The Friday Dispatch: January 10, 2025
Are you guys still writing 2024 on your checks
Happy New Year! Welcome to the first Friday dispatch of 2025! What’s our motto gonna be this year, gang? “Time to Thrive in '25?” “Go into hyperdrive in 2025?” “Sour cream and chives in 2025?” Mmm. Chives. I want chips.
Hot reading hack: Get stranded
It wouldn’t be a Hattie Holidays if I didn’t get stranded at an airport! Ok, not “stranded.” Relatively speaking. I flew out of Kansas City just under a week ago. Even though my flight was delayed by seven hours, I was lucky enough to be one of the people who actually made it out of the airport this past weekend. Between the foot of snow and the 45-MPH wind gusts, the runways and the highways were shut down, so a lot of my fellow travelers who checked in on Saturday were stuck at the airport until late Monday.
All of this to say: I’ve already read two books in 2025! If you have a lofty reading goal for this year, might I suggest “getting snowed in at an airport” as a focus strategy?
The main book I read during my stasis was Summer Romance, by Annabel Monaghan. A week before, I’d finished a different Monaghan book (more on that in a sec!) and turned back to her fluffy, rom-com-y narratives as a salve for the general atmosphere of anxiety that permeates any airport. Aptly, I started reading Summer Romance, which begins on the anniversary of the narrator’s mom’s death, on January 3rd, which is the anniversary of my beloved Gram Cracker’s death. I was drawn in by the conceit, “Grieving lady pulls herself together and achieves her goals because it’s what her matrilineal ancestor would want,” and it was exactly as comforting as it needed to be. Of course, it’s a rom-com, not a mom-com, so a Beefy Man quickly shows up and takes her to the beach and blah blah blah. It was cute! Fun and funny! And also, weirdly similar to…
Nora Goes Off Script, the first Annabel Monaghan book I read. So, this is a mild spoiler, but both of these Monaghan books feature a single mom, living alone with her kids in a house near-but-not-on Long Island, in a job with very flexible hours. Both moms love living in their small town, and are glad their crappy ex-husband is gone. Very tropey! It’s great! I liked Nora Goes Off Script more (the main character writes Hallmark movies), but they’re both good.
My Murder, by Katie Williams, was a DELIGHTFUL surprise. My goodness! I knew nothing about this going in. I chose it because I liked the cover, and it was ready to borrow in ebook form at the library. A quick note, which is not necessarily spoilery, but was something that required me to readjust my expectations in the first few pages: This book is set in a near future and it veers into the sci-fi realm at times. Expect cloning, AI, VR and self-driving cars. This was a five-star read for me, on the prose alone. Gorgeous turns of phrase which are also uncanny and odd. Thoughts I've had, but never needed to voice. Etc. AND fun, but honest, dialogue. Plot-wise, there were a couple twists that took me by surprise. Pretty early on, I had an inkling of what the final twist would be, but I felt like it was telegraphed well, rather than obvious.
Tender is the Flesh, by Agustina Bazterrica and translated by Sarah Moses, was fine. It achieves in 224 pages what The Semplica-Girl Diaries achieves in 24. I’m not on “BookTok” but I know Tender is the Flesh has been lauded as the hot new thing in cannibal fiction. Eh! I thought it was very boring. It is full of exquisitely rendered depictions of human meat farming. It grapples explicitly with the grim promises of industrialism and the inevitable outcomes of our inherently violent economy. And still…I wasn’t moved by it. If the twists in My Murder were telegraphed well, then every plot point from Tender is the Flesh was delivered by someone using their speakerphone on the train. It’s short enough that I don’t feel mad about reading it, though.
A Bit Much, by Lyndsay Rush, is Instagram poetry for people who also read other poetry. Rush started her poetry career under the Instagram handle MaryOliversDrunkCousin. This collection evokes that persona very well! There are some poems that are very clear pastiches or parodies of more famous works, several pieces which utilise ripped-from-the-news headlines, some “remixes” and blackout poems which I found quite moving. I got this book for Christmas, and I took it to the gym with me, because it’s excellent treadmill reading. There’s a good balance of “love yourself for who you are” and “love the version of yourself you’re trying to be.” One warning: It is heavy enough that, if you drop it on the treadmill’s Emergency Stop button, the treadmill will stop. Both times.
Miss Iceland, by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir and translated by Brian FitzGibbon, is a tidy Bildungsroman that simmers. Hekla is a young writer in the 1960s. She's a woman, a fact which often stands in the way of her dream of authorship, and her ability to live a quiet, unperturbed life. The best part of this book is Hekla’s relationship with her two best friends, Ísey and Jón, and the ways the three of them force each other out from the muck and into their individual senses of creative agency. Sometimes lifting each other, sometimes pushing each other. Always getting out, and back on the road. These characters felt like so many of my friends. No matter the obstacles, they never let each other stop writing and creating. They’re good role models for how to be.
A non-book reading recc: my friend
does a great job writing about fear. My favorite quote: “The singular beauty of gratuitous anxiety is you overshoot the doom.” Read the full thing here.And a self-promo recc: ICYMI, my 2024 10 Best Days of the Year post includes a surprise announcement (which may or may not rhyme with “I am shmetting schmarried”)
Oh Boy I’m Back on Stage This Sunday!
MORE self-promo?! Well! Yes. In fact. Yes!!!!!!!
I will be on the January We Stan Together show, singing more goofy parody songs(!) about pop culture etc. The show is Sunday at 7PM EST, you can live stream it or attend in person, and tickets are available now! I had a lot of fun doing a Les Mis number last time. This time, I’m taking a departure from Broadway into something a little more celeb-oriented (and still extremely silly).
I am Cleaning Out My Notes App
And here are some of the treasures I discovered from 2024.
From March(?????)
June:
July:
And November:
WIDNBTW
WHEW. Ok. Hi. We’re here, we made it to the last part of the newsletter! Man, I have 122 pounds of laundry to put away (not kidding) (no exaggerating) (I mean it) and that’s before you add in my new clothes I got for Christmas (currently languishing in a suitcase). I probably don’t need to buy anything new for a while, and in the meantime, here is What I Did Not Buy This Week!
Shirt with jam jars on it!!!!!!!
A sweatshirt with the Mary Tyler Moore Show logo on it
This reproduction of a vintage Bach sweatshirt, the original of which I saw a picture of Rosemarie wearing in 1967 and am coveting, deeply sinfully coveting
Super Yaki When Harry Met Sally… tee, which is adorable and would be the second installment in my When Harry Met Sally… tee collection (I have, and love, this discontinued Inkwell Threads one)
Swim bloomers
Personalized Burt’s Bees lip balm, which I learned about on Instagram. I would get the names of all the ladies from Mambo No. 5
Yet another cardigan that turns out to be for toddlers
These birthday candles which look like fusilli (maybe an Italian person will be born near me soon! One can hope!!!)
An AMAZING, hardcover film comic of Kiki’s Delivery Service, which I carried around Vintage Stock for a few minutes before returning it to its shelf
A working kitten puppet named Snowflake (I would simply be sponsoring her lifestyle!)
Anything from Ace Outpost in Philadelphia, a store I guess I need to go visit in person so I can look at their remarkable lamp options
These “collage core” sheets, which I probably should not have because I would lose sleep from staying up and staring at them in adoration
And that’s it! Ok! Friday! I’m gonna go make stir fry! I hope you do too! Godspeed! Happy January! Paid subscribers, thanks for your patience on my Empties, you’ll see ‘em Monday! Bye!