weekly digest #5

january 26-february 1, 2026: forbidden notebook, kick the latch, is this a cry for help?, ebay failures, ditching instagram

My parents were traveling last weekend, so I spent most of this week isolating from them in case they got sick. The difference between not leaving your house and not leaving your room always amazes me. Even if I spend most of my time in my room anyway, I really appreciate those extra square feet of living room and kitchen. It’s nice to eat meals and sit on a couch in a different part of the house. It’s nice to sit with my parents instead of alone. I’m constantly grateful that, having to live with my parents at age 28, I actually like spending time with them.

a neighbor’s driveway at golden hour

reading

I finished Forbidden Notebook, which was quite good. Valeria, the main character and keeper of the titular notebook, has been so consumed by the role of wife and mother that she has stopped seeing herself as a person with desires and thoughts and opinions. No one has even called her Valeria in years – her husband calls her mamma, and her own parents refer to her by a childhood nickname. Only as she writes in the diary does she begin to admit to herself that she isn’t happy, that she doesn’t agree with her husband on everything despite deferring to his judgement, that she longs for a different life. Her family can’t see her outside of her role either – when she mentions that she might want to keep a diary like her daughter (unknown to them, she already is) they all laugh at her. “What would you write mamma?” her husband asks. The implied answer is obvious to them all – she can have nothing to say. The hidden notebook begins to torture her. Not only is she terrified it will be found, but the act of writing about her days makes it impossible to ignore the slights and disappointments she would otherwise have tried to forget.

“If it’s true that the hidden presence of this notebook gives a new flavor to my life, I have to acknowledge that it isn’t making it any happier,” she writes. “In the family you have to pretend not to notice what happens, or at least not to wonder about its meaning. If I didn’t have this notebook, I would have forgotten Riccardo’s¹ behavior on Christmas Eve by now.” She repeats this idea over and over – if I hadn’t written the upsetting moment down, I would have forgotten it already. Through the everyday pains and dramas of Valeria’s ordinary life, Alba de Cespedes deftly reflects on the casual, everyday misogyny women deal with from the people who love them, and the way they then inflict it on each other.

I then read Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan, a novella about Sonia, a female horse trainer in a world of low-budget, sketchy racetracks. The book is based on a series of interviews Scanlan conducted with the real life Sonia, interviews which were transcribed then fictionalized², an origin than shines through in the finished work. Rather than a conventional plot, the story unfolds in a series of vignettes, jumping from memory to memory like an interviewee would, painting a world of hard work, strange people, and casual violence. The writing has a conversational cadence to it, with sentences like “The guy sobered up, I knew him, I seen him every day, I knew exactly who it was — it was bad, but anyway, I survived.” This is Sonia’s brief reflection on the jockey who raped her at gunpoint when she was seventeen. She is candid about many such moments of startling violence, though she lingers on nothing, wanting to convey also the bonds between her and the other workers, lifelong friendships, her real love for horses. It’s an unsettling, well-crafted little book. (It’s not even 20,000 words.)

I also read Is This A Cry For Help? which I found disappointing. Emily Austin is one of three writers whose new releases I’m actively keeping up with. I loved Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, really liked Interesting Facts About Space, and loved We Could be Rats. Is This A Cry For Help? is about Darcy, a lesbian librarian just returning to work after a mental breakdown caused by her ex-boyfriend’s sudden death. A group of “concerned citizens” begins protesting the library, advocating for book bans and changes in programming. While Austin’s other novels have all been driven by complex, deeply flawed characters, I never felt like I knew who Darcy was. She is frequently stating her opinions and beliefs; even when she dwells on painful memories, these memories are quickly psychoanalyzed and conclusions drawn for us instead of by us. These conclusions were repetitive, and while I agreed with Darcy’s opinions and beliefs, it wasn’t particularly interesting to read them stated outright. I understand Austin’s impulse here – she has a lot to say about the importance of libraries, the dangers of censorship, the impact of heteronormativity and misogyny on young women, and the stigma around mental illness. But strong arguments alone make for a weak novel.

watching

I’ve been watching The Great British Sewing Bee, which is exactly the same as The Great British Bake Off but with sewing instead of baking. It’s perfectly fine TV. Project Runway is more interesting, but Sewing Bee is kinder and calmer, which is sometimes the mood. (Not usually, to be honest.) I have sewn very little but I’ve watched a lot of sewing videos on youtube. I like watching people make things – I’ll watch carpentry, book binding, lampshade fabrication, upholstery. I find it endlessly fascinating to watch good craftspeople work.

listening to

On repeat this week was I Won’t Care How You Remember Me by Tigers Jaw, an album that felt instantly familiar. It sounds a lot like other music that I listen to, but I listen to that music because I like it, so I’m not complaining.

I also revisited the first two Camp Cope albums.³ These used to always remind me of spring – the first time I listened to How to Socialise & Make Friends was the day the winter weather broke and I opened the windows in our apartment for the first time that year. But now they remind me of the winter after I graduated from college, when I had a temp job deep in the suburbs and would spend hours on different trains then walk through a wasteland of gray slush with no sidewalks. It was only December but the winter already felt endless. I listened to these two albums over and over again to try to get that feeling of spring back. I still love them both.

eating & drinking

For dinner my parents made stir fry, Italian sausage & zucchini soup, salmon roll bowls, chicken paprikash, winter squash and spinach pasta bake, and oven-baked ribs. The salmon bowls are a favorite that we have a lot and are very very good.

