Show & Tell: Bad Times Call for Good Cookies
Unstacked Digest for the week of June 30 - July 6
This is Show & Tell where I tell you some things I loved from the week and the one thing I hated, plus round up everything else going on around these parts. The first half of Show & Tell is free to all. The adoration and hateration are for paid subscribers only.
I think every newsletter I’ve read this week has started with some sort of, “Wow, holy shit, are you okay? I am not. Hang in there.” energy, and boy howdy do I feel that. Whatever it is that fucking sucked for you this week, and it can be a combination of things, I am sorry and I hate it for you.
Oh, and happy birthday to The United States, you old raggedy bitch. Get it together babe, you’re making us look bad.
Reminder, in July I’m planning to do an Ask Me Anything all around nonfiction for The Nonfiction Files. As of now I don’t have enough questions to do it. I’m moving things around to do it later in the month, but I still need your questions. So please…
This Week in The Stacks
Remember back when everyone was fleeing New York City because of a mayoral primary? How quaint.
Every year we read one Toni Morrison novel on The Stacks, and this year our pick is God Help the Child. It is Morrison’s only contemporary novel, and the last one she wrote. More of my thoughts on the novel below. Get your copy, read with us, and catch our book club convo on July 30th.
Our guest on The Stacks this week was professor of African-American lit and author of the new book on Toni Morrison, Dana A. Williams. We talked about Toni at Random, her favorite underrated Black classics, and why she picked God Help the Child for book club this month.
I shared the nine books I read in June and ranked them for you from my least to most favorite.
Books I Read This Week
Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream by Megan Greenwell
In Bad Company, we follow four people whose lives were impacted due to private equity takeovers in their place of work or residence. This is the kind of investigative journalism I love most, we follow a handful of people while using their lives to tell a bigger story about an industry1. I knew very little about private equity going into this book besides that it was bad, but now I know so much more, and my takeaway is that it is very, very, fucking bad. Greenwell does a fantastic job of breaking down this complicated world that crosses into finance, business, real estate, and politics, so that even folks who barely understand their bank accounts2 can grasp it. She taps into the impact on individuals, families, and communities, and while I liked that angle, if you know a bit more about the industry or are looking for the nitty gritty of private equity firms, you might be left wanting. The stories in the book are compelling, but I did wish for more variety in her subjects and their outcomes.
God Help the Child by Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison’s final novel and The Stacks Book Club pick for July, God Help the Child is a novel that explores the idea that “what you do to children matters. And they might never forget”. This has to be Morrison’s most lean novel, it is not concerned with the lush prose we’ve come to expect from her. Perhaps because it is her only novel set in the present? It is easy to follow and understand. It reminded me of a dark fairytale; in its antithetical characters, traumatic back stories, and the main character’s quest. While this isn’t Morrison’s best book, it does show a real skill of simplicity. It feels like the kind of book only a professional writer could create. There are some etremely bleak events relayed throughout the book, but Morrison uses her prose to cut to the quick without embellishment. While her grasp on California as a setting felt weak, her ability to create memorable characters (with perfect names), carried the book. There is no shortage of mess in the book, including one really great Toni Morrison Scene™. If we’re judging against the rest, this book is a knockout, if we’re judging Morrison against Morrison, this is a solid middle of the pack entry into her canon. Morrison is so good, I find myself moving the goalposts.
Fave of the week!
Housekeeping
Did you Ask Me Anything about nonfiction yet? What are you waiting for?
The ladies of Decisions Decisions got me on their podcast to talk about sex and the history of erotic books and Megan Markle and so much more. I had the best time with them even if the were saying things I didn’t even know you could do.
I’ll be chatting with Morgan Pager for her debut novel,The Art of Vanishing, on July 14th at Skylight Books.
On July 16th, I’ll be back at Skylight Books for an event with Zan Romanoff and her newest romance novel, Square Waves. It is part of the Big Fan universe, which I loved, which is to say, I am very excited about this one.
And in August, my girl, Cleyvis Natera will be in LA for an event for her new nove lThe Grand Paloma Resort at Reparations Club on August 28th.
Also, looking ahead, I will be back at the Mississippi Book Festival in September. Its a great festival and I’d love to see you on September 13th.
Things I Love…
Books
I always look forward to LitHub’s biannual most anticipated book lists, they’re always massive, and usually put at least 10 books on my TBR. They skew heavily into the world of fiction, which I find helpful since I’m usually locked into nonfiction. This year’s second half list just dropped and it is as good as usual. Here are a few books from this list I didn’t know about before3 that I am adding to my TBR asaptually
Open Wide by Jessica Gross (August 5)
Loved One by Aisha Muharrar (August 12)
Vulture by Phoebe Greenwood (August 12)
Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy by Mary Roach (September 16)
The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories That Define Us by John J. Lennon (September 23)
Mothers by Brenda Lozano, tr. Heather Cleary (October 7)
Gaza: The Story of a Genocide edited by Fatima Bhutto and Sonia Faleiro (October 7)
Hate: The Uses of a Powerful Emotion by Şeyda Kurt (November 4)
That’s a start. A bunch more were added to my personal list, and I will feature those in my monthly Books on Deck pieces. Here is my most recent one from July ICYMI.
Substack
I don’t have a plan right now for our political futures, but
does, and it sounds really good to me. Thankful for her clear mind and leadership on this (and everything else).Pop Culture
Boo Thang Benny just dropped his music video for “NUEVAYol” on July 4th and he has AI Trump voice talking about immigration4. The video is great. Benito’s hatred of Trump and the hypocrisy that the U.S. of A. cannot be overstated, and he pulls it off with the right amount of humor and dismissiveness for a pop star. He hates you, but not enough to be uncool about it.