Hello my turkeys and welcome to the Lost Friends Lit Club newsletter!
Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you’re all well-rested and doing fine. I hope your skin is clear and your hair is shiny and you’re enjoying being alive. Can you believe that 2020 is almost over? In my last Featured Reader, I mentioned that we were 26 weeks into COVID but I have since lost the ability to count. What is time, anyways? Well, friend, if you’re hoping to find the answer here, you’re reading the wrong newsletter.
We’re back this week with another Featured Reader, to learn about the reading habits of the lovely Tarleton Walmsley. Tarleton and I run in similar circles in our little mountain town of Asheville, NC, and I first became familiar with her book proclivities through her business, Garden Party. Garden Party is a seriously gorgeous shop and one of my favorite places to buy gifts (for myself). Tarleton has done an excellent job at making a beautiful and inviting space, and I highly recommend visiting next time you’re in the area. Walking into the shop feels like hanging out with your friends on a Saturday morning in the spring. It’s delightful. You can also check out her Garden Party book club, with some more details down below.
Before we get to the books, a little about Tarleton & Garden Party: “Garden Party is an aesthetically minded lifestyle brand and retail experience that supports well being, promotes creativity, and cultivates meaningful community connection through the advocacy and normalization of the cannabis plant. We sell products that are intended to enhance the sensory experience of a smoke session by inciting the 5 senses. One big part of that for us is books, and prior to opening Garden Party I ran customer service for a book distribution company in town. The thing I loved most about that job were the books, and I knew that whatever course my career took that I wanted books to still be involved. That's why we carry a range of coffee table books about art, interior design, and gardening that stimulate the mind and foster creativity.”
Lost Friends Lit Club, please welcome Tarleton:
What are you currently reading?
I'm reading Daddy by Emma Cline. It's a book of short stories, and like Cline's The Girls the subject matter tends to be dark. I also love Joan Didion, and Emma Cline's work reminds me a lot of Didion.
Do you have a reading goal for 2020? What is it? How are you doing?
I average about two books a month, so that's ordinarily my goal. Some months it's more, sometimes less. Depending on how busy things are with Garden Party, this goal is sometimes met and sometimes I'll go a few months without really digging into a book at all. Technology has really changed my reading habits so overall I think I'm just trying to integrate reading back into my life in a way that is enjoyable. If I am not enjoying something 10-20 pages in, then I'm learning that it's ok to move on to the next rather than "suffer" through to completion if that makes sense.
What was the last book you read and loved?
The Mercies by Kirin Millwood Hargrave. I have been using books now, more than ever, for an escape from quarantine and this one didn't disappoint. A whaling village in Norway in the 1600s undergoing a witch hunt is the furthest from my own life and for that alone, I loved it.
Do you have an all-time favorite book?
The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante. I think I love it because it felt very similar to my circumstances at the time, having discovered my own husband's infidelity- the main character has discovered that her husband of 15 years has abandoned her as a result of his infidelity. I had never felt a writer's words more fully and completely than I did Ferrante's. It's as if someone picked apart my brain and shared its contents. There's a descent into rage and anger, pain and emotion that is so intense and heartbreaking. And yet at the same time, is such a powerful and strengthening prose to read when you're going through something so similar. It's also a lesson in not succumbing to circumstance, rising up from the ashes so to speak. I don't think I can ever read it again, but it haunts me still.
Do you have a reading bucket list? Something you’ve never read but would like to read someday?
All of Suze Orman's books. Or anything related with financial security. Owning a small business is extremely hard work, and I'm learning that I have an unhealthy relationship with money that can sometimes make that work even harder. I have an unrealistic expectation that if I just read books about badassery and money it'll magically happen, but I know there's more to it than that. I think that's why I'm holding out...there's a level of work and personal development involved that I need to accept as "my work," before these books will actually help. I have a stack of self-help/money related books that I know I need to read...and yet there they sit gathering dust.
If you were to write your own book, what would it be about?
Probably a love story, a la Danielle Steel. But it'd also be part-memoir about how everything I thought I knew about my life would ultimately fall apart, change, and get rebuilt after falling in love with someone I met on Tinder :)
Lastly, what’s the deal with the Garden Party book club?
Although technically on hiatus because of COVID times, I started Garden Party's monthly Book Club as a way to get myself involved in reading again, while also wanting to engage with our customers in a way that didn't involve an exchange of money. As a result, a solid group of folks have shown up each month to read with us. It's also given me an opportunity to read books that I would not have heard about otherwise. I'm hoping to bring it back in the spring.
A big, HUGE thanks to Tarleton for sharing with us. It’s so special to be able to share the reading habits of the cool people around me. For more info on Garden Party, you can visit her website, here. You can also find Garden Party on Instagram and Facebook, or visit in-person at 315 Haywood Rd, Suite 113 in West Asheville.
And now, here’s 5 things I read this week:
First, an accidental deep dive into the theory that Paul McCartney died in 1966 and was replaced with a double so that the Beatles could keep playing.
This story about two adult sisters who took a DNA test and accidentally uncovered a decades long kidnapping mystery.
A new-to-me newsletter, At The Bottom Of Everything, about grief. Written weekly by Amy, a young woman whose young husband died suddenly and inexplicably in August of this year. I’ve been subscribed for a while but newsletter 09 felt like a really good place to start. It’s heartbreaking and haunting and really beautiful, especially to anyone who has felt grief and didn’t know who to talk to about it.
A roundup of the 50 best memoirs of the last 50 years.
Our word of the week:
is ex libris, which is an inscription in or on a book to indicate the owner. It’s my favorite part of used books, and it’s also the name of my college bookstore. Go Bees! Okay goodbye.
That’s it for this week. 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. Again, special thanks to Tarleton for participating. Thank you for reading!