shelf care #3

Recommendations on reading and consuming, i.e. lots of links

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Lately, I’ve been thinking about potential. Specifically, my potential in life — a burning question as my birthday looms ahead. How do you know if you’re wasting potential? How do you know if you have it in the first place?

I found an answer to this buried in a book purchased years ago at a bookstore that went out of business. And in between the pages of Rachel Cusk’s extract of Aftermath, published in a 2011 edition of Granta, sat a note, with points on how to accelerate a short story I was writing that was going nowhere. I had enshrouded this note a year ago, with points on what the story was about and how to approach it, so I could refer back to it again. Naturally, I forgot about it, even though I keep coming back to the extract whenever I think I’ve strayed away from the frontiers of reading. I’ve read it so much that it’s become a part of me, and parts of yourself always tend to be hidden — private knowledge in fact — unless they’re persecuted.

The answer wasn’t in what Aftermath contained, it’s what it led me to — more reading, which made me unfocus (for just a bit) on living upto whatever potential I had built for myself in my head and fix my attention towards the pile of books that have remained untouched like that note I discovered. I’ve found myself in a book before, and so I’ll find myself before a book. Because a book is a possibility. Before the book there was vast emptiness; blank pages were bound together finding potential through words.

Here’s what I’ve been consuming since the previous shelf care newsletter.

Books

Still slowly reading The Immortal King Rao, a book that has been richly imagined by the author. I’ve also picked up the copy of In the Kitchen: Essays on Food and Life that has been languishing and forgotten in my backpack since 2021. Re-reading the Spring 2011 issue of Granta that contains the Rachel Cusk essay plus other stellar ones. I always re-read a couple of my books whenever I clean my bookshelf, which was a few weeks back.

Words wide web

Writing and thinking about potential magically led me to this piece on why debut novels are failing to launch and how it’s difficult for first-time writers to perform. I am never not thinking about writing a book. The problem with personalised nutrition seen via the Zoe app (which I thought was a person lmao) is that there is too much interpersonal variability. This tweet on men in Gaza with flowers. This harrowing anecdote by Edward Said. Fast fashion is not only polluting the world, but that its female workforce is paying the price. How one American doctor pioneered a diet fad that’s become increasingly worse today. On the evolution of the trash icon, and how we’re just really moving data around instead of throwing something away. “Somewhere in the past decade, though, Fleetwood Mac got cool again.” A brief history and effects of Special K. Is Google in the midst of resetting the entire economy of the web? In a desire to live más, an unusual painting heist is taking place at Taco Bell!

Other newsletters

Emily North on wearing merch and owning what you like. I am obsessed with baba au rhum and was overjoyed to see it in Nicola Lamb’s latest. This Plate Will Save Your Life on the illegitimacy of green powders. It’s as if Celine Nguyen took words from out of my brain to write about research as leisure activity. Ask Polly on how to be a true romantic. Welcoming back Saghar Setareh to newsletter writing the second time. TW Lim on the composition of a fine salad, which led me to seeing my own name in the post below! Always Rachel Hendry on wine, especially drinking, drunkness, and control. Pitches are open for FFJ’s BODY issue.

Cooking and eating

Leaning into sandwiches a lot lately (this is the Chiara Cui effect) because they’re perfect for this clanging summer, both making and consuming. Mangoes (banganapalli, ratnagiri alphonso, malgova, javvathu, some homegrown ones that we refer to as country mangoes), cherries (my fruit seller missed me and so pressed a box of a kilogram of ruby red cherries into my hand), some very good strawberries and blueberries from Ooty, papaya and bananas. Lots of oatmeal. Insufferable amounts of ice cream. Burnt corn. Blistered naan. Tomatoes. Yogurt and roasted peppers.

Writing

An interview for Kinfolk (of someone else) that will come out in September, I think. Reading up on water to write about it for this newsletter. Trying to summon the discipline to keep going. Recapping what I’ve published lately:

Watching/Listening to

70s rock — I can’t explain why. A lot of Nigella Lawson, especially Indulgent Summer which takes me back to the 2010s.

Would love to know what you’ve been reading, browsing, thinking, and listening to!