Open Book Newsletter #1
The first edition of Open Book, a weekly round-up of reads (and other cultural pleasures) from writer and editor Che-Marie Trigg.
The year 2023 was a reset for me. I went freelance, giving me more time to recommit to my first love: reading (sorry Leonardo Dicaprio, you were always a distant second). For the first time in a long time I had the brain capacity and time to properly think about what I’m reading, to work out why I like something or don’t, and to read books I wouldn’t have prioritised before.
So, I figured, I spend so much time (and an unseemly amount of money) on reading, I should harness it into something productive. Enter: this newsletter. For now it’s going to be a weekly compilation of longreads, shortreads, books and magazines I’ve enjoyed, as well as book-adjacent reccs. And maybe even other things that are making me feel good, like films, recipes and music. They may not necessarily be new. They might be dumb. There might be an entire newsletter coming up dedicated to Agatha Christie (I am slowly working my way through her catalogue. I have a lot of thoughts).
What this will not be is negative or mean or overly intellectual (I’m a complete novice when it comes to writing about books, and too lowbrow to be a proper book critic). If I don’t like it, it’s not going in here (though if you want my opinion on, say, the latest Zadie Smith, I’m happy to oblige, privately). Plus, the internet is increasingly gross. I don’t want to add to that.
This week I am loving Barbara Kingsolver, tucking into some wide-ranging food writing and crying in H Mart.
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
I’m a bit late to this one, yes. Michelle Zauner’s memoir about the painful loss of her mother to gruelling cancer and their mutual love of, and communion over Korean food has directly galvanised me to read more memoirs. I gulped it down in one tear- and snot-stained evening and it did double-duty of helping me miss my mum a bit more than I already do (she is in Australia, I am in England) and stirring a craving for Korean food. This book is so painstakingly written, digging into the stickiness of mother-daughter relationships and the sheer horror of cancer without falling back on familiar ‘fuck cancer’ tropes. I love Zauner’s honesty in not just unveiling the grief that followed her mum’s death, but also the growth she earned from that trauma. Admitting not just awfulness can come from death can be a bit taboo, so it’s nice to see Zauner speak to the “suspiciously charmed” years following her mum’s death, in which her band Japanese Breakfast grew in popularity.
The Stanley water bottle craze, explained by Alex Abad-Santos on Vox
I don’t Tiktok. So seeing videos of people in the US elbowing each other aside to get their hands on a limited-edition Stanley cup came as a surprise to me. Turns out there’s a whole section of Tiktok devoted to Stanley Cups. People have shelves of them. They buy limited-edition cups for hundreds of dollars. Watertok, aka people adding flavouring to their water so they drink more, is a thing. This is not a wormhole I intended to fall down, and, yes, I’m a bit mad about how dumb it is. And also a little confused. Turns out Alex Abad-Santos is, too: the Vox writer decided to investigate this frankly bizarre craze. His article goes some way towards explaining the context behind this trend (and how buying many, many reusable cups is environmentally dubious). I still hate it.
The Dinner Table: Over 100 Writers on Food edited by Kate Young and Ella Risbridger
I picked this heavy-duty (720-page) anthology at my local bookstore on a whim. I consume more food writing than actual food, and am always eager for more education on foodways, food history and provenance. This book offers up a taste of all of those – and it doesn’t just star food writers. There are food-related excerpts from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott and even Bridget Jones’s Diary, alongside more expected writing from culinary big-shots Fergus Henderson, Nigella Lawsona and Nigel Slater (my fave; see below), and even recipes from a woman who was formerly enslaved in 19th-century USA. It encompasses a range of cuisines and foods (from raita to marmalade, bread and ice-cream), a range of experiences of eating (straight from the fridge, at a dinner party, on a picnic blanket) and is simply a really lovely tribute to the role of food beyond the eating, all the ways we think about it, and all the ways it’s metaphorised. The piece that’s stuck with me the most is by Jimi Famurewa, the chief restaurant critic at the Evening Standard. It’s an excerpt from his book Settlers: Journeys Through the Food, Faith and Culture of Black African London, and in it he visits African and Afro-Caribbean markets and grocers around London, talking to stallholders and store owners and their customers about the role of these institutions in fostering diasporic communities and helping the individuals in those communities find a taste of home. I learnt so much about these places I often walk past (and now I really want to eat more of these cuisines).
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
No one needs this book recommendation from me; it seems as though every second person I know has read Demon Copperhead. But here we are. Demon Copperhead is one of the few books I’ve read where I’ve mentally begged the author to allow the protagonist a happy ending. Demon (birth name Damon) is born in a single-wide trailer in the Appalachians, in the poorest part of a very poor community. His teenage mum is an addict – but his early childhood is one of the happiest times of his life. Through telling Demon’s story this book spans rural poverty, how big companies suck what they can from these areas and leave them to rot, the opioid crisis, domestic violence and male friendship.
Despite all this malaise, the story never weighs too heavy. I read it in just a couple of days. Demon Copperhead is sad, it’s sometimes funny, often tragic and absolutely damning of the poverty found in the richest country on earth, while finding the beauty and joy in these communities who are so often ridiculed by people with no sense of what life is like for them.
Bonus recc: Nigel Slater’s butter beans, cannellini and cavolo nero
This is turning out to be a very food-heavy newsletter! I have a deep love for Nigel Slater (and his garden). His food writing is immensely soothing and his recipes always make me immediately want to get into the kitchen and cook (sadly my kitchen is no thing of beauty like his). The Observer is a great paper, but I admittedly mainly buy it every Sunday for his recipe column. I made this little number when my boyfriend was out earlier this week; it was so simple but bolstering on a freezing winter’s night. Be sure to add the lemon – it does a lot of heavy lifting flavour-wise. I reckon this could also work as a sauce for a pasta, or have a bit of spicy Italian sausage added to it for those who reckon no meal is complete without meat.