2 books I read, 7 tabs I have open, and my prediction for the next big trend in home decor

The October Zip File

The Zip File is a monthly selection of highlights and delights. Get it? Low rise jeans… jeans have a zipper… anyway.

2 Books I Read

The Secret History — I liked The Goldfinch years ago but didn’t get around to reading this, Donna Tartt’s other blockbuster, until my book club chose it this month. I raced through all 600+ pages because I just had to know what was up with these crazy kids. Turns out, a lot is up with these crazy kids!!

Grape Juice — This romance set during a grape harvest in France is the next release from 831 Stories (who I just love), and on a sentence level, the writing is STUNning. 831 manages to make their books feel just a little more special than other romances through some non-tangible mixture of writing and branding, and I’m fascinated by this.

Gen alpha shopping report (aka 4 things my tween asked me to buy)

• A blond wig (I let her buy it with her allowance)

• Starface lip gloss (I caved and bought it for her)

• A Labubu (she put it on her Hanukkah list)

• A vintage typewriter (she agreed to pay for half out of her allowance and I was so delighted by her enthusiasm that I said yes. It was broken.)

October Personal Curriculum

My backward take on the personal curriculum trend — some of these things I looked into for work, some of them for random silly projects, and some of them because the zeitgeist pulled me in that direction and I was powerless to stop it.

4 things I wore

Watching four hours of soccer in gray sweatpants and the rugby shirt I bought to heal my inner child / playing tennis in red track pants

A blazer I found in Y’s closet and loafers to feel ~ literary ~ at a David Sedaris reading

2 places I went

An old favorite store (Senti) and new favorite (Madge)

Trend report: hippos

At a coffeeshop in the North Loop of Minneapolis, Y and I were charmed by this hippo we assumed had been sourced from, I don’t know, a zookeeper’s estate sale.

“Do you know where this is from?” I asked the barista, who said, “You can lowkey get it on Amazon.” Sure enough, variations of this dish are all over Amazon, Shein, Temu and Wayfair. This basically crushed me. How could I, a discerning consumer, have believed this was some kind of vintage treasure? I too was hustled, scammed, bamboozled, hood winked, lead astray!!! It was like reading a beautiful poem and then learning it was written by AI.¹

A few weeks later, at one of those little gifty stores that sells expensive puzzles and tiny rocks engraved with clever phrases like “fuck this shit,” I saw this:

Are hippos the next cutesy animal fashion trend, like owls and deer and foxes before them? If so, is it directly related to Moo Deng? So far, a search reveals hippo decor that exists in the context of a larger jungle theme and a few tiktoks shilling the above hippo dish, but REST ASSURED I will stay on this case.

7 tabs I have open:

How Does a Mother Focus by

Youngna Park

Every few months I consider hanging this ode to one of my favorite things on my wall (first seen in Emma Chamberlain’s house tour of all places)

It’s day two of this National Novel Writing Month alt from

Kailey Brennan DelloRusso

and I’m playing along…for now.

Knobs for my 1920s built in, y/n? (store found via

Jessie Randall

)

“The Pure Delight of Joining a Tennis Team in Midlife” by Liz Krieger (I may have teared up at the last line).

The viral Elizabeth Taylor/Everybody mashup by Lydia Getachew

The Composite by

Jordan Bogigian

— I love her micro- level observations on the trends that make up culture (plus her desk tour on

Olivia Muenter

’s Substack was very aspirational). Jordan: please weigh in on the hippos!!

1 thing in my house

I impulsively followed a garage sale sign to the most charming secret garden of a backyard. I picked up all kinds of treasures (including a brand new book of Princess Diana paper dolls from 1985) and this jug. A sticky note attached to it read “think: flowing flowers.” When I got home with it, I walked into the kitchen to find a giant bunch of freshly picked marigolds on the counter from Y’s garden. Twas fate. (The dahlias are from the farmers market.)

Closing thoughts

I’m writing this on Halloween, a day I think of similarly to how I think of the local marathon: next year is my year.

I’m going to learn to sew this year, I think to myself while handing a tiny bag of Haribo gummies to a toddler in a hand-crafted flamingo costume, her beaming mother standing behind her. A month earlier, while high-fiving an elderly woman in a tutu at mile three of the Twin Cities marathon, I thought to myself, I’m going to start running. All I need is a new pair of running shoes, the time and patience to handle a sewing machine or even a pair of scissors and a dedicated teacher who is invested in my success, a temperature-controlled running route on a scenic overlook and expensive fabric from a beloved quirky textile designer in Notting Hill.

And then every year I wake up on the day you’re supposed to register for the marathon and realize I haven’t run one single time. I wake up on October 1st and realize I have no ideas and no skills and the idea of making even the simplest costume feels exhausting and frankly, not worth it. My daughter picks a costume from halloweencostumes.com and I pull out a chambray shirt and a red bandana and half-heartedly dress like l Rosie the Riveter, again.

Maybe next year?

1. I’m realizing that this sentence would fit perfectly into a modern version of Ironic by Alanis Morissette.