The people have spoken—I’m going to be reading George Eliot’s Middlemarch this holiday season, diving into nineteenth century dramas spicy enough to be reality television. If you’d like to join me and need another reason to do so other than my encouragement (seems rude but whatever), let Sophie Haigney’s writing about it, here and here, convince you.
When I saw Hua Hsu at a live taping of E. Tammy Kim and Jay Caspian Kang’s podcast, Time To Say Goodbye, an audience question asked Hsu what song he wishes he could play for his late friend, Ken. Hsu struggled to answer, thrown off by the weight of the question. But after a few false starts, one of the songs that he could think of was Pearl Jam’s “Black.” I’ve listened to that song a lot this year because it’s one of the many featured on my favorite playlist of the year, “to love another person is to see the face of god,”1 created by RAFTM Kyle Curry. It’s a perfect playlist for every mood and every moment. If you’re a purist, you can listen to it in order, moving through the stages of falling in love, the fantasies of a forever commitment, and then, heartbreak. Or if you’re like me and you listen to pretty much everything on shuffle, listening can be like working through a puzzle of which belongs to which feeling, realizing that you could make an argument for them all belonging to every stage.
Despite my introduction, this newsletter is not really about loss and heartbreak but rather favorites, namely some of my favorite things of the year. But I guess starting it off thinking about music shared amongst friends is a good way to do that. Throughout this year, writing this newsletter has felt like writing little love notes, not just to the things that I consume and enjoy, but to the people who read it. It has been the easiest for me to write when I think about it as a continuance of the text messages that I exchange with friends on a daily basis. The exchange of tweets, articles, videos, etc. that has existed in group chats and (now silent) private discord channels and in these emails have sustained me through the various crises I’ve gone through this year. I’ve found great joy in getting separate texts from friends, sometimes at the exact same time, about the exact same thing. In the latter half of this year, popular topics have been Phoebe Bridgers and Paul Mescal’s relationship, and the whole Don’t Worry Darling saga. I’m glad that people know what I really care about. I also didn’t really expect this introduction to be so long and now I’m trying to figure out how to segue into the actual run down of favorites I planned to share here. Anyway, I guess what I wanted to say with all of those words is thanks for reading, for sharing, for sustaining this newsletter, and me (barf!). Here are my favorites from this year, not because they were the best (though they are!) but because they really did it for me.
BOOKS: RAFTM Rachel Davies2 tweeted the above about Elaine Hsieh Chou’s Disorientation, one of my top books of the year. As I’ve written here, Disorientation is a completely original book that manages to be insightful and lots of fun, all at the same time. Of all the 48 books, I’ve read this year, many of them being the dreaded MFA novel, I don’t think any managed that balance. As you all know, I also really loved Sheila Heti’s Pure Colour this year and wrote about it several times (all separate links). I know that I was transformed by the book because I remembered the other day that before I read it, I was pretty ambivalent towards Sheila Heti in general. I’m also still thinking about Julia May Jonas’s Vladimir, another book that felt like a surprise. When we used to work together and we were trying to figure out if a book was worth reading, RAFTM Jess Kasiama and I would play a game called first line/last line. We’d read the first and the last line of whatever book, and if we were intrigued enough by both, we’d put it in our ever-growing TBR piles. Vladimir passes this test with flying colors. I think about its first and last lines often because they really bowl you over. I won’t spoil the effect for you by sharing them here—you’ll have to pick it up and find out for yourself. My most recent favorite read of the year is Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy. A novel that could easily have come out in the last decade, it’s a sharp and witty bildungsroman that defies expectation. To be quite honest, when we live in an era in which “difficult” and complicated women are so celebrated, I find it hard to believe that there’s not more commotion about Kincaid’s work. I’m making it my goal in 2023 to change that.
MOVIES: In her most recent newsletter dispatch, RAFTM Tia Glista wrote about how “painfully expository and obvious” so much film and tv is these days. I’ve felt the same way, desperate for cinema to surprise me and confuse me rather than knock me over the head with its “message.” A few days after reading her dispatch, I received a message from a new friend about how Park Chan-Wook’s Decision to Leave demanded a lot from the audience. I realized that it was that demand that made me like it so much. As much as it’s a mystery film that depends on exposition, nothing about it feels obvious. It surprises visually and narratively, and I was left trying to figure out its puzzle long after I had left the cinema. It’s a movie that I want to see over and over again, because I can imagine noticing something new every time that will transform the story for me. I feel similarly about Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All which I saw while I was in Toronto for Thanksgiving. On the surface, it’s a pretty simple movie and yet it feels extremely complex, like there’s so many layers yet to be discovered (it’s not a Glass Onion if you know what I mean). Other favorites were Catherine Called Birdy, for being a delight, and Paris, 13th District, for making me shiver all over.
