Honolulu, Kittens, Tarot Sleuths, & Going Broke
Uncommon Writing from our Stacky Floating World
Okay, pussycats, it’s that time again: my updated “Reading Love List” on Substack.
Of course, I read the “bigwigs” on Stack— duh.
Don’t you want to know who else is spit-take incredible, who hardly anyone is talking about? I do.
I change my recommendations every month; let me know if you have some ride-or-die suggestions. They need to NOT be ubiquitous, post at least once a month, and write like fire.
Shall we begin?
The Chatner - Daniel Lavery
Daniel Lavery was once Mr. Toast. He was “Prudence” in Dear Prudence on Slate!
Why is our boo not a household name? —Not for my lack of trying!
In this essay, Lavery takes us deep into a children’s book I bet you thought you knew by heart. Now the HOP and the POP are going deep.
Girls of a Certain Age - Kim France
Okay, listen up, style babes. Kim France was the founding editor of Lucky Magazine. Need I say more?!
Kim’s taste is TO DIE FOR. Her writing unerring. It’s the fashion intelligentsia. Every week, she writes a feature called “Things I want, Things I bought” and her evil scheme is for me to follow her irresponsible closet-mongering. It’s working.
Tarot for Scholars - Helen Swords and Margy Thomas
Every time I see the title, “Tarot for Scholars” I crack up. Then I read every word. Somehow this duo of hardcore academics— Helen and Margy— knew that we Jungian symbol-loving freaks could not resist a good picture and a story.
Make your day, draw a card! Today I drew the Seven of Wands:
Adrian McKinty’s Substack
We dragged Adrian over to the Stack. DRAGGED him from his hideyhole on TwitFuck.
You may know that before Mr. McKinty hit the mystery bestseller list—the Northern Ireland love parade—he had one of the best independent blogs around. Now we have him back, people! Gaelic Code-Switching, naturally.
His latest post is a draft of a Sean Duffy story he's polishing.
Ariel Gore
Ariel Gore is my colleague, and saucy seer.
She is an uncommonly talented writer, cartoonist, and bullshit-detector. We both had daughters the same year. I insisted she bring her bell, book, and candle over to Substack. Thank me later, your mouth on the floor.
The past few years, Ariel lived with her wife Deena who was dying of MBS. They wrote a zine about it called Kittens, Blunts, and Metastatic Breast Cancer. I would not dream of “cancer-ing” without it.
Honolulu Blotter - Scott Kikkawa
There is little about the Japanese American, or Honolulu lived experience on Substack. So far, as Bart Simpson would say.
Yet I believe even if our mutual interests flourish, Scott Kikkawa’s observations of mid-century Territorial Hawaii, the Japanese-American zeitgeist, and the call of ancestral home when one is generationally near and yet so far — is irresistible. He’s the best.
This is a story of his first travels to Kyoto, with broken Japanese and a serious dread of Temples. Let us enter:
In Case You Missed It
The History of the Blatant Lesbian Image
I wrote this, as a love letter. It's a letter evoked by many authors before me— a story written secretly, without fanfare of any sort, for as long as women have conjured up a picture of their sex, and their sex together.
Today I drew the King of Swords 🗡️