Show & Tell: Happy Birthday. Sad Messi.
This is Show & Tell where I tell you some things I loved from the week and the one thing I hated, plus round up everything else going on around these parts. The first half of Show & Tell is free to all. The adoration and hateration are for paid subscribers only.
I have had a wonderful week. We celebrated my birthday with a dinner, a party bus, and hours of dancing, then woke up for a World Cup final watch party. This week I also met my goal and ran a sub 6-minute mile1. It has been a great week, but the thing about doing it big is you get big tired. I was planning on skipping writing this all together, but I figured I should wrap up the World Cup and review the book I finished. So that’s what I’m doing today. A very abridged Show & Tell for the week. Expect short and sweet with plenty of typos. Because who has time to edit on three hours sleep?
And for those of you asking, what do I want for my birthday this year? I want you to subscribe to my newsletter. So you should go ahead and do what I asked.
This Week in The Stacks
Lindsey died.
I talked with journalist Pamela Colloff about her fantastic new book Catch the Devil. She shared some really special insights into her career and its relationship to gossip.
How about 42 nonfiction classics to add to your TBR?
Books I Read This Week
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
A work of deeply reported nonfiction that follows the lives of people living in Annawadi, a slum in Mumbai. I didn’t like this book2. I had a bunch of issues with the book, big ones and small ones, but the biggest was that I never felt I understood what Boo was doing with this book. Why did she want to tell this story? What was she hoping to share with her reader? Who was her audience? The lack of clarity and context made the whole book feel disjointed and without purpose.
Fave of the Week3
Housekeeping
I was a guest on the Walkin’ About podcast this week. I walked through DTLA and the LA Public Library with host Allan McLeod
Things I Love…
Sports
Sad Messi is one of my favorite things. And ladies and gentlemen, we got Sad Messi. We had to wait until the very last moments of the very last match, but patience in sports is often rewarded with maximal devastation.
Other loves from this last week of the World Cup?
That delightfully stretched third place game between France and England. A match with 10 goals? We got it all, a comeback (almost) a hat trick, more Jude, Mpabbe getting himself the Golden Boot and becoming the all time goal scorer in World Cup history, surpassing Messi’ record. Cue Sad Messi.
Oh, an Spain won the World Cup. Go off, I guess.
There was also a truly batshit insane halftime show. It had muppets and Justin Bieber doing an acoustic set and Shakira dancing with a billion children. The theme was LOVE. Am I on drugs?
Internet Things
I laughed.
