Some things I’ve been reading and thinking about.

George Saunders on Tobias Wolff, a writer he admires: “It was invigorating to be reminded that great writing was (1) mysterious and (2) not linked, in any reductive, linear way, to the way one lived: wild writing could come from a life that was beautifully under control. Watching him, I felt: O.K., nurture the positive human parts of yourself and hope they get into your work, eventually.”

“Was I reading it because I was blue, or was I blue because I was reading it? This is the wonder of a book you love, that you can’t know; it’s like a horoscope. It is true, but you don’t know whether it would be true had you not read it. “

I saw The Way, Way Back and loved it. Great soundtrack, too. Next I want to see Fruitvale Station and Short Term 12.

“I unwrapped my tiny hamburger. It smelled like McDonald’s, a warm salty smell, like the breath of a healthy German Shepherd. The bun was smooth, immaculate, and pliant. It held my caress like memory foam.” Here.

“Resist, in other words, the allure of the multitasking myth. It’s the siren song of our age, and it will shipwreck your mind.“

Alicia Galer makes really pretty, simple drawings. And Barbara Kitallides makes gorgeous, vibrant, abstract paintings.

How to discover a story? Ben Montgomery: “Every day, the tide comes in and goes out, and if you’re standing there in the mud with a bucket and spear, your jeans hiked up, you’ll sometimes find something cool left behind.”

These observations from two American mothers raising their kids in the Congo are fascinating. For instance: a total embrace of public breastfeeding (and milk sharing). Part of a great series on expat motherhood (for, generally, white, middle-class women).

Rape Joke by Patricia Lockwood.

Prison is funny. Too many people get that wrong. Orange is the New Black doesn’t. (I haven’t watched the show, but this is a great essay.)

A very, very honest piece on the work of marriage. “Because it takes enormous courage – plus grace, and quite possibly good fortune – to transcend the resentments of long relationships, and to see one’s partner in a rounded way beneath.”

“I thought about how we should attribute as much meaning and weight as we want to things. About how everything is something if you look at it right.”

Skipped an edition to get pizza and my first legal beer on my 21st. Now we’re back in action. Long list today.

Here are some things I’ve been reading and thinking about.

I grew up reading Esquire and wanting to write for Esquire. But being the girl who breaks into the boys’ club has always been something I’m uneasy about, partially because of what it requires. This essay perfectly deconstructs the “cool girl” character and how playing it can warp self-understanding. Also, male magazine writers and “laid-back-yet-irascible attitudes”? Yes.

“It is not my job to educate him about the experience of race in his own country, although as his darker countryman, I am called on to do just that.”

That reminded me of this excellent essay about the invisibility of white masculinity, deconstructing how we frame white male killers’ actions as, often, the result of some external pressure: “In imagining the killers as good kids who did a bad thing, who snapped because of a divorce, because of too much medication, because of inadequate mental health treatment, because of too much mental health care, because of guns, and because of who knows what, white manhood — the visible link that binds together so many of these shootings –always gets erased.”

You can spent a good four hours on this: The 50 most interesting articles on Wikipedia. A good one: Language deprivation experiments.

Three great NYT Modern Love columns: A father wants his gay son to find legal love, a Hemingway lover regrets a lost relationship, a mother helps her daughter tend to a flour-sack baby doll.

Women athletes, by and large, hate their breasts, which they say get in the way. To keep young gymnasts from developing, coaches and trainers will encourage undereating and overtraining, which delays menstruation. Older athletes get breast reductions. And worth keeping in mind: the sports bra wasn’t even invented until 1977. Awesome to see ESPN dedicating so much space to the great reporting of Amanda Hess.

How to talk to little girls.

Five literary magazines that restore faith in publishing.

In “Just Kidding, Love Sucks: Notes on Taylor Swift,” Tavi Gevinson of Rookie reinforces why she’s so brilliant. She’s a deep thinker (see: her TED talk on growing up, which is worth your time), yet she rejects cynicism and instead loves art earnestly. Here, she divulges her appreciation for the country pop star and her lyrics.

I’ve been eating the wrong salt!

“The meaning of life? “Only God knows,” says Mr. Newton. But with his beaten broom, sweeping a sprawling seafood warehouse, he seems to have found the secret to not dying.”

A man is drafted in Turkey only to become the squadron’s librarian. “The strange and limitless charm of books.”

Good advice for young writers, but also young people: “Avoid all messy and needy people including family; they threaten your work. You may believe your messy life supplies material, but it in fact distracts you from understanding that material, and until you understand it, it is useless to you.”

Two new books I’m looking forward to reading: & Sons and My Education.

