Best things in life (almost) #12

The ultimate beach read, grief anniversaries – and entering my stargazing era? 💫

Jul 18, 2024

book on gray pillow on bed near seat during daytime — Photo by Tobias Tullius on Unsplash

Hello, hello.

Before we get into this week’s glorious recommendations, a few announcements.

📢 I’m in Stylist magazine this week, as part of their new campaign Every Loss Counts, which is on a mission to get pregnancy loss taken more seriously – including lobbying for miscarriages to be officially counted so that health services can be properly designed to give people the support and care they deserve. It’s not online yet, but you can read the latest issue via the magazine’s app.

📖 Life, Almost: Miscarriage, misconceptions, and a search for answers from the brink of motherhood is now available to buy in America. Hurrah!

Meanwhile in the UK, the paperback version, updated for 2024, is out on September 26^th – and available for pre-order now. To celebrate, I’m giving away a signed bookplate to anyone who orders a paperback in advance.

If you’d like one, all you have to do is send me a screenshot of your pre-order receipt (from anywhere – Amazon, Bookshop.org, or your friendly local bookshop), along with the address you’d like the bookplate sent to. If you’d like a particular name or dedication, pop that in your email too.

Of course, if you already bought the book in hardback (you’re the best, thank you) and would like a bookplate, I’ll gladly send you one. (Though if you did feel like posting a short review online somewhere in return, I’d be even more grateful than I already am). Email me on: jennieagg@substack.com

(I’m afraid, for now, this offer is for UK readers only).

Any other business? No? OK, on with the good stuff.

Reading/watching/listening…

On holiday, as well as the fifth and final instalment of The Cazalets (😭), I read Malibu Rising, by Taylor Jenkins Reid. It is perhaps the ultimate book to read when there’s a chance you’ll have sand between your toes and saltwater drying on your skin. Set in 80s Malibu, over the course of a single night at a riotous celebrity party, it’s about the Riva siblings, who are estranged from their pop star dad. (If you’re a familiar with the Taylor Jenkins Reid Universe, there are also enjoyable Easter eggs: Evelyn Hugo, Carrie Soto etc).

Strange Bodies, by Tom de Freston. This is both a love letter from a man to his wife, as she loses pregnancy after pregnancy, as well as a profound meditation on art, grief, the creative process, and life before birth. Memoir is blended with art criticism and descriptions of paintings the author created during this time (a whole new world to me – and a fascinating insight). I was very moved by Tom’s perspective on pregnancy and miscarriage. However, if your brain is like mine (creaky, cobwebbed and littered with ad jingles from the 90s), this might not be the easiest book to dip in and out of. It needs – and deserves – time and space devoted to it to really absorb everything it has to say.

The Instant, by Amy Liptrot. If possible, I enjoyed this even more than Liptrot’s first memoir The Outrun (about returning to her home island of Orkney, after rehab for alcohol addiction). It’s about the time she spent in Berlin, lonely, sober – and looking for love. It’s very good on longing, homesickness, heartbreak and the disconnect between our online lives and our actual, embodied lives. With a bit of late-night raccoon-hunting, thrown in for good measure. The audiobook, narrated in Amy’s gentle, almost musical, voice is spellbinding.

Bikini Kill frontwoman Kathleen Hanna on the You’re Booked podcast. I loved this interview. (And I want to get my hands on a copy of Lesbian Ethics, which she talks about).

‘Whether you’re a parent or child-free, you’re allowed to be stressed, frivolous, hedonistic, lazy, bored, frustrated, unproductive’ – I really appreciated this piece on being child-free and the pressure to ‘make up’ for not having children with ambition or productivity. (Stylist – read via the app or here with a subscription).

Michelle on the pain of pregnancy announcements and losing your ‘safe people’. (Substack)

I know nothing about stargazing, but I’ve started listening to the Star Diary podcast, on Sunday nights – it gives an update of everything you can see in the night sky for the week ahead. Apart from hoping I might learn a little, the scale of everything described – 11-year solar cycles and such – puts everything else into perspective in a way I find incredibly soothing. (BBC Sky At Night)

‘My son and I were calling to each other across a great distance, a distance that I was daily aware might never close’ – this is a gorgeous piece of writing about IVF. (GQ)

This piece by comedian Grace Campbell on the emotional aftermath of having an abortion. Any hint of sadness or ambivalence after terminating a pregnancy has a history of being weaponised against reproductive rights, so it’s brave and necessary to put this kind of nuance into the world. (Guardian)

Amy Jones

on finding the joy in exercise again after miscarriage and other pregnancy complications. (Substack)

This Is The Kit, live. (Performance dates here)

Ruth Whippman

, author of Boy Mum – top of my TBR list – on raising boys and the battle-fication of boyhood, aka ‘the shark experience’. (Substack)

This poem.

And this one, by Victoria Adukwei Bulley.

And finally, the always excellent

Poorna Bell

on the evolution of grief anniversaries. (Substack)

Other joys…

Snipping sweet peas. Fat, peachy roses. Writing with a lit candle on my desk. Dancing with friends to Taylor Swift...as played by an indie cover band (even if they did try to claim at first that they ‘didn’t know any’ 🙄). Pizza in the sun. Fish and chips on the seafront. Nocellara olives. Sea swimming. Puffin-spotting. Tresco Abbey Gardens. (A bucket-list garden, if ever there was one). A coastal path run. Collecting shells with Edward. Slowing down. Coming home again.