five things no. 16

feat. Petya from A Reading Life!

Folks, I am so excited to bring you another installment of five things, which long-time readers will know is one of my favorite newsletters to write as the process works to remind me that I do not, in fact, hate my life. Even more exciting: Petya K. Grady is joining us today. She introduces herself in her own words below, but suffice it to say that I have been reading Petya’s newsletter for ages now, and am always inspired by how seriously she takes books. Beyond a hobby or a pastime, she sees reading as a direct extension, if not an integral element, of her creativity, and treats the habit with the intentionality I always try (and not always successfully) to dedicate to it.

It was an honor for me to read her words for Hmm today: I hope you enjoy them as much as I did, and do check out her work on A Reading Life if you haven’t already.

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Agh I have the blue Fitzcarraldo edition but this cover is so good!

I write A Reading Life on Substack and keep a companion visual diary on Instagram. I share book recommendations, ideas on how to read more, and essays inspired by my reading life. I started the newsletter in 2024 after a long stretch of burnout. It was my way of rebuilding a reading practice and creating a community of mutual accountability for others who, like me, wanted to make reading a priority inside an ordinary, algo-ed, busy life. My taste runs toward emotionally intelligent, formally daring books — stories that privilege interiority over plot and leave room for ambiguity and discomfort. I’m Claire-Louise Bennett’s biggest fan.

Petya’s Five Things

2025 for me will always be the year of discovering Claire-Louise Bennett.
Her work has inspired, challenged, and entertained me in endless ways, and CLB the person has become a guiding force in my life, beyond any reasonable measure of comparison.

1. The intertexts of Checkout 19

Checkout 19 is Bennett’s second novel — a coming-of-age story about a young girl who becomes a reader and then a writer. The book is packed with literary references and is the ultimate pleasure read for someone who loves reading about reading. In a moment of madness last fall, I went through the novel and made a list of every single book and/or author mentioned. Then I organized them by genre, form, and theme. The result is incredible — a kind of personal syllabus I am working through.

2. Oatcakes

Becoming a completionist of an author is delightful for many reasons, but when you love someone like CLB — who genuinely does not give a fuck and simply does her thing — it’s especially satisfying. In an interview, she says she isn’t embarrassed to admit that much of her work is autobiographical, and I think that’s why devoted readers begin to notice recurring elements across her books, some of them awfully specific. Case in point: Scottish oatcakes, which I am now also addicted to. They’re rough, crunchy crackers — neither sweet nor savory, but not flavorless either. They’re the perfect vehicle for a good slice of cheese and go beautifully with coffee.

3. The color green

Another recurring motif in her work is the color green — mentioned too many times to count. Here’s a taste, from a letter the protagonist in Big Kiss, Bye-Bye writes to a former English teacher:

“Green is life is poison is sickness is peace…is absinthe is tarnish is labyrinth is melancholy…is lush is infection is solitude is beginning is asparagus…is mould is freshness is vitality…is mildew is vile is rampant is the colour of my ink yes, the colour of my ink.”

I am now, too, deeply interested in green and notice it everywhere it appears in my life. It’s apparently my daughter’s favorite color and, most recently, I bought a handful of green pencils to use for underlining in my books. [Clara: Earlier this year I read Big Kiss, Bye-Bye. It was the first (and so far only, but not last!) CLB book I read, courtesy of Petya’s chronicling of her growing obsession with the author, and I very much enjoyed it and look forward to my own completionist journey. Also: green is, fun fact, my favorite color as well.]

4. Black eyeliner

I almost didn’t want to share this one because it makes me sound a little crazy — but we’re all influenced by far lesser figures these days. I am obsessed with Claire-Louise Bennett’s portraits by photographer Mark Walsh, and after spending a frankly ridiculous amount of time admiring them, I started wearing black eyeliner. Which, at 44, says something. I’m still a novice and can’t pull off a proper cat-eye, but the Victoria Beckham (ahem) Kajal liners basically draw themselves.

