First things first, we (Divya & Diana, hi!) have some housekeeping. We’ve been doing this newsletter for over six months now and it’s always such a joy. But! We are anxious to make sure it stays a joy: we want to protect this space and keep it pressure-free and algorithm-resistant, even as our other writing commitments fluctuate. (More on some of those commitments in the Muses section this week!)
To that end, we want to think more long-term about how we can have consistent, slow thoughtful discussions about what genuinely interests us. And we would love your FEEDBACK!! If you like this newsletter, please click the poll below to indicate exactly what it is you like.
And if you have any strong opinions or general comments (an edition that you particularly liked/disliked; something you’d like to see more of) then please leave a comment. Or if you’re shy, our Instagram DMs are always open. THANK YOU for your feedback, and thank you for reading. Now to our musings, which are actually about… reading. (Wow, segue.)
Whether you’re knocking off a novel a week, or just dipping your toe into one or two whenever you go on holiday, we are all, by virtue of being alive at this point in history, Big Readers. We’re surrounded by words all the time. So much of what would have been auditory and spoken communication — phone calls, in-person chats — has been converted to text in the modern world. Texting, of course, but also closed-caption videos, chatbots to solve insurance claims, and entire workflows completed over email.
In the midst of all this, maybe it’s no surprise that many of us forget the plot of a film or a novel almost immediately upon finishing it. There’s so much to parse and there’s no distinction in the medium that we receive and experience art and literal, mundane information.
This article in The Atlantic, though, thinks there’s a different reason: it’s not because there’s simply too much to read. It’s because we’re reading wrong. What was once a communal exercise, meant to be shared with an audience, has turned into a solitary, silent one. Apparently — stay with us on this one — we should be reading aloud. “To reap the full benefits of reading, we should be doing it out loud, all the time, with everyone we know,” writes Julie Beck.
Obviously, reading aloud is weird. What are we going to do? Mumble our work emails at our desk? But we wanted to interrogate whether it might be worth it. Should we fight harder for our own memories, or are we content to outsource everything to the internet? What’s the purpose of reading anyway?
Let’s discuss.
What’s been on our minds this past fortnight…
Divya: Can you remember the plot of the last book you read?
Diana: Yes, but only because I literally finished it last night. But the one before that — absolutely not. For me, books are so associated with place. Like, as soon as you asked that question, my brain short-circuited and I was like, wtf was the last book I read?! Then I thought: where have I been lately, and the book came to me. But yeah, if I’m struggling to remember what I was reading yesterday, I doubt I’ll recall the plot a few weeks from now.
Divya: It makes me think of this Hayley Nahman essay I read. A reader asked her how she was so referential in her work, like how she was able to pull out so many scholarly references in each essay she writes — how does she remember them all? I was curious, because I too, wonder this when it comes to writers I admire. Do they have a bank of quotes and theories in their mind at all times?
Basically, she said no — but that she had created a little library of theorists whose work she identified with and that she would just pull a book down from it and start leafing through to see if anything stood out to her. I liked that idea of building a base of knowledge — like an umbrella understanding of which theorists relate to which ideas, where you might seek edification on like, surveillance capitalism, or feminist theory and labour etc etc — but not needing to carry those ideas actually around with you everywhere.
Diana: Definitely. I listened to an interview with Philip Pullman a while ago, where he was talking about memorising poetry when he was younger. He mentioned that it had been so helpful because it gave him an “emotional vocabulary” that equipped him for later in life — when he experienced love or grief for the first time, he was able to draw on this library of sorts. I thought that was so poetic.
Divya: That sounds like an amazing thing to have built up. I wonder if anyone in our generation has that in the same way. I was never encouraged to memorise poems, or anything really — I feel like that fell out of fashion in the education system, at least in the schools I went to — like memorisation was dismissed as ‘rote-learning’ and therefore not as good as ‘higher order’ critical thinking. So it’s interesting to hear about the benefits of that.
Diana: Totally! If I think about a store room of poetic memory… mine’s pretty empty. My “emotional library” would be full of, like, conversations with my friends or podcasts I’ve listened to, not literature lol. But I think in this world we don’t need to retain knowledge anymore. We’re pretty comfortable with the fact that we can access information when we need it, as we need it.
Divya: It feels like an old world kind of skill. Like darning socks!! Should we be trying harder to keep it? Should we read out loud to ourselves so we retain more of it, like this article suggests?
Diana: I just think I would find it too cringe. In school, I used to love being asked to read aloud in class. I was like, my time to SHINE! And now I look back on that girl and I’m embarrassed for her hahaha.
Divya: Maybe a more interesting question is: why do we read, anyway? Especially with novels and films and things that we consume for the sake of enjoyment… does it matter that we forget? Do we need to retain them?
Diana: I think there’s a case for poetry: I can really see how these discrete images and turns of phrase might make you more emotionally articulate. But yeah, what’s the point of the plot of a novel or a film?
