Welcome to the Lost Friends Literary Club newsletter!
Hi! How you guys doing? Have you read anything good lately? I’m having a hard time reading this week. All of the books I own don’t seem exciting and our county’s library is only doing curbside pickups three days a week (and not at our local branch). Does this ever happen to you? Books that I actually want to read feel very hard to come by right now. Sometimes that happens and it’s okay, even the most voracious readers sometimes hit a wall. With the world around us unstable and changing everyday, it’s no wonder that our brains can’t seem to focus on anything.
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Finally, four days after initially writing the above paragraph, I picked up some books from the library in West Asheville and I made it through one, that’s right, ONE British detective book (my favorite) before the reading brain block swooped in again. Now here I am, writing a newsletter about books while I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten how to read. Oh, well. Occasionally that’s how it works.
What does one do when they just don’t want to read? Sometimes I try to push through, forcing myself to pick up something from my to-be-read pile, other times I give up and accept defeat. I’m waffling somewhere between the two right now, falling back on Agatha Christie to try to coax me out of this weird slump… She’s not doing a great job. You’ve likely heard lots of advocating for reading while we’re all still trapped at home. I for one, have seen exhaustive amounts of pushing for NOW being the time to Start! That! Book! The one that you’ve always wanted to read! The big one! You’ve got nothing but time, now and for the foreseeable future, so you might as well get reading! And let me just tell you, I’m not having it. I will continue to take long luxurious breaks from reading where I do nothing but stare at the ceiling, and I will feel okay about not wanting to read. I hope you feel okay about not reading, too.
just a quick bit of evidence that this reading slump is an on going problem, even for people who sometimes read 4 books a week. Hang in there.
literally the only book I finished this week.
Now here are some things I did read this week, and let me just tell you now- not a dang one of them was a book:
"Reading Shouldn't Be a Chore"-an older issue of Written Out, a newsletter by Kelsey McKinney. I needed the reminder this week.
How to Extract a Mother’s Rogan Josh Recipe Over Zoom, a lovely piece about culture and comfort food.
This profile of Alice Waters, the chef who started the farm-to-table movement in the 1970s. She’s a rad woman and she’s written some great books on food. I love her.
This article about a Christian minister who came out as trans to her congregation through a sermon. It’s really beautiful, equally about her career in ministry as it is about her being trans.
The lyrics to “I’m A Woman,” which I looked up after showing my husband this video for the first time. I’m really trying to perfect my over-the-shoulder singing so I can reenact this once karaoke is a thing again.
And lastly, this week’s vocab word, which popped up in no less than three articles and which my husband said twice before I realized I had no idea what it really meant:
Lionize [pronounced like lion-eyes] (a verb): to give a lot of public attention and approval to (someone); treat as a celebrity.
Sadly it has nothing to do with astrology, although it is Leo season and my birthday is on Monday. I think I shall lionize myself this weekend.
That’s all I have for you 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. Reminder: 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!