Hopefully, you will read and enjoy the recommendations.

I have officially hit that point in life where I keep talking about my vacation.

I told the random barista at Starbucks.

I told the two women who work at Paper Source when I went to buy a new journal.

I told the man at work who needed help getting a video added to YouTube.

I told my neighbor who asked if I had been sick because he hadn’t seen me in a few days.

I told my doctor during my telemedicine appointment.

I told my favorite cashier at UPS when I went to return my Nuuly package.

And since I am writing this newsletter currently, I am also telling you, but yolo, or whatever we say these days.

I just got back from Portugal, specifically Lisbon and Porto. And as someone who always travels with a laptop and a sea of work emails to sort through, it was both beautiful and necessary to be unplugged for an entire week. I went with my parents who have both recently retired so it was nice to spend quality time with them, and also see how they enjoyed themselves without having to think about going back to work.

Portugal is just as beautiful as people say with beautiful people, great food, vibrant colors, and so much to do. I enjoyed drinking lattes and espresso shots after dinner, eating an excessive amount of octopus and olives, people watching, exploring, and observing the street style from all the cool girls: lots of linens, and relaxed fit pants in vibrant designs with cool tanks, see below:

On my trip, I finished two books, A Very Special Episode by Camille Acker and Dèy by Edwidge Danticat and start a new book Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan.

I also fully enjoyed Larry June’s new album Who Coppin and Somi’s new album What Does it Take to Bloom? both of which became the soundtrack to my trip.

With that, I wanted to share a few of my recommendations from the trip as it relates to music and books. I also have a few other recommendations for places to eat, travel, and stay at, which are below.

Share

Subscribe now

Book spaces and anecdotes

When I was in Porto, we went on a Tuk Tuk tour, and our tour guide told us about J.K. Rowling living there for several years teaching English, and how the city inspired Harry Potter. I will admit, I have never seen nor read Harry Potter, but from the imagery and things I know about the world that lives in the books, I can see the influence. Our guide said some of the places that inspired Rowling were the Livarira Lello bookstore, the University of Coimbra and the Maria Pia Bridge.

Lisbon: Good Company Books

I saw this as a recommendation on TikTok I believe so I added it to my list. It’s a super cute and quaint bookstore that has a cafe with both coffee and wine. They have a selective and curated assortment of books and I found a few that I have read and enjoyed including Widow Basquiat by Jennifer Clement, Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo and Heart the Lover by Lily King. They also had other books that I have been wanting to read like John of John by Douglas Stuart. This is a great bookstore to visit if you want to be off the beaten path.

Lisbon: Livraria Ler Devagar at LX Factory

Let me start by saying, LX Factory is such a cute area. We went here and started with breakfast burritos and coffee at Selllva LX Factory, then did some walking around and ended here. I really enjoyed the layout of the store – they had a table full of music books for one thing and I had no idea Questlove had a new book. This is an aesthetic bookstore and I got two books, which the bookseller told me was an interesting pairing. The books I got were Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan and Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams.

The only note is since this is an aesthetic store, there are tons of people all over the place. I would suggest going early just so you can move around freely.

Music discoveries

When I went on a food walking tour, our tour guide taught us about the musical genre, Fado. The genre got its origin in Lisbon in the 1800’s and is essentially the soundtrack for longing and mourning. Our guide mentioned that the style tends to be heavily emotive, dramatic, and sad, and was started by prostitutes, dock workers, sailors and other working class people. While I have some digging and exploring to do with the genre, what I have heard thus far has been beautiful. I watched these videos to help me learn more:

I discovered lots of music in coffee shops, on surround sound systems, in Uber rides and just around so here are some of the things that I discovered.

Jitram - “Temptations”
I discovered this song at the coffee shop next door to my Airbnb and I loved it. It then made me go through a rabbit hole listening to the full album, Honeycomb, and some of his recent music.

Berlioz - “Miro” featuring Ted Jasper
While I was already familiar with him, I never heard this song so it took me down a spiral which had me ending up at “hot house,” which is jamming. I also discovered the jazz is for ordinary people EP which is pretty good as well.

Sajmoonn - “From the Music Within You”
I loved this because it made me both want to dance in a circle, but also dance offbeat with coffee in my hand. Yes, I’m aware that’s oddly specific.

CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso & Anderson Paak - “Ay Ay Ay”
I heard this song when we were at LX Factory and it was playing on some speakers outside. I was like this sounds like Anderson Paak, and in fact it was. Such a quirky song once I listened to the full song.

Winta - “I Still Believe in Love”
Last year, I think from TikTok, I discovered Winta. I stopped listening to Winta because I am 76% sure that Winta is AI, but I must admit this song, and album is jamming.

