You Love Sea Shanty TikTok

Are celebrating having a woman in the White House or share my obsession with the college admissions scandal

Hi friends,

Greetings from two blocks outside the “Capitol Green Zone,” an area closed to the public in the days leading up to the inauguration.

In a sign of the times, customers can nows send National Guard members stationed at the Capitol a pizza from my neighborhood pizza place. Celebrity chef, and D.C. celebrity, José Andrés, has been delivering meals to the the troops as well.

I’m headed out to a friend’s house in Virginia later today and will probably be there for the week. I’m hoping my neighborhood will start feeling like the community I love again soon.

Olivia Dade’s Spoiler Alert is packed in my bag, and I’m looking forward to sinking into it — Olivia writes great comfort reads. My book club is chatting with her on Saturday morning. If you’re interested in joining, respond to this email or leave a comment below.

One more note: if you're looking for a book about racial justice on this Martin Luther King Day, I can’t recommend Caste by Isabel Wilkerson enough. Or, if you’re looking for a shorter read, Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is a classic.

And now, what to read if…

You’ve Gotten Really Into Sea Shanty TiKTok

The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown

I’m not on TikTok, but I was delighted to learn about Sea Shanty TikTok when videos of people singing 200-year-old fishing songs kept popping up on my Twitter timeline. It is apparently the new thing.

Explaining the video’s sudden popularity, Kathryn VanArendonk wrote in New York, “[The videos] are unifying, survivalist songs, designed to transform a huge group of people into one collective body, all working together to keep the ship afloat.”

I was trying to think of a book with the same feel as these videos. My friend Sarah suggested The Boys on the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and it is the perfect book for a sea shanty vibe. It’s about a group of Americans coming together to defeat the rowing team fielded by Nazi German in the Olympics.

The Boys on the Boat is the type of non-fiction book that reads like a novel. It’s an inspirational tale and a history lesson all at once.

You’re Excited to See a Woman in the White House (or the Naval Observatory)

Most Likely by Sarah Watson

Sarah Watson’s debut YA novel is the perfect book if you’re looking to celebrate the start of Kamala Harris’ vice presidency. It follows four best friends as they navigate their senior year of high school and all that comes with it — college applications, SATs and more. The twist? One of the four of them will become the first female president.

I read Most Likely in a single sitting over the holidays, unable to put it down until I knew who became president. I kept guessing and then re-thinking my guess.

 I particularly loved Watson’s depiction of the four girls’ friendship, showing both their individual relationships and group dynamics. So often in books and movies, teenage girls are depicted as competitive and catty. These four, though, mirror the best friendships in my life, helping each other grow and taking delight in their friends’ successes.

You Followed Every Twist and Turn of the College Admissions Scandal

Small Admissions by Amy Poeppel

For more than a year now, I have obsessively followed “Operation Varsity Blues,” the college admissions scandal that sent actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman to jail. I actually read the entire 200-page criminal complaint when it became public in 2019. 

Small Admissions is a novel about private school admissions in New York City, featuring parents who share Loughlin and Huffman’s obsession with getting their children into the “right school.” The book’s main character Kate is unemployed, newly single and spending her days watching Sex and the City reruns when she suddenly gets a job as an admissions assistant at an exclusive school.  

I loved that this book was both a satire of the insane preschool admissions process and a story about Kate building a life she loves. As she begins working at the school, she also starts putting together the pieces of life — job, friends, family — in a way that works for her instead of just going along for the ride.

Bonus Rec: Tiny Imperfections by Alli Frank and Asha Youmans’s looks at kindergarten admissions in San Francisco. The main character, Josie, manages pushy parents and an obnoxious headmaster while struggling with her own child’s pending departure for college.

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What to Read if is a weekly book recommendation newsletter. Need a rec? Want to gush about a book? Reply to this email, leave a comment or find me on Twitter @elizabethheld.

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