Hello, Tuedsay People.
June is going to be a good month.
Hello, friends. I am grateful to be 99% settled in the new house and back to my usual routine, which will soon be upended by the end of school and two straight weeks of children in the house with no camp.
Anyway, I’m sure I’ll prevail, and that both of my children will watch a great deal of other children playing video games on YouTube, because the year is 2025 and watching one Shari Lewis and Lambchop video over and over again just isn’t going to cut it like it did for me and my sister circa 1990.
What I Read Last Week: English Major Edition
So, in writing this Substack I have come to realize how many new books I read — and not just published within the last decade, but as they’re released. I have an elaborate system that includes reading every “most anticipated books of the year” post that comes out, tagging the ones I want to read on Libby, and then getting in the queue as soon as they’re available. All of this is great, and very up my alphabetized alley, but it means that I don’t dig into older books as often as I’d like. As such, when I found this list via Reddit, I took to it for inspiration. I have read some books on the list that I strongly agree are “Great American Novels:” Passing, The Grapes of Wrath, No-No Boy, The Dispossessed, Kindred; and some of the books on the list make me feel like sticking my own hand into the Vitamix because, honestly, the Vitamix can blend anything, probably even human flesh: Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, fucking Portnoy’s Stupid Self-Indulgent Misogynistic Whiny Complaint.
From this list I chose to read Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop. I read O Pioneers! in college but didn’t remember anything except that it was good, so I went in cold.
From Bookshop.org:
“In 1851 Father Jean Marie Latour comes to serve as the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico. What he finds is a vast territory of red hills and tortuous arroyos, American by law but Mexican and Indian in custom and belief. In the almost forty years that follow, Latour spreads his faith in the only way he knows—gently, all the while contending with an unforgiving landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. Out of these events, Cather gives us an indelible vision of life unfolding in a place where time itself seems suspended.”
I truly loved this book. It’s not trying to be tricky or coy like so many books I read (or try to read but inevitably DNF); it’s straightforward, elegant, and melancholy. For a book written nearly a century ago, it’s not as offensive on the topic of Native Americans or Mexicans as it could have been, which was a pleasant surprise. The book follows two French priests who come to America to spread the word of God, ending up in the Southwest. The way Cather writes about the landscape is STUNNING — I usually skip over descriptions like this that are longer than a few sentences because it feels self-indulgent, but these were glorious. I want to go to New Mexico SO much, now. I also loved the way Cather depicted the relationship between the two priests — was it brotherly love, godly love, romantic love? Hard to say, but there’s a passage at the end that slayed me:
"Well, we are getting older, Jean," he said abruptly, after a short silence.
The Bishop smiled. "Ah, yes. We are not young men any more. One of these departures will be the last."
Father Vaillant nodded. "Whenever God wills. I am ready." He rose and began to pace the floor, addressing his friend without looking at him. "But it has not been so bad, Jean? We have done the things we used to plan to do, long ago, when we were seminarians--at least some of them. To fulfil the dreams of one's youth--that is the best that can happen to a man. No worldly success can take the place of that."
"Blanchet," said the Bishop, rising, "you are a better man than I. You have been a great harvester of souls, without pride and without shame; and I am always a little cold--un pédant, as you used to say. If hereafter we have stars in our crowns, yours will be a constellation. Give me your blessing."
He knelt, and Father Vaillant, having blessed him, knelt and was blessed in turn. They embraced each other for the past--for the future.
Anyway, I loved this so much. Read if you: want to feel like you’re in New Mexico during frontier times, watching the sun rise over some tamarisk trees; like your love stories so subtle they may not even be love stories; you need a corrective against the icy post-modern autofiction that is currently so in vogue.
What You Should Read: Stephen King Edition
So, I’m currently reading King’s newest Holly Gibney book, and it’s really fun. I have also talked to two of my subscribers (hi, Brent and Allen!) about Stephen King, and they both requested a roundup on our Horror Champ, so here I go.