My mom made some gluten free chocolate chip cookies that were excellent, adapted from Sally’s Baking Addiction. She also made a gluten free version of Elodies chocolate cake, an old Bon Appétit recipe that we haven’t had for a long time that is absurdly delicious.

I’ve run out of all my fancy Christmas coffees and am back to drinking store brand breakfast blend. It’s a perfectly good everyday coffee, but it’s definitely a downgrade from my holiday treats.

making

Speaking of sewing, I finished my patchwork pillow and made a second plain pillow with the rest of my plaid fabric. There are a lot of mistakes in these and I’m very pleased with them.

I’ve learned that I like hand sewing. It’s nice to have another hobby like knitting and crochet – interesting enough to be fully engaging but simple enough that doing it for an hour or two won’t send me into a crash.

the finished pillows in their new home on my bed

I haven’t knit very much this week since I was mostly making the cushions, but I still made a little bit of progress on my second sock. I wouldn’t say I have second sock syndrome exactly, but it’s definitely less interesting than making the first one was.

my second sock so far

shopping

I didn’t buy anything this week, though I was going to bid on this rug on ebay. It ended up selling for $210 which was over the $200 my mom and I decided it was worth to us. I realize $10 doesn’t sound significant but a) it wasn’t actually my money, so I thought it would be rude to go over budget and b) you have to have strict limits with yourself when you’re on ebay or things get out of control fast. I have made many bids I regret in order to defeat my enemies (other bidders). The rug search continues.

the rug i did not buy

My parents brought me back these lovely earrings from their trip. Yay pink!

miscellany

I got to flip over a new page on my vintage cats calendar on Sunday. Look at that coy little lady.

I think I’m finally going to leave instagram and tiktok. (I have essentially left facebook and twitter already.) It’s something I’ve been debating for a long time and never followed through on. I know these apps are bad for me and manipulating my attention span and selling my data. But after reading this article and seeing this video of Netanyahu describing tiktok as a weapon, it finally felt real to me that there is in fact an ethical imperative to delete them. I’ve known that all the social media sites I use are owned by evil corporations for a long time. It’s easy to be desensitized to it when seemingly everything everywhere is owned by an evil corporation – food brands, pharmaceutical companies, internet providers. It quickly feels beyond my control, and I sometimes use that feeling to absolve myself of any personal responsibility in the matter. But while I can’t avoid buying food and must in some level compromise my ethics to eat, I don’t in fact have to post or consume content.

There have been three main reasons I’ve resisted deleting social media:

1. I like keeping up with friends and following the work of artists I find interesting. I’m not going to delete my accounts just yet so I can slowly go through my following list and see where else I can follow people – newsletters, blogs, personal websites. The biggest loss here is knitters and crocheters who make interesting things but don’t sell patterns/monetize their work. Because they’re just doing this for fun, they’re often only posting their work on social media.

Any friends whose posts I’ll miss are people I can text or call.

2. I’ve been convinced that I need to cultivate some kind of personal brand in order to promote myself as an artist. I do think it’s true that having a robust social media presence can benefit your artistic career. But I’m not currently trying to book theater gigs and I don’t really have anything to promote. If I wanted to actually grow a platform, I’d have to put a lot more work into “making content” – something I’m not interested in, good at, or able to budget the energy for. There are a lot of reasons I don’t have a career right now – my lack of tiktoks can join the list.

3. I like having something to do on my phone that requires almost no thought or effort. For some reason when people talk about quitting social media they rarely admit that it’s hard in part because social media is fun. I like being on there. I can live without it, but it’s silly to act like I won’t miss it at all. I like seeing sweaters and dog videos and my friends’ selfies.

For now I think I’m going to keep pinterest and tumblr, both of which I use sporadically, though I might change my mind. I have issues with both of those platforms too – I have issues with substack, while we’re on the topic – but I do think they’re somewhat less evil than meta and oracle. This is another thing that’s gotten in my way before – it feels hypocritical to divest from the worst offenders if I’m not divesting from everything. How can I get rid of instagram but still use youtube? Does any of this matter when I still use an iphone? But the idea of achieving some kind of moral purity has just kept me from doing anything at all, and it’s more important to start somewhere than to be perfect.

I’ll probably delete my tiktok account, but I’m hesitant to permanently get rid of my twitter and instagram and facebook profiles instead of just deleting the apps. I’ve been on these platforms for over a decade, and it’s hard to accept losing all of that data. I don’t know. I probably should.

I’m curious what other people think about this. Have you deleted any of your accounts, anywhere? What was the moment that pushed you over the edge? Or why have you decided not to?

kitsch corner

This is exactly the kind of thing I’m going to miss seeing on instagram. What a beautiful, hideous cardigan by Maris Christina. Great stuff.

See you next week.

xoxo,

Franny 💋⌨️

1. [her son]

2. “Kick the Latch is based on interviews recorded in person and by phone in 2018, 2020, and 2021. With Sonia’s permission, I transcribed those recordings and used them to write this book, which is a work of fiction,” Scanlan states in the afterword.

3. Yes, this was because I kept thinking about the Tigers Jaw reference in Stove Lighter.