When I Need To Be Reminded That There Is More

Welcome to the first proper "Thursday Thirteen" of the year. This is a weekly digest of links to things I have found interesting and which I think you might be intrigued by as well.

Last week's list was slightly different — thirteen small life changes rather than links — but it is still worth noting that the most popular thing for people to click on was my date stamp, with the silly chair coming second.

What I'm up to: Getting back into a routine after being away, doing two loads of laundry a day, and knitting my first-ever pair of socks (the Elizabeth Carter stockings by Kate Davies, for the knitters among you). The first Shedunnit episode of the year went out yesterday, too — it's a "reading through the decades" one spanning 1925-2015, so do dip into that if you need some inspiration for new crime fiction to try. Also, I am thrilled to share that A Body Made of Glass was picked by critic Sarah Ditum for a "favourite books of the year" list in the Sunday Times. This cheered me right up at the end of 2024 as I was reflecting on the publishing process.

Here are thirteen more things this Thursday that I wanted to share with you:

1. A very funny account of what it's like to be the person who does voiceovers for adverts.
2. The Anti Tag Cloud tool represents a literary text by showing the most common English words that don't appear in that book. Pride and Prejudice, for instance, doesn't feature much mention of "blood", "faith" or "government".
3. Katherine Rundell's series of The Essay about magic in children's fiction was a dose of pure delight delivered in five fifteen-minute episodes.
4. Jen A. Miller's annual freelancing wrap-ups should be required reading for anyone who wants to earn their living by exchanging words for money. The latest edition highlights just how difficult it is to make what most people think is "writing" — that is, contributing articles to publications they have heard of like the New York Times — your full-time job as a freelancer. Jen is a very successful and experienced writer who has been doing this for two decades, and last year only two per cent of her income came from consumer publications. That's partly a reflection of the state of journalism and partly owing to her (very smart!) decision to become "extremely choosy in deciding when I’m going to put myself through the wringer of a consumer publication process".
5. Four minutes of musical intensity, courtesy of Shoshana Bean and Cynthia Erivo (and Taylor Swift). I like to imagine this is the only take they did of this.

6. I'm warning you now, I was crying by the time I finished reading this piece about the trial of Dominique Pelicot. It is extremely good and very upsetting.
7. The best British podcast ever to exist, Answer Me This, is coming back!!! If you, like me, got through most of the 2010s by listening to Helen and Olly, you must join their new Patreon.
8. I need to hear this all the time, but especially at this time of year when I am inclined to get rid of everything I own: A Capsule Wardrobe Won’t Save You.
9. I've never related to a video on the internet harder.
10. Writing advice: sometimes it is good to tell rather than show, or "turn off the TV in your mind". You don't necessarily need to describe what every character is wearing!
11. I am old enough to remember when DJ Earworm was Spotify Wrapped. Enjoying this year's offering, I was inclined to think that was a better time, too. His mashups of the most popular songs from each year are a genuine creative output all of their own, and I can still hum the melody from the 2009 one.

12. My sort of place: Italian village forbids residents from becoming ill.
13. Originally written about films, but applicable to every discipline, I look at "Against Lists" by Elena Gorfinkel when I need to be reminded that there is more to culture, criticism, even life, than... what I'm doing here:

"Lists pretend to make a claim about the present and the past, but are anti-historical, obsessed with their own moment, with the narrow horizon and tyranny of contemporaneity. They consolidate and reaffirm the hidebound tastes of the already heard."

I'm writing this in my free time, but if you would like to support my work, you have a few options. Share this to a friend. Subscribe to my podcast, Shedunnit, in your app of choice, or if you are already a listener, become a member of the Shedunnit Book Club. Buy my books — The Way to the Sea and A Body Made of Glass — or borrow them from your local library. Purchase a subscription for yourself or a friend to The Browser. Thank you for reading.