Divya: Maybe I’m just excusing my terrible recall lol but I don’t think I’m necessarily reading to carry around a characters’ life story with me… I think we’re all just reading to have these moments of connection and emotional insight and beauty. And then poof, you can just leave it behind.
Diana: Like a friendship that doesn’t exist anymore, even. You can feel nostalgia towards it and be grateful that it was in your life… but it’s never going to be as intense as when you were actually experiencing it. Actually, I think that’s a really useful analogy for what books “do” for us. It’s a relationship! And like all relationships, it’s not about what you take away from it, it’s about sitting in these moments of connection.
Like what they say about charisma—that charisma isn’t, like, all the clever and witty things you have to tell other people, it’s how you make other people feel when they’re around you. So if you think of a book as a friend, the charm or the charisma or the magic isn’t in all the interesting information it contains; it’s about how it makes you feel at the time.
Divya: Also I like the idea that you can revisit a book and it would show you something different about yourself when you read it. If books are meant to be a mirror, you remember and you pick out certain things and then when you return to it something totally different strikes you. And it’s okay that the picture in the mirror changes all the time.
Diana: Yes! It reminds me of this great article, which draws a distinction between novels and other art forms. Music is inherently nostalgic: when you listen to a song, you’re transported to the person you were when you first heard it. But books aren’t static like that. In fact, when we re-read a book, it can clarify who we are now. So I guess, it’s okay to forget and experience it afresh each time? Even if it’s just to mark how much we’ve changed?
Divya: I always think about this. Like after I go to an art exhibition, or something. I can never recall an image perfectly, obviously, but I still imagine that it changed me in some tiny imperceptible way. Like you don’t really know how or in what way, but I like to think that’s what a lot of art is; reading, or visual art, or whatever. You are the person you are because you’ve experienced that, right? You walked through something and it changed you a tiny tiny bit, and you’re out the other side and you’re different by, like, a millimeter. But also, I don’t know. Maybe that’s a little idealistic.
Diana: No, I love that. I guess reading for knowledge and recall, for memory, is a kind of optimisation. It’s almost reading-as-upskilling. But maybe we’re just reading because our time on earth is finite and this is a nice way to spend it. And maybe it does change you, but, as you say, in these almost-imperceptible ways.
Divya: So you’re saying we can happily continue reading in silence?
Diana: Shhh.
What we’ve loved this past fortnight…
Divya
Object
One of my all time favourite jewellery brands Alighieri just released a new drop of trinkets (it branched out into homewares earlier this year) and I can’t stop looking at this seahorse bottle opener. I mean…
Experience
Little plug here: I’m the editor of a print magazine called The Everywoman and our inaugural issue is out in the world on Monday. Myself and the incredible team behind it (Jess, Serrin, Margie, Rae et al) wanted to create a new space in women’s media for thoughtful, meaningful content that goes below the surface. In Issue One, there’s a piece on the artistic renaissance of Athens, a profile on America’s oldest woman park ranger, a feature on the contradictions of the no-makeup movement, and a piece on Lo-Tek, the design movement that draws on indigenous knowledge to build more sustainably. Diana has also written an amazing piece on the artist Julia Gutman! Sign up to the waitlist here, or head to the website to get your very own copy on Tuesday.
Taste
Roughly one out of every three times I go to De Beauvoir Deli I see a genuinely A-list celebrity. This is a very good hit rate I think!! Last week it was a two in one — Suki Waterhouse and Robert Pattinson (sans baby, if you’re curious). But this is not Deuxmoi, so let’s stay on track: I am mostly here to recommend their delightful mushroom toast. So herby! So creamy. (With a side of celeb spotting, natch.)
Diana
Taste: I was in Copenhagen over the weekend (lucky me!!) and every single meal came with a side of bread and whipped butter. The butter was so fluffy and indulgent that I was compelled to look up the recipe. It really is what it says on the tin. I think you just… whip… the butter? I’m going to try it this weekend. Will report back.
Object: I’ve given this recommendation enough times in real life now that I thought I should put it in here. Abe Books is the best place to buy second hand books: it’s absurdly cheap, offers free international shipping, and has an amazing selection of books that are now out of print. The copies can be a bit tatty but I personally think there’s charm in that. E.g. I purchased Darling by India Knight for £2 last year for a holiday read (actually, on Divya’s recommendation) and was delighted when I opened it and sand fell out of the pages. A holiday read indeed!
Experience: I’m embracing the spirit of the shameless plug! I wrote an essay for The Griffith Review about how the cost of living crisis and social media has changed the way we perform class, especially online… if you liked our Fuse discussion about ‘how the internet made ostentation cool again’ this essay expands on a lot of those ideas. And I talk about Saltburn (which already feels very last-year but hey, I had more to say!)
See you in two weeks! xx