Not Necessarily Books

Ponderings and wanderings I have known this week.

Dear Reader,

I’m not a numbers girl, and yet, so many are rattling around my head this fine afternoon. Don’t worry, there’s no math on this exam–but numbers can tell a very interesting story, so please consider the following:

Lisa’s Index

100s: the number of men who entered San Francisco’s Performative Male contest on August 22, 2025

1.3 million: the number of followers of Instagram’s @hotdudesreading

40: the percentage by which the number of Americans who read for pleasure fell from 2003 to 2023

401K: the number of followers of Instagram’s @hotdudeswithdogs.

58: the percentage of Gen Z dog owners who are men

63: the percentage of Millennial dog owners who are men

<45: minutes within which dog owners subjected to stress were able to return to normal, signifiying that dogs keep humans in the healthy zone of stress response

60: the percentage of women’s market share of tote bags in 2025

$14.95-$39.95: cost of a tote bag at The Strand

$1,500: cost of The Strand’s bag as reimagined by Bottega Veneta

2,700: number of units sold in September 2023 by Sazen Tea company of top-grade matcha grown in Uji, Japan’s best-known tea-producing region

14,000: number of units sold a year later

4-8: average number of years needed for a tea bush to reach maturity for harvesting

3: the number of passengers reading a book in my section of the L train on a Monday evening at 6:30pm (that I could see without rubbernecking)

Hmmm…

Last Monday, I found myself sitting between two men on the subway, both of whom appeared to be reading. I say “appeared” because my IG feed, reputable news sources, less reputable online forums, and my daughters have all warned me about the rise of the Performative Male. Much is being made of this new male archetype, which can, according to the NYT, be identified in the wild by the tell-tale tote bags, matcha, and books by women authors. Hundreds entered the Performative Male contest in San Francisco last month (the judge was AI, but that’s a whole nuther post, I tell you what), and presumably a good time and laugh was had by all, BUT…

I would also like to point out that I too “appeared” to be reading on the subway (yes, I was one of the three in my very scientific stat). Notwithstanding sudden jolts back to reality (my book was good– and very, very weird!) followed by panicked searching through smeary windows for station signs, I actually was reading– but honestly, how would anyone really know? I find it difficult to imagine that reading among women would ever became a viral question of character and/or intent as it apparently has for men, but if it did, I would be vexed. Finding a moment long enough in a busy day to crack a book open is a sweet and harmless pleasure– to suddenly attract the judgy, side-eye of public scrutiny seems an awfully unfair price for us book-loving sort to pay for those “bad actors” who may be “reading” while riding the rails. It’s enough to make even dedicated readers think twice about reading in public, and that can’t be the outcome we’re going for…So, I’m advocating for a little generosity here and the presumption of innocence for ALL readers in public spaces. After all, one person’s performance art may be another’s true love. Until proven otherwise, I’m going to take each dude reading –hot or not– at face value and assume he’s savouring a stolen moment on public transit to indulge in a favorite past-time. So many extra points whether he’s really reading or not if he has his dog with him.

Notable Quotable

“…we’ll make poems and jam for you.”

Margarita Karapanou (translated by NC Germanacos), Kassandra and the Wolf

Poems & Jams sounds like my kind of specialty store.

Kinda Obsessed…

One of the many bright spots in the reading landscape are the many celebrity book clubs popping up. My current favorite is Dua Lipa’s Service95 Book Club, which has been around for a couple of years now but is new to me. Her choices are varied and not-your-Oprah-or-Jenna-or-Reese’s book club fare –no shade throwing here to these amazing, famous readers who’ve done so much for keeping books and their authors central to so many conversations, but rather, a hat’s off and acknowledgement that Dua Lipa is reaching for picks that feel fresh, and she seems interested in introducing a different audience to books that are ever so slightly off the beaten path (recs aimed to provide “more ways for you to read the world differently”). Recent reads have been Jennifer Clement’s Widow Basquiat, Vincent Delecroix’s Small Boat, and Helen Garner’s This House of Grief. For September, she’s tagged Percival Everett’s The Trees, which she describes in her newsletter as a“bold, genre-blurring novel that’s sharp, unsettling and deeply thought-provoking.” Yes, please! Also, be sure to check out her amazing author interviews– here’s a recent one with Helen Garner.

And, the last bookstore I went to is– Sister’s Uptown!

Last month, I went to Sister’s Uptown for an event to help bring much-needed attention to this incredible community space. Suffice to say, this beautifully curated store did not disappoint, and I walked away with some gems to add to my library (More about my haul @quiteliterallylisa on IG so stay tuned).

Finally, if you haven’t read these two substack posts, please remedy that forthwith:

7 Literary Love Affairs & Marriages by the Literary Ladies Guide:

Relationships between brilliant writers were nearly always a tangle of complication and passion. Some literary couples preferred non-monogamous arrangements; others agreed that marriage was never to be part of the bargain. An intellectual bond was part of the attraction, and the glue that held these literary love affairs together.

Nava Atlas has done a bang up job in giving us a little taste into the fascinating relationships of creative couples like Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley, George Sand and Frederic Chopin, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, to name a few. If you really want to go down a 547 page, dual-biography rabbit hole, check out Max the Scrivener’s “Ode to Mary” and her take on Charlotte Gordon’s tome, Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley. Max admits she expected this to be a chore to read (full disclosure, she did so at the urging and behest of her mother, me):

Except, to my surprise, this book was a total page turner…Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley led page-turner lives, and on the anniversary of Mary Shelley’s birth (from which Mary Wollstonecraft later died of complications), it feels appropriate to take a second to celebrate them.

And that’s it for now, dear Readers! I hope your September has started off with much promise and many things to smile about.

Yours, &c.,

L