presents to myself

I wrote a lot this past month — for BuzzFeed, in book edits, just not in this newsletter, which I hate, because this newsletter works as a sort of release valve for the stream of consciousness I’m forced to filter for my other writing. Like a lot of people, I feel unsettled during this so-called dead week, when it’s never clear how much you should be working, whether you should feel shame or glee about it. But it’s increasingly clear that my unsettledness has less to do with the actual structures of work and more to do with my increased antipathy towards ambient-always working. I want to work or not work, not have this melty liminal space that seeps into everything.

But I love new planners, and our New Year’s tradition of a massive Portuguese Fisherman’s Stew, and reflecting, generally, on the year — especially all of the truly excellent writing and thinking I read/consumed. You can see my favorite books below, but I’ve also collected a mishmash of favorites from the internet and quasi-categorized them below. As I wrote last year, with all the arbitrary energy around a new year, it feels important to spend time to allow the old, in all its sorrow and glory, to catch up with us.

Uncategorizable Favs:

• The real experience of fixing cable in the homes of America

• How a version of Universal Basic Income is working in Alaska

• A Black Legacy, Wrapped in Fur

• The Rio Grande Amputation Crisis

• The best piece of climate change writing I read this year

• Down South, The New Succession

• A transformative reading: Is prison necessary?

• A weeklong kayak trip you won’t be able to stop reading

• I probably linked to something Adam Serwer wrote every other week, but here’s the ones that feel canonical: the deep roots of white nationalism; civility is overrated

• We were poor, but the beach was ours

• The Hobbyhorse Girls of Finland

• Feels like a parable, doesn’t it

• America, the Gerontocracy

• Queering Barbie

• When Mayor Pete Calls

• Climate Disaster at Wounded Knee

• Time is Broken

• Am I Writing About My Life, Or Just Selling Myself Out?

Media criticism, broadly defined:

• The Problem of Queen Anne’s Body

• Spotify as Emotional Surveillance

• The True Greatness of Hootie

• Teenage Pricks

• Susan Sontag’s Queer Life

• I Interviewed David from the Real World: Seattle Because It’s Never Too Late to Realize Your Childhood Dreams

• How Did Lauren Duca’s Revolution Backfire?

• One of the only times I’ve actually found an actor interviewing an actor compelling

• Inside R/Relationships

• The only thing to read on ‘Cancel Culture’

• Hustlers and the female gaze, Hustlers and pre-recession fashion

• YES FIONA

• The Dark Secret Behind Where The Crawdads Sing

• Little Women’s Marmee Problem

On Daily Life:

• The Best Skin-Care Trick is Being Rich

• How the Great Recession Influenced a Decade of Design

• The Poor Can’t Afford to Not Wear Nice Clothes

• How Instagram Changed Our Living Spaces

• The Why of Cooking

• The Age of Bold and Blocky Book Covers

• The Trap of Turning Hobbies Into Hustles

• The Case for Rooms

• The Rise of ‘Mama’

• Outdoor Voices

• A journey through internet garbage

• Cheap, meaningful, Payless Shoes

• Grandmillennial style

• Women did everything right. Then work got ‘greedy.’

• How women suffer when everything is designed for men

• Mother, Writer, Monster, Maid

• Darkness of the Edge of Cougartown

• Whatever you think this article on spin class is going to be from the headline, it’s not that

• The Scourge of Worker Wellness Programs

Profiles That’ve Stayed With Me:

• Sally Rooney

• The Benedictine Monks of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert

• Who Killed Tulum?

• Miriam Toews

• Naomi

• This Scammer

• Harmony Korine, Glorious Weirdo

• Incel Plastic Surgery

• Constance Wu

• The Florida Shuffle

• A good horse

• Northern Lights Tourism

Just Trust Me Again:

• Try this one

• And this one

• And this one

• Always just trust me on Patricia Lockwood

• Oh but this one

• And this one

• And, for this week, this one

And some things I wrote this month:

• The Sort-Of Socialist Church Focused on Debt Relief (one of the things I worked hardest on this year)

• 12 People Talk Honestly About How They Paid Off Their Debt (I found all of these so compelling)

• On the appeal of Large Adult Man Adam Driver

• A coda of sorts to my dissertation: How the 2010s Killed the Celebrity Gossip Machine

I read 49 books this year. I set out with a goal of reading, well, a lot more. The aim was somewhere around 52, but really what I wanted was a return to that feeling of near-constant grounding in some book, any fiction book, amidst everything else. I read dozens more for work, and for my own book, but I don’t think of them — or the reading process — in the same way. These 49 books were read on planes, on beaches, on long Sunday afternoons, in hotels after a long day reporting, at night to take my mind elsewhere. They were presents to myself, and what you see above are a few of my favorites.

I’d love to hear what you also loved — and, as always, your suggestions for future reads and potential “Just Trust Mes.” Simply reply to this email — or find me at annehelenpetersen@gmail.com. You can follow me on Twitter here, and on Instagram here. And if you want to give someone a New Year’s present, or think they’d like this sort of thing in their inbox once a week-ish, just forward it their way. (You can subscribe here).