#76 A Slow Sunday Scroll ☕️
celebrations + lots of good reading material
My new novel Table For One is out in three weeks (in the UK)! You can order a special signed copy from Phlox books here.
This week I met a friend for dinner, and while standing outside in the queue (it was a popular restaurant), a man with a clipboard was taking names for the waitlist:
“It’s a 20 minute wait, I’m afraid. Can I take your name?”
I gave my name, said I’m happy to wait.
“Celebrating anything special tonight?” he asked, his pen hovering over the tick-box question on his clipboard.
“Oh, um… you know—just celebrating life!”
Celebrating this random Tuesday, on this street, in London town. Being alive.
He nodded and smiled. (In hindsight, I think I might have sounded slightly unhinged.)
But this is how I’ve been feeling lately. Celebratory. Joyful. Dyed my hair. Burnout long gone. I look at the moon most nights and think huh: I’m back. I enjoy food again. I can go out with friends and not fall asleep at the table. I can get up early instead of needing to sleep for hours. If I start spiralling, I can think a logical thought and stop the spiral in its tracks. Any sort of rough patch in life can be savage. You’re barely able to function. And then when you do function again, you feel half elated (I’m alive!) and half absolutely gutted (that was not normal!) Now: I’ve learned to honour the seasons. When it’s bleak AF outside, I honour that. Candles, blankets, bath potions, inner witch. And when I have something to celebrate and the sun and blossom pokes out: I honour that too. A big tree outside my house is blossoming in a very extra way and I think it’s saying: IT’S TIME TO UNFURL! PUT YOUR SUNNIES ON, GET OUT THERE AND CELEBRATE THIS STUPIDLY GOOD LIFE.
So, I’m in celebration mode. I spent the best part of four years writing a new novel, and now I can CELEBRATE this small blip of time when it’s published and (hopefully) garners some attention. It would be rude not to. This week, my publisher hosted a dinner for some journalists at a gorgeous restaurant in Soho. My diary is full of fun things. I just put a celebration breakfast in the diary with my fellow Women’s Prize judges. I’m organising a Substack dinner party (you’re invited, link coming soon), another dinner with friends on publication eve, and a dinner with my parents on publication night. I’m not having a traditional launch party this time round, but boy am I celebrating.
We don’t get these good moments in life very often. Most of life is full of admin, repetition, or drudgery—so I am leaning into the celebrations hard.
Alexa, play Kool and The Gang, Celebration!
For anyone new to The Hyphen newsletter: this is my ~Slow Sunday Scroll round-up~. This is a twice-monthly list of my favourite books, links, podcasts, things I’ve bought, all handpicked by me — which thousands of paid subscribers enjoy reading every other week ✨ It’s one of my most popular features and I’ve been doing a version of these lists since 2015!
In this issue below, I share my book tour programming, books I’m reading and a podcast episode I can’t stop thinking about.
Excited to be doing lots of fun events for my new novel Table For One during April/May/June! ALL tickets and dates here: 👇
— What Farrah Storr learned in her 40s & Abi Morgan learned in her 50s
— Donna Lancaster writes about Adolescence
— 12 Women on Living Alone
— The Gen X Career Meltdown
— The birth of a new media system
—The stigma and joy of a table for one (my article for The Guardian)
— Can Simon & Schuster Become the A24 of Books?
— Stop Telling Men to Stay Quiet
— ‘Worry Windows’ Got Me Through My Most Stressful Years
— Bill Gates on the future of AI
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— Why would a musician join OnlyFans?
— On aging without children
— What's on Kim France's Coffee Table
— Gen Z is falling in love with the charm and 'cringe' of millennials
— The rising cost of glow up culture
— has 10 ideas for coaxing a difficult book into life
— ’s tips for female solo travelers
— Really enjoyed the contemporary novel Normal Women — a sort of dark version of Motherland.
— Currently enjoying Perfection described as a ‘sociological novel about the emptiness of contemporary existence’ — a recommendation via Notes from
— I also have The Story of a Single Woman on my bedside table.
— The brilliant has a new cookbook called Sabzi coming this year. More here on her Substack.
— I really enjoyed ’s new nonfiction HARK — magical musings on the intersections between motherhood and sound.
— I’m also tucking into the Women’s Prize fiction shortlist :)
— Enjoying Dying For Sex on Disney+ with Michelle Williams + Jenny Slate based on a popular podcast.
— The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire Live with Kim France.
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— Twitter: Breaking the Bird on BBC Two.
— My Brain: After the Rupture on BBC Two. Clemency Burton-Hill’s recovery following a brain injury in early 2020. You can read my personal piece about Clemmie below:
