The OffBeat #61: Half Note / Whole Note
Something to read, something to think about, something else
Something to read:
Small is more meaningful than big
How celebrity book clubs actually work
The tooth fairy and resilience
How much should you push yourself?
Something to think about:
“I’m pretty sure that any value I can offer comes, at the most abstract level, from engaging with the world as the particular conscious sensibility that I am, then communicating what I learn to other conscious sensibilities — and being changed by their responses. In other words: from creating and fueling connection.” — Oliver Burkeman
Something else:
I’ve been devouring books this year, even faster than normal, partially because I’ve had a run of excellent selections, and partially because I spent April through August on parental leave. Number 66 on my “Happy List” is “Being in the middle of a book I know I’m going to rate 5 stars on GoodReads”; for passionate readers there’s nothing like that feeling of anticipating getting back to a book you’re head over heels for.
So I’d like to share the love for this edition of Half Note / Whole Note. Below, recent reads I’d rate SIX stars on GoodReads if I could:
Jennifer Romolini, Ambition Monster: A supremely well-written, relatable memoir about one hard-charging C-suite woman’s reckoning with her relationship to work.
“In a capitalist society, onerous work is often as satisfying as it is depleting. We've been conditioned from a young age to find pleasure in accomplishment's rigors and strains. It feels natural to view my overwork as noble, to settle into that foundational groove of the brain.”
Harrison Scott Key, How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told: An impressively hilarious (I laughed out loud a lot) “wild Pilgrim’s Progress through the hellscape of marriage and the mysteries of mercy” as Key works through if, and how, to forgive his wife for having an affair with a family friend, a guy who “wears cargo shorts, on purpose.”
“One of your greatest misconceptions, the one you must jettison as soon as is convenient to you, is that you’re easy to live with. You’re not. You’re a monster.”
Glynnis MacNicol, I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman's Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris: Are you sensing a memoir theme? This one’s about a 46-year-old single woman’s lively pursuit of “radical enjoyment” in Paris after a year of pandemic isolation in her tiny New York apartment.
“Actual maturity, I’ve come to suspect, is largely just succeeding at not letting the injuries of your childhood debilitate you, which is the great challenge of life.”
Xochitl Gonzalez, Anita de Monte Laughs Last: Just as good as, if not better than, her 2022 debut Olga Dies Dreaming. It’s about a first-generation Ivy League student who discovers the genius work of a spicy powerhouse female artist decades after her suspicious death.
“No, when I looked in his eyes, what I saw was the most dangerous thing of all in a man: insecurity. Because they will crawl over and push down anyone around them in their desperate thrashing to find themselves comfortably affirmed at the top.”
For double the reading recommendations, a.k.a. a Whole Note, including a meditation on how mediocrity and perfectionism are the same thing (!), keep reading.