Winter Holiday List of Links, #2
Tuesday, December 24, 2024
Here is the second of a series of daily posts with some fun distractions over the festive period. In case you need a moment away from your loved ones, you know? If you’d like some more web-based distractions, I have a library of “links and listens” posts for you to dive into.
I haven’t yet read Sally Rooney’s new book, Intermezzo* (*ad - affiliate link), but I found this article by Emma Specter in Vogue to be fascinating: Why Are All The Characters in Sally Rooney’s Novels So Thin? She talks about how Rooney’s characters can ‘detach from their bodies’ in a way those of us who are fatter don’t really get the privilege of doing - which I found to deeply resonate with me. Specter goes on to write:
The thinness isn’t explicitly glamorized, but it’s ubiquitous enough to feel like a prerequisite for sensuality.
Around the same time, I read
’s article about the utter joylessness of trying to find something suitably formal to wear to a fancy literary event while in a fat body, and it felt like it was in conversation with Specter’s Vogue piece. Her piece is now behind her paywall, but she talked about“trying to find a way to vaguely look the part in a sea of lean, gamine, elite-reading bodies. For someone who had ostensibly chosen a life of the mind, my body felt like a dull, heavy, sometimes deadening, burden”
And boy was that relatable. On the same subject, Emma Copley Eisenberg wrote a fantastic piece, published in The New Republic, about the problem American literature has with fat people.
As a palate cleanser - I love
’s poetry - here’s a beautiful short piece she shared on her Instagram earlier in the year:
I wanted to share with you this wonderful letter from Stephen Fry to a young woman named Crystal who was struggling with depression - it was written in 2006 and shared in
.
Stephen Fry writes:
It will be sunny one day.
It isn’t under one’s control as to when the sun comes out, but come out it will.
One day.It really is the same with one’s moods, I think. The wrong approach is to believe that they are illusions. They are real. Depression, anxiety, listlessness—these are as real as the weather—AND EQUALLY NOT UNDER ONE’S CONTROL. No one’s fault. Not yours.
BUT
They will pass: they really will.
One of the things that’s helped me in seasons when my mental health has been tricky is to chant ‘this too shall pass’ to myself. There’s always the possibility of better days.
Sitting on my shelf waiting to be read is a copy of Rhaina Cohen’s The Other Significant Others*, a well-reviewed book all about the importance of prioritising non-romantic relationships as we build our lives. I loved listening to this episode of The Liz Moody Podcast, in which she and Liz discuss the impact of ‘compulsory coupledom’ on the way we think we should be organising ourselves and our societies.
Also on the Liz Moody Podcast, Liz had a great episode with Simone Stolzoff about fixing work/life balance:
Stolzoff’s book, The Good Enough Job*, is also firmly on my to-read list (and at the time of writing it’s only £1.99 on Kindle). As a sidenote, I had definitely assumed that Stolzoff was a woman - turns out that he’s an Italian man. Another great reason to put one’s pronouns with one’s name!
Time for some house porn: the headline A House For One That Has Room For Many caught my attention (goals, right?), and this New York Times feature (gift link) about a beautiful cabin in North Haven, Long Island, did not disappoint. I’d move in tomorrow.
You might have seen Kaeli’s videos on Instagram where she imagines what the writing process of some of the year’s biggest songs could have been like? I loved this video where she compared the lyrics in and the story told by two of my favourite Taylor Swift songs, Down Bad and New Romantics.
To finish up, I wanted to share this beautiful illustrated scene shared by Amtrak on their Instagram, by illustrator Maëly Schay. I’m wishing you all a moment of peace and cosiness.
Speak soon,
Lily