So much happens in my mind, it's almost enough...but not quite.
monthly favorites ― November 2024.
*This post is too long for email, so please read it on the Substack App or your browser.
It’s finally time for another monthly round-up!
Books.
November was a productive month. I read a lot. Many great articles, a book that I have been carrying around for a couple of months, and almost finished another dense and challenging one (that will appear on my December favorites). Plus, I rediscovered the pleasure of immersing myself in poetry.
But I must admit that half the time I was completely absorbed in reading multiple fan-fictions about a particular Game of Thrones couple…(find out more at the end of the article!).
Reborn by Susan Sontag
It hurts to love. It's like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.
It has been a tormented journey, in all the best ways.
A journey on the discovery of love, of oneself, of the first life lessons to be swallowed, and much more, through the attentive eyes of Sontag.
We are in her thoughts and live with her the emotions that pass through her, the doubts, the things she learns, etc.
If you want to know more, I have just published an article where I collected many of her quotes from this book and categorized them into themes (and soon there will be a second part focusing on her writing advice, opinions on famous books and authors, etc).
The fear of becoming old is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes. It is equivalent to a sense of abusing the present.
Highly recommended!
Unexhausted Time by Emily Berry
I discovered Emily Berry's poetry last year and it was love at first sight, or rather...at first reading!
This collection of poems is also an inner journey that highlights what is real and what is imaginary, between memories of the past that come back to haunt us in the present, between moments of déjà vu and scenarios of what could have been.
I am a creature who often looks to the past and starts imagining different scenarios, so I felt involved as if this book had been written especially for me, or even by me!
I appreciate that it can be read as a cohesive narrative or by navigating between different poems.
Emily Berry's style is direct and modern without sacrificing the magic of mystery and ephemerality inherent in the poetic medium.
I loved it so much that it gave me the desire to start writing poetry again myself.
And that's what I've been doing, for a couple of weeks now.
This book plus the emotions that the GoT couple made me feel, have inspired me a lot.
I am a river in flood.
Now I am already devouring collections of poems by other wonderful writers, such as Louise Gluck, Anne Sexton, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and more.
I am a creature that feeds on obsessions.
Once I find one that captures my soul and body I dive into it and try to exploit it to fuel my creativity.
The Mirror and The Palette by Jennifer Higgie
I’m almost finished with this one, as I said. And it’s so good!
If she had access to a mirror, a palette, an easel and paint, a woman could endlessly reflect on her face, and, by extension, her place in the world.
Rest assured I'll be talking about it in my December favorites.
Articles from the web.
I began to believe that beauty was a fact of nature, that it was something intrinsic and essential, meant for some and not others. I could always change jobs and cities, buy new blush, talk raspier, talk less, lose weight, be flirtier, get breast implants, and wear a sundress. But I was born with the face of my lifetime, and you were, too. So I stopped playing Prettiest Girl in the Room. I asked a guy friend for help. How long did it take for him to figure out whether or not he was interested in a girl? He said somewhere around two seconds.
What sort of collection should a library hold? How should books be classified? What is the function of lists?
Lists are important because they manage our order of discourse. And because they are the heart of information systems, they teach us how data becomes knowledge.
In seventh grade, my history teacher explained a fun game we could play in the effort to kill time during our middle school retreat. It is a simple game. All you need is a dark sky, yourself, and a friend. Once you have all of those components, you step outside and stare at each other’s faces. Suddenly, because it is dark out, it will look like your friend is headless. And that’s the game. I don't really know the science behind it. When I played this game for the first time, I could not believe what my eyes saw and how their 20/20 vision fooled me. I have not tried to play this game since seventh grade, but I still stand by the game’s core takeaway. When you stare at something familiar long enough, like a head, it begins to look quite strange.
