Capsule #58 ft. James Cox

Hiiii everyone,

First I just want to say thank you for reading and responding to last week’s issue on Ozempic and body image — some of your personal stories made me think about aspects I hadn’t tapped into, and I really appreciated hearing from you. If you missed it, I also published it in full on Instagram.

This week I am delighted to bring you a very high quality summer reading list for your sunny escapades. I reached out to my friend Jaleh who always gives the best book recommendations, and she really came through with a stacked list for us.

Before we begin, a quick question if I may! I recently received some feedback from a reader struggling with the font of the newsletter. They said it felt like a blocker to reading, and I wanted to see if anyone else is also struggling before making the decision to change. I am pretty blind to it because I look at it so much!

Have a wonderful weekend,

Holly x

✨📚 CAPSULE SUMMER READING LIST with Jaleh Brazell 📚✨

Jaleh works in film and TV development at See-Saw Films. She previously scouted books for adaptation into film and TV. She is from South London, where she is still based. She also happens to be one of the loveliest people I know, and has some of the best vintage clothes… but that’s for another issue!

It’s book time. Let’s go…

PIRANESI by Susannah Clarke

The book I wish I could read for the first time again. I am allergic to people saying they “devoured” a book in one sitting, but I genuinely did read this on a single plane journey, and immediately regretted getting through it so fast. 

It’s definitely a story where the less you know going in, the better. But if you need a little more: it’s narrated by Piranesi, a young man who lives in a set of huge, abandoned halls decorated with statues. He tracks the weather, fishes to survive and seems to have no memory of how he got there. The story is a staggeringly imaginative, deeply human and a tantalising unravelling of that mystery. I was gripped from start to finish and still think about it at least once a week. 

THE POETRY PHARMACY by William Sieghart

The perfect book to give as a gift. This grew from the author’s ‘Poetry Pharmacy’, where people would bring him a problem and he would prescribe them a poem in return. His selections offer solace for loneliness, insecurity, anxiety, unrequited love… It's a book to turn to in times of trouble. There are now three volumes in beautiful, jewel-like tones – appropriate for the gems of wisdom within. 

COLD COMFORT FARM by Stella Gibbons

I avoided reading this for so long because the copy in our house had a huge picture of a cow’s snout on the front, and most of the time you should absolutely judge a book by its cover. (I mean this – a huge amount of thought goes into deciding the cover for a book. It’s a delicate calibration to convey genre, tone and subject matter in a single glance. Which is also why you start getting strange trends like stylish face-down ladies.) 

Anyway, I sincerely wish I hadn’t waited so long. Published in 1932, this is a classic by name but not by nature. It’s irreverent, inventive, and laugh-out-loud funny. Orphaned at nineteen, Flora – sensible, stylish, wise beyond her years – decides to go and live with distant relatives on a farm in Sussex. While there, she quietly but firmly fixes all of their problems without ruffling any feathers (and there are a lot of feathers – the chickens run amok). 

For the last few years, there has been a growing trend of novels with messy female protagonists, aka the FLEABAG effect. These are great in their own way, but after reading a string of them I found COLD COMFORT FARM a perfect counterpoint: Flora is the antidote to a messy heroine. She’s poised, witty, determined and eminently capable. It’s a pleasure to spend time in her company. 

TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW by Gabrielle Zevin

You’ve undoubtedly heard about this already, seen people reading it on the tube, and probably already know that it’s earned the rare accolade of being the first great novel about video games. All of which to point out: this is not a hot take from me. What I can say is that it really does live up to the hype. Bump it to the top of your reading list, you won’t regret it. 

THIRTEEN WAYS TO KILL LULABELLE ROCK by Maud Woolf

If you want a beautiful, thoughtful, poignant novel about AI, read Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, which is as subtle and intelligent as you’d expect. 

If you want a poppy, darkly funny, action-packed novel about AI, with a protagonist straight out of BARBIE, then read Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock. 

It’s set in an alternate Hollywood where clones exist. We follow a famous actress called Lulabelle (think Margot Robbie or Sydney Sweeney – an A-lister with babydoll looks) who’s already commissioned several clones of herself to do the boring bits of being famous… fulfilling brand sponsorship deals, making small talk at parties, etc. 

But one day she creates a final clone and instructs it to ‘decommission’ (i.e., kill) all the others. Obviously, things don’t go to plan. What ensues is an action-packed, hugely entertaining, madcap story which deals with some big questions in a smart, lighthearted way. A beach read that’s far cleverer than it needs to be, and all the better for it. 

THE BORROWED HILLS by Scott Preston

An absolute corker of a debut novel. A contemporary Western set in the Lake District, this story follows Steve, who returns to his family farm after years away to find that their livestock have been devastated by a foot-and-mouth outbreak. Watching his livelihood go up in smoke, he is forced to find a way to survive in the uniquely harsh, wild and poetic landscape of Cumbria… and realises that his only choice is to turn to a life of crime. Specifically, sheep rustling. He starts driving lorries hundreds of miles in the dead of night to steal sheep from farms in the South, but when things start going wrong, the violence of the criminal underworld soon catches up with him.