Some notes, first: I have read almost everything he has written, and I am going to say that these are my personal favorites of his — not necessarily the “best,” but the ones I enjoyed reading the most and think you will, too. [I am not recommending The Stand, even though it’s fucking perfect, because I assume too many of you have already read it. If you haven’t, just know that I once forgot I was on an airplane because I was so engrossed in this book.]
First up, what’s probably his non-horror masterpiece, 11/22/63.
From King’s website:
“Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students—a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk. Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane—and insanely possible—mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life—a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.”
I cannot express to you how off-putting I find this description, as I do not care about JFK, his assassination, or time travel. It just doesn’t matter, though — this book is a true gem. There’s crime, there’s creepy shit, there’s heartbreak; what more could I want? I found it impossible to put down, and it’s definitely the King book I would recommend to people who don’t read horror. It’s literary as fuck, people. Also, I read this while in the first trimester of my pregnancy with my daughter, and it reminds me of a) my soul-crushing nausea and b) how excited I was to have a baby. Read if you: roll your eyes every time a man [yes, it’s always a man] talks about conspiracy theories; think you won’t like Stephen King because your sister made you watch the movie It when you were 10 and it traumatized you but you’re King-curious; wonder about the practicalities of time travel, particularly how you could exploit the modern buying power of the dollar.
Next up, a feminist screed that feels under-appreciated to me, Dolores Claiborne.
From King’s site:
“Suspected of killing Vera Donovan, her wealthy employer, Dolores Claiborne tells police the story of her life, harkening back to her disintegrating marriage and the suspicious death of her violent husband, Joe St. George, thirty years earlier. Dolores also tells of Vera's physical and mental decline and of her loyalty to an employer who has become emotionally demanding in recent years.”
I think about my girl Dolores a lot, and about the impossible work that women are expected to do without complaint, particularly care work. Stephen has a reputation for sometimes being an author who writes about women doing things boobily, which I think is fair, but not in this book. Dolores is a fully realized protagonist, frustrating and admirable and vivid, the King character that has resonated with me the most, even more than Jack Torrance, Pennywise, and Randall Flagg. Read this if you: want that Elizabeth Strout Maine vibe but need more blood; have contemplated what straight men would do if all the women in their lives suddenly refused to carry the mental load; like your horror grounded in the mundane domestic, not the supernatural.
Finally, and this is gonna be a hot take, I recommend Under the Dome. From King’s website:
“On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as “the dome” comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when—or if—it will go away.
Dale Barbara, Iraq vet and now a short-order cook, finds himself teamed with a few intrepid citizens—town newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician’s assistant at the hospital, a selectwoman, and three brave kids. Against them stands Big Jim Rennie, a politician who will stop at nothing—even murder—to hold the reins of power, and his son, who is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry. But their main adversary is the Dome itself. Because time isn’t just short. It’s running out.”
Common criticisms of this novel are that it’s too long and that King doesn’t stick the landing. To that, I say, it’s not long if it’s entertaining the whole time, and while the ending of this book was somewhat jarring, it worked for me and I loved it. Honestly, I just wrote myself into wanting to read this book again over the summer. It’s just so fucking entertaining, and there’s an excellently, deliciously Trumpy villain. Read if you: want to get lost in an increasingly terrifying world so that you can ignore the sounds of your children asking if they can have their 19th snack in a one-hour period; like to imagine yourself in various apocalyptic scenarios, surviving all of them despite the very convincing evidence that you surely would die the second you lost your eyeglasses; think a Parks and Rec/Walking Dead crossover episode would be a real fucking treat.
Other favorites that I feel shouldn’t be missed: The Shining, The Long Walk, Night Shift.