Other recommendations:

I have a few more recommendations in terms of places to eat, and things to do, which I am putting below. I have also put them into this Google Map. The list also includes a few recommendations from my tour guides as well. The only thing I wish I would’ve done that I did not do was go to Livraria Lello in Porto.

Sintra is definitely worth the day trip. As a Bay Area gal, it reminded me of Sausalito or Tiburon with more hills. Also, if you get the chance to get close to the water there, it was absolutely beautiful. We went to see the castle, which gave good views, but was a little rough on my knee. I will say, I enjoyed the views from the castle more than I enjoyed the actual castle.

Douro Valley is absolutely beautiful. Even if you’re a little meh on wine like I am, it was so beautiful. We took a boat ride, did wine tasting, and had lunch and I enjoyed it so much. I feel like truthfully, greenery and water is where I thrive — maybe I’m meant to be a land mermaid since I can’t swim in the sea.

Amarante which is in Porto and on the way to Douro Valley is such a beautiful and quaint place. If you get the chance to visit there, you should. When I go back to Porto, I plan to stay here for a night or so at a bed and breakfast.

If you go to Porto, we stayed at the cutest hotel: Village Aparthotel by BOA. My aunt who recommended it to us stayed here for a month, and it’s the perfect place for that. It’s cozy, cute, and relaxing. If you want the Airbnb’s I stayed at in Lisbon, let me know.

Last recommendation is to eat all the seafood, Octopus and olives that you can. Here are a few pictures from my favorite meals.

That’s it for this week. I’ll catch you next week.

Subscribe now

Google Maps Recommendations

Reading List:

Dèy by Edwidge Danticat (out August 25)
This is Edwidge Danticat’s first novel in over a decade. The book is being described as the following: “From the bestselling author of Everything Inside comes a vivid, timely story, moving from Haiti to Brooklyn to Miami, of a woman whose sense of self and family are called into question when she gets caught in a random act of violence one sunny Florida day.” Given Danticat’s writing, I expect this to be a good and moving book.

A Very Special Episode by Camille Acker (out August 18)
I just started reading this book, and so far, I’m enjoying it. This is Camille’s debut novel and here’s the description of the book: “In Washington, D.C.’s powerful Black elite, legacy is everything. When a young heir to one of the city’s most influential institutions seeks funding to cement her future, a shadowy organization offers to help—but it could cost her far more than she’s willing to give.”

Listening List:

Flo - Therapy at the Club (out Friday)
Flo is back with their sophomore album, following their Grammy-nominated debut album, Access All Areas. Flo described this album as a complete night out from getting ready, to the morning after, and the club is where the actual healing happens. From the album, they have released four singles and while none of them have necessarily tickled my fancy, I still have high hopes. They were also just on Keke Palmer’s podcast, and it was a cute conversation.

Rapsody - God Gotta Afro & Gold Hoops (out August 21st)
Rapsody is one of my favorites, and she’s back with her fifth studio album. Truthfully, this is one of my most anticipated albums of the year and I feel confident that it was deliver because she never lets me down. Rapsody created this album in a period where she was drawn towards Africa, and she went, and this album was inspired by that trip. From the album, so far, she’s released two singles: “God Gotta Afro,” which I could not stop playing, and on Friday, she released “Apple Juice,” which she sings on. I’m so excited.

Alabama Shakes - I Must Be Dreaming (out August 28th)
When I read that Alabama Shakes was releasing their first album in 11 years, I think I clapped, literally. I love Alabama Shakes and can’t wait to hear what they sound like with so many years in between releases.

Also, I realized that I didn’t share this last weekend, so I’m sharing it today. If you read Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams, you may have a few thoughts about her as a protagonist because she was… exhausting. I read Candice’s upcoming book, Queenie is Working on It, and I must say, Queenie actually didn’t get on my nerves. Read my review, and some other things it made me think of, including friendship and redemption.

Just a heads up, I’ll be taking a baby break for some traveling that I am excited to share in the coming weeks. In the meantime, follow me on Substack Notes, Threads or Instagram so we can stay connected.

Subscribe now

Have you ever read a book where you could not stand the protagonist but the author released a second book and you felt like you had to read it to see if your feelings changed?

While that was a very specific question, that’s how I felt with the book Queenie and now the follow-up book, Queenie is Working On it by Candice Carty-Williams.

Seven years ago, Candice introduced readers to Queenie, a twenty-something woman living in London who was trying to figure her life out. After breaking up with her boyfriend, Tom, she spiraled into a stretch of drinking, and way too many bad decisions. Reading the book, and later watching the series, I found Queenie to be exhausting. I get being in your twenties, and not having things figured out, but she was spiraling way too much for me.

However in the new book, out September 8th, the title was accurate. We are seeing Queenie ten years older, and as the title alludes, she is working on and through many things. She’s more self-aware, she takes accountability for her wrong doing in her relationships (even if it takes some time), she’s in therapy and she’s figuring out what her next chapter looks like, e.g., whether she wants kids or not and what that looks like in partnership. Dare I say, not only did I enjoy this book, I also found Queenie to be very relatable.

