Memorial Day Weekend Reading

Plus this week's Highs & Lows

What are you reading this weekend? I’m finishing my friend Lidija’s wonderful novel Slanting Towards the Sea which comes out a week before Everyone is Lying to You.

How gorgeous is her cover!!! There’s an awesome story behind it that I am going to have her share on the podcast in a couple of weeks.

I am also finally getting around to Broken Country because I tipsily joined a book club at the school auction last night and I need to catch up before our first meeting.

If you’re looking for something to read I’ve decided to release my entire short story THE REVERSAL to the first 100 people to order Everyone is Lying to You this weekend.

Here’s a list of purchasing options, but it’s also available at a lot of indie bookstores and you can get signed copies mailed to you here and here.

Fill out the form here and you will get the pdf of THE REVERSAL.

Grab one for a friend too. You don’t want to read alone.

Here’s the premise for THE REVERSAL:

The future arrived quietly. No dramatic collapse, no sudden catastrophe, just the slow realization that an entire generation of men could no longer father children. Environmental toxins had done what no war or plague could: they'd broken the most basic biological imperative.

In this new world, women finally have the power they've always deserved. The Agency controls access to the Reversal, a procedure that can restore male fertility, and Alice Walter is one of their best evaluators and surgeons. Her job is simple: separate the men who will be good fathers from those who won’t.

But power has always been a dangerous thing to take from those who believe it belongs to them.

When Alice rejects Jack Kinkaid's application, she becomes the target of his rage and desperation. In one terrifying night, she's forced to confront the violence that lurks beneath the surface of male entitlement and to make an impossible choice between her principles and her family's safety.

The Reversal is a provocative thriller that asks: In a world where women finally control reproduction, how far will men go to reclaim what they believe is theirs?

This is still in draft form so I am taking all suggestions but even in draft I think it is a fun read. I’ll be quick to send it out so you can all read this weekend and the pdf should work on e-readers or phones. Or print it and ignore your kids at the pool. And when you email no need to apologize for buying on Amazon. EVERYONE DOES IT. I do it. We all need things to be easy and if that’s your easy thing then let it be. You’re amazing.

OK for Highs and Lows this week I invited my friend, the author and journalist Elizabeth Greenwood to share what was amazing and what sucked balls. Liz and I are going to be chatting about her new book Everyday Intuition on Tuesday night at Headhouse Books, my local indie if you are in Philly and want to come by.

Everyday Intuition is a captivating and insightful deep dive into the world of human intuition, exploring the power of this elusive phenomenon and how it can be harnessed to better know and trust ourselves.

Here are Liz’s things!

HIGHS

Cowboy Carter in Chicago: At 42 years of age and of a perpetually cranky constitution, I have. Big Event quota of one per every half decade, and what better place to spend it than a Beyoncé concert?! I live in Brooklyn but realized it would be easier to get to Chicago than to East Rutherford, NJ for her “New York” dates. And this was a perfect excuse to see my bestie and his bf who live there, so we doffed our cowboy hats and set off into the Chicago night!

Also, we got floor tickets for a fraction of the cost, so this girl math was mathing when I was thisclose to the goddess herself. Cowboy Carter is my most favorite Beyoncé aesthetic, and the fans DELIVERED in fringe vests, booty cutoffs, and rodeo sashes, for some choice best people watching. After spending 100 USD on three sodas and three pretzels at Soldier Field, my friends and I got our lives to the performance and artistry of truly the most beautiful human of our time. The best part was not thinking about my self and my little problems for the better part of three hours. The next day we had a meta and barely coherent sleep deprived conversation about the genius behind Beyoncé’s cultural curation and how she herself is more like a spokeswoman for the Beyoncé brand, a brand to which I gladly forked over much dinero for merch and the privilege of being on the planet at the same time as Her.

We Do Not Care Club: I spent my last three brain cells creating a TikTok account and goddamn Mephistopheles has my algorithm down to a SCIENCE. It recently served me Melani Sanders’s We Do Not Care Club, an account for perimenopausal and menopausal women. Every day, Sanders recites items about which we no longer care. Some recent items include:

• Being on time: “Baby, be happy I showed up, I didn’t want to be here no way.”

• That we look like Adam Sandler and Wesley Snipes: “That’s how God made me.”

• If I forgot what I was talking about: “Start a new conversation.”

• If we look pregnant and we’re no pregnant

• Cellulite in short shorts: “Legs is legs.”

I spend so much time cackling at Sanders’s delivery and the hilarity in the comments. MY PEOPLE!

H&M is really good right now: I know, I know, fast fashion BAD. But sometimes it just HITS. Fruit prints, wide leg pants with elastic waists that look chic but feel like pajamas, matching sets (again see chic jammies). My wardrobe consists of rentals from Rent the Runway (where you can get actually nice designer shit), Nuuly (last season’s Anthropologie) and H&M, and I will tell you I get the most compliments on my amoral H&M! I will never learn to shop like a grown-up, investing in timeless pieces for a capsule wardrobe. When I shop, which is rarely, it more closely resembles Supermarket Sweep > woman who respects her time and image. I ducked into the Herald Square location last week, just off the 8^th circle of Hell, and left with a HAUL. Summer wardrobe, check. Immaturity masquerading as a fountain of youth? Double check.