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Melissa Lozada Oliva described her reading rut in her newsletter last week by calling out fiction by millennials as all about “millenial adrift finds a hole” which made me almost laugh. If you read Candelaria, it’s actually hilarious. Finding a hole, indeed. Every day in my life is a version of “finding a hole” insofar that the future becomes less certain and safe. When I last reread Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel in October 2020, I was most struck with terror when credit cards stopped working while people quarantined in the airport. I thought the lack of financial infrastructure was the worst thing that could happen that could really dismantle society. I’m not sure, but it feels like we’re being forced into some tribal backslide that could eventually end with people living in caves. Canceling billions of research dollars, greenlighting the worst policies targeting the most marginalized amongst us seems like an overlarge step in shoving us all in that direction. I’m reading something right now about a catastrophic world event that results in the further creep of corporate supremacy and the complacency that comes with near constant chaos to which I say, “Yeah, that sounds about right.” If this is where we’re headed, I have to get better at growing zucchini.
This Week’s Vocabulary List
“The Case for Lunch” by Laura Collins, The New Yorker July 28, 2025
Redoubt (noun): a small temporary enclosed work; a defended position
After revealing Samuel Johnson’s definition and origin of the word "lunch,” the author lists things for a quick convenient lunch and then more decadent offerings like ragu or a vacation snack table that never ends as a “redoubt of leisure or even decadence.”
This usage shows a stoppage of time, a protection from the bustle of the day in order to enjoy. It’s not just a pause in the day, it’s a protection, like a brick wall or a fence, keeping out the constant notifications and updates and requests the workday can bring. The word choice is effective here because it shows careful deliberation and forethought in a midday meal that could potentially go past four.
Do not accept the unacceptable. Make a triple stuff Selena Gomez Oreo. A better world is possible and is waiting for you. I guess my lunch practice is decadent because I eat with my mom during the week which is a highlight of my day. It’s really nice to be away from my big screen in favor of my little screen. I ate lunch alone today and read a book instead of listening to a podcast. I ate pizza with broccoli and garlic and drank a mini can of coke. When I’m alone, I’m less inclined to sit at the table to eat lunch and would rather just go back to my desk.
That being said, I don’t think anyone should eat lunch at their desk if it can be avoided. When I was teaching, sometimes I would sit at a student desk just to get a change of scenery while eating my lunch. Other times, I would give out fake lunch detentions to kids who would get in trouble eating in the cafeteria so they’d eat in my classroom and we’d watch the Giraffe Cam and stay off the radar.
I feel tricked into reading all of this article. I thought we were talking about lunch but it was really about a fussy but not lunch place in the UK with an owner with a brash affect. While I agree with his stance on work and taking time to enjoy your life as a socialist concept, I disagree with a two hundred dollar a person lunch. That is cuckoo bananas. It has been ZERO days since the last time I learned about the Yellow Bittern against my will.
Practical Applications
I spent some of Saturday afternoon milling around the library with no agenda which made me feel like a kid again with all of that available stuff at my fingertips. The library was a redoubt against the summer heat and roving packs of neighborhood losers who followed us home from camp on their bikes. Now, Michelle is our library’s board president and she organized a local authors festival. Local authors set up tables in the library with the aim of generating new readers and new relationships with other authors. It was a great success even though I depleted my weekly social battery and would rather have given a wolverine a manicure than talk to anyone. Promotion is hard and everyone deserves a lot of credit for putting themselves out there even after writing a book which is also hard!
Football starts for real (preseason starts tonight for the Eagles) in a few weeks which means my favorite yearly writing is here: “Why Your Team Sucks” by Drew Magary for Defector. Magary started this series when Deadspin existed in its original iteration and not its current slop factory iteration. I loved this series before I loved football. I’ve been saving them to read at one time, especially the ones that came out first which feel like kicking someone while they’re down, which, in the case of the Tennessee Titans and the San Francisco 49ers, is just fine by me. The Eagles one won’t come out for a little while, so I can only guess what’s wrong with the team. One of my hotties who dressed for the Super Bowl got traded this week but I haven’t unfollowed him on Instagram yet. It took me almost a full calendar year to unfollow Tobias Harris, so if you know Philly sports, you know it was a heartwrenching unfollow. Michelle read the Dallas Cowboys one out loud to me while I caramelized zucchini for dinner which was great. The analysis and the dinner. Reading things that include reader comments are particularly funny to me because people who don’t identify as creative can be incredibly creative with describing their psychic pain of being a football fan. We can all agree that we’re all miserable in some regard and the narcissism of small differences can serve as a redoubt against loneliness. If you love football, this is required reading and if you don’t love football, it’s educational enough to jam a few facts into conversation with someone—something for everyone.
Love,
Andrea
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I am happy to dramatically perform each and every “Your Team Sucks” for anyone, especially while you are cooking.