While reading, there are different themes that Candice explores in the book, but one of my favorite themes is friendship. We see Queenie still interacting with her same friend group, “The Corgis” and working through the shifts that happen as your friends get partners, move and start having kids. Queenie is not where her friends are currently, and has to reckon with how her previous decisions impacted her life stage and also, how some of the chaos she created impacted her friendships, specifically with her best friend Kyazike.

Friendship by the page

The theme of friendship has shown up a lot recently in books, perhaps because we all crave connection, and life milestones at times shift how our friendships look. Here are a few recent books that I enjoyed where friendship is either at the center of the book or a theme that exists within the book.

The Books

Kin by Tayari Jones

This is probably my favorite book of the year, and for so many reasons, one being the friendship and relationship that exists between Vernice and Annie. The pairing, two motherless girls, grew up as “cradle sisters” in a small Louisiana town. Throughout the book, we see them live different lives but their friendship and sisterhood are a constant.

Love by the Book by Jessica George
This is such a beautiful book about friendship, and how your friendships should be treated as intimately and cared for as your romantic relationships. The intimacy and friendship that exists between Remy and Simone was beautiful to read.

The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy

While it took me some time and multiple attempts to get through this book because of the time hopping, at the center, what I enjoyed were the friendships. In the book, we meet five girlfriends who have been friends for twenty years. Throughout this time, they experience many life events including having kids, and getting married, and they are working their way through the metaphorical wilderness and their friendships.

The Revelation of Dionne Daphne by Mara Brock Akil

While this is a heavy book, and friendship isn’t the core focus of the book, it’s one of the themes that I enjoyed the most. In this book, Dionne gets life-threatening news that she has to navigate, and one of those ways is through her friendship with her best friend Farrah. Farrah serves as one of Dionne’s safe spaces on her journey and based on interviews I’ve listened to with Mara, that relationship was one of the themes she wanted to highlight the most. She says your friends act as your surrogate parents which I think is such a beautiful concept.

Take What You Can by Naima Coster

This book, out August 4th, explores how your friendships can evolve and again shift overtime. We meet best friends, Val and Milly who met on a study abroad program, and who are now both married, pregnant and living in New York. With this book Naima maps out the complexities that come when your friendship dynamic changes, and how you can create bonds without examples.

The Music

Aside from the friendship theme, another thing I couldn’t stop thinking about while reading this book is that it served somewhat as Queenie’s redemption arc. With the book, we see Queenie have to essentially reintroduce herself to her friends, colleagues, family and technically… even us the readers. With that lens, for some reason I kept thinking of Common’s album Be.

Perhaps because I was reading this book at an appointment where Jennifer Hudson’s talk show was playing, my mind kept going to that album and how that was Common’s redemption arc or reintroduction following what many would call his flop of an album, Electric Circus. While there were many factors that made that what it was e.g., record label shifts, that album was the one that critics and fans often cite as his questionable release. The album was an experimental album that was created at a time where Common said he wasn’t in a hip-hop mood. While that album gave birth to one of his biggest singles, “Come Close,” there were no other singles from the album and as a whole, it left fans and critics feeling mixed.

When Be came around, it was a reintroduction to him and his craft and a welcome back for fans and critics who began following him based on his initial hip-hop roots. I would say that Be sits in a similar world of Queenie is Working On It because neither asks people to see where they were before the fall, instead they ask people to meet them where they are now because of that fall.

Last week was an interesting one for me, a mix of a lot of thinking, geeking out, and moving a little more slowly. Some weeks are like that, and I embrace them and even appreciate them when they happen.

This week is my final week of physical therapy, and it’s tripping me out for a few reasons.

I do feel stronger. I found new ways to strengthen and show g…

Read more

“I like sad love songs. They inspire me. You can pull the sadness into a happily-ever-after. They evoke emotions that translate to the page. You just have to write the story as a writer and figure out what the journey and obstacles in the romance will be. For me, love songs translate to the page.”

Since our conversation, I’ve been thinking about the stories hiding inside some of my favorite songs. They introduce characters, build conflict, complicate love, and leave someone changed. They are stories with plots, emotional arcs, and endings that linger after the song fades.

That led me to wonder: if my favorite heartbreak songs were books, what stories would they tell? I made a list of the five I think would make perfect novels.

Subscribe now

Heather Headley - “In My Mind”

When I think of my favorite heartbreak song, this is it. Although it gives me an annoying memory of an old suitor, the song is beautiful and sad.

Here’s the novel I hear: A woman, Ashley, meets a man, Robert, in college (I made these names up). They form the kind of relationship where you meet his mother, and she already loves you, and where you start filling in your future together without being asked. Then one day, he ends it. He gets a new girlfriend. He moves on, or tries to.

