Happy October! It's time for soup.

Hi there! Welcome to my newsletter experiment. It’s just a handful of things I liked this month that I think are worth sharing.

I’ve blatantly stolen this format from Austin Kleon, whose newsletter is a highlight of my Friday morning toilet repertoire.

1. The Ask Baba Yaga advice books. You might not know it, but you need sinister-yet-uplifting advice from a Russian witch living in a house built on a dubious foundation of chicken legs. I finished one book and immediately read the other. To one advice-seeker, who was worried they had made the wrong choice in breaking up with their kind and boring boyfriend, Baba offered this advice:

   If a man is a stump filled with goodness, he is still a stump.

   And THAT is advice to live by.

2. The Indian movie RRR blew my absolute socks off. If you’re looking for an over-the-top action movie/buddy comedy/fantasy/historical drama/musical with an honest-to-god anti-colonial dance battle (and really, who isn’t?), I can’t recommend it enough. However! There are some gnarly Indian nationalist politics roiling under the surface of the movie that it’s a good idea to understand, and this was a very helpful analysis to have as companion piece.

3. I had a FALL FASHION VISION and since I’m a bit of a fashion maverick, it turns out you can’t actually buy what I was looking for, so I had to make it. Behold, the Star of David bolo tie:

   

   You can buy bolo kits on Etsy, and there’s a surprising number of Southwest-themed Star of David brooches on eBay. I’m planning to wear this at my launch party for WHEN FRANNY STANDS UP on November 3rd! (If you’re in Chicago and want to see my bolo get-up, RSVP here for the party - it’s free!)

4. I’m kind of obsessed with etymology. I have the Etymology Online app on my phone, and I use it more than my podcast app. My newest find is one part of the etymology of ESCAPE:

   from Vulgar Latin *excappare, literally "get out of one's cape, leave a pursuer with just one's cape"

   What tickles me is that the act of fleeing a grabby pursuer and unlatching one’s cape to slip away was SO COMMON that they made a word out of it.

5. I promised you soup, and soup you shall have. There are many versions of the bean/kale/sausage soup, but I’ve tried a million of them and this one - named Roberto - is the best. I eat it nonstop from September to May. Enjoy.

Bonus Lewd Animal Fact: Among spotted hyenas, females are dominant, and their clitorises can be half a foot long and indistinguishable from male penises! Isn’t nature amazing!

In case you didn’t know, my debut novel WHEN FRANNY STANDS UP is coming out November 1st! I would be ever so grateful if you’d pre-order and tell your friends!