Substack Reads: The great Ukrainian cheese heist, the future of publishing, and Cantonese home cooking
Hello and welcome to Substack Reads. The duo behind The New Statesman’s
, and , guest-edited this week’s digest. It includes Felicity Spector, Tim Mak, and Alessandra Hay on a very special world cheese awards, Leah McLaren on liminal London, and Anton Howes on the history of writing for the public. We hope you enjoy it!LIFE ITSELF
My kitchen, early in the morning
Wow, this piece manages to be many things very quickly without feeling rushed at all. How to write a short story about a day in your life in eight paragraphs. HL
—
inI stir the porridge cooking on the stove and watch Estella. She is utterly absorbed by her task. I love watching people concentrate. I love watching people do something well. The appeal perhaps of tennis, or of sitting perched at a bar, as bar staff mix cocktails. The concentration it demands. Something beautiful about that and about her this morning, as her tongue pokes between her front teeth and she holds the tweezers in her hands to grab the parts, and I suddenly am reminded of an afternoon in early autumn with a friend when we are eating afternoon tea in Fortnum’s, which is not an activity I am ever given to partaking in, unless with her, and then it is hilarious… Largely, when we sit in these opulent surroundings, we talk about sex and coming to understand what our own morality looks like; the freedom, the terror. But today, maybe something to do with the anaesthetic or the negroni, we become fascinated by the size and colour of the cakes.
WRITING
Liminal London
London is not easy to write about. So big, so busy, so much history. The city has a horrible weight to it sometimes. Let Leah McLaren take you there in this reflection on its forgotten spaces. WL
—
inOne of the things I love about London is how perennially shit it is here—the way the city embraces its own bleakness and gloom, dawning its foulness like a moth-eaten cloak and swishing it round, just for kicks. If you believe the tabloids, this town has never had a cold dark season that was not the Winter of Our Discontent. I find it a comfort to know I am living in a place where, at any given moment of the day or night, terrible and wonderful things are happening to everyone all over the place and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. A cyclist’s just been catastrophically gored by a bus, the third quadruplet is safely delivered, an actuary is turning the corner of his street to discover his wife on tiptoes in her dressing gown passionately kissing a lover, a toddler’s face is tipped up in stunned silence watching her balloon disappear.
INTERNATIONAL
The great Ukrainian cheese heist
How did cheese from Ukraine make it to the World Cheese Awards in Norway this year? With immense difficulty, past bombs and bureaucrats
—
, , and inThe Jersey dairy is in the Lviv region, far from the front lines and one of the safest parts of Ukraine. But it has also come under attack: in May last year, a rocket fell just a few hundred yards away from the site, forcing workers to seek refuge in the basements where the maturing cheese is stored. A nearby electricity power plant became a frequent target last winter, as Russia tried to destroy Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure. The Jersey team had to think on their feet to adapt to the power blackouts. “Guys were milking cows in the dark, with flashlights on their hats,” she said.
CULTURE
The fight for the future of publishing
The Free Press has the data: “woke” titles have fallen flat with the public. Why did the New York publishing world spend the past three years buying books no one wants to read? HL
—
inAgain and again, those in the New York literary universe explained to me that it was my job to tell stories that furthered The Narrative—their narrative. It didn’t matter, in their view, that the stories they were publishing were detached from reality—or, in some cases, turning reality upside down. What mattered was educating the masses, the idiots outside New York.
For years, there has been a growing politicization inside the industry, which editors describe as a slowly percolating illiberalism that makes it difficult to publish books by authors who don’t adhere to the new dogma. Out of fear of losing their jobs and friends, these editors (we spoke with ten across these publishing houses) insisted upon speaking anonymously.
RELIGION
The one that got away
Paul Kingsnorth used to be an environmental journalist who wrote for the mainstream press in the U.K. He broke with his past, moved to Ireland, and converted to Orthodox Christianity. Pretty wild, but it definitely made his writing more interesting. Here he writes on Ireland’s crumbling “Big Houses.” WL
—
inBetween 1916 and 1923, during the Irish revolution and ensuing civil war, an estimated 275 of these ‘Big Houses’, most of them the homes of hated Anglo-Protestant landlords in overwhelmingly Irish Catholic areas, were burned to the ground by the IRA. You can read more about that story here. What it means on the ground is that today’s Ireland is not only studded with the remains of Big Houses but with the remnants of other things associated with them: untended graveyards, empty Protestant churches, rotting farm buildings, silent stable blocks—and sometimes, forgotten holy wells.
HISTORY
How to be a public historian
What happens when you start writing for an audience as large as a medium-size town? What responsibilities does that place on the writer? The historian Anton Howes thoughtfully goes through the pros, cons, and controversies of writing for a large audience. WL
—
inOne thing I’ve noticed as my own audience has grown—to over 26,000 people now, far in excess of what I ever expected when I started this newsletter just over four years ago—is that there is no surer way to provoke a reaction, ranging from the painfully polite correction right down to hostile name-calling, than to make an actual mistake, even if it’s entirely innocent. There seems to be a fairly universal human urge to correct what is incorrect, each in our own way, and bring our own expertise to bear, whether we notice a thesis-shattering counterproof or even just a mere spelling mistake. This is downright terrifying.
FOOD
What is Cantonese home cooking?
Chinese Cooking Demystified does exactly what those words promise. Here they explain—deliciously—what normal people in Guangdong (population 126.84 million) actually eat at home
—Steph and Chris in
Even in China, most people experience Cantonese food in restaurants—a bit like French cuisine in the West, it’s sort of become the country’s default ‘fancy’ food. It’s settled to become the haute cuisine of China—a popular choice for wedding banquets, business dinners, and Michelin stars. Media surrounding it will often emphasize the sophistication of the technique and the skill of the chef—whether it be the subtle wok hei of a fried rice (Western media) or the thirteenth pleat of the har gow (Chinese media).
But just like how French food is more than Escoffier and his brigade system, Cantonese food is more than a labor-intensive mise culminating in the spectacle of a high-powered wok station.
Recently launched
New video:
New & noteworthy
shares the latest writers’ dilemma:Politics coverage continues to grow on Substack:
Inspired by the writers selected by Harry and Will in this week’s edition of Substack Reads? Writing on your own Substack is just a few clicks away:
Substack Reads is a weekly roundup of writing, ideas, art, and audio from the world of Substack. Posts are recommended by staff and readers, and are usually curated and edited from Substack’s U.K. outpost by Hannah Ray. This week was a guest edition, curated by
and .Got a Substack post to recommend? Tell us about it in the comments.
Still hoping that one day, you’ll notice my Pottery Podcast, The Potscast. I make the most of your versatile platform, but apparently you just like famous people.... 🤷🏽♀️
https://keramikslu.substack.com/
😂😂😂😂 who the fuck cares about Chris Cuomo. Substack!! Why do you keep promoting these famous, CORRUPT, failed journalists!! Why not promote actual journalists like Simulation Commander?