Months later, Robert’s mother runs into Ashley and quietly tells her Robert isn’t doing well. The new relationship has fallen apart. He’s been through some things. Then she says, “I think it’d do some good if you called him every now and then.”

The universe, through the voice of a mother who still considers Ashley family, opens a door. What Ashley chooses to do with that door is the novel, and the question is whether she walks through it.

The chorus is where the literary device lives. She toggles between two versions of herself: “In my mind, I’ll always be his lady” and “only time will tell if I’m his lady.” Those are not the same statement. On the bridge, she tells herself, “If you love something, let it go.” It sounds like a resolution. Then she follows it with “always feel this way about you, always be your lady.” She is narrating the story of letting go while holding on completely. That is an unreliable narrator. That is a woman who knows exactly what she is doing and cannot stop herself. She isn’t lying to us. She’s negotiating with herself, and we overhear it.

“In My Mind” is not just a phrase. It is the setting. The story takes place inside her head, in the space between what happened and what she wishes had happened. If this were a book, the ending would not need to tell you whether she called him. The silence would say enough.

India.Arie - “Good Man”

I used to sing “Good Man” in my bedroom in high school before I fully understood why it affected me so deeply.

The story of this song is that a woman falls in love young, the kind of love that feels like forever from the start. They get married, have kids, and build a beautiful life together. He’s in the military, and before he deploys, he leaves her with a promise: if something happens, be strong, carry on, and tell the kids about me when they’re old enough to understand. But he doesn’t come home.

What makes this song a novel is the chorus. He sings it to her first, as a promise before he leaves. Then she sings it back, as a vow after he’s gone. By the end, she is singing it to their children, passing the promise to the next generation. The same words, carried by three different people. That’s structure. That is storytelling.

The detail that breaks you open is the kids pointing at his picture. “Where is he?” They don’t yet have the language for what happened. They just know something is missing. And she has to find the words in real time, for children who are too young and a grief that is too big.

On their first anniversary, they chose a star together. “First anniversary, remember we chose a star. And as I stand under it, I can’t help but wonder if you see it where you are.” Authors spend entire chapters crafting symbols like that. This song gives us one in four minutes.

If this were a book, it would be the story of a woman learning how to hold a family together with one hand while carrying an absence with the other. End it in memories, in small moments, in what she says to her children at night, and in what she cannot say.

Jay-Z - “Song Cry”

When I listen to this song, it feels visual to me. Here’s the story I hear.

A man and woman build a life together, coming up through the trenches. Their relationship is forged in hard times, and they navigate it side by side. Then success changes him. He gets distracted, chases the wrong things, cheats, and leaves her carrying the relationship alone. Eventually, she does what he never believes she’ll do: she leaves, builds a new house, and falls in love with someone else.

That gap between knowing and changing is the whole novel. What makes this song feel literary isn’t the breakup. It’s the narrator. He understands exactly what he did wrong. He can name every mistake, every missed opportunity, every way he took her for granted. What he can’t do is go back and become the man she needed when it still mattered. The story isn’t about a man learning a lesson. It’s about a man learning the lesson too late.

He cannot cry not because he doesn’t feel grief, but because he’s built an identity around never letting himself feel it out loud. So the song cries for him. It becomes his emotional proxy, saying everything he’s incapable of saying himself. That’s not just a hook. It’s a character study.

The turn comes late, and it lands with my favorite line in the song: “Once a good girl’s gone bad, she’s gone forever.”

That isn’t the moment she leaves him. That isn’t even the moment he learns she’s moved on. It’s the moment he finally understands what he’s lost. The tragedy isn’t that he loved her too little. It’s that he understood her value only after she stopped waiting for him to.

If this were a book, it would follow a man who spends three hundred pages trying to explain himself, only to realize the explanation changes nothing. The confession is the story. The regret is the ending.

Emeli Sande - “Maybe”

This song starts where most love songs end. The relationship is already over, or almost. Two people who could not keep their hands off each other are now lying back-to-back in the dark, not speaking. The love did not leave in a dramatic moment. It just went quiet. That silence is the first sentence of the novel.

The story moves fast once it starts. They break up on a Sunday night. He takes his bags and leaves. She replays the fight, rests her head against the wall, and sits with the empty space he left behind. Then his key turns in the lock. He is back. He sees her on the stairs and stops.

That moment on the stairs is the whole book. Everything before it is exposition. Everything after it is a consequence.

The chorus holds both possibilities at once and refuses to choose between them. “Maybe you could stay a bit longer; I could try a little harder. We could make this work, but maybe we should stop pretending. We both know we’re hurting; maybe it’s time to go.”

She is not deciding. She is holding two truths in the same breath and letting them live there together. The song ends without resolving. The door is open, and neither of them has moved.

