AUDACIOUS BOOKCLUB HAPPENINGS
Book club news! We’re partnering with the lovely people at Allstora for the Audacious Book Club. Now, you can sign up to have the monthly selections delivered to your doorstep each month!
Our September selections are Moderation by Elaine Castillo and Resting Bitch Face by Taylor Byas. We will have a live book club discussion with Taylor Byas on September 23rd at 8pm ET/5 pm PT. We will be in conversation with Elaine Castillo on September 24th at 8 pm ET/5 pm PT. Registration is open! I hope to see many of you there. I’ve put together an Audacious Book Club storefront if you want to buy current or forthcoming book club titles. There is a bookclub FAQ if you have questions about how it all works.
THE NEWSLETTER WEEK IN REVIEW
PERSONAL & PROFESSIONAL NEWS
On September 13th, I will be in Omaha, Neb., at the Get Lit Festival! Then, on September 30th, I will be at Occidental College, in conversation with my lovely friend Alexandra Grant. It’s free and open to the public; you can get tickets here. On October 18th, from 11 am to noon, I will be appearing at the Chicago Humanities Festival, talking about a decade of Bad Feminist. Come through!
Thanks to you guys and other readers, The Portable Feminist Reader is a NYT bestseller! So thank you! And if you haven’t gotten a copy yet, there’s still time! (And there will always be time, it’s a book.) And check out Love Letter to a Garden, by Debbie Millman.
Book and project buying links: Books I’ve Written, RGB Imprint Titles, Rebind: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton.
READING MATERIAL
DOGE revealed an Afghan scholar’s identity and then the Taliban went after his family. There are so many things wrong with the current political climate but one of the worst is how absolutely careless the administration is. They lack any kind of forethought and what’s worse is that they don’t care about the consequences or who bears them.
The prince of petty removed Kamala Harris’s Secret Service protection detail. California Highway Patrol is stepping unto the breach. And this master of diplomacy is uniting China, India, and Russia which is, of course, not ideal for much of anything.
The administration tried to deport hundreds of unaccompanied Guatemalan children over the holiday weekend but were stopped, for now, by a judge. In other cruel deportation news, a wildfire firefighter in Oregon was arrested. While doing his lifesaving job.
Is there anyone journalists love to profile more than conservative mediocrities? See also, this ridiculous piece on Jillian Michaels.
By the way, what is going on with the president’s health? Who knows! And speaking of health, RFK Jr. has destroyed the CDC and he is actively harming all of us.
I don’t believe any city should be occupied by the military but this framing, highlighting the places where crime is actually high, is how journalists should be covering this American travesty. But people are pushing back including Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson.
Meanwhile, Black women are bearing the brunt of Trump’s federal job cuts.
The country has a new “chief design officer” who was a co-founder of Air BnB, which totally tracks. And the website touting how the markers of the country will be more beautiful is exactly as ugly and badly designed as you would expect. This administration does everything it can to run in the opposite direction of competence.
I am not sure how many professional organizations need to declare that a genocide is a genocide but here’s another one. The Guardian has printed the names of the at least 189 journalists killed by the IDF over the past two years. The loss is staggering.
Here is a living document with a list of ways we can actively defy this fascist regime.
It has been twenty years since Hurricane Katrina—a difficult anniversary and a stain among many on this country’s history.
Because of tariffs, LEGO will no longer ship single pieces to American Lego enthusiasts.
The right manifested a nonsense outrage campaign against Cracker Barrel because they updated their ugly logo into another ugly logo. Now, the company has lost its nerve and returned to the original ugly logo. Debbie Millman had several smart things to say about this.
Cruella Wannabe won’t be running for reelection in Iowa.
In Minneapolis, a school shooting—two children dead, and seventeen people, mostly children, injured. What is there to say beyond expressing rage and endless grief? Nothing will change until our gun politics change.
Blah blah blah, Taylor Swift is engaged, etc etc etc. Global news? Okay! Travis Kelce designed the ring and I won’t comment on the ring because this one time, a celebrity gossip site posted a picture of our engagement rings and made fun of them in really mean ways and it really marred what was such a joyous occasion, particularly because….I’m not a celebrity?
Jia Tolentino reviews Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book and it is a great review. And at The Cut, an excerpt of Gilbert’s new memoir, All the Way to the River. I will be writing about this book this month because, unlike many of the people discussing it right now, I’ve actually read it.
True story: Renoir’s great-grandson has opened a video store in Burbank. Art lives on!
A settlement with Anthropic is on the horizon for authors. May this be the beginning of the end of a technology predicated on blatant theft.
Bad Bunny is a boon to Puerto Rico in more ways than one.
The U.S. Open has been interesting with some racism thrown in. But Naomi Osaka beat Coco Gauff, and I love both players, and I am happy to see Osaka doing so well! Osaka is moving on to the quarterfinals. Medvedev had another meltdown and has been fined.
Lil Nas X was arrested for wandering around WeHo naked and then overcharged by the DA. It was not album promotion and, in his own words, he was terrified by the experience. A Black man would never do something like this for publicity; the risks, clearly, are way too high.
In Oxford American, Lauren Leblanc writes incisively about Hurricane Katrina, John Updike’s… telling review of a book of photography about the aftermath, and who gets to critique cultural artifacts that are made from trauma.
I love The Great British Bake-off and so I appreciated this essay from former contestant, Ruby, offering a glimpse into what it’s like to be one of the esteemed home bakers on the show.
A conversation with Arundhati Roy. New fiction from Aaron Burch. A poem from Thea Matthews.
RIP Graham Greene, an actor who made everything he ever appeared in better with his mere presence.
In Denmark, they are making books more affordable to address a reading crisis.
School dropoff can be quite fraught. Who knew?!
My goodness, do critics love to shit on Meghan Markle Sussex. Now, I haven’t watched the show in question, and all indications are that it is terrible, but I do wonder if the critique is strictly about the show in the genre, broadly.
David Geffen married a guy who is fifty years younger without a pre-nup and now the divorce is messy. This piece goes beyond the tabloid details and it’s pretty interesting.
Some authors share real details about what it’s like being published. More of this!
Good news! Annette Bening is coming to the Yellowstone cinematic universe.
I'm printing the 10 Commandments of Defiance and hanging it up everywhere and sending it to everyone I know.
I'm so grateful for you and this little gift you curate every week. Thank you!
I cannot wait for your Elizabeth Gilbert piece. Holy shit.