Just a busy-body you could say
How I make this newsletter
Sometimes my friends ask me,
‘How on earth do you find time to actually read all the things you put in your newsletter?!’
Well, let me let you in on the secret. As I keep saying, I absolutely love pulling together this newsletter - it’s one of my all-time favourite things to do.
Because there is so much reading required.
I’ve always been a reader, a keen observer of culture and just a curious being - so newsletter or not I would be reading, digging, discovering and investigating. A natural busy-body you could say.
Prior to starting this newsletter journey, I was forever thinking of others who would love to see or read what I was consuming and so, now I can share. Rather than reading and scrolling being a *waste* or *indulgent* it’s now a work job - but mostly I get kicks out of sharing and recommending and generally starting conversations in other people’s world.
My inbox currently has 1,000’s of unopened emails, I guess this is a product of oversubscribing to news and newsletters but I want to have a plethora of options when it comes to newsletters writing day.
My filing system
In Google Keep I have a looooong note where I copy and paste all my interesting reads - along with a little thought bubble that I expand on when I’m writing.
I utilise the ‘saved’ function in Instagram a lot as well as screenshotting content.
For my podcasts I scroll ‘recently played’ in Apple Podcasts - I’m conscious of recommending the same podcasts all the time, so I try our new ones weekly, it’s actually really rare that I find a newbie that I love, again you’d probably be surprised at how many don’t make the cut.
For more meaty, deeper reads my regular weekly check-in’s include:
And it’s not just a peruse of the home page - I’ve sort of learnt which rocks to look under and where to find the goodness.
I have digital subscriptions to: NY Times | The Atlantic
I dip into these newsletters of a weekend for essay form reads
LitHub | Longreads | Pocket | Sydney Review of Books
I’m a paid subscriber to the following newsletters and I religiously open them as soon as they land in my inbox, I love them:
The Sit -Spot by
News and Reviews
The Hyphen by
Bits + Books by
And wonderful free offerings from Graziher’s Friday Finds and Sophie Hansen’s Monday newsletter, still the most lovely offering to dip into with a coffee once the kids are on the bus.
Interiors, Gardens, Travel and Fashion:
For interiors I tend to scour UK websites as I love the fabrics and mismatched colourings of English interiors, everything else I glean from Instagram. For Fashion I absolutely love Vogue’s YouTube offerings; In The Bag (UK), Une Fille Un Style (FR) and for Garden’s there are also a few UK offerings that I check in with regularly. I also regularly buy the irl magazines of Homes and Gardens UK and House and Garden UK - I really love anything that Sophie Dahl writes - she used to have a column for House and Garden UK. Come to think of it there are lots of writers, everywhere, that I keep tabs on and plenty of other websites not listed here that I have navigated my way around - but this list is of the ones where I hang out most.
Health, Wellness and Routines
Dr Chatterjee’s Friday Faves newsletter. I love Rangan Chatterjee’s podcast and also his small tips to look after yourself so this is one I always look forward to opening.
Practising Simplicity by
ABC Lifestyle - I receive a weekly email for this but I can’t seem to find where the sign-up is.
Rural news:
This space is quickly growing in Australia which is exciting.
I keep tabs on the websites of ABC Rural, the Guardian and Graziher.
I subscribe to newsletters from National Farmers Federation, The Rural Network by the Guardian and AuctionsPlus.
I’m not a subscriber to the rural papers, which is kind of sacrilege I know, I guess this will change as time goes on. I also find so much wonderful content from rural circles coming in from socials.
So there you go! Last week I told you that there are going to be some changes to free and paid subscriptions and this post is part of my transparency on that - but it’s not only about that. I know that I would absolutely love to extend my own list of interesting people/publications to follow so if you are that way inclined I hope you get some great value from this and I suppose, if becoming a paid subscriber isn’t for you, then you know where to find all the info!
And now on with normal programming …. Sxxx
Podcast Playlist
My fave for the week was this conversation with Cotton Australia about its innovation around sustainability but also how its partnership with RB Sellars played out.
And then this chat with Miranda July - who wrote All Fours. I think I am going to like this podcast. There are chats with Yung Pueblo, Melissa Henry, Malcolm Gladwell, Rachel Kushner, Yottam and more
Lay your eyes on these Instagram accounts
@molist_floristes (above) || @aesthetic_logophile || @sable_85
This pile of things to read
The NGV in Melbourne has the coolest exhibition - featuring shopping lists retrieved from the bottom of shopping trolley’s.
Elizabeth Day of the How To Fail Podcast - has a new novel; in anticipation of it she writes on two of her earliest memories being around words and the fact that she’s been enamoured ever since, she says she’s never not reaching for a book.
Putting ideas, thoughts, recollections into words ensures they last beyond the ephemeral moment. And there is a specific kind of satisfaction that comes from alighting on exactly the right word, at the right moment, to communicate the thing you’ve been reaching for - a sensation akin to slotting smoothly planed crenellations of wood into their own perfectly judged dovetail joint.
Ahhh - this ‘List of Underrated Green Flags’.
Be careful of who’s in charge of your moral compass and the magnets that may distract it by
.11 ways to start your day on a joyful note.
And long live the Locket (you know, the thing we all used to want around our neck?!)
News from the middle of nowhere (ie Rural Australia)
Love love love love this design collaboration creating a woollen sphere pendant light from Australian Wool. Inspired by the rural upbringing of Rakumba Lighting’s managing director, Micheal Murray - which of course, makes me want to interview him. Click on the link to get the full image and film rich story - it’s just beautiful. Also wouldn’t mind one of these in my hallway.
A new documentary of the making of Crocodile Dundee has been inspired in part by the discovery of boxes of items from the set of the film by Delvene Delany who’s late husband John Cornell, produced and co-wrote the film.
"We'd open a box and it would be like goosebumps, it'd be gold - everything was gold," she said.
No sooner had I finished watching this on ABC News Breakfast that I came across this NYT Article on the Cinémathèque Française exhibition of Wes Anderson’s collection of props, costumes and curio’s from his movies.
Then I came across this with the owners of the Walkabout Creek Hotel - and now have wanderlust.
The new cover of RM Williams Outback Magazine is a bit of a show stopper.
