To Do list №21

OK, so you may have noticed that we didn't send a July To-Do list, and there is a simple reason; time. Selkie is really growing, it's amazing! As a small team sometimes there's no time for me to make newsletters for you, and we will improve that in the near future.

August is known for a few things, the last month of Summer, blazing heat, and those dog days by the pool or beach. With that in mind I thought it a perfect time to make the To-Do list strictly book club this month! I love to read via Audio, everything I recommend is audio approved! Narrators can make a massive difference, in fact some narrators are so popular that people have clubs around them, they will read every book they narrate! What a great living- reading the years most anticipated novels. One of my favourite readers is Julia Whelan, whom I discovered listening to My Year of Rest and Relaxation and realised just how incredible listening to books can be.

 I highly recommend to make listening a hobby, especially as a busy person because it's something you can do  freely and frequently, allowing you to consume much more. It also brings excitement to the week if you're sitting at a desk with a job that won't be disturbed by audio. 

Audio reading can also be a really fun way to enjoy long drives or making dinner, a way to invest more time into cooking! It becomes a meditation. If you've been yearning to learn to make homemade pasta, pickle your favourite veggies, or  build complex broths for soups (gazpacho anyone?) an audio book is a relaxing tool to keep your mind focused and off of daily worries.

We open with the poem of the month, and of course this one is about summer! 

*One thing I highly recommend is to read these poems out loud, read them like you have an audience. Practise the rhythm, listen to your own voice, sooth yourself and sharpen your performance skills

Your poem of the month

David Baker, We Are Gone

Even the night cooling down is slick with heat.
Even the sheet we share like a humming skin.

From three stories up the sounds of the street,
drinkers at the curb, a wet hiss of dry tires,

is a rhythm through our box fan, like panting.
When we sleep it is piecemeal until morning.

        •

Listen, the years are short. They are nothing.
I write each morning, while you are at work.

In the heat of day, I walk to the library, 

cold water at the fountain, air-conditioned air; 

walk with a new book back in the elm-lined shade.
At night I meet you at the top of the stairs.

        •

Where are you gone, who loved me so long
one summer far from home? Days are long.

Even the heat is lovelier there, as memory is.
We make lemonade from powder. Little wonder

the years are less than a breath, like a song
on the radio heard as the rhythm of languor.

        •

Whistle of the ice-cream truck. Drinkers at the curb.
Days and nights of heat, of sex, such tenderness.

When we sleep sometimes it is to dream of the days.
Where are they gone? Meeting on the stairs,

laughter and light, a small meal, a bottle of wine.
When we wake it is piecemeal, until we are gone.

Exquisite, romantic beach dramas (that might make you cry):

Miranda Cowley Heller's new book is a stunning family drama that whips you through time. Two friends that meet as kids, an abuse that changes the direction of their entire lives, and a story you won't ever forget. Quite a summer read.

"This house, this place, knows all my secrets."

"It is a perfect July morning, and Elle, a fifty-year-old happily married mother of three, awakens at "The Paper Palace"--the family summer place which she has visited every summer of her life. But this morning is different: last night Elle and her oldest friend Jonas crept out the back door into the darkness and had sex with each other for the first time, all while their spouses chatted away inside. Now, over the next twenty-four hours, Elle will have to decide between the life she has made with her genuinely beloved husband, Peter, and the life she always imagined she would have had with her childhood love, Jonas, if a tragic event hadn't forever changed the course of their lives. As Heller colors in the experiences that have led Elle to this day, we arrive at her ultimate decision with all its complexity. Tender yet devastating, The Paper Palace considers the tensions between desire and dignity, the legacies of abuse, and the crimes and misdemeanors of families. "

This romantic book gripped me and held me hard. From the cover I thought it would be a super light, cheesy read, but I was mistaken! I listened to it literally everywhere. The twists are shocking and the romance is truly unexpected. The narrator has a thick British accent so prepare yourself to get used to it, but I promise if you make it through chapter one you won't ever look back.

"Eve, Justin, Susie, and Ed have been friends since they were teenagers. Now in their thirties, the four are as close as ever, Thursday pub trivia night is sacred, and Eve is still secretly in love with Ed. Maybe she should have moved on by now, but she can’t stop thinking about what could have been. And she knows Ed still thinks about it, too.

But then, in an instant, their lives are changed forever.

In the aftermath, Eve’s world is upended. As stunning secrets are revealed, she begins to wonder if she really knew her friends as well as she thought. And when someone from the past comes back into her life, Eve’s future veers in a surprising new direction...

They say every love story starts with a single moment. What if it was just last night?"

Very sexy/cheesy (but actually well written) summer romance:

You'll be hard pressed to find a person who has read this and didn't thoroughly enjoy it. From the storyline, to the characters, the setting and the sex, this book is tastefully raunchy and laugh-out-loud funny. You may be inclined to read her next book straight after as this one is truly an addiction, but it's not quite as satisfying. 

"Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.

They're polar opposites.

In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they're living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer's block.

Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She'll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he'll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really."

Hot Child in the city!