5. Frieze

To tide myself over while I wait for her next book, I recently subscribed to Frieze magazine, where Bennett is a contributor. If you haven’t read her work yet but this list of obsessions has made you curious, take a look at her review of Björk’s 1993 album Debut:

“Adolescence is a time of pushing boundaries, seeing how far you can go, how much you can get away with, and no one expresses what flirting with danger and licking your wounds feels like with as much infectious candour and vim as Björk.”

I agree with her about adolescence and about Björk. But that’s also exactly how I feel about Bennett’s work itself — pushing boundaries and licking its wounds with infectious candor and vim. [Clara: Unrelated, but I cannot read/hear the word “vim” (a great word!) without thinking of Kendall Roy’s eulogy to his father, which is frankly already a scene I think about at least once a week.]

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Thank you, Petya!!! Will now be debating which CLB novel to read next, brb.

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Clara’s Five Things

1. Staying with literature for a moment …

Let’s stick to Petya’s literary theme for a while longer, but with a slight twist, because I’ve been reading a bit more nonfiction recently, and it’s been a great counterbalance to the novels I’m simultaneously reading. Do not worry, I’m not about to start recommending self-help books to you, but I’ve been on an architecture kick recently, and I just find that learning about subjects I know little about stimulates a different part of my brain than reading fiction.

I’ve kinda been on a non-alc beer kick, too.

Last week, I finally finished Arquitectura critica: Proyectos con espíritu inconformista, a book I bought at a museum in Sevilla over a year ago and have been taking my sweet time with since. And the other day, I began reading Bauhaus Goes West—which I also purchased at a museum because I am a girl deeply susceptible to gift shop offerings—about Bauhaus-trained architects who emigrated from Germany to America and Britain in the twentieth century and how their influence impacted the trajectory of Anglo-American design and architecture. I feel very good about this new habit of mine. I love leaning into a niche interest. Makes me feel alive. And anything, frankly, that better allows me to make increasingly esoteric references in everyday conversation. Keeps me approachable.

2. And so what if I’ve made intro to philosophy my new thing?

You guys might remember how one of my little 2026 resolutions was the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake (chill, lowkey, casual). Well, I fell into a bit of a philosophy rabbit hole¹ via Borges’s Ficciones, a short story collection I finished reading on Christmas Day. To be clear, I only understood about 50% of Ficciones, and that’s a generous figure, but Borges made multiple mentions to the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, which sure, fine, why not, it happens, but then I watched Joachim Trier’s Oslo, August 31st, and Schop was mentioned there as well, which I decided to take as a sign. A sign of what? Well, mostly that I should google Schopenhauer. I hate the sense of consistent ignorance. It starts to feel willful.

Which is how I ended up watching a 45-minute lecture on the man, one I enjoyed so much that I whipped out a few of my many little Muji accoutrements (a thin beige notebook and a 0.38 dark blue ballpoint pen hates to see me coming, I can tell you that much) and took three pages of detailed notes.

Bit of cereal, bit of Hegel, bit of coffee on the side … Girls just wanna have fun, is what I keep saying.

Unfortunately, that was only the beginning. I’ve since watched lectures on Kant, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Hegel, Marx, Goethe (not a philosopher, sure, but not not a philosopher!), Wittgenstein (my current hyperfixation, if you must know) … the list of dead white men about whom I know very little is refreshingly long.²

I take little lunch breaks when I’m working from home, and I like to watch a little something while I do this. That little something is occasionally—okay, typically—an episode of a relatively mindless TV show (most recently, and I will not be apologizing for this, it was The Vampire Diaries … let me live, I am literally just a girl). But the last couple of months, I have been replacing that episode with a lecture, and it makes me feel superior in the same way exercising in the morning used to make me feel.

I’ll probably write more about this, but the truth is, I just really love being a student. Feeding my brain, if you will. And to be a student without the hassle and anxiety of being tested at the end of a semester? Other than my growing smugness, I see no downsides.

3. Drops of God

Once more, I have bravely and boldly taken on the role of being the only person watching an AppleTV series. I have accepted this as my burden to bear, given the platform’s arbitrarily reluctant marketing budget. A few months ago, I’d for some reason lost/forgotten my passwords to every other streamer and was too lazy to reset them; instead, I decided to get into the weeds of AppleTV’s catalog. This is not an exercise I would necessarily recommend, but it is how I discovered Drops of God.

I mean. Graphic design is my passion, said whoever was in charge of this promo. (Photo: AppleTV+)

This is a show boasting an audience of dozens, I’m sure, about a French woman whose estranged and famous wine expert father dies, at which point she has to compete for his inheritance with the dead man’s former protégé, a Japanese sommelier. That sounds insane, you’re saying? Well, yes. It is! The show is based on a manga series of the same name, and the story teeters on the edge of melodrama on a thrillingly frequent basis. I devoured season one, and have been taking my time with season two (mostly because new episodes are being released weekly, leaving me no choice in the matter), but I will just never lack appreciation for terrible and batshit shows. It’s why I watched Riverdale for longer than any one person should, from a mental health perspective.

4. Nothing but respect for my fellow nominees …

And of course, my fellow newsletter writers have been, as per usual, delighting and inspiring me. In no specific order, here’s a non-exhaustive list of pieces that have kept me company: Marion Teniade’s “Keep your sports fan energy out of my Oscars” gamely addressed approximately 93% of my frustrations with current film discourse;” Totally Recommend’s “How to COSplay Luxury,” on top of its respect for the pun, bravely questioned why a brand stocking truly some of the blandest clothes of all time has become so popular;” AVH’s “Where I would want to go in Paris if I were a tourist,” because Marion and I are meeting irl for the first time in Paris in a couple months³ (!!) and this list was everything I wanted and more; Celine Nguyen’s “we’ve created a society where artists can’t make any money” had me nodding along so fervently it threatened the structural integrity of my spine; Caitlin Dewey’s “Who’s that baby?” achieved the impossible and connected a baby’s process of self-perception to our refusal to see AI systems as mere reflections of society (as opposed to original or new creations); and Arden Yum’s “The Stomach as a Site of Control” was perfect for my simmering frustration in re the inanity of hot girls have stomach issues.

5. My new cute little film camera

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this already, but in a stunning turn of is this early onset dementia or am I just extra distracted, lately I’ve had too many instances of “was it you I was talking with about this?” So just in case, let’s recap: I bought myself a film camera for Christmas. A deeply simple one, so I wouldn’t have to overthink it—just pop in the roll, stick the camera in my coat pocket, and bring it with me to my little walks, dinners, parties, drinks, coffee dates … anything that might yield a fun and/or interesting photo. And the fact that I won’t get to see that photo until the film is developed, which happens anytime from two weeks to two months following the photo’s genesis? Well, that’s part of the charm, baby! The only thing I ever rush is my walking speed—for everything else, I’m happy to take my time. Prefer it, even.

This definitely happened because I opened the film canister prior to finishing the roll but you know what … I am a student.

I’m only on my third roll of film, but the two times I’ve received the developed photos in my inbox has been an unparalleled delight, mostly because by the time I do, I’ve completely forgotten what was in the roll, and seeing the who/what/where of the last two-four weeks is like a little gift to myself.⁴ I might write more about this, although in a way I want to keep it to myself, instead of commodifying the hobby by memorializing it in writing for public consumption. You know?

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Thanks for reading, and thank you to Petya for joining us today! You can find me on instagram. The newsletter is fully supported by readers, so if you often find yourself thinking I enjoyed that and also I happen to have disposable income, please consider sharing the newsletter with a friend and/or becoming a paid subscriber for $6/month or $40/year. If not, honestly, that’s fine, too. I get it.

1. This is of course one of the most embarrassing things a person can say, but I stand by it.

2. I’m also in the midst of watching an entire semester’s worth of lectures about John Milton, but that’s neither here nor there.

3. Related: if you have any tips or recs, feel free to drop them in the comments! I’ve always gone to Paris in autumn and never in spring (what an obnoxious thing to write), so this will feel like a very new experience for me.

4. I also managed to overexpose several photos in the first two rolls; I’m hoping that this third one will be the charm and all exposures will be recoverable, otherwise I’ll need to find a new film shop to develop my photos … can’t have someone witnessing my learning curve at such close range.