Candy News: Nerds Clusters Edition
Nerds are so good, right? Even though I’m definitely a chocolate girl, a classic Nerds box is always a welcome treat: they’re miniature, tangy, and crunchy — really everything a non-chocolate candy needs to be. Well, I hate to inform you that the sickos at the Nerds Headquarters are now shitting on that legacy with their newest offering, these “gummy clusters.” The copy from the Nerds website reads:
“Rainbow NERDS surround fruity, gummy centers./ Those sweet little sparks are fantastic inventors./ A poppable cluster, packed with tangy, crunchy NERDS./ A candy so tasty, there aren’t even words.” [I put in those line breaks because I had to read it three times before I figured out that it was meant to be rhyming.]
Honestly, the copywriter who loosed this garbage onto the world is the worst. The best rhyme they could come up with for center is INVENTOR? It doesn’t even make sense.
“A poppable cluster” is a horrifying turn of phrase. THIS is a poppable cluster.
Which brings me to my major criticism of this candy: honestly, the first time I ate one, I thought to myself, This is what biting into a cyst would feel like. That is a HORRIBLE sensation to experience at any point in time, let alone when you’re expecting a delicious treat.
Thus: I hate this candy, it burns the back of my throat because it’s too sweet, and it’s like chewing on fatty tumor. 0/5, truly heinous.
Pop Culture Moment I’m Thinking About: The Chrisley Pardoning Edition
I envy you if you live in a world that allows you to remain ignorant of the Chrisley family.
These creeps used to have a reality show on USA that I watched for maybe 20 minutes before deciding that it was too bleak even for me, an aficionado of Sister Wives, Celebrity Couples Therapy, and My Fair Brady. I am still unclear on why these people got a show, given that they are not funny, famous, or interesting, but I am not a television executive and so I don’t know what the people want. [Actually, I do; we want more America’s Next Top Model.]
The dad is supposed to be the star because he is “funny,” except that he isn’t, and he reminds me of a creep(ier) Joe Simpson. No one else in the show is remotely memorable. Anyway, the above-pictured clowns went to jail in 2022 for bank fraud and tax evasion. I oppose the prison-industrial complex as a whole, particularly for non-violent offenders, but if ANY white-collar criminals deserve jail time, it’s these semi-sentient creatures who were created not by a loving God but by some cruel Dr. Frankenstein mixing peroxide, oversized veneers, and bottomless greed in a farmhouse sink in a suburban Atlanta McMansion.
So, obviously, Trump pardoned them.
I’m just so tired. I don’t know what I think should have happened to these people, but I’m angry that they keep popping up on my internet, and I wish the terms of their release included a permanent ban on ever appearing in the public eye again.
What I’m Looking Forward To: Pancakes and Cinnamon Rolls Edition
So, my daughter turns 7 in two weeks, and I am very excited about it. She does not read my Substack because she doesn’t have a computer or a phone and also she would think it was boring, so I can tell you here that she will be receiving an American Girl doll (Molly!), a magic-8 ball, and assorted other trinkets. One of my favorite birthday traditions is that we go out for breakfast and have fancy pancakes, and this year I will be taking my girl to a restaurant in Sherman Oaks called Sweet Butter that has the fluffiest fucking pancakes I have ever consumed. I don’t live anywhere near Sherman Oaks, nor do I often have occasion to eat breakfast at a restaurant, so this is going to be a fun fucking treat, and I have a feeling the kid is going to lose her mind when she tastes these.
Second, driving to my sister’s house the other day, we went past a place called All About the Cinnamon. It is a “hip-hop inspired” cinnamon roll bakery, and I don’t really know what that means, except that there is a roll named for Eazy-E, which is who I wanted to be growing up. [RIP.]
The Lil Kim has Fruity Pebbles and strawberries on top, the Big Poppa is a classic cinnamon roll, and the Busta Rhymes has NUTELLA. Anyway, this spot is opening soon, and my daughter requested that we get a bunch and do a taste test, so I am very deeply excited for these treats. I will report back.
That’s all for this week. See you soon.