You'll be on your toes as our heroine battles against the male gaze while climbing the ladder at a New York law firm. Reads like a movie. Thrillingly fun all the way to the end!

Sweetbitter meets The Firm in this buzzy, page-turning debut novel about sex and power in the halls of corporate America.

One of Buzzfeed's Most Anticipated Books of 2020, Cosmopolitan's Best Summer Reads of 2020, and the New York Post's 30 Best Summer Books

Alex Vogel has always been a high achiever who lived her life by the book—star student and athlete in high school, prelaw whiz in college, Harvard Law School degree. Accepting a dream offer at the prestigious Manhattan law firm of Klasko & Fitch, she promises her sweet and supportive longtime boyfriend that the job won’t change her. 

Yet Alex is seduced by the firm’s money and energy . . . and by her cocksure male colleagues, who quickly take notice of the new girl. She’s never felt so confident and powerful—even the innuendo-laced banter with clients feels fun. In the firm’s most profitable and competitive division, Mergers and Acquisitions, Alex works around the clock, racking up billable hours and entertaining clients late into the evening. While the job is punishing, it has its perks, like a weekend trip to Miami, a ride in a client’s private jet, and more expense-account meals than she can count. 

But as her clients’ expectations and demands on her increase, and Alex finds herself magnetically drawn to a handsome coworker despite her loving relationship at home, she begins to question everything—including herself. She knows the corporate world isn’t black and white, and that to reach the top means playing by different rules. But who made those rules? And what if the system rigged so that women can’t win, anyway? 

When something happens that reveals the dark reality of the firm, Alex comes to understand the ways women like her are told—explicitly and implicitly—how they need to behave to succeed in the workplace. Now, she can no longer stand by silently—even if doing what’s right means putting everything on the line to expose the shocking truth.

You can tell from the cover what kind of book this is, and the truth is the beginning is tedious. The reward is very much worth it! Get past the first chapter and prepare for an incredibly sexy city co worker crush story that becomes... well.. quite explicit! This one has a movie in the works, and they really only option books for movies when they read like one. All in all, if you love a sexy summer read you will love The Hating Game.

Lucy Hutton has always been certain that the nice girl can get the corner office. She’s charming and accommodating and prides herself on being loved by everyone at Bexley & Gamin. Everyone except for coldly efficient, impeccably attired, physically intimidating Joshua Templeman. And the feeling is mutual.

Trapped in a shared office together 40 (OK, 50 or 60) hours a week, they’ve become entrenched in an addictive, ridiculous never-ending game of one-upmanship. There’s the Staring Game. The Mirror Game. The HR Game. Lucy can’t let Joshua beat her at anything—especially when a huge new promotion goes up for the taking.

If Lucy wins this game, she’ll be Joshua’s boss. If she loses, she’ll resign. So why is she suddenly having steamy dreams about Joshua, and dressing for work like she’s got a hot date? After a perfectly innocent elevator ride ends with an earth-shattering kiss, Lucy starts to wonder whether she’s got Joshua Templeman all wrong.

Maybe Lucy Hutton doesn’t hate Joshua Templeman. And maybe, he doesn’t hate her either. Or maybe this is just another game.

Raw and unflinching, Luster is a sexy city drama that is raunchy but without the cheese. Both thrilling and disturbing with all sorts of unexpected outcomes.

Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties—sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage—with rules.

As if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics weren’t hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and invited into Eric’s home—though not by Eric. She becomes a hesitant ally to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie may be the only Black woman young Akila knows.

Irresistibly unruly and strikingly beautiful, razor-sharp and slyly comic, sexually charged and utterly absorbing, Raven Leilani’s Luster is a portrait of a young woman trying to make sense of her life—her hunger, her anger—in a tumultuous era. It is also a haunting, aching description of how hard it is to believe in your own talent, and the unexpected influences that bring us into ourselves along the way. 

Profound Vacation thriller:

Absolutely gripping. We begin on what we imagine is an ordinary vacation, and it's so elegantly described that for a while you feel as though you too have joined this family by the pool. Magnificent twists take us through what might be the end of the world, but it's done so beautifully you'll be up late thinking about this one.

Amanda and Clay head out to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a vacation: a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter, and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they’ve rented for the week. But a late-night knock on the door breaks the spell. Ruth and G. H. are an older black couple—it’s their house, and they’ve arrived in a panic. They bring the news that a sudden blackout has swept the city. But in this rural area—with the TV and internet now down, and no cell phone service—it’s hard to know what to believe.

Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple—and vice versa? What happened back in New York? Is the vacation home, isolated from civilization, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one another?

Suspenseful and provocative, Rumaan Alam’s third novel is keenly attuned to the complexities of parenthood, race, and class. Leave the World Behind explores how our closest bonds are reshaped—and unexpected new ones are forged—in moments of crisis. 

Inspirational Memoirs:

Dolly has a new book available, Ghosts, and the audio comes out in October! Since I haven't read it I thought it a good idea to introduce those of who haven't heard of popular British author, Dolly Alderton, through her wonderful memoir. Finish it and you'll be clambering for her latest.

