It's what you like!

Sometimes I fear I might be made of books—everything I have ever read forming a kind of mulch, the bottom layers so decomposed I can’t even remember what I read, just a bricolage of turns of phrase and references and metaphors and ideas—what passes for a voice. Of course, I am not made of books—there’s also TV shows, song lyrics, movies, plays, magazine articles, newspaper articles, newsletters, blog pots, and things people I know have said. The title of this post is from Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, “It’s not what you’re like, it’s what you like.” As usual, a quote from someone else perfectly encapsulates how I feel. The works I admire form some sort of a foundation line, perhaps the main one, of my personality.

Sometimes I’m at a party or event and I meet someone who not only isn’t a reader (not that unusual) but doesn’t even seem that passionate about TV or movies or TikToks or anything. I am fairly certain that there’s almost no one who doesn’t consume media in some format or another—almost no one who attends parties, anyway—but there does seem to be a bunch of people who just don’t live it on the inside. I can’t imagine just passively ingesting a show and not immediately wanting to tell someone, maybe everyone, what I think and hear their opinions in response. I read a lot that’s fairly niche, and one of the frustrations of that is being unable to have a conversation about what I’ve read. The long-tail years, where content is more and more segmented and targeted, especially online, are brutal for sharers and talkers and deep feelers like me—I do think cultural products are best enjoyed in community. I actually find it almost impossible to watch TV or movies at home by myself; when I lived alone I ended up giving away my TV. And I love TV.

Anyway, all this to say that the newsletter era we are now in, with very specific content delivered from one creator to my personal inbox, as a simulation of person-to-person communication is…lovely and odd. There’s a bunch of newletter creators I like, but do not know. But I feel like I know them. One of the reasons I wanted to have a newsletter of my own is to join the conversation, in some sense, write back to them, but of course, many of them won’t subscribe. Nevertheless, I am doing it and in some way, it feels successful.

Anyway, if you like this newsletter (is it too early? can you tell if you like it yet? I hope you like it?) maybe you will like these others. They are great.

Hater Nation by Scaatchi Koul is a wonderfully mean and insightful and funny newsletter by journalist and person-on-the-internet Koul. She often uses it to link to recent articles she’s written, of which there are a lot—she’s prolific and it’s almost all worth reading—but also the newsletter itself has a high jokes-per-capita: her parents are re-occurring characters; she shares stuff about her friends, dates, and cats; and her cultural commentary is spot-on and eviserating. It used be called “A List of 10 People I Hate” or something like that and the list always included Ben Affleck for reasons I never understood but I laughed anyway.

Bibliographic 2.0 by Teri Vlassoupolos is a diaristic monthly newsleter from a Toronto writer, parent, karaoke singer and fully engaged human. I like the way Vlassoupolos encapsulates her life every month, from how her daughter is changing and growing to what her friends have been doing to what editing work feels like. It’s very much how my mind works. There’s also lovely photos. I don’t know why the 2.0—I assume there was another version of the newsletter before, but I wasn’t around for it.

Inbox Collective by Dan Oshinsky This is a newsletter about newsletters and really some of the wind beneath the wings of the Rose-coloured newsletter. Oshinsky is a newsletter whisperer, very knowledgeable and enthusiastic, with tonnes of experience at The New Yorker, Slate, loads of cool places, and every week he comes up with more good stuff to say about newsletters. I went to a couple of his webinars and even emailed him once, and he’s always friendly and delightful, but obviously, his most natural metier is in newletter format.

I actually subscribe to tonnes more newsletters that are awesome—this is just a few highlights—but I just decided right now that I wanted to have a preview section in this newsletter to let you all know what’s coming up in future issues.

Preview

I decided this newsletter needed a linguist-in-chief, mainly because I know a good linguist—this linguist: A.M. Tessier is a linguist, professor and dog parent, with a lot of energy for hobbies that require specialized shoes or aprons. A Toronto native with many former area codes (416/514/413/780/517), she is now settled in the BC Lower Mainland. She also tells a lot of stories.

We haven’t fully decided what form the linguist-in-chief posts will take but likely many of them will feature dogs—these dogs:

And finally, I will unexpectedly be adding interviews to the roster of things this newsletter features. This is how that came about:

Rebecca talks to her brother Ben on the subway: Hey, I don’t know if you’ve heard the rumours—I’m starting a newsletter.

BR: No, I have not heard those rumours.

RR: I’m starting a newsletter.

BR: Great.

RR: You should subscribe.

BR: Ok.

RR: Hey, would you ever want to contribute something for it, like a guest post?

BR: Maybe.

RR: You can write about whatever you want, any topic.

BR: I would have to write it? You wouldn’t just ask me questions and you write it up?

RR: Oh, would you prefer that? I could do that, if you want? Would you do it if it;s an interview?

BR: I would do an interview and then review the write up and have final veto.

RR: That seems fair. What should the topic be?

BR: Can the interview actually be about the terms of the agreement?

RR: let’s consider it more. We have until I find a recording app for my phone.