to be sorted later #18
in which we're taking our 2025 slow read to the Old West
I don’t know much about my upstairs neighbor, but I can tell you one thing for certain: the woman has a cleaning schedule. Every Saturday that I’m home, like clockwork, I hear her vacuuming. Usually it’s late afternoon or early evening, which I find to be an interesting choice — but even if the hour isn’t always the same, it still happens. It’s also clear that she is detailed, as I know how big that space is, considering it’s the exact size as mine, and her vacuuming always goes on far longer than I think it will.
I’m impressed by her consistency. As far as I know, mostly from my chatty landlord, she’s in her 20s and this is her first place she’s lived independently. You know what I wasn’t doing consistently on a Saturday when I was in my 20s? Vacuuming my apartment.
My mother Rexanna would also approve. Growing up, when we’d do our Saturday morning chores, and it would be my turn to dust, she’d always inspect my work — “If you’re going to half-ass it, what’s the point?” she’d say, if every photo hadn’t been taken off the piano first, or if it was clear I’d just dusted the obvious spots quickly.
Yesterday, in a fit of new year ambition and desire to declutter, I spent all day cleaning and organizing my kitchen and my pantry. It was a much overdue activity, and I felt great, almost manic with energy. When I finally sat down on the couch to take a break, turning on the television felt like an earned treat. Right as I pressed play on a show, upstairs, the vacuum started.
What I’m Sorting Through, Currently …
“to be sorted later” is a series in which I attempt to have fun on the internet again, namely, by sharing the latest things I am watching, reading, listening to, hating, loving, discovering, and otherwise sorting through in any particular week or season. Enjoy! Or don’t!
Announcing 2025’s Slow Read: “The American War and Peace”
That’s right, folks, we’re embarking on another slow read in 2025 … Lonesome Dove!
“I love how you guys read War and Peace and then decided to just read the American War and Peace,” our cousin Ian texted my brother Jay and me as we brainstormed how we’d organize our slow read book club. Given that he also sent us a photo of his bookshelf with War and Peace and Lonesome Dove prominently displayed next to each other, I trust this was a sincere statement, and wished we’d invited him to join the W&P slow read.
Clocking in at 102 chapters (and 964 pages in the Kindle edition), Lonesome Dove feels like a breeze after a year of War and Peace. If we stay faithful to our slow read schedule, we should finish right before Thanksgiving. Plus, now that we’ve left Moscow and are hanging out with some old Texas Rangers, more of the family is joining in this year!
Feel like reading the Pulitzer Prize-winning American classic that "some critics” (my cousin) call the “American War and Peace” with us? (Are you reading this post and not related to me by blood? Wow. Thank you. You’re still invited!)
Another Year, Still Trying to Read Everything at Once
As always, I’m reading multiple books at once — I’m still working my way through a re-read of One Hundred Years of Solitude (the Netflix adaptation is fantastic — a “wily, improbable triumph”!).
I’m also reading Swimming in Paris: A Life in Three Stories, which was an impulse buy on an impulse visit to Women & Children First bookstore on NYE. I’m going to go ahead and claim that part one, about her abortion when she was 17, is a must read. An excerpt:
“I did not do it with a ‘lightness of heart’; it was neither comfortable, nor convenient, nor banal. I was neither in distress nor in a state of high drama, but that spring of 1984 was, I understand now, ‘an extreme human experience, bearing on life and death, time, law, ethics, and taboo’ (Annie Ernaux, Happening).”
Up next: my January Haruki Murakami read! It was so considerate of him to have a new one (The City and Its Uncertain Walls) just in time for my annual read. I’ll be reading the UK edition, and I’m extremely into the cover:
On Repeat
Hamilton “Hammy” Leithauser saved the first Friday of the year with this new single that my brother (J. Hammy) shared, and I’ve since listened to dozens of times. “She said Hammy!”
“She said Hammy, it’s not a beautiful country, as much as I’d like it to be”
And here’s a little playlist I had made and forgotten about until today, great for perking up a dark January day. I recommend pairing it with a solo trip to a museum while looking at the weirdest art you can find, scowling at any men who invade your personal space.
If that’s strangely specific for you, maybe just as a mid-afternoon pick-me-up?
previously:
to be sorted later #17
It’s the holiday season, and as such my ambition is waxing and waning, much like my energy and the moon.
