Every Thing I Read This Week

in order

Monday:

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, I finished this book on Monday but started it last week. A beautiful and heart-wrenching story. My sister saw the movie because ticket sales were down and I am about to do the same. I am sad I waited so long to read this. Now that I have finished it, to me, it’s required reading.

The Most by Jessica Anthony, I started and finished this book on Monday. I was on Amtrak and had nothing else to do and with stalling L trains I had more time than usual which is not to take away from how good this book is. I would have read it in one sitting regardless of obligations or not. It’s the perfect travel read because it’s less than 200 pages. I couldn’t stop reading once I started. It’s the story of a 1950s housewife who gets into her apartment’s pool, and won’t come out. A book I had seen many times at book stores and lingered on but only just read.

Tuesday:

On Tuesday my issue of New York magazine was delivered. It’s one of the few magazines I subscribe to receive the print of. I’d like to subscribe to more once I can front the bill. On Tuesday my issue came in the mail and so I read

The cover story by Madeline Leung Coleman How Many New Yorkers Are Secretly Subsidized By Their Parents? Going to art school in New York I obviously met wealthy children with wealthy parents. Plus I love the cover art

Similar in essence but also very interesting I read, People With Parents With Money 14 adults come clean about the down payments, allowances, and tuition payments that make their New York lives feasible. According to NY mag website this piece is, "as told to Paula Aceves and Julia Edelstein, with additional reporting by Alyssa Shelasky and Rachel Sklar.”

I once spent 2 minutes in an elevator with Lorne Michaels, in which he almost missed his floor. I was interning so I knew it was his floor and had to figure out if I was supposed to alert him that his floor was here. Luckily, he looked up at the last second, right before I had the nerve worked up. He didn’t look at me once. For that reason, I read of course, After Lorne by Reeves Wiedeman. I loved it because like so many, SNL was a huge part of my childhood. Then, for a year, it was an even bigger part of my twenties in a way I never imagined. I read most things about SNL and unlike many, I never thought I could do it better.

Would I be Ava Williams if I didn’t read, You Mean to Tell Me Michael Cera’s Never Done a Wes Anderson Movie Until Now? by Rebecca Alter? Half the life I live is a predictable one, the other completely chaotic.

Wednesday:

As someone who has appeared on r/NYCInfluencerSnark for one night and one night only, I had to read Meet the Redditors Who Spend Hours Snarking on Influencers by Brooke LaMantia for The Cut. Regardless of how much I don’t particularly like influencer culture, I never can wrap my head around how these people justify what they do. It seems that these people want to be critics who are never critiqued themselves. Justifying their snark from a roundabout moral high ground. Influencing isn’t rocket science, but their perception of what these people do is oddly wrong for people who hate follow so many. I’m all for critiquing, but you have to get it right to make a point, and they almost never do. I’m sure there are a thousand reasons for them to hate me, but I know they would think I am not important enough to talk about, so I don’t particularly care. This piece was good but not in a way the people interviewed could see.

My sister,

Chloé Williams

wrote a newsletter that day, which I also read. She talked about all the good movies she had seen in January and it made me jealous. Not because I didn’t watch any movies or see any good ones, but because I didn’t get to watch them with her.

Thursday:

Learning The Ropes By Simon Rich which I have read before. I hit command+P to avoid the paywall and saved it. I read it because I love it, and I saw it performed on Broadway. I have read it before, but given that it is Valentine’s Day weekend, I felt compelled to read it again. There is one line in there a group of us can’t stop saying. I am obligated to complain about the article quota I always meet from the New Yorker which is so annoying I talked about it in therapy after I read it.

Friday:

Okay, I was really trying to get out of the SNL Vox media cycle, but I couldn’t resist reading “The Lorne Michaels Book-Event Thread Is the Reply-All Disaster We Need” By Charlotte Klein. It reminded me of a time my freshman year of college when someone hit reply all to an email about an end of the year party my RA hosted only to ask about balloons that were at the party. Someone who later became wicked famous basically (and then I am pretty sure was canceled) replied “u did not just reply all to ask about balloons u can get at party city” I always find it funny. We’ve all fallen victim.

Saturday/Sunday:

My roommate

Rebecca

put out a newsletter for her substack

hankycode

which was really a podcast that I read the transcript of while taking the train back from Penn Station. She’s always interviewing cool people and, in turn, inspiring me!

Butter By Asako Yuzuki, a book I got on Saturday that I started this weekend. It already is amazing but the story itself is about (as swiftly of a summary as I can make this) a female gourmet cook who is in jail convicted of killing multiple people. She won’t talk to any media, but a journalist writes her a letter asking for her stew recipe, and the chef can’t help but write back. I didn’t know when I first became interested in reading the book that it was based on a true story, but I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it, so I had to purchase it.

Noteable additions:
I read countless love tweets about Irving and many Severance theories, probably two dozen tweets about the SNL 50 episode, 7 mini crosswords worth of clues, as well as a few Vulture 10x10 crossword clues, and the Reddit for outdoor boys because I am always a little curious.