AUDACIOUS BOOKCLUB HAPPENINGS
Our October selection is We’re Alone by Edwidge Danticat, and she will join us on October 30th at the usual time. Registration is open! And you can see our conversation with Regina Porter, on YouTube.
THE NEWSLETTER WEEK IN REVIEW
A Quarter Tab of Loss
PERSONAL PROFESSIONAL NEWS
Debbie Millman has a new book, Love Letter to a Garden, and it will be published on April 15th, 2025. Also included in the book are 10 recipes by me—a mini cookbook if you will. Pre-orders are open!
Megan Pillow and I wrote a book called Do the Work. The Tenth Anniversary edition of Bad Feminist is available. The Portable Feminist Reader is coming out on February 18th, 2025. Pre-orders are now open and it is always a huge help when you pre-order.
READING MATERIAL
I was in the Mediterranean for like ten days. Barcelona! Cadiz! Malaga! Tangier! Lisbon! Gibraltar! It was fun. Came home, my wife threw me a birthday party. It was very very fun. I felt loved. Then, I got the WORST flu I have ever experienced. No, it was not COVID. Fuck that flu vaccine (which I took a month ago). I mean go get vaccinated, but also, fuck that flu vaccine. I still feel crappy and it has been like… a week. I do not get sick often so I really get so sad about it when I do. Anyway, all this to say that’s why things were quiet around here but I am righting the ship! Onward we go.
On CNN, during NewsNight, MAGA pundit Ryan Girdusky told Mehdi Hassan, “I hope your beeper doesn’t go off.” It was an absolutely shocking moment, on live television, even. Host Abby Phillips and the network have apologized. Girdusky has been banned from CNN. And, of course, he is unapologetic. What the fucking fuck? Just… WHAT? The mask is off and so is like, the face skin, at this point.
Elon Musty is trying to bribe voters so the Philly D.A. is suing him.
Trump had a Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden. He and his surrogates managed to insult and anger almost… everyone! An accomplishment!
It doesn’t matter anyway. Beyoncé has endorsed Kamala Harris so…. that’s that.
Anyway, MAGA has gotten so wild with the lies that the Pentagon had to issue a statement saying, nah, we’re not going to deploy our troops against Americans.
Republicans are exploiting elderly donors and it’s pretty damn sad.
There is a troll who went by Black Insurrectionist and hahahahah HE IS NOT BLACK. It’s just some white guy.
Some tech lady has joined the MAGA ranks.
The guy who used to run Abercrombie and Fitch did some sex trafficking on the side.
The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post both declined to endorse a presidential candidate even though both papers were set to endorse Kamala Harris. The staffs are rightly furious. There have been several resignations. Their billionaire owners intervened for self-serving purposes while calling it neutrality or some other nonsense. Anyway, the Post has lost more than 250,000 subscribers or 8% of their subscriber base. Whoops!
Ummm… Jimmy Carter voted down in Georgia. He’s 100 and like, let that man rest.
I am not at all sure why so many people run, so eagerly, into the sharp teeth of Isaac Chotiner, but here we are. And here is Howard Jacobsen rationalizing atrocity with some of the most damning statements I’ve ever seen someone dare to speak.
Many, many prominent writers are calling for a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions.
How many lawsuits is Diddy going to face? Only time will tell but it’s going to be A LOT.
This is a chilling look at some of the fifty men who raped Gisele Pelicot. What’s chilling is that they’re your friends and neighbors. Sometimes, yes, it is all men.
It was egregiously late but President Biden apologized for one of America’s many, many sins—the boarding school policies that harmed so many indigenous people.
Gisele and her jiujitsu boyf are having a baby.
Another Style section story about like 7 thin people who comprise a scene I have never heard of.
Hanif Abdurraqib writes about his sneaker collection but really, like all good essays, it is about so much more.
American Airlines has to pay $50 million for their terrible treatment of passengers with disabilities. Now do the other airlines!
RIP Lily Ledbetter. RIP Gary Indiana. RIP Liam Payne. RIP Lynda Obst. I worked with Lynda for a few years. She was one of the producers on a TV show I wrote called Negroland and she was a real one—savvy, generous, well-connected, charming, and kind. She will be missed.
The grandmas of TikTok!
A couple of musical theater guys got married.
A look at the way Vegas has evolved
New writing from Kiese Laymon about home training, a cancer diagnosis, family, being pushed to one’s limits, and more.
It will probably come as no surprise but some chefs are not so enamored with the idea of owning a restaurant.
An essay from Amber Tamblyn about The Substance and aging as a woman.
Down with the monarchy!
I have many thoughts on the saucy minx known as Jessica Fletcher, and here is a great guide to Murder She Wrote.
A profile of Glinda and Elphaba…. and the women who play them in the forthcoming Wicked movie. Also, PSA, it’s a movie that is part 1 and part 2. I’m telling you this now so you don’t have to deal with the shock I experienced at the end of Fellowship of the Ring, when I learned it was a trilogy.
Some “media elites” said some… uhh…. interesting things about the state of the media. GET OFF THEIR LAWNS!
TikTok is gonna get more into publishing books. Cool. Cool.
At some point, the Catholic church decided it could afford to buy its way out of its endemic pedophile problem. Now, the LA diocese will be paying out $880 million to more than 1,300 survivors of sexual abuse.
Digital nomads on the dating apps—a scourge?
A conversation with Julia Turshen. A conversation with Sevdaliza. A profile of bookstore owner Lucy Yu. A profile of Kieran Culkin. A profile of Jonquel Jones. A conversation with Kendrick Lamar. A profile of Brian Tyree.
Just a question but why on earth are they remaking American Psycho? They got it right the first time!
Maybe print magazines aren’t quite dead yet!
A guy who loves old dudes wrote about the why of it all.
To close a dumb loop, Oliva Nuzzi was fired for her lil romance with brain worm guy.
A look back at this past season of Days of Our Lesbian Lives: WNBA edition. The New York Liberty won the finals!
I’ve been wondering what AKAs are thinking about the Harris campaign. Jazmine Hughes looked into it!
Oliver Radclyffe and Hugh Ryan have a lovely conversation about late in life transition, Oliver’s memoir Frighten the Horses, and what it means to feel aligned.
Aubrey Hirsch with a graphic essay on miscarriage.
Florida author Laura van den Berg writes about her home state’s insistence on attacking books.
La Guardia’s glow up is complete!
Gotta agree with this review. Disclaimer on Apple TV is so so bad.
In other good news, Rudy Giuliani has to give up his nice apartment and his nice watches and all his other nice shit to the two Georgia election workers he defamed.
Good news young’uns. The Whitney Museum in NYC will be free for all of you youths under 25.
Sunset Boulevard is now playing on Broadway. I attended the premiere. It is an extraordinary, bombastic show. I loved it. It was a glorious theatrical experience. I am going to see it again. And Scherzinger is an outstanding vocalist.
Stevie Nicks, dropping some ice cold common sense. Here is the full interview.
You are a treasure, Roxane. Happy Birthday. I hope you feel better soon!
Often in your roundups there is a little gem of a story I had never heard of, and would have never come across if not for your link to it.
The essay about the snickers collection was it this week, and it really moved me. Thanks for sharing your eclectic reads.