In a letter to TS Eliot inviting him to Monk’s House, her home in East Sussex (WoI June 2012), Virginia Woolf signed off with the words: ‘Please bring no clothes: we live in a state of the greatest simplicity.’ What Woolf meant by ‘clothes’ was the iron-boned conventional fashions of her Victorian upbringing, with its rigidly codified succession of outfit changes throughout the day.
She wrote in an era obsessed with explaining the natural world; the word ‘biology’ burst into usage in England around 1800. Austen’s acute, almost clinical, attention to detail resembles the style of early British naturalists. In Jane Austen and Charles Darwin (2008), the literature scholar Peter Graham explores parallels between Austen’s sensibility and Darwin’s, arguing that both ‘were keen observers of the world before them, observers who excelled both in noticing microcosmic particulars and … discerning the cosmic significance of those small details.’
In their adoptive Mexico, Leonora Carrington, Kati Horna and Remedios Varo quickly formed a lifelong, almost familial connection thanks to their shared Surrealist proclivities and fascination with the occult arts – leading to the trio earning the nickname ‘the three witches’ among their coterie.
Goodies from Substack.
Some of the newlywed men—one of them rather handsome, with dark hair—gave me the subtle once over on my frequent journeys to and from the breakfast buffet. I did wear a black thong swimsuit and a sheer, white cover-up, but I reasoned with myself. I figured I’ve been good for so long, I’ve done everything I was supposed to do. Maybe I’ll misbehave for once in my life. And is that so wrong? To remind myself that I’m desirable, even desirable to men who swore their undying love and fidelity to the woman sitting right next to them just one week ago? I decided it was fine.
My interest was sparked by the cultural revival of medieval aesthetics and iconography over the last few years. TV shows; from Game of Thrones and its prequel, Vikings, the Tudors and others; the ever-growing popularity of romantasy. On the catwalks, chainmail and capes are in and out every other season, often mixed with silk, leather, corsetry, or even armours - COS even offers a chainmail tie. Even further, some people swear by herbal remedies, rituals from a previous time and a wider ‘return to nature’.1
But one icon stands out. What really grabbed my attention was the aesthetisation of Joan of Arc.
do we really need more stuff? no.
do we really need another carbon copy of another creator’s gift guide? also no.
i do, however, find gift guides to be quite entertaining- an escapist sort of read, so i’ll be providing that for you today (window shopping on the web).
i’ve broken these guides into categories to make it easier to reference if you’re searching for gifts to buy for your loved ones.
Capricorn
Stop moving, you’re making me anxious. Your form of “relaxing” is multi-tasking yet you complain about how tired you are. You pride yourself on how ambitious you are but really, you’re just a people pleaser. You get employee of the month every month, people hate you but you’re clueless to it. Stop making lists out of enjoyment and do something actually fun for once. A for effort.
Since you love making lists so bad, make a list of the characters in this book and write a brief description on how much fun you had with them…
This December, I want to be like Cameron Diaz in The Holiday: lounging around a snowy cottage in a cardigan and pajamas, reading the books I’ve been meaning to read, drinking wine and singing at the top of my lungs, and just giving in to pure relaxation. I want to break away from this busy life and have a cozy winter all to myself.
The series is split into four parts — childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age —but meant to be viewed as a full progression of life. Af Klint was deeply inspired by what she had seen when studying petri dishes as well as her theosophical beliefs. She believed there was a world, just beyond what was visible to the eye, affecting what was visible to the eye.
Out of 160 models that walked the runway for Yves Saint Laurent in Autumn Winter 1965, twenty-six sported Mondrian looks. In fact, the Mondrian dresses were created only in the month prior to the runway show, after YSL himself had produced simple sketches while swimming in a high level of Piet-induced inspiration. Turns out: his mother gifted him a book on Mondrian’s paintings, and he was taken by the artist’s ability to paint with absolute “purity.” Way to go, mom!
