The sensory joy of junk food, and other nice things
July's round-up of recommendations
One of my favourite monthly pieces to share with you all is this round-up of things I’ve found over the course of the month that I wanted to share with you.
This is a long, full-of-links, email which might get cut-off by some email providers - I can recommend downloading the Substack App, which puts all your Substack newsletters in one place. I use it myself and really enjoy it.
Alternatively, you can read on my Substack webpage; Substack is the service I use to send out these emails; think of it as a blogging platform hosting my one-woman magazine.
Poem of the month
A number of you have told me you like this part of the monthly roundups, so I’m moving it right to the top! This is by Ursula K Le Guin, from her translation of the Tao Te Ching:
Hardness
Living people
are soft and tender.
Corpses are hard and stiff.
The ten thousand things,
the living grass, the trees,
are soft, pliant.
Dead, they’re dry and brittle.So hardness and stiffness
go with death;
tenderness, softness,
go with life.And the hard sword fails,
the stiff tree’s felled.
The hard and great go under.
The soft and weak stay up.
Note (from Ursula K Le Guin): In an age when hardness is supposed to be the essence of strength, and even the beauty of woman is reduced nearly to the bone, I welcome this reminder that tanks and tombstones are not very adequate role models, and that to be alive is to be vulnerable.
It makes me think of the idea of ‘wick’ as life force, in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden.
Still from Agnieszka Holland’s 1993 film adaptation, which I adore
Travel inspiration and packing
I am a total gear hound - I adore reading packing lists and checking out backpacks. And since I turned 30, I’ve gained a real joy out of long distance walks. So I was obviously going to enjoy this piece from
all about walking 500 miles across Spain, even before it turned into a meditation on who gets to decide what’s cool:
I’m a big fan of Caroline O’Donoghue at
and I have been lapping up her pieces about her month Interrailing with Jen and the Fat Sisters (their backpacks).
I have been influenced by the series into buying both a North Face duffel backpack and a Baggu sling bag (I found an old limited edition floral print on Vinted - extremely chuffed with that). I don’t know if I’ll be using for my own European adventure this summer (would you like to hear more about my packing??), but it’s been absolutely fantastic already for a few railway-based UK adventures.
Podcast Recommendation: How To Start Strength Training
I’ve been spending more time and energy on strength training lately, and loved this episode of Slate’s How To podcast. Tucked in there there’s an excellent discussion about how strength training can be about being functionally stronger overall, vs being stronger at a particular thing, and how we might approach either of those goals.
Relatedly:
On not following the rules:
These socially prescribed rubrics of how we should each act to be deemed good are hurting all us
🔥🔥🔥
Relatedly:
And also: “single girl, reveal yourself"…
You’ve maybe heard of micro-aggressions; I loved
’s list of 30 acts of ‘Microfeminism':
I read Glynnis MacNicol’s new book, I Am Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself, on holiday in June, and loved this interview
did with her:“There are plenty of women in all of history who would've killed to have any shred of the agency you and I have and died for it or didn't die for it or died because they didn't have access to birth control or all of these things.”
A seriously cool woman breaking boundaries in climate politics is Ayana Elizabeth Johnson - I loved this interview with her in the New York Times:
“There’s an enormous amount we can do as individuals, but the system around us is not set up for success. This is why I focus on policy and not shaming individual people into tiny actions in their own lives.”
“Near the end of our first conversation, you said the phrase that’s the title of your book: What if we get it right? Can you give some examples of what getting it right on climate looks like? So many things. We know how to transition to renewable energy. We know how to insulate buildings. We know how to put reflective roofs on buildings. We know how to improve public transit. We know how to shift our transportation toward electric. We know how to avoid food waste. We know how to reduce our consumption. There’s a million things we could do. It’s just a matter of shifting the status quo, building the political will, shifting the culture in order to make all of these things happen as quickly as possible. There’s room for innovation, but there’s absolutely nothing that we need to wait for.”
This month’s incredibly lovely celebrity interview: Josh O’Connor has spent much of this spring out and about promoting Challengers (which I haven’t yet seen!) and I loved this interview with him in the Guardian, from Tim Lewis. He just seems like a total gent.
Another lovely article: this time about libraries, the people who keep them running, and the incredible public service they provide. Real heroes.
On the sensory joy of junk food: I Recommend Eating Chips, by Sam Anderson for the New York Times
Relatedly:
Podcast recommendation: ADHD Chatter
Holly Morris, ADHDer and TikToker, joined Alex Partridge (founder of UNILAD) to talk about adult diagnosis of ADHD. Really worth a listen, especially if you have an ADHDer in your life or think you might be one yourself.
Similarly, I found this extremely relatable (as well as feeling somewhat attacked…):
It’s Strawberry Season! And I’m dying to eat this from
:
Summer holiday craft camp vibes from
here:
Your Regular Taylor Swift Report:
The lovely Kat Brown’s article about the Eras Tour as a safe space made me even more excited for my trip to see it next month (eee!), and made me think about the incredible night I had at Swiftogeddon back in 2022.
There’s been a lot of discourse about Taylor Swift’s relationship with Travis Kelce; as ever, I found
to be spot-on:Plus, what I read in June (all Amazon affiliate links - I get a few pence kickback at no extra cost to you):
Funny Story by Emily Henry
Summer Romance by Annabel Monaghan
Behind Every Good Man by Sara Goodman Confino
I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston
Breathe by Sadiq Khan
I’m Mostly Here To Enjoy Myself by Glynnis MacNicol (weirdly, this was available in ebook and on Audio when I bought it, but is no longer available in either of those formats in the UK. Would appreciate any little birds at Penguin explaining why this has happened…)
You Belong With Me by Mhairi McFarlane
Thanks for the shoutout! And for pointing me to all these other wonderful pieces.
I am so cross that I missed the Glynnis Macnicol ebook. And now the hardback is expensive/unavailable. This has happened to me twice before so you’d think I’d learn. But no.