Thanksgiving week is upon us in the United States.
Thank you for reading this newsletter and supporting the arts and Largehearted Boy.
My thoughts are crowded with thanks. For my partner who makes life exciting every day. For friends. For art. I am thankful to live in Brooklyn’s Polish enclave Greenpoint, where pierogis are as plentiful as gentrifying beer bars.
Mostly my thoughts are being thankful that I am able to follow my heart and speak out for the books and music that make my life bigger and better and brighter.
Happy holidays, y’all.
Largehearted Likes
Year-end book lists - I am still adding “best books of 2022” lists to Largehearted Boy’s master list, and adding books to my own TBR list at an alarming rate. This week I’ve put together lists of my favorite poetry and nonfiction books, with novel, story collection, and music book lists to come.
Brooklyn Brewery’s Black Ops Barrel Aged Stout - I stopped by Whole Foods Thursday morning for last minute Thanksgiving dinner supplies, and found three of my favorite beers available (more on the other two later). Black Ops is Brooklyn Brewery’s seasonal flagship brew, a stout aged in Four Roses small batch bourbon barrels. At 11.5% ABC, it’s definitely stout, and perfect for long winter afternoons.
Brooklyn Brewery’s Black Chocolate Stout - Another Brooklyn Breweries beer and also one of my favorite drinks, this Russian imperial stout is bold and tasty with its chocolate notes.
Grimm Super Spruce - Imagine drinking a refreshing, grapefruit-tinged gose through a filter of fresh evergreens. That is Grimm’s Super Spruce, which at 4.7% ABC is a great drink for watching World Cup games!
My forthcoming podcast - launching in February, and considering the previous three “likes",” is unsurprisingly beer-adjacent.
The New School adjunct faculty strike - Adjunct professors receive little pay and few (if any) benefits). New School part-time faculty are heroes in standing up for fair compensation in a time where full-time faculty numbers are dwindling.
A Brown athlete has become the first woman to participate in NCAA Division I baseball
“I’m just really glad that we’re having more and more female baseball players at the collegiate level, and no matter what division, it’s just really good to see this progression,” Pichardo said. “It’s really paving the way for other girls in the next generation to also have these goals that they want to achieve and dream big and know that they can do it.”
Bob Dylan didn’t really sign the $600 edition edition of his latest book
Largehearted Links
Recommended soccer books - With the World Cup in session, these books are a great introduction to “the beautiful game.” Also recommended: Simon Kuper’s other soccer books.
The auctioneer on the Joan Didion’s estate sale
I ask Stair which lots stood out most to him, and the $27,000 sunglasses top his list. The waste baskets were another standout. Stair had waffled on those, but Thomas felt that the fact that the pair was positioned under one of Didion’s desks meant even the more damaged one deserved a showing. When the lot came up, Stair was prepared with his pitch: “Imagine the manuscripts that ended up in these!”
Sarah Thankam Mathews' 6 favorite books about life-changing experiences and self discovery
Two new independent bookstores in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy Neighborhood
“We really make sure that voices and bodies that are not represented in most bookstores find a good prominent shelf space,” he said, adding that is essential to do in Bed Stuy. “There’s so many authors and readers here, but since Brownstone Books closed over 10 years ago now there hasn’t been a full bookstore. There’s little pop ups or places that have some books, but not a full service bookstore.”
Andrew Scott on leaving academia to become lead writer at an indie publisher
Marketing is storytelling, and companies need people who can write well and connect with audiences. The importance of empathy in all of this finally became clear to me during a research trip I embarked on as a freelancer for another firm’s university client, when everyone kept emphasizing that my classroom experience should allow me to better empathize with the students’—or customers’—journeys to and through the university. After conversations with a friend who’s been writing copy for more than a decade, I came to agree that empathy in the service of storytelling is not the sole dominion of the fiction writer.
Danyel Smith on her book, Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop
I feel like every generation gets more free. In music, every generation of artists gets more free because they’ve learned from their previous generation. I say more than once in Shine Bright that Black pop is shot through with the spirit of reparations; reparations very specifically from the blues era and the jazz era and the early R&B era, where so many artists were just robbed of money, of credit, of cultural status, of their dreams coming true. Do I think it's gotten better in that way? Yes I do. There are lines throughout many rap songs that speak to this energy, and people think that it’s only in rap, but it’s not. I hear it quite clearly in some Black pop.
Elif Batuman on the Peanuts character Pig-Pen
In a way, Pig-Pen seems to be conjured by Patty herself. Patty, with her grid-patterned dress and matching bow, is the most concerned with propriety, appearances, and conventions. She is a kind of emanation of the fifties. (Once sandal-wearing Peppermint Patty, who isn’t overconcerned with neatness, appears in 1966, the other Patty is no longer mentioned by name and soon essentially disappears from the strip.) Pig-Pen, then, may be Patty’s Jungian shadow, the dark side of the fifties suburban ideal. In 1956, Charlie Brown describes Pig-Pen as “the only person I know who can raise a cloud of dust on a clean sidewalk.” It’s a subtly disorienting moment.
Morgan Talty’s profile by the Bangor Daily News
“I hear from people all the time about how much they love the book or how the book has affected them, and it reminds me, constantly, how powerful and important storytelling is,” Talty said. “So many people — Native and non-Native — have been cheering me and the book on, and that support has meant so much to me.”
A conversation between authors Allie Rowbottom and Tea Hacic-
VlahovicTEA HACIC-VLAHOVIC: I’m having a terrible morning. My Instagram just got deactivated for the second time. I was telling my husband—I was like, “Maybe I can be free now. Maybe I can rebrand myself as a real writer.” But we don’t have that luxury, do we?
ROWBOTTOM: For a long time, my goal was to be able to get off social media and be like Ottessa Moshfegh or Emma Cline—someone who’s anonymous and it actually works in their favor. They got plucked by the establishment and don’t need to do what the rest of us do, which is shill constantly.
Carl Nolte on the appeal of indie bookstores at the San Francisco Chronicle
I’ve always liked bookstores. I like the look of them: books stacked to the ceiling, shiny, new, unopened. I like the smell of new books, the sharp scent of ink. Or the musty smell of used bookstores, knowledge coated with dust. Sometimes I hunt for bargains — remaindered books, best-sellers that never were, or biographies of the almost famous.
Last Week’s Largehearted Boy Features:
Sara Moore Wagner's Playlist for Her Poetry Collection "Swan Wife"
Tom Breihan's Playlist for His Book "The Number Ones"
Will Betke-Brunswick's Playlist for Their Graphic Memoir "A Pros and Cons List for Strong Feelings"
The Largehearted Boy List of Online "Best of 2022" Book Lists