten system, I’ve been experimenting with a method for mapping my thoughts together via Notion. What I love about writing and reading is that I make connections between things that don’t seem immediately related. This allows me to keep track of those for future writing and learning.
Only a Notion nerd could be excited about a screenshot like this. 😂 Being more intentional about my internet presence. I’ve always been suspicious of Zuck, but his emergegence as a main member of the tech broligarchy gave me the motivation to finally abandon the last of my Meta platforms: Instagram. Cutting scrolling time out of my life immediately made me less anxious, less scattered, and less overwhelmed. I’m still as scared as ever about The State of Things, but I’m no longer paralyzed.2 I don’t believe there are any perfect tech spaces, only problematic spaces that we try to make the most of. However, being less connected to one of the main architects of fascism in the U.S. makes me feel better.
Punching things. I joined a boxing gym at the end of January. It’s fun and cathartic and so, so hard. Never in my life have I looked forward to doing 20 seconds of squats as a “break,” but it’s helping me keep the existential dread at bay.
Clench your fucking fist and remember who the fuck you are. Live well and defiantly and by your values. Personally I’m interested in being—and being around people who are—brave, honorable, unfragile, capable, thoughtful, and in possession of style, humor, and moral nerve. Maybe you are too. Defiance, once you’ve tapped into it, is useful. It can give you an animating energy, it can remind you of your own aliveness and stamina. Anger is better, always, than despair. Take in what they’re doing, what it means. Tell yourself you want to live past this. Live to see their downfall; live to see them die. -Sarah Thankam Mathews, thot pudding newsletter
Here’s hoping for a Spring Wrapped with more books finished, more words written, and less sickness. See you again when the weather finally warms up.
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Fun fact: I recently learned this word and have been looking for every opportunity to use it since.
If I sound self-righteous, it is only because I detest him so much.
Pachinko and The Fixed Stars are two books I love - I highly recommend Wizenberg's other books if you haven't read them. I liked the peak into your note-taking, it's so helpful to find ways to cut out the noise and pay attention to our thoughts. Wishing you all the things you hoped for looking to spring!