Three Book-ish Substacks You Should Be Reading Now

Recommendations, Readings, and a Break from Book Bans

I’m in Seattle for two weeks. It’s not exactly a vacation from my work with Texas Freedom to Read Project—I’m still taking meetings over Zoom, still tracking book removals and policy changes, still writing about it all (I’ll have an update on all the June school board action around Texas soon). But I’ve put some literal and figurative distance between myself and the land of book bans, and it’s nice to spend time hiking, jogging around lakes, exploring the city and its environs and generally NOT thinking about book removals and attempts to demolish public education.

So, to reflect that little mini-break, today’s newsletter is going to be different. Specifically, I wanted to share some newsletters that nourish me, elaborate for a bit on why I love these pages, and maybe nudge you to subscribe to them. Then I’m going to log off and go watch a live-streamed school board meeting visit a Seattle bookstore. Maybe this one:

Three Book-ish Substacks You Should Be Reading Now:

Irina Dumitrescu - the process

Dumitrescu is a professor of medieval English literature at the University of Bonn and a columnist for the Times Literary Supplement. She’s also an engaging and wide-ranging writer who takes on everything from bad cooking to writer’s block. My favorite essay of hers is Swan, Late, her 2017 meditation on taking ballet classes as an adult beginner. But a strong second contender is her post from last August, “On not trying so hard.”

She doesn’t write Substack posts very often, but that means that when one shows up in your inbox, it will feel like a treat.¹

Tracy Clark-Flory - TCF Emails

I’ve been reading Tracy Clark-Flory’s writing for close to two decades, since I was a twenty-something teacher in Houston and she was a brand-new feminist writer for Salon.com. I followed her to Jezebel, and I eagerly read her 2021 memoir Want Me. I guess Clark-Flory is known for her willingness to take on any topic, but what I’ve always appreciated in her writing is her ability to bring thoughtfulness, nuance, and self-reflection to those topics. She writes about books, she writes about politics, she writes about reality TV, but she always writes well, and I’m always grateful when her perspective hits my inbox.

Sarah Orman - A Reader’s Compendium

A much more recent discovery for me has been Austin writer Sarah Orman’s A Reader’s Compendium, my new favorite book-ish newsletter. Orman takes deep dives into books, writers’ lives, and cultural commentary. A couple of recent posts I’ve loved from her are “George Orwell and Women” and this piece on mystery writer Tana French.

All three of these newsletters have brought me pleasure and made me think. I bet they’ll do the same for you.

1. I also appreciate Dumitrescu’s justification for sending out posts “once in a while”:

This is not an “every Friday” type newsletter. I’ll write you when I have something to say — and invite you to respond if you feel like it. That seems to be approximately once a month. But to protect the rest of my creative life, I’ve decided my goals for this newsletter are pleasure, connection, and discovery. It’s not another job.

When I was planning out my newsletter, I consciously took that way of thinking as a model!