June Round Up

let's give them something to talk about

Jul 03, 2025

Hello, hello! Welcome to the June edition of the Four Top Monthly Round Up. A quick note to say if posts like these give you something to think about, please consider subscribing. If you’re already a subscriber and want to show your appreciation for the work that goes into each post, might you consider becoming a paid subscriber?

From the bottom of my heart, thank you ❤️

How Long Does It Take to Draw Every Pub in London? 31-year-old artist Lydia Wood is on a quest to sketch the approximately 2,800 pubs London boasts. She suspects it will take her nearly 30 years to complete. An epic creative endeavor that’s actually paying the bills = genius.

Momofuku Goods Announces New Growth Funding from Alliance Consumer Growth The team behind Momofuku is embarking on a long-term project of their own.

It’s Almost July Fourth! Ina joins Substack and with a single post acquires 520.9K subscribers. How easy is that? (No, seriously, how easy is that?!).

Blue Crabs: Eating Them the Way God Intended A personal essay from Joseph Earl Thomas filled with picturesque phrases that drop the reader right into the narrative: “The kitchen of our apartment was small enough that we couldn’t escape the smell, a superheated smog of liquored-up hot sauce tickling that little dangly thing in the back of our throats […].”

Limonada (Brazilian Lemonade) I’d like to revise my fridge cig essay to include this. And this. “It’s just lime, salt, and sparkling water: a Mexican Gatorade.” Author of Sunny Days, Taco Nights.

Is it Soft Tofu’s Time? With the smallest member of our household steadfastly adhering to the vegetarian lifestyle, I’m decent at working with the extra firm, firm, and sheet varieties but I’ve always been a bit befuddled by the silky sort. Also adding Fong On to my next NYC itinerary.

Gas Station Orders Unbeknownst to my merry band of Marco Polo friends, when we recently shared our preferred gas station fare (in surprising news to no one, Combos and Chex Mix came out on top), Dirt covered this hot topic back in December.

Printemps Wine Shop is Open in Fidi Minimalism is out.

Decline and Fall of the Spinach Kings An excerpt from John Seabrook’s new book The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty.

Comforting Cozy Gingery Cabbage Rolls with Pork So pretty, so satisfying.

Never Buy Salad Dressing Again Have you preordered Samin Nosrat’s forthcoming fall cookbook yet? These dressings are the real deal. I made the Creamy Sesame-Ginger variety earlier in the week, poured it on top of napa cabbage, steamed dumplings, homegrown radishes and sugar snap peas, and threw a handful of peanuts on top. Perfection.

Frittata Sandwich One of the OGs of the food blog sphere, Heidi Swanson just keeps going. She sends a weekly newsletter that is well worth your while, especially if you live in a vegetable-forward household. This Frittata Sandwich is the perfect summertime nosh.

How Sadie Mae Burns and Anthony Ha Made a Perfectly New York Restaurant Burning question: Is medium rare gross? Comments are open.

Jeremy Allen White Is the New Face of Louis Vuitton Yes, chef.

Seattle-Style Hot Dog Guys, did we know there was a Seattle Style Hot Dog (she types from her New England bubble)? Yell at me in the comments, if you wish.

Table Manners Podcast with Fiona Shaw Cream in scrambled eggs, always.

The 100 Best Restaurants in New York City in 2025

Here’s the Full List of James Beard 2025 Winners

Inside the Exclusive, Obsessive, Surprisingly Litigious World of Luxury Fitness | How Tracy Anderson Built an Exercise Empire A master profile from Xochitl Gonzalez about the small-town Midwestern firecracker who transformed the way women of a certain class think about their bodies.

Gwyneth Speaking of Tracy and her tribe, you might as well go ahead and smash that pre-order button for the latest from Amy Odell.

Chanel Launches Arts & Culture Magazine Print but make it chic.

Jason Schwartzman and Kieran Culkin Geek Out on the Succession Extended Universe I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about Mountainhead but I’m quite clear that it would be an excellent idea to get Schwartzman on stage, preferably Broadway.

How the Most Remote Community in America Gets Its Mail Mules. Broken bones. Tempestuous weather. Brings a whole new meaning to USPS mission to serve ALL areas of our nation.

Haim Isn’t Answering to Anyone They’ll do whatever they want.

Catherine Lacey Had a Really Bad Breakup. But That Was Just the Beginning An excellent interview with Lacey, author of The Mobius Strip, a hybrid fiction/memoir mashup that I’m honestly not sure I’ll read. But I appreciate the raw honesty and circumspect approach to writing, journals, truth, fiction, and all the mess within.

Why I’m Replacing Doomscrolling with Poetry Or any sort of scrolling. Maggie Smith declares, “All of us should be using the framework of poetry as we not only create but live.”

The Book Cover Trend You’re Seeing Everywhere “Ripped from the galleries” is as good a way to describe it as any.

What’s Happening to Reading? Are we in the golden age of oral storytelling? Is reading on a screen so much worse than on paper? Are large language models the most accomplished readers among us?

The Talented Ms. Highsmith “Pat is an amazing writer.” […] “So imaginative. But she does not like people. You will feel you are bothering her, but don’t think it is something you did. She is like that.” A gorgeously detailed account of the Ripley author in her final days.

Changing Lanes A history of bowling wrapped up in a gloriously executed personal essay.

One Nightstand w/Sharon Horgan One hundred percent here for the page to screen adaptation of Vladimir.

Blue Line Medicine Yes to the forest pharmacy and anything Robin Wall Kimmerer writes.

Now onto the books.

On the Calculation of Volume: Book I deals with a somewhat familiar trope — rare books dealer Tara is stuck in a Groundhog Day-like loop, November 18 dawning again and again and again. This tremendous book is the first in a seven-volume series that will roll out over a handful of years. Danish author Solvej Balle removed herself from society, relocating to the island of Ærø to buckle down to deal with the speculative idea she just couldn’t let go of. The domestically detail-driven narrative spans just 161 pages, detailing a cozy home life with Tara’s partner Thomas. Tara tries to tame time by letting Thomas in on the secret, but the repetitive nature of this task wears. It is the asides, the thoughts that occur in this strange in-between state, that catapult the novel into the Booker-nominated stratosphere

It seems so odd to me now, how one can be so unsettled by the improbable. When we know that our entire existence is founded on freak occurrences and improbable coincidences. That we wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for these curious twists of fate. That there are human beings on what we call our planet, that we can move around on a rotating sphere in a vast universe full of inconceivably large bodies comprised of elements so small that the mind simply cannot comprehend how small and how many there are. That in this unfathomable vastness, these infinitesimal elements are still able to hold themselves together. That we manage to stay afloat. That we exist at all. That each of us has come into being as only one of untold possibilities. The unthinkable is something we carry with us always. It has already happened: we are improbable. We have emerged from a cloud of unbelievable coincidences.

Clearly, I have Book II on order.

A Family Matter by Clare Lynch came in a close second. Lynch offers up a shockingly spare tale of Dawn, a woman who falls in love outside expected boundaries and, as a mother, pays the ultimate price. In the wake of Dawn’s disappearance, the book centers around the father-daughter relationship that remains. Describing this book to friends, I keep tripping over the time period, naively shocked by the callousness of the courts so recent as the 1980s. This is the result of my mind, a literary sieve that greedily catches all the best tales and then allows the details to drain away. The Guardian review points out that Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain both wrestle with the homophobia of the 1908s

It is a decade slowly edging closer to being classified as historical fiction, a soothing balm, perhaps. However, in this small and powerful story, Lynch forces us to stare bigotry in the eye.1

Romance played a starring role in my early summer reads. Emily Henry returns with Great Big Beautiful Life, an okay, if not entirely satisfying saga that missteps when it tries its hand at the decade dance, weaving together present day with family history. For me, it didn’t land but it’s not a terrible choice for languid nap-filled afternoons peppered with conversation and icy cold glasses of rose. You can dip in and out without missing much. For much quicker satisfaction, I recommend Set Piece, a book that wastes zero time getting into blush-worthy territory. Set designer CJ + movie star Jack seize the moment and the reader’s attention from the start. Bonus: 831 Stories gives me hope for the publishing world, features super fab covers, and the books are short enough to be gulped down in a single sitting. Rounding out the trio of trysts, Sky Daddy is a bizarre yet compelling yarn featuring Linda, a somewhat socially awkward young lady who is sexually attracted to airplanes. Believing her destiny is to marry a jetliner, she flies as often as she can, taking the commitment of blind dates to an entirely new stratosphere.

