What's Your Butter Right Now?
Plus Eloise's mom, my new favorite pasta sauce, and of course Barbie discourse.
Friday Thread: Can I Have Extra Butter, Please?
2023 is turning out to be one of the most intense years of my life—because of the book, yes, but also because of some personal stuff that isn’t newsletter material (yet, anyway). The latter is going to be especially hard for the next little while, so I’m leaning hard into making life feel softer and more joyful where I can. Maybe you are also in need of some extra joy? Or maybe you just have a great, joy-bringing recommendation to share. Either way, I’d love to know your butter!
If you’re not a podcast listener: Butter is what we put on our Burnt Toast to make it/life even more messily delicious. It can be a book, a movie, an item of clothing, a food, a mood, a recent experience, or some random bit of ephemera that brought joy to your day. You can find a master list of Butters here, though we’re overdue to update it —otherwise check for them at the end of every episode.
A few of mine, lately: Watching butterflies in the garden, reading my friend’s new novel-in-progress, and hosting the inaugural meeting of the Feminist Romance Book Club. We did a deep dive on Rachel Lynn Solomon, while eating cheese and brownies. Heaven.
PS. To tell us your Butter and read everyone else’s, you do need to be a paid Burnt Toast subscriber. Here’s how to join us!
Links & Recs
I was up with a sick kid several nights this week and ended up reading this brilliant Eloise prequel by
at 2am. (Here she is reading it if you don’t have a New Yorker subscription.)When God makes you get Instagram.
Like most millennial feminists, I knew the Barbie movie would be good when I heard the Indigo Girls let them use Closer To Fine.
Also, Radical Activist Barbie.
! I cannot wait to read Prom Mom.Comforted to know even expert gardeners lose a ton of plants every year.
Getting weighed at the doctor’s office is associated with worse mental health.
I co-sign everything
says here about the problems with Solid Starts.TW for anti-fatness, weight loss surgery, and death, but I do keep thinking about the Lisa Marie Presley story. (NYT gift link)
For dinner the other night, I made Kelsey Miller’s amazing zucchini-tomato thing (over cavatappi) AND added a few big scoops of The Cheese. So good.
Book Stuff
Delighted by The Observer’s cover story about my work, written by the excellent Rebecca Seal.
And I wrote about the inherent anti-fatness of “body positivity” for InStyle Australia, to celebrate Fat Talk arriving in the Southern Hemisphere!