Soup Shibboleths & Synergy
Hello Dames and Damettes!
We are Maris and Rachel, friends and internet book nerds who look sort of alike but not as alike as a lot of people seem to think. Thank you for having us! We both like books, glasses, musical theater, brightly colored dresses, cheeseburgers, brussels sprouts, and gchatting each other to consult instead of (or before) making angry subtweets. We both haven’t gotten over our intense cases of Ferrante Fever. We both really like our dudes. We both like to live-tweet at book events, but we try to be considerate.
Maris likes karaoke and dogs, particularly her pug, Bizzy. Rachel likes cookingand zine-making. Maris made the blog and book Slaughterhouse 90210 and is the editorial director at Book of The Month (but you might know her from Kickstarter or from writing about her relationship on the internet.) Rachel talks about woman-processing-their-shit books and the bookternet and works at HMH (but you might know her from Tumblr.)
We met at a Housing Works Bookstore event when someone pointed at Maris and whispered to Rachel, "That girl makes Slaughterhouse 90210" and Rachel tackled her. Then we immediately bonded over our mutual love for The Giant’s House by Elizabeth McCracken. We have spent many nights at Housing Works together since. In the space of about two weeks, Maris launched her book there and Rachelgot married.
A Guide To Telling Us Apart:
Maris: shorter
Rachel: cooks food
Maris: wiggle dresses
Rachel: fit and flare dresses
Maris: hates tomatoes
Rachel: loves tomatoes
Here are some things Rachel loves and wants you to see:
Glory Edim. Glory freakin’ Edim, people. Do you guys know this amazing lady? She took her love for reading, magnetic personality, and endless generosity of spirit, and turned it into Well Read Black Girl. Is that a website, a newsletter, a book club, an event series, a feminist act, a community, a bunch of reading recs? Well YES it is all those things and more too. Read all about her!
Rebecca Traister. I know most of you know and love her too, but there is probably no one who has kept me sane for the last decade or so without ever having met me like she has. She says what I’m thinking and feeling, except better than I ever could, and then connects it to the bigger world around me. The one I return to most often is this I Don’t Fucking Care If You Like It opus. Reader, I bought the t-shirt.
Check out the needlecraft contraception and other vagina-adjacent products I saw at Gowanus Open Studios this weekend by artist Katrina Majkut. I suspect she doesn’t fucking care if you like it either.
Another piece I return to again and again is Katie Coyle on Cara Hoffmanbut really just on rape culture and The Dead Girl. Read it. Read Cara Hoffman’s books. Read Katie Coyle’s books. Hear “All you have ever been is lucky” pop into your head unbidden at inopportune moments.
Gabby Sidibe, supermodel. She’s also a funny and wonderful writer, and I’m so excited to help publish her book this May.
Please enjoy/sob yourself to death as the goddess Cynthia Erivo sings The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown, who is better than he has any right to be and is obviously the Aaron Sorkin of musical theater, go ahead and @ me.
Helen Rosner is a food writer and twitter crush who just started a tinyletter. The first issue is about a soup named Roberto, which I of course made immediately. It took me about two days of casual instagram scrolling to see that at least six other people I sort of know had done the same. A soup shibboleth for internet food weirdos! It was so heartwarming. Have you noticed that instagram is the last online place you can look at pets and babies and pie and flowers and just like people?
Please, please watch My Mad Fat Diary. Please.
From the Dept. of Old G-Chats:
Rachel: And you could tweet about it
or you could talk to people who genuinely know and care about you
Maris: there you go
i choose g chat
Rachel: I CHOOSE G-CHAT!
that is a good rallying cry
Maris: I CHOOSE G CHAT
Rachel: when I want to talk about [redacted] or [redacted], I choose g-chat!
Maris: hahahaaaa
when i want to express my feelings about what [redacted] means to me
i choose g chat
Rachel: When I want to tell certain people [redacted] I choose g-chat!
Here is a GIF that Rachel sends to Maris when she’s having an off day.
It never fails to cheer her up.
Maris: now i'm crying a little
but in a good way
Rachel: from the puglick?
I puglick you, Maris.
Maris: from the puglick
you are the greatest friend ever
i puglick you too
Here are a few of Maris’s favorite book quotes:
“Behind every crazy woman is a man, sitting very quietly, saying, “What? I’m not doing anything.”
― Jade Sharma, Problems
“We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.”
― Zadie Smith, White Teeth
“You could take the entirety of the common sense of humans and put it in the palm of your hand and still have room for your dick.”
― Anne Carson, Red Doc>
“Guns, she was reminded then, were not for girls. They were for boys. They were invented by boys. They were invented by boys who had never gotten over their disappointment that accompanying their own orgasm there wasn’t a big boom sound.”
— Lorrie Moore, Like Life
“Oh! it is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
Here are some things Maris loves and wants you to see
Here is Constance Wu endorsing The Wangs Vs. the World (an HMH book!) for Book of the Month. It is perfect synergy for Rach and me in our new jobs. And everyone needs to read this book. [Dame S’ BOTM copy arrived just yesterday! SYNERGYYYYYY!]
My beloved Elisa Albert (I will never ever stop bragging about having been her book editor a long, long time ago) on Ambition. Epic.
Josh is my favorite person in the world and he writes for the best television show, AKA the one thing that’s prevented me from going insane during this election season.
Look at Phoebe on The Today Show! Listen to her podcast! Buy her new book! You will love it!
Here are some of Maris’s favorite Tiny Letters:
When you Google Image Search with Hope in Your Heart, you find some amazing things..
A Song a Day by Alex Naidus
Grief Bacon by Helena Fitzgerald
Bouncy Castle by Sami Main & co.
Crime Syndicate by Michelle Dean and Reyhan Harmanci
Three Cents by Manjula Martin
Mess Hall by Marian Bull
Coffee and TV by Ruth Curry
Here are ten books we love and highly recommend:
May they leave you blinking raptly.
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg (coming March 2017)
Marlena by Julie Buntin (coming April 2017)
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capó Crucet
Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close
Whatever Happened to Interracial Love by Kathleen Collins (read it this December!!)
Everything Matters! by Ron Currie, Jr.
The Turner House by Angela Flournoy
Meaty by Samantha Irby
The Center of Things by Jenny McPhee
The Girls From Corona del Mar by Rufi Thorpe
Here is One Last Pic of Bizzy Gondelman-Kreizman: