Hi y’all,
Last week I took a break, which (whoops) wasn’t planned. And in my absence, I have attended not one, but two Substack meet ups! Surprisingly, both were more-fun and less-weird than I expected. I guess we’re all just a lot more accustomed to meeting up with strangers from the internet these days (thank u Hinge).
This week’s Book Scout is Boy(friend) George, who managed to spot some really great books while we were together on the train recently. Here’s who he pointed out to me—
Spotted: How to Blow Up a Pipeline on the L shuttle bus. I don’t remember what this reader was wearing, I didn’t write it down, but I’m sure she looked incredible. On the A train, a woman in a very chic, professional outfit reading David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years. This is one of George’s favorite books. While we were in our woo-ing phase, he sent me a 80 minute video of a talk Graeber gave on Debt. I never watched it. We still got together, so it’s okay.
This week, I recommend that you finish your books in one sitting.
Whenever I tell people this is my reading strategy, they look at me like fucking crazy. Or they roll their eyes. Book Notes, they say, you can do that because you’re a fast reader, because you have amazing concentration. Me? I’d get distracted.
Wrong, wrong, wrong! You’re all wrong! I’m a horribly slow reader and my concentration is just as fucked as yours. Finishing my book in one sitting is actually my solution to both of these problems.
I only read if I have enough time on hand to get through at least 100 or 200 pages. Flow state or nuthin, bitch. I don’t read faster than you, I just read for longer. Because if I put the book down, I will never finish it.
So I don’t put the book down.
Okay, like, yes, sometimes I do put the book down. And I admit, this strategy works best if you read short books. They by Kay Dick is my current recommendation for a book you’ll finish in around two hours or so, but you’ll think about for much, much longer. Lmk what books are like this for you.
Now y’all know where the name of this column comes from :) it’s a horrible pun on a book title and computer terminals :) I’m sorry :’)
Gooooo Hop!
Recently, some of my fellow alumnae have been celebrating the ascent of our university, Johns Hopkins, in the ranks of the US News Best Universities list. We rose this year from #9 to #7. Although Hopkins is notorious for its lack of school spirit, for a moment, my fellow alumnae were uncharacteristically proud of their alma mater (Possibly because JHU has now surpassed most of the universities that rejected us ten years ago).
Except this year, revenge-of-the-rejected was a secondary story to a scandal that made me positively gleeful. Hopkins rise, this year at least, is in part attributable to fall of Columbia—from #2 to #18.
This dramatic fall from grace began in February, when a math professor at Columbia released an in-depth expose and analysis of the falsified and manipulated data that Columbia reported to the US News. Dr. Michael Thaddeus released this pages-long essay on his blog, which is hosted on Columbia’s own website.
Y’all. I read this blog aloud to George as we walked home from the climbing gym on Tuesday, and we were both, like, straight-up jovial. Like, buoyant. Like, the schadenfreude has never been higher.
Idk, sorry if you went to Columbia, but it’s kinda hilarious that the core curriculum loving, goody-two shoes, stuffy ol' university has been saying he’s 6’0 when he barely scrapes 5’10.1
This launched a longer conversation about the utility, reliability and justness of college rankings, and that’s all well and good and interesting, but simply not as salacious and funny as the Columbia stuff. Also, my university is #7 now. I have a vested interest in the status quo. Sorry y’all!
Cool Girls
Years after the infamous “cool girl” monologue in Gone Girl, the cool girl has been reclaimed, or something, I guess. Move over #girlboss, the cool girl is here, she’s a girl’s-girl, and she defines herself by her consumption rather than by her hustle. She’s got a smokey drawl, a .5 selfie, waif-vibes, and a direct lineage from 2017 Red Scare, whether or not she knows it (or is willing to admit it). She reads books about “unhinged women.” I already gently made fun of her 2 years ago, in a meme that went low-key viral on instagram:
In the past year or so, there’s been an impressive proliferation of “cool girl” and “hot girl” Instagrams, TikToks, Social Medias, etc. It’d be fun to dissect it another day. For now, I’m just here to report on a Cool Girl scandal that made me laugh.
@coolgirlsreadingbooks is an instagram that posts pictures of Cool Girls, reading books. It’s like 2015’s infamous @hotdudesreading account, except the girls are clearly submitting photos of themselves, so it’s a lotta self-voyeurism (which like, tbt, read more here).
Well, last week Cool Girls Reading shared a carousel of Queen Elizabeth reading—thereby implying Queen Elizabeth was a Cool Girl. The comments immediately got heated, with plenty of ladies chiming in, saying that they were “disappointed” and “disgusted” with Cool Girls Reading for supporting an imperialist colonizer! In fact, the commenters “lost all respect” for Cool Girls Reading, which really made me wonder why anyone would have unquestioning respect for a random Instagram that posts pictures of 18-year-old girls reading to begin with? (This isn’t a jab at Cool Girls Reading, btw. It’s wayyyyyyy weirder to “respect” some rando on the internet2 than it is to post pics of Cool Girls.)
Cool Girls Reading issued a clarification—this post was not an endorsement. Q.E. may be reading, but she is not a Cool Girl!
Did you hear that? Queen Elizabeth is NOT a Cool Girl!
Idk, I just love this sort of absurd clarification. It reminds me of the collection I used to keep of inane newspaper corrections. A favorite:
I FINALLY got myself a copy of Lauren Oyler’s Fake Accounts, thanks to Substack and the recommendation of Sam, who writes Exasperated Infrastructure.
Alright ladies, fellas, friends. I’m signing off. I will be back next week with a review—or two!
xoxo
Book Notes
For the record, I’ve never applied to or been rejected by Columbia. I’ve just always had the sense that the school is kinda lame. I say this having attended Hopkins, which I know for a fact was very lame (though I still kinda love it). The only real beef I have with Columbia is that they charge $76k for a year for a fucking MFA. That’s highway robbery.
Unless that rando is me!!!!!!!! Unquestioning respect for me please!
Just kidding. I prefer if you pay me normal respect, like, human to human, gal pal to gal pal respect.
Apropos of nothing in particular, have you read "Bunny" by Mona Awad? It's been a long time since I've hated a book so much, and I'm curious what your take is on it.
It was less weird than I thought it would be.