Hi Hello and Welcome to the Lost Friends Literary Club newsletter!
This dispatch was supposed to be about nostalgia- I had it all planned out. I was going to talk about Nancy Drew books and how I don’t have the bandwidth to read anything else. Even though we're all staying home and everyday essentially feels like the one before, I still have an uncertainness and anxiety that shows up every morning. Will today be the day that my chest feels tight? Will today be the day that my friends get sick? I think those thoughts a thousand times a day. But Nancy Drew doesn't think like that. Nancy doesn't worry about anything! She always gets the bad guy and she always solves the case. Plus she gets to see her friends.
And then, I realized that Nancy wasn’t the kind of nostalgia I was hungry for. It runs a little deeper than the surface level comfort of an old, familiar plot. My local bookstore, Malaprop's, just started opening back up: For a $10 deposit, you get a whole hour to yourself in the store, to browse, and touch books, and pretend like everything is normal (except for the mask and the gloves). And while for the most part, I’m feeling incredibly wary of stores reopening right now, I bypassed that feeling and I booked my spot. Last Saturday at 1pm, I walked the 7 blocks uphill just after lunch, and I browsed for my allotted hour. I worked from the list of books I had planned out, but I also went rogue and asked for recommendations. I don't think that any app, online database, or ordering system will ever fully replicate the feeling of a bookseller who recommends something perfect for you. That alone was well worth my schlep uphill in the heat. It was strange, being the only person in a store I'm used to seeing packed, and there was the opposite oddity of being able to linger, and browse without feeling like I was standing in a covid hot zone- to be out and about but not in a rush. It was exactly the kind of familiar feeling I want right now. Plus, I got to buy some new books.
This week, we’re all blessed by the whimsy and wisdom of one of my all-time favorite illustrators, Allison Hall. Allison works on all kinds of projects including murals and wedding commissions, and you can find more info and order her work through her website. She’ll introduce herself a little more below, but I’m feeling very honored that she’s agreed to be my first guest dispatcher.
Hey guys. Allison Hall, local [Savannah] illustrator + Olivia's BFF, here. Kids books are incredibly important to me, as well as incredibly important to the kids you know. Every time I’m at the library or any bookstore, I make a beeline for the kids book section and get lost in the illustrations. I’m still like most kids: I look at the pictures more than read the words. I’ll probably talk with you more about my love/in-depth studies of children books later on LFLC, but for now here’s a dispatch for you. I was recently at my parent’s house in Texas and found some books I grew up reading, so here are some authentic childhood picks:
1) The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister
This was read to us in my preschool class many times. It’s about a gifted rainbow fish that has beautiful scales but hurts his friends by hoarding them for himself. The book ends with him learning that sharing gives you friends and he ends up giving his scales to everyone. I guess they read this to us to teach us how to share, but also as a grown up I’m weirded out that the human equivalent to this would probably be giving away our locks of hair or something.
2) BALLOONIA by Audrey Wood
This. Book. Was. My. JAM. My parents say I was obsessed with this book as a kid, and I even remember having it read to me every night. It’s a simple story about the land where balloons go when you let them go. Pretty much balloons travel above the clouds and then go to “Balloonia”, which is a colorful place where everything is made of balloons. I think this book was written so kids won’t get sad when they accidentally let their balloons go into the sky. I really think I believed this as a kid, because I don’t remember having any traumatic balloon experiences. I had peace knowing that my latex friend would float above the clouds to reside in the inflated rainbow Disney Land, instead of the actuality of it getting stuck in a nearby power line.
3) Where’s Spot? By Eric Hill
I truly forgot about this book until I found it recently. All I remember is that Spot was somehow iconic and I think I even watched cartoons about him. He’s a silent puppy that’s always trying to be found by his mom(?), and its a flip book. Simple, but apparently it intrigues the kids. I love the simple line work/watercolor approach though. That’s the fun about books made before the 21st century- you know that they were mostly traditionally painted without digital aid.
Well, that’s it for now folks! Expect a part II of my hometown dispatch soon. Thank you for having me, Lost Friends.
Allison
This week in book news:
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling announced the release of her newest book, "The Ickabog" this past Tuesday. Originally intended to be released right after “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” Rowling shelved it to focus on her adult books (The Casual Vacancy and the Cormoran Strike novels, of which I am a huge fan). It will be officially published this coming November, but for now Rowling is releasing it chapter by chapter online over the next few months. The first two chapters are available now. Rowling and her publishers have also opened an illustration contest for kids aged 7-12, with each publisher picking the winning illustrations to accompany Rowling’s story once it is published.
The James Beard Foundation Media Awards were announced this week. The JBF gives awards for cookbooks and other nonfiction food or beverage related books that were published in the U.S. the previous year (as well as awards for broadcasting and journalism). You can see the list of this year’s winners right here.
On things I read this week:
I think that reading of any and all kinds is good and important, whether you’re reading books or articles or poems or tweets, which is why I share a little bit of everything in this section. That being said, if you’d prefer more book and literature related content here, I welcome any feedback you’ve got (just reply to this email or leave a comment on the substack).
Now for the actual stuff I’ve read:
I’ve been getting back into poetry as I stretch my writing muscles for this newsletter and a few other projects. "June" by Alex Dimitrov and "Western Motel" by Anne Carson are two poems that I've really enjoyed lately.
"Me, Again" is a newsletter by friend-of-a-friend Phillip McClure and I really enjoyed last week’s stream of consciousness. I haven’t actually met Phillip in real life yet but I think we will be friends. (a sidenote: am I becoming a newsletter who just shares other newsletters? do you hate me for it? actually, don’t answer that.)
"A Feud in Wolf-Kink Erotica Raises a Deep Legal Question"- the world of online fanfiction is a strange and fascinating one. This NYT piece explores how copywrite and authorship fit within an artform already working from unoriginal material.
I started and finished Agatha Christie’s "The Man in the Brown Suit" in about three days, and I really, really loved it.
Here are all of the books I bought last weekend at Malaprop’s.
That’s everything! If you enjoyed this dispatch, please share it with a friend or follow us on social media at the buttons below. Every book I recommend can be found on this Goodreads shelf. If you want to chat, ask for book recommendations, or correct my punctuation, you can reply directly to this dispatch or leave a comment on substack, where you can also find an archive of every dispatch I release. Thank you for reading!