The book is beside you. You could read the book. You keep telling yourself to read the book. You want to read the book. Of course, you do not read the book. Who could possibly compare to beautiful, interesting, blue-lit phone? Not book!
But you want to be book person, not phone person. We know, it’s hard. You’re more likely to watch a film split into 75 parts on TikTok and spliced with footage of people playing Temple Run or Subway Surfers, so how on earth could you read a book?
Look, don’t beat yourself up about it. Instead bridge the gap. Read good things on phone, build up to book. A Substack, perhaps. A Substack will get you off Twitter, sorry, X. A Substack will free you from watching videos of people rolling bottles down the stairs on TikTok. Here are some good ones to start with.
1. The Unpublishable by Jessica DeFino
As all beauty writers know, it’s tricky to write about the beauty industry. It’s trickier still to publish writing on the beauty industry at publications and companies which invariably have close links to the industry. Critique, even the lightest critique, is rare. Writer Jessica DeFino has circumnavigated that problem with the aptly named The Unpublishable, her newsletter about the weirdness and the wonder of the world of beauty. In a politics-free zone which she calls ‘the beauty industry’s least favourite newsletter’ Jessica covers ageing, the Kardashians, Barbie, cannibalism and more. This week’s release is an inspired list of Oppenheimer-chic buys (those cheekbones!). Subscribe here.
2. Embedded by Kate Lindsay and Nick Catucci
The internet is a big and confusing place. Every time you think you have it down, it changes and then you’re left baffled again, wondering what ijbol means, or why they changed the hand-sign that means “heart”. Anyway! Tackling all that madness is Embedded, a weekly newsletter from journalists Kate Lindsay and Nick Catucci. An “essential guide to what’s good on the internet”, Embedded covers everything from the weird trends that infest your FYP, to advice columns on understanding the chaos of the information superhighway and regular interviews with other extremely online individuals. A highlight from their recent posts is this investigation into why going viral suck now, just really really sucks. Subscribe here.
3. Idle Thoughts by Shon Faye
If you like your newsletters a little slower, a little more in-depth and a little more essay focused, then Idle Thoughts from Shon Faye is a great one to subscribe to. The journalist and author of The Transgender Issue posts about embodiment, exercise, dating, ageing, sexuality and grief. Idle Thoughts is kind of like a balm to the breakneck ugliness of Twitter, a slower paced Instagram. Shon’s modus operandi for the Substack reads like a definitive explanation for why the platform exists in the first place: “I have felt increasingly limited by both the slow death of print and online journalism and the lack of left-wing political media in the UK. This landscape has reduced the positive working relationships on offer to me as a writer who is also a socialist, a woman and a transsexual at a time of tedious culture wars,” she writes. “I also find it cringe that everything I write now needs to have to have a ‘hook’ to an inane news story or to what people I’ve never heard of are discussing on Twitter that day, which is how commissions have been going for a while.” Subscribe here.
4. From the Desk of by Alicia Kennedy
Foodie internet is a jungle, truly. Every recipe comes with 5,000 words on the creator’s childhood before you even begin to understand how much flour and how many eggs you need. Restaurant write-ups are either angry Karens posting Google reviews or critics posting to websites infested with ads. There isn’t much out there from individual writers and creators — with the notable caveat of publications like Vittles based out of the UK — to delve into the thorniest issues of food and eating and the industry. Alicia Kennedy’s weekly newsletter is one of the exceptions. Covering not just the act and art of cooking and eating but food culture, politics and media, it’s a Substack about the love of food and its constellation of concerns: politics and labor and hospitality and sourcing and everything else. Every Monday there’s an essay somehow related to the industry; this week’s was about the concept of ‘women’s work’. Subscribe here.
5. Internet Princess by Rayne Fisher-Quann
If you’re going to be painfully online enough to want to read a list recommending Substacks to subscribe to, then we’d best include at least one more stellar recommendation on the world of internet culture. Who better than i-D contributor and culture writer Rayne Fisher-Quann to provide it. Internet Princess is part essay, part meditation on online culture, part reading list. If you like the stuff on there, then you’re in luck, the most recent instalment is the announcement of Rayne’s upcoming book (remember those!). Subscribe here.
6. Out Of It by Mary Gaitskill
If you thought Substacks were only the universe of the painfully young or painfully online (or the publications trying painfully to access both those universes) then think again. The joy of writing for yourself, for people who have specifically signed up to see it, appeals to the net’s microcelebrities just as much as it appeals to veritable literary stars. Out of It, from author, essayist and short story writer Mary Gaitskill, is one of the best of the best. In it, she covers everything from academia, going blonde, air travel and cats. The latest instalment is about art and the body, from Simone Weil to Homer (not that one). Subscribe here.