If this were a book, it would be a quiet, devastating novel told over the course of one weekend. Two people in an apartment, a fight, a departure, a return, and the question that neither of them can answer out loud.

Lianne La Havas - “Elusive”

This will forever be my favorite Lianne La Havas song. A woman is in love with a man she cannot quite reach. He is cold, a gambler, a mystery even to himself. She describes his hands as the coldest she has ever held. She sees him clearly, and that is the heartbreak.

She is the opposite of everything he is. He is elusive. She is awake, definitely real, nothing fake. She is fully present for someone who is somewhere else. The more herself she is, the less he can see her.

The detail that breaks you open is small and specific. After everything, after all the reaching and holding on, what she has of him is a strand of hair. One physical trace. That is what love leaves behind when it cannot fully land. That’s what makes the song feel so literary to me. It isn’t really about unrequited love. It’s about asymmetry. Two people can be in the same relationship while living in entirely different emotional worlds.

Then he tells her, almost gently, that his destiny lies in the hands that set him free. He is not looking to be held. He is waiting to be released. She is trying to love someone who experiences love as a kind of captivity. They are in the same relationship, wanting entirely opposite things from it.

If this were a book, it would be quiet and atmospheric, told from her perspective, the story of a woman who is so fully present that she becomes invisible to the one person she is trying to reach. That disappearance is the heartbreak.

Share

Subscribe now

When Tiffany L. Warren told me sad love songs make great novels, a lightbulb went off. The best sad love songs already know how to be novels. They have characters, conflict, tension, unreliable narrators, and endings that refuse easy resolution. They understand that relationships end long before love stories do. They end when the people inside them finally become someone else.

Maybe that’s why we replay them, cry to them, or journal to them. Not because we’re hoping the song changes, but because some part of us is still wondering whether this time the story will.

In typical Erin fashion, I couldn’t stop at five, so I made a list of fourteen more songs that already feel like novels to me, along with a playlist to go with them.

Alicia Keys ft. John Mayer - “Lesson Learned”

Heartbreak becomes the beginning instead of the ending. A novel where survival slowly becomes wisdom.

Read more

Well let’s get into this week’s edition.

Today, I’m sharing a new interview with author Haili Blassingame whose debut novel, They All Fall in Love at the End, was released last month via Simon & Schuster.

The novel follows Kat, a writer living in DC who is in an open relationship with her college sweetheart Jay. When she falls for the two people most off limits, Jay’s best friend Tristan and his girlfriend Nia, she has to reckon with how much she’s allowed to want, in love, in art, and in life. Set against the backdrop of a politically charged DC, it’s a literary love story, a family drama, and one of the most honest books about desire I’ve read in a long time.

Haili felt like exactly the right person to open On the Record, a series where I sit down with authors and musicians to talk about the relationship between books and music in their creative lives. Every conversation goes both directions, and Hailli’s did not disappoint.

In this conversation we get into:

• How she used the Challengers soundtrack to write one of the most electric scenes in the book, and what that says about how music shapes her process even when she’s not listening to it

• Why the parts of the book are named after songs

• What revision actually means, and the moment she felt like she became a real writer

• What drew her to a character who refuses to want less in any area of her life

• Writing the current moment as it was happening, unprocessed, and why she would never do it again

• The F. Scott Fitzgerald connection and what it means to her that they share a publisher

You can listen to the interview wherever you listen to podcasts, or watch it here on Substack. Also, be sure to follow Haili’s Substack or on Instagram at @hailiwroteabook. Lastly, read the New York Times’ review of Haili’s novel here.

Listen to Podcast on Apple

Listen/Watch Podcast on Spotify

The novel follows the life of Yolande Du Bois, daughter of W.E.B. Du Bois, as she navigates love, family expectations, ambition, and one of the most high-profile and talked-about weddings of the Harlem Renaissance.

While I was reading the book, I took so many notes and when I finished, I was so curious about Yolande and the different relationships in her life, that I knew I had to talk to the author, Tiffany L. Warren about the book — so I’m excited to share our interview today.

One line I can’t stop thinking about:

“Fiction is a window, and it allows you to have empathy for other people in the world.”

Tiffany shared that reading was an escape for her as a child. Books showed her lives beyond her own experiences and helped her understand people whose circumstances looked nothing like hers.

That idea sits at the center of A Harlem Wedding. While the novel introduces readers to well-known historical figures, it also asks us to see them as people navigating love, family expectations, friendship, ambition, and identity. By the end of the book, the history felt less distant because the people at its center felt real.

