Hello…
Welcome to Notebook, a newsletter that’s about books, movies, TV, Taylor Swift, perfume, and so on, but also the way we think about social mores now, especially online.
Notebook is a literal notebook—a running collection of things I find interesting, things I find annoying, and brief reviews of what I'm reading and watching—and also a way of testing out and exploring ideas that don't fit easily into essay form. What is loser theory? What's the deal with Taylor Swift? Why is the moon sad? And so on. The only thing that will be very rarely covered here is the news.
Notebook is divided into the following sections:
First, there’s the main feed. There’s no remit here and no beat. Here, we’re just a bunch of dogs chasing an infinite number of squirrels. All conclusions are tentative. About once a month, sometimes more, very rarely less, I do a post of capsule reviews of things I thought were worth writing about.
Then, there’s “A Year of Ghosts.” On the first of every month in 2025, I will send you a ghost story. It might be good! It might be bad! But it will be there.
“Weird Sisters” is a special lane for stuff related to my forthcoming book about women in science fiction.
“Rewatches” began as a project for rewatching the show Neon Genesis Evangelion, but I discovered there was a surprisingly large readership for doing this kind of writing about anime. So now I plan to keep it going. But since I know anime is a niche subject among niche subjects, I gave it its own lane too.
I also have a series where I’m educating myself about perfume, because it’s fun. This series is paywalled because I do not want to cost any innocent perfume companies sales along the way. (More here.)
Finally, if you prefer to get just one monthly email, there’s the monthly digest.
If you’re curious, please subscribe! If you like it, think about paying! All posts auto lock after a certain period of time. You can also find me at Parfumo and Letterboxd, but I don’t use those to review, just to log things.
To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.
