Six Months of Largehearted Ledger
plus Siouxsie Sioux news, Jason Diamond on tuna melts, an interview with Emily St. John Mandel, and much more
This week marks almost six months of Largehearted Boy’s newsletter, Largehearted Ledger.
The experience has been overwhelmingly positive. Writing a short personal piece every week has been a welcome respite to my longform projects. Interacting with readers is always fulfilling. Creating weekly playlists for paid subscribers has taken me out of my usual “albums-only” mindset and encouraged appreciation for individual songs and how they interact with each other.
One thing I noticed was how often the “Largehearted Likes” and “Largehearted Links” overlap with book & music content. That’s just me.
Thank you to everyone who has chosen a paid subscription, which helps fund Largehearted Boy’s hosting costs, a site redesign, and enhancements. These paid subscriptions, as well as donations) keep the site strong and vital.
I look forward to the newsletter’s 2023 future, and look to add some surprises to future issues, like a recurring interview feature.
Thank you for reading, and for being a part of the Largehearted Boy community.
Largehearted Likes
Tammie Teclemariam’s best & worst NYC foods of the year
New York City’s varied food scene is one of the biggest reasons I love the city. GrubStreet’s diner-at-large adds some places to my ever-growing restaurant and bar list.Jason Diamond’s 2023 tuna melt recap
No one loves (or writes so well about) a tuna melt sandwich as much as Jason, so it’s not surprising that tuna melts dominate his year-end wrap-up.ProPublica’s investigation of night raids held by US forces in Afghanistan
…there are lessons to be learned from the West’s failures in Afghanistan. Other reporters, notably at The New York Times, have documented the cover-up of casualties from aerial bombardment and the drone war in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. This story is a deep look inside what happened after America embraced the strategy of night raids — quick, brutal operations that went wrong far more often than the U.S. has acknowledged.This Atlantic profile of photographer Stacy Kranitz, who is reshaping how people think of Appalachia
Curbed’s investigation into NYC’s cutthroat Christmas tree trade
Salon delved into the history of the Christmas myth, which includes psychedelic mushrooms
When you start adding up these details, the idea that Santa was a mushroom shaman who flew around on tripping reindeer starts to make some sense. At least some of these elements could have bled together with other Christmas origin stories, such as St. Nicholas being one of the progenitors of Santa.Birdwatching is helping preserve a sacred region in Columbia
“It’s important to nurture the next generation,” Couceiro says. “If you want to have a beautiful life, you must take care of nature. That’s how the idea started: Let’s bring these kids closer to the unique species in their backyard and help them profit from their land in a way that doesn’t require chopping down trees.”Mark Seal on the fascinating Murdaugh family murders and the fall of families
This is the tragic tapestry of some blueblood American families that, like their houses, seem so idyllic from the exterior but are so haunted within, a sad testament to the secrets these families keep, told over and over again.
Ilana Masad on classic books that live up to their reputations
Largehearted Links
FLOOD’s best albums of 2022
While the list of 25 albums outlined below accurately represents what we’ve been enjoying most over the past 12 months, it’s also a stab at which releases we’ll have the fondest recollections of a few years from now when that pop artist tries her hand at Berlin-school progressive electronics, or another two decades down the line when that screamo band drops their third LP.John Self’s case for Don DeLillo as America’s greatest writer
DeLillo's vision never flinches, never looks away, which may be why his work can seem cold in its unsentimental approach to human horror.Sophie Vershbow’s exploration of what makes a book a New York Times bestseller
Although the list claims to be a numerical ranking with full autonomy from The New York Times Book Review, some of the sources I spoke with believe that an element of editorial curation must be at play.Donna Tartt on her novel The Secret History
For me, writing a novel doesn’t feel like an address to an audience so much as a direct interaction with one other person — the solitary person who pulls the book off a shelf and reads it, whoever that happens to be — so I’m less concerned with the broader impact of the book than with how it reverberates in the lives of individual readers.
I would say fiction is an act of writing where your primary concern is telling and shaping a story. And poetry is an act of writing where your primary concern is language. It’s an insufficient definition, though.
Last Week’s Largehearted Boy Features:
Jamie Marina Lau's Playlist for Her Novel "Gunk Baby"
Jeff Chon's Playlist for His Story Collection "This Is the Afterlife"