In this conversation, we discussed so much including:

• How Octavia Butler helped Tiffany realize that she could become a writer herself

• Why Yolande Du Bois because the perfect heroine for a Harlem Renaissance novel and what made her the “it girl” of her era

• The complicated relationship between Yolande and W.E.B. Du Bois, and how his vision for her future shaped her choices

• What years of letters, diaries, photographs, and newspaper clippings revealed about the people behind the history

• Why sad love songs often inspire Tiffany’s stories and the song that became the emotional soundtrack for A Harlem Wedding

• How historical fiction allows writers to explore not just what happened, but the deeper question underneath it all: why it happened

If you enjoy historical fiction, the Harlem Renaissance, complicated family relationships or hearing writers talk about their creative process, I think you’ll enjoy conversation.

As always, you can watch or listen to the interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube Podcasts, or Pocket Casts.

Listen and/or Watch on Spotify

Listen to Podcast on Apple

Connect with Tiffany L. Warren

📚 A Harlem Wedding is available wherever books are sold.

🌐 Visit Tiffany at tiffanylwarren.com

📱 Follow Tiffany on Instagram and Threads:

A few more notes for the week:

📺 If you watched the video interview above, you would’ve seen my face when Tiffany mentioned the one song that kept coming to her mind while she was writing was A Harlem Wedding was Vesta Williams “Congratulations.” If you have never heard this song, or watched the video… prepare to clutch your pearls. Also if you can find it, I recommend watching Vesta’s episode of Unsung.

🎧 Speaking with Tiffany about the Harlem Renaissance made me think of my conversation with ReShonda Tate who wrote one of my favorite books of the year, With Love From Harlem. You can listen/watch to that conversation here.

📚 I just finished reading Take What You Can by Naima Coster and I have many thoughts and questions after reading the book. If you like complex stories about friendship, relationship dynamics, and like hearing about good food, I think you’ll enjoy this book.

📚 I also just finished reading Never Tell a Black Girl How to Black Girl by Amena Brown, which is a collection of short essays and I both nodded my head and laughed while reading this book. I saw myself, and so many of my girlfriends reflected in this book. Amena talks about different things like learning how to cook, Waiting to Exhale, how to survive the hair shop, and different pop culture references, including one of my favorite RHOA references: “A white refrigerator? Please put your shoes up. Let’s find you a home.”

🔗 Inside the first official portrait of Barack and Michelle Obama together. I LOVE, LOVE this portrait and all the details that artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby included.

*Quick note: I will be taking a little tiny break from your inbox and will be returning on July 6th with some updates I’m pretty excited about. In the meantime, you can catch me on Substack Notes, Instagram or Threads.

I cannot believe we are just days away from summer, and truthfully, I can wait.

I am not a hot-weather gal at all, so while everyone is making plans to be outside roaming around, my plans consist of early morning farmers market runs, long days reading on my couch under the air conditioner, and dancing around my living room, again in an air-conditioned sp…

Read more

Hi friends,

On Sunday, I shared a conversation with author about her travel memoir Happy Iceland, releasing June 27th. We talked about her writing process, what inspired her trip to Iceland, what she learned about community and happiness, and the song she can’t stop listening to. What stayed with me afterward was her habit of noticing what she calls “si…

Read more

Those quiet moments and pockets of joy are exactly what author Anne Marie Wells set out to find when she boarded a plane to Iceland at 29, unemployed, and searching for something she couldn’t quite name yet. Instead of booking tours or following a guidebook, she walked up to a stranger in the airport and asked one simple question: what are your happiest memories here?

For five weeks she hitchhiked and backpacked across Iceland chasing the answers, from childhood sports fields and family farms to hidden waterfalls and the remote Highlands. Part adventure, part meditation on connection and joy, Happy Iceland, out June 27th from Star Belt Press, is a reminder that some of the best journeys begin when we slow down, actually listen, and find joy.

It took her ten years to write this book. And as she told me:

“You don’t know what you don’t know. You can’t really skip over it and then suddenly be a good writer. You have to just learn all of it slowly as you learn it and then apply it to your writing.”

In this conversation we talked about:

• What happiness actually looks like when strangers describe it out loud

• Why asking what delighted you lands differently than keeping a gratitude journal

• Learning to write a book from scratch, with no formal training, over ten years

• The confidence it takes to travel solo and trust strangers with your story

• The one song she’s had on repeat for months

You can listen to the interview on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or Pocketcasts.

Listen/Watch Podcast on Spotify

Listen to Podcast on Apple

You can find Anne Marie on Instagram and order Happy Iceland now ahead of the June 27th release.

The question I asked Anne Marie at the end of our conversation was: what’s the one lesson about happiness from your trip that you’ve actually kept? Her answer was that happiness lives in other people, that connection is the through line no matter the setting. It’s not a new idea, but hearing it from someone who hitchhiked across Iceland asking strangers about joy for five weeks gives it a different kind of weight.

If this conversation sat with you, here are a few other things to explore:

If our conversation inspired you to read more, start with Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, a book about a woman who left without a plan and found something she wasn’t looking for.

