shelf care #5

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

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I wish I had something worthwhile to say here, as I tend to do before I go on about what I’ve been consuming since the last shelf care newsletter. But the truth is oftentimes startlingly simple like working on a draft of an essay, poem, or a story: you write and let the work rest. Then you work on it again and let it ferment. And you keep coming back to it till it’s ready – or you are. It may take days, it may take months, or it may take years, but both you and the draft have to come to a joint decision about when you’re ready. I think in my case, we’ve restrained each other in a sort of headlock, making it difficult for either of us to say we’re just not ready for this. But somehow, we persist.

All of this preamble to say, look I’ve not done as much reading as I would have liked to before coming back from my month-long break. I’ve been reading a lot of essays on this platform (which have been great!) and elsewhere online, but in terms of actual offline reading, it has felt like trying to put my head through a wall. I’ve been thumbing through Grace Paley’s Begin Again: Collected Poems and ‘September’ has stood out – Then the flowers became very wild/because it was early September/and they had nothing to lose… – as well as Charles Bernstein’s Attack of the Difficult Poems, which pokes fun at the embarrassment we are faced with when trying to read and respond to difficult, intelligent poems where difficulty is often a stand in for some anxiety within that stops us from doing the said difficult thing. A quote that stands out here is: “the risk for invention is that your invention fails; it usually fails, since most art produces failure, no matter its successes. The risk of not inventing is to succeed—at little or nothing... it can be admirable to succeed at nothing (I have just made a point of it) just as it can be illumination to fail at innovation.”

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

Books

I’ve also been slowly making my way through a reread of Teju Cole’s Open City, which is a beautiful meditation through the narrator’s nomadic wanderings of the city he’s a resident in (it’s New York). His long, aimless journeys from Morningside Heights offer Julius a distraction from work and is also a liberation from both his past and his present. Open City has no major plot twists and turns; it is an honest novel that lays bare the disillusioning promises of a country, which has been sold throughout the world as a dream.

Words wide web

A powerful memory of 9/11 that’s woven through grief, love, and conspiracy together. How AI software provided by American companies help the IOF kill Palestinians. Inside the global illegal organ trade. “Embracing the nocturne, and finding within it a time of solitude and creativity.” The appeal of Reddit’s ‘Am I the Asshole’ is evident – questionable behaviour draws everyone in. How hate campaigns are turning vicious in Western Maharashtra. Call it digital decay or linkrot, but a bunch of really meaningful work is increasingly getting lost on the internet.

Other newsletters

Rachel Roddy on the beloved and influential Carla Tomasi. Abbas Asaria for Vittles on Madrid’s fun culture of crisps, which remind me so much of my city’s culture of snack shops that will fry crisps on request and sell them in a plastic bag for immediate (or later) consumption. Steph’s generous, romantic descriptions on the changing of seasons which reads like a watercolour painting. Jon Randell Smith on why individual choices matter, maybe not in the ways you think. Cameron Steele with a moving essay on love transcending our immediate families and into the communities we shape in the capitalist societies we live in. Teresa Finney on making zines/short format cookbooks but also simply creating art that’s independent. Everything that Katie Mather writes on pubs. Nikkitha Bakshani’s tactful response to a racist, lazy review of her book via the Knight of Cups. Kelly on late summer in her garden. Terry Nguyen reviews Charlotte Shane’s new memoir. Farah Yameen for Vittles on the dastarkhwan. Dr Sarah Duignan on invisible food costs propped up by an even invisible labour work. Also Sarah on food moralisation, themes of which keep propping up everywhere on social media. I enjoy Thom Eagle’s notes on gardening, cooking, and reading. Catherine Lacey’s 144 word essay project has inspired me to take up flash fiction and nonfiction. Margaux Vialleron on belonging and watching birds. Huw Lemmey’s beautifully written essay on looking through the windows out to the world.

Cooking and eating

I have been terribly unmotivated to cook which translates to low motivation to write or read; the former fuels the latter and vice versa. But I did have moments of sparking creativity: a chickpea-tofu-potato burger with a garlic-coriander sauce, chana on toasted white bread, deep fried tofu and broccoli in a soy-miso-ginger sauce with rice, refried beans and cheese quesadillas, and a spiced plum compote have been standouts.

Work

Surprisingly eventful!

• Sub-edited the latest issue of PIT magazine on sandwiches.

• A recipe for an inauthentic curry and rice for Something Curated.

• An interview with Jonathan Nunn for Kinfolk’s latest issue.

• Took a risk and started the online literary magazine chlorophyll, with fellow writer Annie Wallentine. We’re open for submissions for issue 1 if you’re interested! Send us your best poems, fiction, and creative nonfiction before 15 October.

• Redid my website – get in touch if you’d like me to edit your magazine/website/book or commission some writing.

Watching/Listening to

We had a day of no power and thankfully, I’d saved a 4 hour long video of Nigella Bites which helped me through this difficult time. I moved from Spotify to Apple Music so my listening has been piecemeal, mostly because Apple doesn’t boast of any good Tamil playlists from the 80s. But Nirvana, Velvet Underground, Khruangbin, and Talking Heads on rotation.

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