November links & listens
I scour the internet, so you don't have to.
Welcome to your November links and listens roundup, one of the bonus issues I normally send as a thank-you to my premium subscribers. Because both parts of the gift guide this year were behind the paywall, and in the spirit of giving, I’m sharing this one for free with everyone!
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Instagrams and Threads
I love everything Kate Clayborn writes. Usually, that’s her novels, but this post on Threads is extremely relatable.
Christopher Hall and his sister Lizzy have a tonne of ‘background singers’ videos on Instagram and TikTok. This one was a hoot.
For all you hopeless romantics out there…
Substack newsletters
Everything is overwhelming lately, even more so if you also have the tendency to feel everything incredibly deeply. Katherine May (of Wintering and The Electricity of Every Living Thing) shared some advice for grounding yourself when it feels like everything is whizzing and tangling and confusing:
Relatedly, Kate McKean shared her advice on getting through the winter. My version of this would start and end with ‘everything good comes from an early night'.’
Content warning: on disordered eating.
I love to read and listen to people who specialise in breaking out of - and helping other people break out of - diet culture. But on top of that, what I find really interesting is when writers who mostly write about other things share their views on this - incredibly fraught - subject.
And on a similar vein, reflections from Isabel Mohan on working at heat magazine during the toxic size-12-is-fat noughties, as the biggest person in the office:
If you’ve been around here a while, you’ll know I’m somewhat obsessed with the idea of ‘roads not taken’ and making choices about life. So I loved this piece by Carrie Courogen, about visualising the life you didn’t choose, and having complicated thoughts about it:
And related to that, Tiff Philippou continues to write extremely insightfully about what it is to be single, and what it is to want something more than seems to be available:
Podcasts
Caroline O’Donoghue + Cariad Lloyd of Austentatious + Pride & Prejudice (1995) = a stellar 75 minutes of audio. Go, listen now.
“Austenheads are the Trekkies of women”
I do have to admit that in line with their theory that whichever adaptation of P&P was out when you were 14… I prefer the 2005 version. See also, Olivia Muenter’s post on the subject.
Poems
Lyndsay Rush writes and publishes poems on Instagram as ‘Mary Oliver’s Drunk Cousin’ and her poem Okay, Here’s What we’re Gonna Do struck a chord with lots of writers - many of whom wrote their own pieces with it as a diving board to jump from. I especially liked Mandy Huser’s:
okay, here’s what we’re gonna do
after Lyndsay Rushlet everyone else’s declarations
of how to move through the world
slide through our fingers
like sandhold what we are meant to
let go of all the restsilence the end-of-another-year noise
turn up the volume on how we must live
on how we need tobe this version of us
so boldly and brightly
with such acceptance
with such adoration
that they can’t help but look toward
the lighthold everything loosely
except the knowing that we are love
this knowing, we are gonna
hold on to
for dear lifeknow that if we end another year
just as we are
just as we have been
this is worth celebrating, toobecause the permission to end another year
just as we are
might be all we’ve needed
all along
Books
Last month I shared a ‘10 before the end’ list and it’s genuinely helped me with my reading! It’s nice to have ‘the next book’ lined up, and has also helped me put a lid on new purchases, because I’ve been asking myself if I want to read them more than anything on the list. I didn’t read exclusively from that list, but it provided an excellent foundation.
Case Histories - Kate Atkinson (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
10 Things That Never Happened - Alexis Hall, read for audio by Will Watt (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
Things We Lose In Waves - Lucy Ayrton (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
You, Again - Kate Goldbeck (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
Laziness Does Not Exist - Devon Price, PhD (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
The Dictionary of Lost Words - Pip Williams (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
Knockout - Sarah MacLean (Amazon | Bookshop.org)
Speak soon - I’d love to hear what books you’re hoping to get to before the end of the year,
Lily
I'm team 2005 p+p as well. X