COWW vol. 30
May this year !
Hi, dears. May, may. May. This month I read Dune by Frank Herbert, Love Among the Haystacks and Other Stories by D.H. Lawrence, and The Morgesons by Elizabeth Stoddard. Musings coming next week. I’ve also just started Outline by Rachel Cusk as well and may finish it this weekend, so maybe more on that next week too.
Not a bad showing considering what a busy woman I’ve been. I jetted off to Boston (I trained, but let’s go with jetted) one weekend and to New Orleans another. I tried to run and cook every week and mostly succeeded. I’ve taken up ballet again, and I’m also in a Tuesday evening poetry class. This has all been very nice, and I’m grateful.
I’ve still not bought a book (even Faulkner House Books couldn’t break me!!!); however, I have doubled down on the purchase of literary magazines in a way that I’ve deemed legal but can acknowledge is questionable. This month I enjoyed:
Midnight Mind Magazine was a Casa Magazines treat, and I got the last copy they had. This edition was themed “On the Road in America Again” and featured primarily road trip related musings and poetry. My favorites were “Going to California: A Journal Excerpt from 1981” by Hugh Findlay and “The Gospel According to Alfred,” an epic poem by Paul Doty. None of it is available online, and it’s sold out, but you can buy next the edition here!
One day, I ran out of my spicy chili crisp, and instead of going to the normal grocery story to replace it, I went to Big Night on 10th Street. Big mistake, because chili crisp there costs $15 instead off $7 at the grocery store, but also because they had copies of Steak Zine (so cute! So red!) stacked up on the counter. I ended up spending $50 that day on chili crisp and Steak Zine, so you do the math on that.
Despite the exorbitant cost it was fun to tote around and read over the course of the month. I won’t say they were all winners—sorry but every essayist seemed to think her little “I know it’s not really okay to eat steak given the political, socioeconomic and literal climate” caveat was really providing a unique perspective, and it became BORING after essay #3. That being said, my favorites were “Six Orders of Foie Gras, for Research” by Anonymous, “Omaha After the Stock Yards” by Jamal Dauda, and “Good Food, Full Nude” by Sophia June. Buy here.
My copy of the Sewanee Review arrived in the mail just in time for me to dip my toes in. I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but “Dairy” by Kelan Nee (winner of the Review’s annual non-fiction contest) and “Accurate Witness” by Nell Freudenberger were both excellent. You can get an annual subscription here for the cost of one Steak Zine.
And lastly, I must admit that I additionally bought the “Dead Friends” and “Generations” editions of Granta at Trident Booksellers in Back Bay, though I haven’t gotten into either yet.
In other one off things, I read Joyce Johnson’s essay on Jack Kerouac and an old profile on Gerald and Sara Murphy (friends and muses to F. Scott Fitzgerald), both in The New Yorker. Came away wanting to read more Kerouac and Fitzgerald (although that’s really not the point), so I feel I can recommend. Some interesting parallel to be drawn there re: voice(s) of generation(s).
I also pretty reliably love August Lamm’s writing, and her contract violating Hinge x Esther Perel expose is no exception. I’m looking forward to part 2.
Finally, as it’s really almost summer, I can point you in the direction of a few worthy reading lists:
Not technically a reading list but a review of all the books Regan read for grad school
Mandylion Press’s basics v. classics list (sorry paywalled, but honestly subscribe)
Books on GIF also just read Lonesome Dove, which I’m dying to read but do not own. Alas, I will try to scratch the itch for something epic via the other big books on my shelf. I famously believe that the best time to read an 700 page book is in the heat of the summer, and nothing is more glam than pulling out a clunker at the beach and going home with sand stuck between the pages. After recovering from Lies and Sorcery, I’m ready to get hurt again. Some contenders for this summer:
Can't wait to see your thoughts on Dune! I also vote for The Power Broker. And you can borrow my copy of LD anytime!
The Robert Wood Lynn poem is so good. I vote The Power Broker for your summer book. I'm reading it now, heavy indeed but so interesting! It gets better as you go. And lucky us, we can visit places as we read about them. Or sit and read in the places he writes about. There's also an excellent documentary called "Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb" to watch along the way. Fascinating back and forth between author and longtime editor.