The wildly funny, occasionally heartbreaking internationally bestselling memoir about growing up, growing older, and learning to navigate friendships, jobs, loss, and love along the ride

When it comes to the trials and triumphs of becoming an adult, journalist and former Sunday Times columnist Dolly Alderton has seen and tried it all. In her memoir, she vividly recounts falling in love, finding a job, getting drunk, getting dumped, realizing that Ivan from the corner shop might just be the only reliable man in her life, and that absolutely no one can ever compare to her best girlfriends. Everything I Know About Love is about bad dates, good friends and—above all else— realizing that you are enough. 

Glittering with wit and insight, heart and humor, Dolly Alderton’s unforgettable debut weaves together personal stories, satirical observations, a series of lists, recipes, and other vignettes that will strike a chord of recognition with women of every age—making you want to pick up the phone and tell your best friends all about it. Like Bridget Jones’ Diary but all true, Everything I Know About Love is about the struggles of early adulthood in all its terrifying and hopeful uncertainty.

I am just as surprised as you might be that I am recommending Matthew McConaughey's biography, Greenlights. We put this on for a road trip a few months ago, and I truly expected to cringe all the way through. As it began I could feel my eyes rolling, but as the story went on I was incredibly shocked to find myself not only relaxed and entertained, but inspired. I mean... VERY inspired! Matthew has quite a bit of wisdom to offer and by the time it was over I was looking at the world through a different lens. I even cried. Whether or not he actually practises what he preaches, or if you like him/his choices, this book is worth a read. Def listen to the audio on this one as he reads it himself.

"I’ve been in this life for 50 years, been trying to work out its riddle for 42, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last 35. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me. 

Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life’s challenges - how to get relative with the inevitable - you can enjoy a state of success I call “catching greenlights”. So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is 50 years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops. Hopefully, it’s medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot’s license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears. It’s a love letter. To life. It’s also a guide to catching more greenlights - and to realizing that the yellows and reds eventually turn green, too. Good luck"

Classics to pull you right into summer feelings:

Doesn't a trip to France sound delightful? Well not all of us can afford the money or time to travel this summer, and with covid still looming many of us simply don't want to. That doesn't mean we can't go there in our minds! Julia's story is, simply put; delicious. The scenery, her life with Paul, the food, the restaurants, friends and truly fascinating stories are enough to fill you with pure relaxation. See why people can't get enough of Julia Child.

Although she would later singlehandedly create a new approach to American cuisine with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, Julia Child was not always a master chef. Indeed, when she first arrived in France in 1948 with her husband, Paul, who was to work for the USIS, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the country itself. 

But as she dove into French culture, buying food at local markets and taking classes at the Cordon Bleu, her life changed forever with her newfound passion for cooking and teaching. Julia’s unforgettable story—struggles with the head of the Cordon Bleu, rejections from publishers to whom she sent her now-famous cookbook, a wonderful, nearly fifty-year long marriage that took the Childs across the globe—unfolds with the spirit so key to Julia’s success as a chef and a writer, brilliantly capturing one of America’s most endearing personalities.

Speaking of Delicious... this book is practically edible. Take a trip to Paris in the 1920's, a real glimpse into so many famed painters and writers lives!  Sylvia Beach, Hilaire Belloc, Bror von Blixen-Finecke, Aleister Crowley, John Dos Passos, F. Scottand Zelda Fitzgerald, Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Pascin, Ezra Pound, Evan Shipman, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas and Hermann von Wedderkop.

Instead of a description, here is an excerpt:

As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.

Now that the bad weather had come, we could leave Paris for a while for a place where this rain would be snow coming down through the pines and covering the road and the high hillsides and at an altitude where we would hear it creak as we walked home at night. Below Les Avants there was a chalet where the pension was wonderful and where we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright. That was where we could go. Traveling third class on the train was not expensive. The pension cost very little more than we spent in Paris.

I would give up the room in the hotel where I wrote and there was only the rent of 74 rue Cardinal Lemoine which was nominal. I had written journalism for Toronto and the checks for that were due. I could write that anywhere under any circumstances and we had money to make the trip.

Maybe away from Paris I could write about Paris as in Paris I could write about Michigan. I did not know it was too early for that because I did not know Paris well enough. But that was how it worked out eventually. Anyway we would go if my wife wanted to, and I finished the oysters and the wine and paid my score in the café and made it the shortest way back up the Montagne Ste. Geneviève through the rain, that was now only local weather and not something that changed your life, to the flat at the top of the hill.

"I think it would be wonderful, Tatie," my wife said. She had a gently modeled face and her eyes and her smile lighted up at decisions as though they were rich presents. "When should we leave?"

"Whenever you want."

"Oh, I want to right away. Didn't you know?"

"Maybe it will be fine and clear when we come back. It can be very fine when it is clear and cold."

"I'm sure it will be," she said. "Weren't you good to think of going, too."

Read more: https://www.oprah.com/omagazine/a-moveable-feast-by-ernest-hemingway-excerpt/all#ixzz72PvldYdZ

For all this cooking, gardening, beaching and poolside reading, burn our new, summer candle to get in the mood.