Top Shelf #1

The very best things I’ve read, watched, heard, and used. One per category, so you know it's the Top Shelf.

Welcome to the very first wrap up of the very best things I’ve read, watched, heard, and used lately, that I’d recommend to you too.

Oh, and there’s only one thing from each category, so you know each recommendation is truly Top Shelf.

💄 Beauty

Fave Fluid, Ultraviolette

Ultraviolette’s new-ish SPF, Fave Fluid, is a revelation.

I have combination skin. Oily through the t-zone, dehydrated, occasionally dry, recovering from a recent (and my first) bout of perioral dermatitis. So I want my sunscreen to be thin, natural in finish (no greasiness, please), and work well under make up. Fave Fluid is so thin as to be almost undetectable when you rub it in, even using the correct amount. A natural, skin-like finish. Totally not fussy over the top of skincare or underneath make up.

Magic in a bottle. The best sunscreen I’ve ever used. 

📖 Book

The Anniversary, Stephanie Bishop

The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop (my one-time creative writing teacher, a decade ago!) is one of the best books I’ve read this year. I finished it months ago now, and I still can’t stop thinking about it.

“There were things that I wanted to say. Things I knew I couldn't say but needed to tell someone. And then the things I knew I should say. What they wanted to hear. There is never only one version.”

Here’s an edited down version of the blurb to whet your appetite: “Novelist JB Blackwood is on a cruise with her husband, Patrick, to celebrate their wedding anniversary … Then a storm hits. When Patrick falls overboard, JB is left alone, as the search for Patrick's body, the circumstances of his death and the truth about their marriage begins.”

It’s so jam packed with juicy themes like reliability, marriage, truth-telling, travel, writing, and power. The writing sparkles, the story skilfully, masterfully woven. JB’s world is hazy and uncertain and confusing, but as a reader, I felt so confident in the way Bishop deftly pulled me through the story.

The book could easily feel cliched. A writer protagonist. An old, male professor who marries his young, female student. I loved that Jaclyn Crupi also noticed this, but as she said: “The Anniversary contains two writerly tropes I usually dislike: a writer protagonist and an older professor married to a young student. Neither bothered me that much here and I think that’s because they were so much a part of the narrative that it couldn’t have been any other way.”

author

Jaclyn Crupi on Instagram: “I want to talk about a writer’s third or fourth book. We talk so much about debuts and that hard second book and we don’t make a big enough deal about the magic that can happen with a third or fourth book. I really enjoyed Bishop’s early work. She’s a beautiful writer. And with her fourth book she has reached, she has truly stretched, and it’s amazing. The confidence and skill it took to write this book is breathtaking and not something a young person writing their first book could achieve. The book starts with a couple on a cruise seemingly taking a trip to both celebrate and save their marriage. But nothing is what it seems and we follow our protagonist in a dream state fog after her husband plunges to his death. The novel explores what is often for a straight woman some of the most significant relationships of her life; that with her (in this case absent) mother, her sister, her husband. Everything is hazy and confused in the wake of the accident until the clear-eyed clarity that comes at the end when we find out what really happened both with regard to the accident and the marriage. The Anniversary contains two writerly tropes I usually dislike: a writer protagonist and an older professor married to a young student. Neither bothered me that much here and I think that’s because they were so much a part of the narrative that it couldn’t have been any other way. This book brought to mind Wolitzer’s The Wife and Groff’s Fate and Furies – fine, heavy-hitting company. #theanniversary #stephaniebishop @hachetteaus”

August 29, 2023

The Anniversary is simply brilliant. I didn’t want it to end. I have spent months thinking about it. I can’t wait to read it again (and I hardly ever re-read books - so that’s the greatest compliment of all), and to keep pressing it into the hands of everyone I know.

📰 Article

Geri Halliwell-Horner at 51 —  by Spice Girls fan Dolly Alderton.

The headline tells you all you need to know. 

🤓 Substack read 

Haley Nahman

writing about losing her beloved cat ruined me. It is fragile, gorgeous, and a devastating reminder that we will very likely outlive our pets.

“This place feels so empty without him, and too small to hold my sadness. But it also feels wrong to be away. As if he’s home alone and I need to come back to him, and in a way he is, and I do. He’s nowhere to be found here, and everywhere too.”

😭😭😭

Sorry this is late

📺 TV

One of my top priorities since getting home has been catching up on both Below Deck Down Under and Below Deck Sailing Yacht. 

I’m up to date on the former and getting through the latter - bingeing it was the best part of my weekend. 

🎙️ Podcast

Cool Story with Bri and Bridie is brand new (a few weeks and four eps in!), clever, and fun. I’d expect good takes, good stories, and good production value from heavyweights like

Bri Lee

and Bridie Jabour, and Cool Story doesn’t disappoint. 

This week’s episode features a tender, challenging, and nuanced discussion about the ethics of true crime (Bri and Bridie have different views! And express them eloquently and respectfully!), expanding on Bri’s

News & Reviews by Bri Lee

column on the same subject. As someone like Bri who sits in, or has sat at, the intersection of media and the law, I really appreciated the thoughtful exploration of the genre’s messy greyness. 

In the third ep, Bridie recommended Octavia Bright’s memoir, This Ragged Grace, and referenced an interview Bright did about the book on the podcast she hosts, Literary Friction.

I’m already cheating on my promise to only pick one thing per category, but the interview is extraordinary - traversing process and structure and how Bright realised she’d need to plot her recovery from alcohol addiction alongside her father’s race towards death, the very opposite of recovery, following his Alzheimers diagnosis.

The podcast episode, combined with Bridie’s recommendation, ensured This Ragged Grace skyrocketed to the top of my to-read pile.

What’s been on your Top Shelf over the past week, in one of the categories above or another entirely?

Until next time,

Britt