Anne Marie quoted Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer in our conversation, the other side of the same journey: what happens when the search for meaning pulls you away from people instead of toward them.

Anne Marie has had RAYE’s “Suzanne” on repeat for months, and I had never heard the song before our conversation. Consider this your introduction.

The NYT interviewed Laurie Santos, the Yale professor behind the most popular college course ever taught on happiness, and separately published a piece on how to actually feel loved. Both are worth your time this week.

And if today’s conversation stayed with you, Anne Marie writes about the writing life, upcoming events, and submission tips over at her Substack.

Hi friends —

I must admit: I spent my writing time preoccupied with watching Jay Z’s performance at The Roots Picnic, and Your Friends and Neighbors on Apple TV and also making a summer playlist. I lost track of time, and feel comfort in knowing it happens to the best of us at times so this week I’m sha…

Read more

Hi friends —

The holiday weekend was perfect. I spent the weekend napping, reading, and playing around with coffee since I got a new Nespresso machine. While quite an impulsive purchase, it was fun playing around with flavors to get the perfect cup.

On the reading front, I finally got to Kennedy Ryan's new novel, Score, and I loved it. It’s a second-ch…

Read more

For this week’s newsletter, I have a fun interview with Carlie of one of my favorite YouTube channels, She’s Becoming Bookish.

Lately, I've been deep in my historical fiction era — and one of my friends suggested I check out Carlie's channel because she shares a lot of great historical fiction recommendations, along with so much more. I started watching her videos and immediately felt like I was hanging out with a friend. Carlie's personality comes through in every video, and her recommendations have already landed on my TBR list.

So naturally, I had to speak with Carlie for my newsletter.

In our conversation, we discussed a range of topics, including:

• How we each consume books and whether audiobooks really count — they do FYI

• What draws Carlie to historical fiction, especially stories centered on real women in history

• Her thoughts on ReShonda Tate’s novel, With Love from Harlem which I loved (watch my interview here)

• How she builds confidence on camera and why she made the pivot from TikTok to YouTube

• What books she’d hand to three different types of readers

• What music she thinks would actually make a great book

You can listen to the interview on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or Pocketcasts.

Listen/Watch Podcast on Spotify

Listen to Podcast on Apple

Books mentioned in our conversation:

• With Love from Harlem by ReShonda Tate

• Queen of Sugar Hill by ReShonda Tate

• Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray

• Still Life by Sarah Winman

• Angels of the Resistance by Noelle Salazar

• Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

• A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams

Subscribe to She's Becoming Bookish

A little bit more for this week:

🔗 The Atlantic’s 2026 Summer Reading Guide - I have thoughts on this list, and my main thought is I’m not 100% sold on it but there are a few books I had on my TBR that are mentioned.

🔗 Giveon released his deluxe album for one of my favorite albums, Beloved, so I wrote about it and made a list of some books you should read in the same vein.

📚 Kennedy Ryan's Score: Her new book is out today and just ahead of the release, she announced a deal with Universal Studio Group to develop projects for Peacock, starting with Before I Let Go. I'm diving in this long weekend with my whole heart. Also, please just read the full interview — I loved the conversation.

📚 Famesick by Lena Dunham: I am currently reading Lena Dunham’s new memoir, and I must say I’m enjoying it. I’m reading it on my Kindle as well as listening to it, and I must say, one thing that I do enjoy is how open Lena is with what she shares. I think she’s always been very honest which people either love, or hate. Additionally, if you have not yet, I thought The New York Times Interview with Lena was good (also their UX has been so cool as of late).

🎧 Minnie Riperton’s Secret Symphony: is one of my favorite writers, and I loved reading this piece on Minnie Riperton’s background and her album Come to My Garden.

🎧 Patmeena Sabit on Politics and Prose Presents Podcast: I just finished reading Good People by Patmeena Sabit, and I must say, this is a book that will stick with me for a long time. I will more on that soon, but I thought this was a great conversation with her on the book, the setting and the story behind the book. Please if you have not, read this book.

That’s it for this week - I’ll catch you next week.

Happy Sunday.

Here I go again writing about Giveon and his album BELOVED, but on Friday, he released the second act of this album in the form of a deluxe with five new songs.

Typically, I’m slightly indifferent about deluxe albums unless they introduce another dimension to the original, and dare I say this one actually did.

The new tracks feat…

Read more

This week’s newsletter is coming in on the mellow side, and honestly, mellow has been my mood as a whole lately. We celebrated my mom over the weekend, and somewhere in the middle of all of it I also deleted TikTok from my phone. As someone who works in social media and has genuinely found a healthy balance with it, I still somehow found mys…

Read more

Hi friends,

Before we get into today’s newsletter, I wanted to say Happy Mother’s Day to every mom, bonus mom, grandmother, godmother, aunt, and mother figure — every person who helped make up someone’s village.