Fascinating analysis of beauty and, when there is an overdose, its ill effects on relationships and love. “For guys in relationships, exposure to beautiful photos undermines their feelings about the real flesh-and-blood women with whom their lives are actually intertwined.” 

If you missed it, Ta-Nehisi Coates on Trayvon Martin.

“The women’s story sidles up to you at a party and asks in the honeyed voice of a false friend whether you or other women like you might be doing sex or love or motherhood (the top tasks of the woman) slightly wrong.”

And one last well-written and balanced piece on women and narrative journalism. “It seems if they go so far as to dip a toe into the personal,they’re tossed into the pool of memoir, where swim the snakes of derision and triviality,” writes Sarah Menkedick of Vela Magazine. Why is it that, so often, men’s longform work is called  “criticism” or “putting yourself in the story” or “voice-driven” or “narrative,” or “travelogue” or “history” or “new journalism” or simply a “literary journey,” when women’s get pegged as “personal”? she asks. A very good, very convincing read that I connected with strongly.

Fireworks, sunburn again, a weekend trip. Flying back to St. Pete felt like coming home (already).

Here are some things (a lot of things) I’ve been reading and thinking about. 

Please read Lane Degregory’s stunning story about Miss Teen America’s escape to the woods — except that’s not what the story’s about at all.

David Mitchell on learning to accept his son’s autism. The second-person writing style is commonly abused but here it works well on an empathetic level. And I loved this: “Having a life-redefining diagnosis – like autism, Asperger’s, Down’s, whatever – is like getting off the plane and finding yourself not in balmy, romantic Rome but… Schipol Airport, in Holland. What the hell? My wife and I booked our holiday in Italy, like everyone else.”

“Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.” A poem on failing and flying.

I am loving Miranda July’s new project, We Think Alone. Over 20 weeks, you get 20 sets of emails from other people (Lena Dunham, Kirsten Dunst, a few more) about things like money or advice. Why? “How they comport themselves in email is so intimate, almost obscene — a glimpse of them from their own point of view,” July has said. Here’s more on it, if you’re interested.

“I could make whatever decision I wanted… I was in control.“

“Writing is so much about the work of noticing. Fiction writing in particular demands intense noticing — studying how the emotional scaffolding of a human is built.“

“Eighty! I can hardly believe it. I often feel that life is about to begin, only to realize it is almost over.” A tribute to old age, with levity.

“North Carolina was once considered a beacon of farsightedness in the South, an exception in a region of poor education, intolerance and tightfistedness. In a few short months, Republicans have begun to dismantle a reputation that took years to build.” The New York Times dedicates an editorial to North Carolina’s political mess.

“Good writing seems to be driven by the part of the mind that we don’t understand, something like harnessed dreaming, and so when you’re in that place it feels separate from you.” The evolution of a first novel. (Lessons: Be patient. Play with your work. Cut stuff.)

Really powerful NYT Modern Love column about domestic violence.

“I’ve been teaching for almost 50 years, and when people ask me what I teach, I tell them empathy.”

Tech anxiety abounds — but what are we really addicted to? “My own view is that life, itself, is the toxic and addictive bit. You cannot stop doing it and doing it and doing it until eventually you die from too much living.”

Rainy days lately, slow afternoons watching movies (Good Will Hunting) and my first story as a reporter for the Times. This edition’s shorter because I’ve been absorbed in The Secret History.

Here are some things I’ve been reading and thinking about.

“Journalists should be scrutinized for whether they’re covering women candidates fairly and seriously, but we shouldn’t be banned from noticing the carefully managed visual signals candidates of both sexes send.” Why it’s not sexist to examine women politicians’ clothes.

Being 20, it was interesting to read a journalist’s advice to a 19-year-old. My favorite: “It doesn’t get any easier. What you get for doing something well is the opportunity to do it better.” From Michael Kruse.

That was, of course, inspired by this: Twelve athletes write letters to their younger selves.

I revisited this this week: What do we see when we read? “Even if an author excels at physical description, we are left with shambling concoctions of stray body parts and random detail… Our mental sketches of characters are worse than police composites.”

How to write a novel, in 1000 words.

A poem: Each from Different Heights.

“All you can do is sit back and bask in your relevance to the cosmos.” Neil deGrasse Tyson on ego and the cosmic perspective.

Photos in National Geographic’s traveler photo contest are insane and spectacular.

Talking female suicide, the right way, the wrong way and the Vice way.

Gorgeous black and white shots of an empty Met.

When you’re presented with healthy choices at a restaurant, it fulfills your need to be healthy, so you might end up choosing something even worse: why healthy eaters fall for fries.

I made this for dinner this week, and all I can tell you is this: Make this for dinner. Cacio e pepe.