The-preheader says it all, really. I am a living, breathing, “accidentally became important at work n its ruining my life” meme, and the worst part is, the only person doing this to me is me. Luckily, I managed to read a book early in August, before I decided to give the majority of each day to my job and then whatever was collectively leftover to Maine and the US Open.¹

Lily King, The Pleasing Hour (1999)—The mood generated by the Gwendoline Riley novel I read last month stayed with me like a benign itch. I wanted to access that mood more directly, as if a fresh encounter with something similar could be like scratching. You might think that would lead me to read another book by the same author, and I did carry around Riley’s My Phantoms (2021) for a while with intent, until I accepted that I a story of a difficult mother and her adult academic daughter would likely not recreate the vibe I had been seeking.

Thus, I turned to King’s debut novel, which has sat on my shelf for 3 years, waiting for me to “be in the mood” to read the story of a young American woman nannying in France whose remit and location changes from caring for 3 children in Paris to looking after an elderly woman in the south of France after she grows a little too close to the married father of the Parisian children.

I loved this book, though it is not as uniformly exceptional as her later novels, imo. But even the parts that I found difficult to enjoy,³ I still loved because those parts are a record of a moment in King’s development as a writer—something she needed to move through in order to become the writer she is today.

As with Writers and Lovers (2020) and Heart the Lover (2025), in The Pleasing Hour it is the combination of King’s style and plot that simply hypnotizes me, transporting me to a whole and complete moment that gives me much to ponder. What I’m still thinking about, nearly a month after finishing the book, is how special King is and how lucky we all are that she’s been able to make a career from writing.

Emily Wilson, “An Uncomplicated Man,” London Review of Books, 13 August 2026—Not much to say about this essay—I’m padding this newsletter the old fashioned way, by adding a lot of words that, upon close examination, are fundamentally non–load-bearing to the overall project—except that it’s everything I hoped it would be. She’s fair! She’s right! No, I didn’t see the movie and I don’t need to see it to know the arguments in her essay are correct!

US Open Round 1, Day 2—Earlier this summer, I entered into a new decade of life. To celebrate my milestone birthday, I wanted to see two of the greatest tennis players of the twenty-first century come to terms with the passage of time in their final appearances at the last grand slam of the calendar year.

Greatness, to me, is not measured solely, or even predominantly, in titles. Matching the all-time slam record is impressive, sure, but watching Djokovic grimly hunt down each victory like a T-1000 stalking John Connor has personally been a joyless experience. Djokovic is a true millennial, leveraging what can only be described as a fundamentally Serbian belief in himself with similarly relentless work ethic, to achieve one trophy after another, like so many “A” grades in ivy league courses.

Stan Wawrinka and Gael Monfils are a different kind of millennial, one that is closer to my heart. They’ve applied their rigorous attention and labor toward excellence in their field with a love that shines through in every point of every game in every match they play. For twenty years, I’ve watched them on tv and felt awe and delight at witnessing the incredible skill, intelligence, and, yes, determination, that they brought to the court.

As much as I love World Cup soccer, in my heart tennis is the beautiful game, and nothing has been more beautiful to me than the play of Wawrinka and Monfils. Federer was a religious experience, it’s true, but Wawrinka has also always played with breathtaking elegance. And, being the only other player besides Andy Murray to win multiple slams in the suffocating era of Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic is, in retrospect, as impressive as all the titles won by the Big Three. The hindsight is key to this observation because it is informed by Wawrinka’s final years on tour where he has played any tournament that will accept him because he loves the sport that much. He may love winning, but it is so evident to me that more than anything else he loves playing.

The same can be said of Monfils—la Monf!!—whose love for the game is so deeply entwined with his love for the people who have come out to see him play over the years. What a generous genius of the sport, a man who some say would rather lose in 5 sets than win in 3. He has given us all so much incredible tennis in the past 21 years, so many unforgettable 5-setters, many of which did win. But even in losing, the man has always been electric. I’ll see him live and in person for the first time in my life tonight, on his 40th birthday, and if the experience is even remotely similar to what I saw of Wawrinka yesterday, then I will consider myself a blessed and lucky woman of 40 years of age.

Off I go for one more day of tennis!

Gertrude Mackenzie with Ruth Goode, My Love Affair With the State of Maine (1955)

Rachel Cusk, Life of M (2026)

Tove Jansson, tr., Thomas Teal, The Summer Book (1972/1974)

Aurora Stewart de Peña, Julius Julius (2026)