#36: Kristen: Reading, Writing, Y2K
I'll read what she's reading.
Happy Thanksgiving, and welcome to Mia’s Queue, a free newsletter for “humans in the loop” who care about conscious culture in a tech-driven world. I love exploring how taste and curation facilitate self-discovery and create deeper connections with others. When I’m not exploring what that means in my own life, I chat with an undercover tastemaker infusing creativity and wonder into the world. Learn what lights them up as they tell their inspiration story and share quality things to read, watch, hear, and do. Meet Agent 036:
, an author and Substack’s Head of Support.
At a Substack event for writers earlier this year in SF, the team asked attendees to come with a beloved book for a swap. When I put “Cherry” by Nico Walker on the table, a woman to my left complimented my choice. I immediately knew I liked her because this book isn’t for everyone: it’s dark and nihilistic and I even wondered if the author hated women. But, still, I loved Cherry’s bleak rawness, its stark prose, and the feeling of being punched in the face by a book. Call me a masochist.
I asked which book this woman, who I’d soon learn was Kristen Felicetti, Substack’s Head of Support, brought for the swap. She held up “Molly” by Blake Butler, and I knew it was to be mine. Ten months later I read it, a rare memoir by a male writer in my memoir-rich reading year. The story of a man reckoning with his troubled wife and her suicide, “Molly” was beautiful and brutal. Someone on Goodreads complained that Butler’s writing is like "a tangled ball of string,” but that’s one of the things I liked so much about it — the real-time, feverish messiness of the whole thing.
After this book delighted me, I needed to know what Kristen thought I should read next. I decided to have that conversation on the record here to uncover more about Kristen, her reading habits, and her life as a writer. Her novel “Log Off” came out earlier this year, and I hope to dig into it before 2024 is done.
How many books do you read a year?
I set a goal on Goodreads to read 50 books every year, and I usually hit it, but this year I don't think I will. Having your own book come out slows down your reading process!
Your book, “Log Off,” takes readers to the Y2K-era bedroom of Ellora Gao, who starts a secret LiveJournal to find the close relationships online that are missing from her real life. How much of “Log Off” is autobiographical? How do you mine your own life for what you're writing?
The character and the era she grew up in and some of the demographic things are similar, and there are people in my life and certain experiences that are similar, but I wouldn't say it's autobiographical in the way I understand auto-fiction, where you take a scene and try to make it as accurate to your memory as possible. None of the scenes in the book have something I'm trying to recall. They're all made up.
You have a full-time job, you're a voracious reader. How do you find time to write?
That's always a challenge. I am part of Morning Writing Club run by Chelsea Hodson. Basically it's Monday through Friday at 8 am ET. I do that for an hour and a half-ish, and then I'll sign on to work. I don't even always write in those hours. Sometimes I'll just read or do something for my creative writing life. [The writing club] changed my life and made me a morning person, honestly. No matter how the rest of the day goes, whether I'm too tired or get busy or have a bad day, I've always had that hour and a half in the beginning [to read and write], and that feels really good.
How do you decide what to read?
It varies. Sometimes it’s a hot book that I heard a lot about that sounds interesting to me. One way I get hooked on a book is if someone posts an intriguing excerpt. If there’s a project that I'm working on, I’ll read a novel that seems thematically similar. I’m also trying to read some older, classic books, like I read Moby Dick with some friends. I found that really rewarding, but at the same time, it's been kind of hard to pick that up again. Especially with an older book, you can't force it. You have to actually have the passion to do it, or it will not work.
What are your favorite genres?
To be honest, I read very contemporary: literary fiction is probably the most common genre that I read. But I'll read everything, just because from a writing perspective, it's really helpful. I'll read nonfiction, essays, the memoir realm, story collections, even YA or contemporary romance. Sometimes it’s nice to have something a bit lighter, since literary fiction tends to skew quite dark.
Print or digital?
Print all the way. Part of it is I want to get away from a screen when I can.
Let’s get to it! What books do you have to recommend to me/us?!
📕 “You Are the Snake” by Juliet Escoria
Sometimes it's a little hard for me to get into story collections, but with this one I didn’t have trouble at all because there’s some consistency of voice and perspective of the world, and I could not wait to get back to it. It's not necessarily a pretty perspective. Part of the reason I found it so compelling is because it was so real. It's showing the ugliness and all of human messiness where it's kind of like, “Wow, this is, this is really how it is. Everybody else is just bullshitting me, except for this voice and this narrator.”
📙 “Blush & Blink” by Ana Carrete
I'm trying to get into poetry more, which is also sometimes a challenge for me. I got to see Ana Carrete read on tour so that's a huge part of it, the performance. “Blush & Blink” is really cool — funny, a little bit horny…If you've got that kind of style, that's my way in for poetry.
📗 “Open Throat” by Henry Hoke
This is a great book. It's basically narrated from the perspective of a mountain lion living under the Hollywood sign in L.A. It's based on an actual thing that happened, but it's from the perspective of the lion. It's one of those books where I wish I'd come up with the idea and written it. An animal learning language is very clever. It's pretty short too.
💌 Kitsch Ocean, a newsletter by
She describes her Substack as a “creative mood ring.” You get the sense of the atmosphere that she's having while building her writing life. It's just very pleasant. You can tell she's writing when it stirs her. There's the common Substack way where you write every week or something; she's just doing it as the spirit moves her. It feels intimate, cool.
📺 Pen15 on Hulu
This show is amazing. It evokes emotions and humor of the era so well, the amount of detail…I don't know how they did it. It's amazing. I remember there was this one time when Anna bends down and has the zigzag part. And I was, like, chilled. (Laughs)
You can follow right here on Substack.
What are you reading? What have you loved this year? I’d love to hear…and see if we too are literary soul mates.