Issue 125: Reader, meet Life

Thoughts on identity, memory, and the physicality of reading

I don’t want to be cool. I just want to be me.
—

Hannah Cao

We are a community of 8,000 now — an entire small town of readers, if you think about it — and I’ve been wondering if maybe it’s time to (re-) introduce myself a little more fully. I write about what I read and about how I read, but rarely about the person doing the reading. Vulnerability is... difficult.¹

A few days ago, I was cleaning my office and re-shelving some books, the ones that had been stacked in leaning towers on every available surface. Before a book returns to the shelf, I flip through it. I check what’s tucked inside, revisit my notes. Sometimes I find a receipt, a note to self, a sticker my daughter slipped in when I wasn’t looking. My books are not pristine objects. They’re more like field journals — weathered, annotated, layered with the detritus of daily life. Sometimes there’s literal mud.

That afternoon, as I flipped and sorted and re-stacked, I realized I’d accidentally assembled a kind of portrait of myself — not in prose, but in paper. The various ephemera that made it into my books — an archive of a life lived while reading. So, in the spirit of showing rather than telling, I thought I’d introduce myself through the fragments I leave behind. Reader, meet Life.

Or at least, meet mine.²

📚 Seeking shelter

When I’m happy, I go to a bookstore. When I’m heartbroken, I go to a bookstore. When the day is shapeless and I don’t know what to do with myself, I head to a bookstore. My favorite solo date is a slow afternoon at Novel, my local indie. I browse for as long as I like—touching spines, reading first sentences—and then take my chosen book into the attached café, where I sit among retirees and eat fries while I read. A way to re-enter the world gently.

I’m also slowly, clumsily, trying to untangle myself from Amazon. I can’t claim purity—I still end up there sometimes—but I try. If I am looking for a specific book title and it is not available locally, I typically go to ThriftBooks. If I am seeking the pleasure of browsing, for that feeling of stumbling into something I didn’t know I needed… I turn to Womb House Books in Oakland, CA a shop I’ve only visited online so far. It began as a tiny Etsy store, and now it’s a brick-and-mortar space that I dream about visiting. The owner Jessica feels like a kindred spirit.

📚 Millennial Shopgirl Energy

Viv Chen

recently talked about the fact that when you order used clothes from Poshmark, your order comes in a neat USPS box with a personal thank you note. When you order from Depop, your stuff arrives in an old cereal box.

In my experience, that is so true. (Also, hilariously observed). And I smiled really big when I got my recent purchase from Pivot — a small shop in Ohio that I discovered on Instagram — because it came with the sweetest hand written note and I just felt so proud of us, Millennials. We do that. 🥹

Stationary lovers will also recognize the Yoseka Stationary card — also personalized on the back — I honestly can’t wait to visit in person one day. Soon. I love collecting paper matter — cards, tags, anything that feels designed to be kept and reused.

📚 Substack Friendship Bracelets

Hannah Cao

’s words are scribbled on a torn piece of notebook paper: I don’t want to be cool. I just want to be me. I don’t even remember if Hannah wrote that in a post or in a note…. But I love it so much.

I think everyone’s a striver in their 20s and into their 30s. That is how we figure out who we are. But I also know how exhausting that can be. And I don’t want to be exhausted with myself. I want to be at peace. I want to be me. This is what I want for my Substack and for my life.

There’s also a note from

Carolyn Yoo

, a thank-you for contributing to her beautiful zine — Rules To Live by — and another one from

Hannah Connolly

who writes one of my most favorite substacks about young womanhood. Finally, I have a sticker from my friend

Jenovia 🕸️

— we have discovered that we are reading on the same continuum, just approaching from opposite directions. I help her pick out contemporary titles and she encourages me to read Pessoa. She also shares my stationary obsession so we are basically a match made in Substack heaven.

These women, these notes — they remind me I’m not writing into a void. That we are not here for content. We are here for connection.

📚 My Daughter’s Art, My Whole Heart

I read differently now that I’m a parent. More tenderly, more carefully, but also more visibly. Both my husband and I make an effort to not only be seen reading but also heard talking about books. We want Rumi to see us make space for language. We want her to remember that her drawings belonged inside books.

Butterfly. Butt really?

📚 The Bulgarian Archive

These Cyrillic flashcards came from Etsy and I’ve had them for years but recently, I find myself looking them a lot, using them as bookmarks… getting nervous when Rumi’s sticky fingers want to play with them. К as in kite. Ж as in illusion.

I seem to be trying to explain to myself what it means to come from a place you no longer desperately need to return to because the arrivals and departures feel heavier and heavier each time. Why put myself through that heartbreak over and over and over again.

Just this week, a friend from Bulgaria (who now lives in Denmark) messaged me after the algorithm showed her my June TBR video. We’ve been talking non-stop about what it means to grow up there, to choose to live elsewhere, to come from a culture that does not seem to want to process the past. Not truly. Not yet anyway.

These cards are my passport pages. They don’t just remind me of a language. They remind me of a former self, of milk in glass bottles, of chalkboard dust, and of the ache that comes from nostalgia. Being an immigrant is a fucking heartbreak, you guys.

It is a little embarrassing to share the insides of your books like this. But there’s also something deeply moving in the reminder that reading is never just intellectual — it’s also bodily, emotional, messy. Your reading life is just life, after all. And I am so grateful that you let me share all of it with you. I came to Substack in need of community and connection and you all have given me that and so much more.

🤓 Now tell me:

• Do you keep paper ephemera or kid art tucked inside your pages?

• If someone flipped through your books, what would they learn about you?

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1. This will be the subtitle of my memoir one day.

2. If you like visual essays about family, memory and culture, I highly recommend checking out

nc

’s excellent post about her lai see project 🧧