As an only child, I grew up surrounded by women who poured into me constantly. My mom, my grandmother, my aunts, my older cousins — so much of wh…

Read more

Purchase Honey by Imani Thompson

Read more

1. Album as a Book: ‘Superbloom’ by Jessie Ware

2. Leonor Mamanna on Consistency, Reading & Curating

3. on the jungle floor and the phases of love

Read more

Hi friends,

​As I mentioned in last Tuesday’s newsletter, I wanted to spend time with Jessie Ware’s new album, Superbloom, which was released April 17th.

​To know me is to know I love Jessie Ware.

​I’ve been a fan since Devotion in 2012. And what has kept me as a fan throughout the years is her constant evolution. Her sound changes with each era, but intimacy, relationships, and her vocals remain central. Superbloom continues this tradition, and it might be her most complete statement yet.

In the press release for the album, Jessie said she wanted to move past the escapism of What’s Your Pleasure? and explore real relationships—the love she has and the fear of losing it. This album does just that. It closes a trilogy beginning with What’s Your Pleasure? and That! Feels Good! Those records were about discovering pleasure; this one is about integration, trading fantasy for presence, and embodying desire, love, and motherhood together without contradiction.

Listening to this album, I couldn't stop thinking about it as a story. So I opened it like a book and here’s what I found.

If this album were a novel…

Read more

For this week’s newsletter, I am excited to share an interview with Leonor Mamanna, who writes one of my favorite newsletters, Leave It to Leonor.

I have been reading Leonor’s newsletter for a long time, almost 200+ editions, I think. For me, this tells me two things: first, wow, time flies when you’re reading well, and second, Leonor has the consistency I aspire to.

Leonor started her newsletter in August 2016, ten years ago this year, and what began as a place to share what she was reading, watching, and loving has grown into one of the most reliably good things in my inbox week after week. By day, Leonor works as a visuals director and has been the person behind the Instagram account for the novel A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.

Leonor has been reading all her life—devouring Babysitters Club, borrowing books from her aunt, and even reading VC Andrews at a young age. The House on Mango Street was the first book that truly reflected her and her family, shaping her reading journey.

We bonded over our love of Amy Poehler’s podcast, Good Hang. In our conversation, we covered a range of topics, including:

• How did Leave It to Leonor evolve from a simple link roundup into the essay-and-recommendations format it is today?

• The way her day job as a visuals director shapes how she curates and what she looks for when she’s putting the newsletter together

• Our years of being chronically online: Livejournal, Myspace, Geocities

• Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast, her dream guest list, and why Tracee Ellis Ross needs to be on it immediately

• Reading three books at a time without losing the thread, and her two current recommendations: The Safekeep (go in blind) and The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy.

• The A Little Life Instagram, Book Face Fridays, and what eleven years of watching people rediscover a book looks like up close

Below you will find a few links to things mentioned in our conversation. You can listen to the interview on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts or Pocketcasts.

Listen to Podcast on Spotify

Listen to Podcast on Apple

Subscribe it to Leave it to Leonor

Books mentioned in this episode:

• The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

• The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy

• A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

• To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara

• Less by Andrew Sean Greer

• The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

• Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews

Good Hang episodes we referenced:

• Dakota Johnson

• Regina Hall

• Gwyneth Paltrow

• Viola Davis

Share

Subscribe now

A little bit more for this week:

🎵 Jessie Ware released her sixth album, Superbloom, on Friday, and I love it. To know me is to know that Jessie is my girl, and one of the things I appreciate most about her music is how she constantly evolves her sound. I’ll be writing more about this album for my Sunday newsletter, but please listen to it.

🔗 Imperfect Women is keeping me on my toes and here is an interview with the cast. If you’re watching it, let’s discuss, please.

🔗 My gal wrote a great piece about why the Dallas Wings were right to shutdown the questions around Azzi Fudd’s relationship with Paige Bueckers.

🔗 If you have seen The Drama and/or having followed the career of Zendaya, I thought this was an interesting perspective from Doreen St. Felix for The New Yorker.

📺 Enjoyed watching this conversation with Jill Scott and Tyler the Creator so much.

📺 As someone on social media, and someone who works in social media, I really enjoyed KevOnStage’s interview on Cam Newton’s podcast. Cam asked good questions which… also has me flabbergasted.

📺 I know that Emma Grede has ruffled some feathers on her press tour for her new book, Start With Yourself, about WFH and motherhood, but I must admit I have been enjoying it. Here are a few of her tour stops that I enjoyed: Joe Budden podcast, She’s So Lucky Podcast, Baby it’s Keke Palmer Podcast and Monica Lewinsky’s podcast.

Well that’s it for this week. I’ll catch you on Sunday!