BEAUTY: Amongst my many crises this year, my relationship with beauty/makeup/skincare was one of them. In the midst of worrying whether I was a slave to beauty culture while browsing the shelves at Credo Beauty, I cemented my love for Kosas’s Super Creamy + Brightening Concealer (which might have been a favorite last year as well). There is no better concealer out there (and believe me I’ve tried A LOT of them). Everyone I know who has tried this is absolutely in love with it. And it’s made all the better by Ami Colé’s Concealer Brush which I’m completely in love with. It’s the perfect thing for anyone who likes the “natural” finish that using a sponge gives you but wants the lasting power/coverage that using a brush gives. It’s a no-brainer. My last favorite is an old favorite that re-entered my life in August: the Perfectly Balanced Foam Cleanser from Paula’s Choice. The biggest mistake people make about face cleanser is assuming that all of it is made equal but if you have oily skin like me, you know that’s absolutely not true. Not only is this an incredible cleanser that doesn’t strip the skin (it moisturizes it even!), it also doesn’t cost $80 like all the cleansers I’ve loved before.
MUSIC: Carly Rae Jepsen’s The Loneliest Time (which I’m currently listening to as I write this) was an album this year that I don’t think got the attention it deserved. Listening to it on my way to class a few weeks ago, I couldn’t help but think that Carly Rae Jepsen will always be a great artist to me because her music is completely heartfelt, whether it’s incredibly corny pop or soulful heartbreak. It is so rare that I care about listening to albums in order but this is one album where doing so feels absolutely necessary. As RsAFsTM Joel and Kyle Curry will tell you, there’s nothing like that transition from “Bends” into “Western Wind.” I also will pour one out (again!) for Lykke Li’s EYEYE, which still manages to bowl me over all these months later. Every time I listen to “5D” and “HAPPY HURTS,”3 I think about how glad I am that she didn’t end up quitting music.
RESTAURANTS: As RAFTM Hannah Ziegler brought to my attention in October, I’m never all that moved by restaurant food, although I love to go to restaurants. However, I went to Chino Grande, in Williamsburg, with my roommate and friends last month and I was actually impressed by how good the food was. I tried mussels for the first time and got hype over a baby gem salad, so overall it was an exciting experience. The restaurant is co-owned by one of the owners of Win Son, which is also one of the restaurants I’ve been to recently where the food matched the atmosphere for excellence. I’m looking forward to taking my sister to both while she’s visiting over the holidays.
NEWSLETTERS: A lot of people have anxiety about not reading enough (including me). What better low-stakes, vibe-heavy way to reduce the dread of being unread by subscribing to a newsletter or two! (Or a million!) Half of the things that I’ve been interested in this year began with something I read in a newsletter and the more I read, the more I learn about writing and what it means to have a voice. One newsletter I’ve surprisingly come to value is Blackbird Spyplane. You know that Nicki Minaj clip that’s like, the first time you hear the song you’re not gonna get it? That’s me with BBSP. I had so many conversations this year about not “getting” why people were so into BBSP especially because the language felt totally irritating and incomprehensible. But something kept me coming back and once I subscribed and began to read on the regular, I began to get it. One thing that’s been very important to me this year is developing my sensibilities (otherwise known as TASTE) beyond what’s trendy/popular/algorithmic, and while mine don’t necessarily align with those of BBSP, I think it’s a really good newsletter for thinking about what it means to hunt for and develop your own taste. Of course, I have to mention Dirt, which I fell in love with this year and then ended up writing for(I also made a TikTok for them). I continue to appreciate Dirt for all the same reasons I did when I first started reading it: It encourages curiosity and draws you into worlds you’d think you’d never be interested in. Apart from commissions and bylines, it’s given me so much. I’ve also come to depend on getting Casey Lewis’s After School, a daily dispatch on Gen-Z and internet trends (thanks to Hannah for the rec!). The weekday dispatches are great for getting your hands on links that everyone is sure to be sharing by EOD, but the deep-dive weekend dispatches are where the wealth is and are completely worth the $6 monthly subscription. If you want to keep up with the Zoomers but don’t feel like spending unchecked hours on TikTok, don’t wait to subscribe! An honorable mention (mostly because it’s no news that I love it) has to go to Hunter Harris’s Hung Up which will always be my lifeline. No one is really doing it like Hunter and if you care about pop culture, it’s the one thing you should be reading.
That’s all folks! I’m off to “brave” the weather and watch Phantom Thread at Metrograph. Have a fantastic (holiday) weekend.
If you’ve been around long enough, you know it’s been mentioned a few times in these pages? inboxes? dispatches
Reader and Friend to Me; credits to Rachel Tashjian
Looking back I realize these were my original favorites because they really are that good!