A ‘Star Wars’ fan might call ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ a non-canon prequel to ‘Jane Eyre,’ or even fan fiction, but you don’t need to have read the latter to appreciate and understand the former. I haven’t read Charlotte Brontë’s book, but I was riveted to Jean Rhys’s novel. Now I definitely want to read ‘Jane Eyre’ to get the rest of the story.
Instead, this illusion that they enjoy the gaze or feel in control of the gaze links to Berger’s idea of the internal male gaze: “The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female.
Thus she turns herself into an object - and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.” The idea that they are in control or are themselves the voyeur is impossible when what is behind and in front of The Box is men, and the pleasure they are gaining from being looked at is the internal male gaze.
YouTube videos.
10 Healthy hacks to stay happy & productive in winter (avoid seasonal depression)
Explaining this once and for all!!! How to do that thing with color
“Get Comfortable with People Not Liking you!” Florence Given on Embracing The Cringe!
I look at life differently now (and so will you after this) *so weird and wholesome!*
Bonus.
As I anticipated, I am completely obsessed with Game of Thrones lately and with one couple in particular: Sansa Stark and Petyr Baelish (Littlefinger).
I know, I know. Don't yell at me, I know it's a problematic couple for many reasons (I don't want to give away any spoilers for those who haven't seen the series), but it's the only one that made me feel emotions...of all kinds.
I mean, just look at them!
Much of the credit goes to Aidan Gillen who made the character so real and intriguing.
Also, if you are not blind you can perfectly understand why I fell in love with this couple and especially with him…😋
For those of you who are GoT enthusiasts, I must say that the script and character development in the latest series have sadly taken a turn for the worse.
How else to say it than this: "The script is dark and full of errors" (referring to the famous phrase in the saga "the night is dark and full of terrors", ) seen in some comments under the numerous YT videos dedicated to "rewriting" the latest series.
“The way the world is made. The truth is all around you, plain to behold. The night is dark and full of terrors, the day bright and beautiful and full of hope. One is black, the other white. There is ice and there is fire. Hate and love. Bitter and sweet. Male and female. Pain and pleasure. Winter and summer. Evil and good.” She took a step toward him. “Death and life. Everywhere, opposites. Everywhere, the war.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords
But I appreciated the world and the characters that the author created and how they were adapted quite faithfully for the screen, at least for the first 4 seasons and then...ups and downs. Up to the sixth, I can still save it, but once we got to the last two series I wanted to pull my hair out.
And we are still waiting for the last two books in the saga…so, we shall see how things will go in the books…if they will come out before we breathe our last breath (we've been waiting for 15 years!).
Alas, we're not here to complain about this, but to talk about my favorite ship!
So, Sansa and Petyr have stolen my heart, in the most tragic of ways.
I know there is the power imbalance, he is manipulative and has his own agenda, and there is the age gap (exaggerated in the books, but in the series...the chemistry between the two actors is palpable and irresistible), but even if Petyr should be considered as one of the villains of the series, he is not stereotyped, he is so layered.
In the end, we see that even if it may have started as a plan of his to achieve his goals, in the end, he truly fell in love with Sansa (that’s my impression), and it is precisely his love for her that ruins him.
And then I have to admit, and I'm not ashamed of it, that at least in fiction, I'm always drawn to the villains.
Good is dull. What novelist ever succeeded in making a good man interesting? Evil on the contrary, is exciting and fascinating and alive. It is also very much more mysterious than good. Good can be seen through. Evil is opaque.
― A Fairly Honourable Defeat by Iris Murdoch
I can't say more, but there is so much to say about these two!
Who knows, maybe I'll talk about it in the next post for my paid subs...stay tuned!
Lastly, my November articles in case you missed them!
stand-alone vampire books by women writers:
monthly favorites ― October 2024:
witchy book recommendations - by women writers:
quotes about witches - by women writers:
That’s all for today. I hope you found something that sparked your curiosity.
Wishing you a wonderful rest of the week,
Nicole.
so happy to be included 💌💌
It sounds like such a great month! 🥰 (the Capricorn call-out 😅)