Sleep, The Boy From the Sea, and After the Parade are all worthy of a go. Four stars plus each. They take on serious subjects, each dealing with seminal childhood experiences (abandonment, sexual and emotional abuse, and adoption). I have zero reservations recommending all three.

Finally, Food Person (cookbook ghostwriter must get out of her own way to find success) and Broken Country (terrible tragedy plagues the protagonist in the English countryside) go down easy.

Prestige television update: I finished Last of Us, I’m caught up on And Just Like That, (frustrated with Carrie and Aidan and the trite college arms race scenario but still stunned by the clothes and New York City bathed in sparkling sunshine) and I’ve queued up Stick with Owen Wilson and my personal fav Marc Maron.

The Bear Season 4 is *excellent.* I wasn’t a Season 3 hater, even though I know some didn’t care for the more art-house-like approach. But it seems that with the current round, we’ve gotten back to a bit more of the lickety-quick banter, Matty Matteson making us laugh, an A+ soundtrack, and real, relatable moral dilemmas about money, loyalty, and art. The wedding episode is everything.

The Criterion Channel If you too find yourself a bit bored with everyone talking about the latest and greatest on streaming and don’t get to the movie theater as often as you’d like, I strongly encourage you to try out the Channel’s superb streaming service. The curated lists and super-stacked library make browsing a pleasure. Stuck in a perpetual heatwave? In the Deep End: Swimming Pools on Screen is the perfect place to cool off. Start with The Swimmer, a surrealsit adaptation of Cheever’s story of the same name.

Bonjour Tristesse From a cinematic POV, I found this female-driven cinematic vacation on the French seaside to be a homerun. A+ for the fashion, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Claes Bang in a role other than the horrid Bad Sisters abuser.

Lee The reason to watch this movie is for Kate Winslet, who passionately fought to get this project made. I first became acquainted with Lee Miller through the tremendous, hard-to-find book Lee Miller: A Life with Food, Friends & Recipes, which, if you’re into art, photography, and food, is definitely worth the hunt.

Inside the Mind of a Dog Perfect family doc for a day when the summer rain tanks all outdoor plans.

F1 I’m holding off on seeing the F1 movie until my resident F1 superfan returns from summer camp but I’d love to hear your reviews in the chat below. Also eager for comments on Materialists, please and thank you.

Every Wes Anderson Movie, Explained by Wes Anderson “When you're writing a story, it often feels less like you're doing architecture and more like you're doing excavation–we're just unearthing it."

Content + Commerce: A Love Story In this episode of Fashion People, Lauren Sherman is joined by Claire Mazur and Erica Cerulo, co-founders of 831 Stories (see Set Piece, above). An honest conversation about the intersection of creativity, art, and money. Loved it.

Our Lives Are an Endless Series of ‘And’ In January 2022, I was in the midst of a multi-year stint at the independent bookstore in my town. As a part of that often dreamy gig, I penned the store’s newsletter, a task that brought me great joy because of the “Friday Five” section where I’d do something similar to what’s happening here - share a handful of books that I was reading and loving, a virtual salon though admittedly without the benefit of reader feedback. Here’s how I opened the column on Friday, January 28

“This week we're talking about loss. Kicking us off, Lost & Found from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Kathryn Schulz. In it, Schulz comes to the reader with unflinching honesty as she details the descent of her beloved father while simultaneously falling in love with her life partner. In the book's pages, Schulz wrestles with how we reconcile private joy with public suffering, how the families we come from influence the families we build, and how gratitude can exist even in the most confounding times. Gentle, smart, funny, and poignant all in one, this memoir is a treasure.”

So you can imagine how thrilled I was to listen to this conversation between Ezra Klein and Schulz. Chock full of important takeaways; loved the part where they ruminate on how much news we really need to consume.

6 Podcasts to Boost Your Productivity and Focus. My friends know that I’ve long been a life coach/life hack/productivity skeptic, but Oliver Burkeman and his Meditations for Mortals made me more open-minded. Looking forward to uncovering some nuggets of wisdom within.

Looking for Podcast Suggestions? 2025 Summer Preview A treasure trove of marvelous host Alison Stewart and her guest Lauren Passell, who writes about podcasts for LifeHacker, curates Podcast The Newsletter, and is the founder of Tink Media.

Finally, a collage of new-to-me albums I’ve explored this month. Stay cool, friends!

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