Strangers
On Olympics tickets, conversations between books and Novel 3's playlist
Hello friends,
I spent my tax refund on Olympics tickets.
The games are coming to LA in 2028, and I missed the drop for LA County residents because the website glitched when I went to sign up for a slot, and then I forgot to go back to it before the eligibility window closed...
I knew I would go to an event no matter what – it’s happening in my city, if I had to resort to buying resale tickets the day of an event in two years, I would have, but I had major FOMO as I sat at book club listening to everyone talk about which events they managed to get tickets to. One of the girls was in the first LA ticket drop and got tickets to gymnastics, a feat no one else I know has been able to manage.
I am bad at things that require me to compete – like scooping up tickets in a high pressure situation. This includes highly sought after concert tickets and seats to the opening weekend of Christopher Nolan movies. I am a very independent woman who never asks for help but usually, in situations such as these, someone else takes care of it for me (thx to meg in advance for getting tickets to the odyssey).
I guess if we count this as an act of service, we could say that’s my love language.
So when a friend (hi, rebecca – not to be confused with the book) who got a slot in the first wider drop of Olympics tickets texted me asking if I wanted her to grab some for me, I was RELIEVED to have a guarantee – not only to be going to an event, but also to have someone to go with (the “who can i share this experience with” exercise is stressful when you’re single).
Thinking about the near future is such an odd exercise. There is something that feels so faraway and so impossibly close about 2028. Anything can happen between this summer and that summer.
The only things I really know for sure are that it will be an election year, and in July, I will be going to Women’s Volleyball Prelim and the Women’s Archery Final.
Some Things–
it’s such a miracle that despite all the terror in the world right now, we sent four people around the moon
here’s why justin bieber’s coachella set was good: he harmonized with his past self and looked happy and healed while doing it! the intimacy of confronting your childhood in front of thousands of people??? POWERFUL!!!!
i really enjoy making my friends become friends independent of me
to the surprise of no one (probably), paddington the musical won best musical at the olivier awards (the british tony’s)
i do feel like we need to talk about how iconic it is that the olivier award is literally a bust of laurence olivier as henry v from a production at the old vic (v haunted). like, the oscar is a silhouette of a man, but it is not literally the silhouette of a specific man and the oscar actually doesn’t even have a face!
a great line reading that popped into my head the other day is cameron diaz saying “i wasn’t expecting i love you” in the holiday
i saw goodfellas in a theater for the first time last night (10/10 recommend) and something you should know about me is that i am like joe pesci in that if you say the wrong thing to me, i will simply never let it go
patrick schwarzenegger is playing gus in the adaptation of emily henry’s beach read. i have only seen him in white lotus, so i do not find him attractive and think he is vanilla and lowkey has a face i want to punch, but allegedly he and phoebe dynevor had amazing chemistry, and really if you’re only gonna get one thing right about a rom com, it HAS to be the chemistry
What I’m Reading
My brother knows that I don’t like Hemingway but he pitched me The Sun Also Rises the other day and I’m like, perhaps I should try again???
Sound off if you think I should reverse my Hemingway stance...
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier - I finished this and loved it! I love the movie, but it is powerful being in this sweet little no name’s head and seeing how completely insecure and lost she is and how terrifying it is to be twenty-one and thrust into a whole new life with no real support system, haunted by a specter of a person you think is everything you’re not.
Like, we’ve all been this girlie in a relationship–
What I had thought was love for me, for myself as a person, was not love. It was just that he was a man, and I was his wife and was young, and he was lonely.
Literally, kill me!!! This poor child!!! The stories we tell ourselves are so heartbreaking, but also…. why do men refuse to communicate???
Something I love about being a student of literature (and what’s fun about any art form, really) is when you can identify pieces of the canon that are in conversation with each other. To me, Rebecca is in conversation with Jane Eyre and by extension, Wide Sargasso Sea – which was written in direct response to Jane Eyre. The story of Rochester’s first wife could also be the story of the titulary Rebecca. One person in a relationship is always painted as a villain so that the other person can move on, but there’s always another side to the story. Rebecca is painted as a selfish, no good, good-time-gal – but how did she get that way?
Am I begging for someone to write a novel from Rebecca’s POV and willing to do it myself if no one else volunteers? Possibly.
Back to the text… this one liner was kind of chilling in its truth–
No crisis can break through the crust of routine.
Our next book club pick:
Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden - This has gotten so buzzy that the publisher has already had to order a reprinting. A very rich woman’s even richer husband decides to leave her, seemingly out of nowhere, with no explanation. Burden sold the book based off her NYT Modern Love essay published in 2023. I have not read the essay, but I love a memoir about relationships, and this woman is related to Babe Paley, one of Truman Capote’s “Swans” and an absolute fashion icon, who was married to the founder of CBS.
Next up on my TBR:
The Academy by Elin Hilderbrand and Shelby Cunningham - You know I have to read anything my girl Elin writes. This is Elin’s first book since she “retired” from her Nantucket book cycle, written with her daughter Shelby, set at an “elite New England boarding school.” Literally say less. This book is not YA, but when I was in high school, “rich kids behaving badly at boarding school” was my favorite genre.
Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry - This is my cousin’s favorite book. I’ve seen all of Friends, but it is not, like so many millennials, one of my favorite shows. However, I love a celebrity memoir so, I will probably enjoy this!
Also, Matthew Perry has become a minor figure in my personal history because he died on the day of my friend’s wedding (hi, sarah) and we will never forget that!
What I’m Writing
At the back of my edition of Rebecca is an Author’s Note from Daphne du Maurier in which she shares that she started writing the book when she was thirty, and the reason the new Mrs. de Winter doesn’t have a first name is because du Maurier simply could not think of one!!!!
I actually LOLed when I read that because, my god, the character naming dilemma is so universal as to be influential.
The other night I ended up on a Reddit thread called “r/namenerds” where a woman was looking for a girl’s name that had the spirituality of “Sebastian James” (which is the name they picked out when they thought they were having a boy), and someone in the thread volunteered the first AND middle name of one of my characters from Novel 2 as a suggestion… Spooky!
Last week I spent somewhere between thirty minutes to an hour organizing my Novel 3 playlist according to the actual story beats in the novel, so the playlist follows the emotional arc of my main character.
This was an exercise so fruitful that I have OPENED THE NOVEL 3 GOOGLE DOC and started writing real scenes.
Sometimes you really do just have to fuck around until you find out, you know?
A sampling of songs from Novel 3’s playlist:
try to feel my pain
slide
someone to call my lover
one of your girls
“slut!”
green light
CUFF IT
taste back
how bad d u want me
heartbeats
don’t dream it’s over
That’s all from me this week – stay tuned!
