But first, books:
No One is Talking About This (Patricia Lockwood) - “What did a story mean to the baby? It meant a soft voice, reassurance that everything outside her still went on, still would go on. That the blood of continuity still pumped, that the day ran in its riverbed. Her blue eyes rolled when the voice of the story came, and something she shook with what must have been excitement, trying in her tininess to be as large as what pressed in on her. In the dome of her head, the mercury of all things was trying to tremble together…."Seizures,” the doctor said….”
Reviewed: Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder
My review of Nightbitch was published by Drizzle Review! It’s short and sweet and and you can check it out here.
5 Apps I can’t Live Without
This Wired article felt like a huge call out to me. TLDR? It says about To-Do lists that “a scant minority of us check off everything every day. An equally tiny minority simply Cannot Even and are curled in a fetal ball awaiting imminent firing. But most of us? We’re just sort of … meh.” Apparently though, human brains are wired to the Zeigarnik effect, you know, the one where “when a task is unfinished, we can’t seem to stop thinking about it. We perseverate.” Apparently “speccing out” or developing a plan for how the task will be carried out/writing it down lessens this anxiety, but maybe to the point that we can walk away from the to-do list without actually crossing anything off. As our “list of shame” grows, the further we push it away. In addition, apparently we see our future selves as strangers, making it easier to take on big future tasks and succumb to procrastination. It’s easy to forget the huge tasks we said yes to will be us doing it.
There’s a million solutions to this all. One of my favorite quotes is, “If it true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there as many kinds of love as there are hearts” (from Anna Karenina). In the same vein then, there are as many ways to organize to-do lists as there minds, surely. There is bullet journaling, the Pomodoro method, the kanban method, morning pages, etc. Partly, I am writing this to share my top apps, but remember this is just what works for me. I want to know if you have something special and reliable that you use to organize yourself. You can tell me about it in the comments, or just take this as an invitation to reflect. So with that, here are 6 apps I can’t live without:
Meco - this is an app for reading newsletters. I only downloaded it a month ago, but it has changed the inbox game for me. I treat my inbox like a to-do list, which can be useful but also leaves newsletters in a grey space. If I leave them unread, I perseverate on them, and if I mark them as read without actually reading, I never come back to them. This is where Meco is helpful. Basically, it auto-detects senders in your email and lets you add them to the Meco app. Then, you get these newsletters ONLY through the app, categorized by sender. It allows you to organize by groups and easily revisit old newsletters by sender. It even opens links in app, so you can easily return to the same spot in the letter when done. Some subscriptions I get come with action items, so I still keep them in my inbox, but my morning brew/shopping/global health letters go to Meco to peruse at my convenience.
Preply - I am on Preply Every. Single. Week! It’s an app that connects you with a real human online tutor in a language of your choice. I grew up with Sourashtra in the house, learned Spanish and English in school. I also grew up in the Tamil community but my speech as never as good as my comprehension/reading. I decided to join the app and have been working with the same tutor for over a year now. My language progress has been incredible, and although his rates have gone up with experience, I have been grandfathered into the same rate as before. You can use this referral link to get 70% off your first lesson in any language. Be careful to work with a native language tutor - I got lucky in that my tutor is from my hometown in India and he teaches me local dialectical phrases as well! If you have questions or tips about it feel free to reach out.
Asana - I am sure most of you know of Asana, and I recently started using it for personal projects. I previously thought of it as a collaboration app, but it actually works perfectly for the kanban method. Basically, my tasks are organized by things I need to get done today, things to finish in the next 2-3 days, and more long term tasks. I also have a shopping list of lusty things I want but don’t need, a list of movies to watch, and I organize my bookstagram posting on there. I have to admit though, I am a bit psychotic and am afraid of the app freezing or failing to download my lists, so I keep a lot of this in my paper planner anyway JIC (I use this one). Still, the push notifications from Asana to get my act together makes it worth it.
Storygraph - Are you on Storygraph yet? This is a Goodreads alternative (which is owned by Amazon fyi). Storygraph is a Black woman-owned startup, has WAY better visualization, and takes customer feedback seriously to improve the experience. Also, it is super data driven and has hundreds of user-generated reading challenges you can join, and you can even import your Goodreads data into the app, so the switch is seamless. Here is the link to my profile if you want to peek at what I am reading, and I can’t wait to share my end of year reading stats by Mood, Genre, page length and more.
Marco Polo - truly I have not been so obsessed with an app in a while, but I already talked all about it last month’s newsletter!
Planoly - If you have an Instagram feed that needs to be managed over the long term, this is an excellent option. I had a problem where I would take photos for my bookstagram in bulk, and then lose them over time in my Photos app. I would edit, and then couldn’t find the specific version. I would draft a post in IG to post the next day, and it would disappear. Planoly has solved every single one of those problems, and more. Because of this app, I am able to make sure my feed looks cohesive. I have had photos of books taken in winter to be posted in summer, and it’s all working so beautifully. Best of all, it’s free for someone who posts at my rate or less!
If you’re looking into some of your own research, here is a link to some of the best new Productivity apps of 2021 (I will pilot some and report back!), and here is a brand new book about a man who gets downloaded into one of my favorite productivity apps ever, Slack!
Soft Spots:
In early August, the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing announced its winner - the first ever Ethiopian person to win! Read the story here
Not sure if I love Ethel’s Club or the founder’s house more
I loved this interview with Yo-Yo Ma when it came out, and I also like to reread it from time to time.
A very good article about the power of Sally Rooney
A really nice reading guide to books from around the world. Includes titles I haven’t seen before.
Indigenous bookish accounts to follow! I follow them all.
This article contextualizes the revolutionary power of rest for Black women