032: Read Like a Magpie

Shirley Hazzard, Garth Greenwell, Kaitlyn Greenidge, Jakob Guanzon, Syed Masood, the Strugatsky brothers & more

Yesterday I posted a version of this photo on my Instagram stories and immediately second-guessed it.

I had just come back from Still North Books where I had the almost normal experience of going inside a store, talking to some people, getting a coffee . . . and then picking up my pre-ordered books from the curbside pick-up table outside the front door. (I guess this is Covid-19 2.0: Still Doing Curbside Pick-Up, except for Coffee.) Back at home, Cleanness was lying around, so I dropped it on the stack of new books because I like it and haven’t written about it. I took a photo, posted it in Stories and tagged Douglas Stuart (author of my favorite novel of 2020 and probably 2021 - 2025, Shuggie Bain) because he was the reason I’d gone looking for Abundance, and tagged Jakob Guanzon. A bit later I saw that Douglas Stuart and Jakob Guanzon had both messaged me which triggered the following sequence in my brain: whoa!/omg!/fangirl!, then, is my feed cool enough?—to which the answer is abs…