Welcome to Thursday Thirteen, my weekly digest of links to things I have found interesting and which I think you might be intrigued by as well.
The most popular link last week was this piece about Mark Zuckerberg with the product manager "no" generator coming second.
What I'm up to: Since I last wrote to you I have been to see an exhibition of massive biblical tapestries, finished knitting my first sock, and talked at length to a teenage family member about why they are reading War and Peace in their spare time.
- An informative "state of crossword constructing" essay.
- I have become addicted to these baffled, sarcastic summaries of films. Try this one of "the fun Nazi musical" Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
- One for the book design nerds: what a perfect visual concept for a book about the iPhone notes app.
- An interview with a knitter about why she makes miniature jumpers. A fun, but unsurprising, fact I learned from this: all the best materials for making perfect tiny things come from Japan.
- I'm so jealous of people who will be in New York before 15th February and can go to this exhibition of imaginary books.
- It's good to keep an eye on what the abandoned pumpkins from Halloween that are still in people's front gardens are up to.
- Some advice on how to productively disengage from the mad panic that passes for "news" these days:
"The first four years of Donald Trump was a continuous panic attack. I’m not going through that again. You don’t have to either. They’re on stage, but you don’t have to be their audience."
- Have you ever had this thought: "If the letters of the alphabet were organised in neighbourhoods, what would they be called"? Well, now you know.
- Nicole Zhu's short story "What I Eat in a Day" is full of clever thoughts about disordered eating, parasocial relationships, and yummy sandwiches:
"Susie accepts both the sample and the sandwich with the shock of someone being proposed to on a Jumbotron. She pops the cheese into her mouth. Even though the man is watching her for her reaction, the smile that stretches across her face is entirely unabashed. The flavor combination is what she’d hoped for. He grins in response, glad that his offering had the intended effect. Susie is pleased with herself, this moment of spontaneous eating that, for once, ignites excitement instead of dread."
- This debut novelist read 50 other debut novels the year that her book came out (2024). Her report on all these books and reflections on what it means for a book to read or not read "like a debut" is very interesting.
"Neuschwanstein not only eschews the role of a castle as a 'fortress to be used in war' (an inherently stereotomic program) but was erected using contemporary materials and techniques that are simply not imbued with the same age or gravitas. Built via a typical brick construction but clad in more impressive sandstone, it’s all far too clean. Neuschwanstein’s proportions seem not only chaotic - towers and windows are strewn about seemingly on a whim - they are also totally irreconcilable with the castle’s alleged typology, in part because we know what a genuine medieval castle looks like."
- Apparently, people can be emotionally manipulated into buying single bananas because they "look lonely". (This would definitely work on me.)
- When I die, please make a long and beautiful mortuary roll for me, as these 13C nuns did for their prioress.
I send a few different types of post as part of this newsletter: personal essays, reading updates and book reviews, reflections on my own writing, and links round-ups like this one. If you would like to receive some but not all of these, you can adjust those settings in your account menu.
I'm writing this in my free time, but if you would like to support my work, you have a few options. Forward this newsletter to a friend and encourage them to sign up. 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.
Until next time,
Caroline
