Action: Who ARE You?
A 1000 subscriber special, and taking some feedback
Not interested in Ulysses emails, but don’t want to totally unsubscribe from MARGINALIA? Scroll to the bottom of this email to find out how!
I am so grateful for this place in your inbox. Thank you, thank you thank you, for granting it to me!
If you’re not going to read the rest of this email, please please considering doing me one favour, and click here for a very very short subscriber survey.
I hope you’re enjoying this newsletter, and getting a lot from it! I certainly have.
Imagine, for a sec, being in this (approx. 1000-person) crowd right now of people, except we’re all here because we want to stop scrolling and actually think about how to become more cultured!
I have spent the past few months writing articles on literature I’m really growing proud of, and in doing so, genuinely following the curriculum I set out for the year. I just want to share a reminder of why I started this project in the first place:
I can’t replicate the one-on-one tutor. But I can replicate the weekly writing, the public accountability, the friction of discussion, and, uh, the arguing? That’s where you come in!
My thought process was this – if I could create a newsletter that attracted a few interested people, perhaps we could share some genuine thoughts/ discussions on some of these books.
From:
Well, it’s more than a few interested people, now, it’s over a thousand of you! Thank you again!
I wish I could share this celebratory cake with you!
Actually, maybe I don’t. It looks a mess hahahah… I have a better offering for you instead if you keep reading!
please help me out!
So why am I emailing you today? I want to get to know you better. I want to take a pause to know what’s working, why you’re here, and what you’d like to see.
For me, the tutorial aspect of this publication is the most exciting part, but I also recognise many of you have never left a comment or reply directly to the emails. That’s totally fine, but I’d love the chance to hear from you today!
So here’s my ask: please would you fill out this very short survey? It is, I promise, only 5 questions and I’m hoping it will make my newsletter better!
what I’ve been loving on substack lately
In lieu of sharing celebratory cake, I will instead share something even better: some of my favourite articles I’ve read lately! Please do enjoy <3
One of the best articles of the month, hands down, BDM’s writing here literally made me finally go and buy my copy of Beloved. It really resonated with me personally too though; it’s beautifully written and argued, but encompasses many of my thoughts lately running my Ulysses Plunge. Go and read it!
I mentioned recently in my Notes that I was craving more really smart book reviews/criticisms, and then this article from Freyja appeared in my feed. What a catch! Having read the Stranger myself (or, “The Outsider” as it’s usually translated here in the UK), I recognised so many of these feelings, and Freyja explores them in a really interesting way.
La Bibliotrek | Read the World here is doing such a fun thing; I really love the concept of this article and many of the books included. I love the idea of grounding our reading and learning to a place; it’s what I’m trying to do with my “Adult School Trips” concept, and Athens in particular resonated with me as I spent so much of last year reading Ancient Greek works.
Heather Colley really is just out here with a problem statement and a solution! This is one of my favourite posts of hers so far, in her quest to demystify literature, because of the format “The Literary Shift”. I am a sucker for a traverse through literary history, and this super accessible overview will be my reference cheatsheet for the forseeable future, I imagine.
If you need a quiet cup of tea and a reminder that books are a tiny miracle, this article will really uplift you. A little gemstone of a piece from Mariella Hunt, whose tearoom I’ve been subscribed to for a while now. Highly recommend all of her writings.
Not as recent a rec, but this is just such a cool way to lay out an article like this that I had to include it. cosi’s odyssey’s content is great, and there’s a lot in here I’ve read and agree with (as well as making me add Mendelsohn’s “An Odyssey” to my TBR), but mostly I’m just superjel that I didn’t think of this setup myself. 100% go and read this if you want a reading list to start off your Ancient Classics journey!
olivia dared to pull out the “whimsical” card here, and I promise you, it’s a breath of fresh air rather than a cliche. I think that’s because I always find her writing a breath of fresh air. As someone who’s chronically prone to go go go and party and study and doing everything at once, Olivia’s writing is an absolutely necessary reminder for me to slow down, reflect, and enjoy the world around me for exactly what it is.
If you like Marginalia, and you like gothic literature, A. L. Sterling is writing things for you. I really enjoyed this article; it’s exactly the kind of thing I love reading here on Substack, the mix of personal reflections and insights lending an angle to reflect on literature. Gimme more people sharing their opinions and feelings and learnings - life isn’t all about being “told how this piece of art HAS to work”!
Just a banger resource. As a writer myself, and a wannabe-professional-fiction-writer-one-day, I basically copied every single link in this post to save for the future. Thank you, sincerely, Sarah Rae Draws!
I absolutely ADORED this post from emily, and wrote a slightly rapturous comment the instant I finished reading it. If you’re someone joining me for my Ulysses Plunge, or thinking of doing ModPo later this year, or otherwise want to bend your literary brain a bit sideways, read this read this read this!
opting out of the Ulysses Plunge (without unsubscribing from Marginalia!)
If you want to stay subscribed to Marginalia for my main posts, but aren’t interested in Ulysses, well… fair enough! Here’s how you do it:
Click this link to go to Marginalia
Click “Subscribed” then “Manage subscription”
Scroll to “Notifications” and uncheck the box next to “the ulysses plunge”, a new mail section I’ve created, but leave the box next to Marginalia checked, like so:
I hope that helps!
Thank you again, sincerely, for reading my writing, and contributing to this project. Onwards!
- Emm x
Aww! Thank you so much for your kind words! I love this place and I work really hard on it, so it’s really nice to know that people are enjoying my pieces.
And congrats! 🎈
You are so cute!!! I love your cake. Thank you for including me! I also had a personal curriculum this year and my substack is helping me accomplish it! Would love to chat more about that so let me go over and take a look at your Oxford post!