This was published earlier this year and I’ve been banging on about it ever since, to the extent that people have started referring to it as “my sheep book”. As someone whose reading habits tend to skew away from male authors, I really enjoyed the stark masculinity of this story. It’s violent men with repressed emotions, it’s backbreaking physical labour, it’s British farmers swaggering around the Lakes like John Wayne. And it’s a hell of a read. Beautifully written, atmospheric and with a touch of the heroic – a book for when you’re craving an epic kind of escapism. 

OTHER PEOPLE’S CLOTHES by Calla Henkel 

This is the perfect book for Brat summer. 

Zoe and Hailey are two American art students on a year abroad in Berlin. They sublet an apartment from a mysterious author called Beatrice, and soon become convinced that she’s spying on them as material for her new novel. It’s 2008, and the girls are obsessed with the public personas of Britney, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton. So instead of calling Beatrice out, they decide to play up to it – turning the apartment into a club and throwing flamboyant parties for Berlin’s underground scene. But where is the line between performance and delusion? 

This was recommended to me by one of the smartest and most stylish women I know, which makes complete sense. Sexy, gritty, and twisty, it will make you want to go straight to Berghain, while simultaneously feeling relieved that you’re reading that reality instead of living it. It’s an unhinged story full of genuinely WTF moments. Read while blasting 360 on repeat. 

FIRE RUSH by Jacqueline Crooks 

A gorgeous cover and an even more stunning read. Set in the 1970s dub scene, this is a powerful, immersive portrait of Bass Culture, the music born out of the Jamaican community in the UK at that time. It follows aspiring singer Yamaye as she falls in love, gets swept into the criminal underworld of Bristol, and ultimately forges her own path. The writing has its own rhythm – it may take a while to get into – but it is well worth it. If you want to be transported and transformed by a book, look no further. 

salt slow by Julia Armfield 

If you’re feeling distracted or time-poor, short stories can be a less intimidating route into reading. This is my favourite collection: a set of spooky, darkly funny stories centred around feminine impulses and metamorphosis. Reading them feels like a delicious, slightly devious treat. Each one is fiercely memorable, so it’s a great book to dip in and out of if you’re struggling to commit to a full novel. 

THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING by Joan Didion 

Essential reading for anyone who has lost someone, or is afraid of losing someone. Joan Didion’s husband of 40 years, John Dunne, died suddenly one evening in December 2003 – this is the account of how she endured the first year after his death. I put off reading this for ages because I thought it would be depressing and sad. And while in many ways it isn’t the easiest read, I found it strangely comforting. A very honest, personal insight into grief which – like all the best art – is somehow universal. Read it when you have the bandwidth and headspace to let it sink in (easier said than done). 

Shop the full list on our Bookshop.org here.

And finally…

Fashion and pop culture news you may have missed this week:

• Fashion’s relationship with F1 has been solidified even further as Dior announced Lewis Hamilton as a brand ambassador. Even more exciting is that LH will be creating a capsule collection for Dior with Kim Jones

• Speaking of successful British men, Loewe tapped Daniel Craig for their latest campaign

• Reformation launched a collection with Laura Harrier. I like that one of the trouser designs is called the Danielle, presumably after her (excellent) stylist Danielle Goldberg

• Katie Gavin of MUNA will release solo music next week!

• Gabbriette is one of those stars we are watching become more and more famous in real time. This week she released (and sold out) a lip kit with Mac, and did a Secret Life of Models video with British Vogue

• Maya Jama and Stormzy announced their breakup via Instagram Stories

• And Charli xcx is in Billboard sharing the story of how ‘Girl, so confusing’ came about, her plans for the future, and the brat campaign

This week, James Cox popped into Capsule to share what’s 🔥hot🔥 and what’s not 🙅‍♀️ …

James is the lead singer of Crows and the co-owner of Only Here For You Tattoo. A date for your diary: the new Crows album Reason Enough comes out out on September 27th.

📺 Watching: The Boyfriend on Netflix, Japan’s first same-sex dating show. More Hot Ones, this time with Childish Gambino (I love when more low-key stars have to pop up on YouTube shows to promote new work), and if we’re being honest, the video of Daisy Edgar Jones, Glen Powell, and Anthony Ramos doing the Apple dance, more times than I care to admit.

📖Reading: The Lena Dunham interview in the New Yorker. Her life has been different to most of ours, but there is some good, applicable stuff in there about how to make your work actually work for you too.

🎧 Listening to: A hotly-anticipated release: Childish Gambino’s Bando Stone and the New World, and a lesser-known one: Manchester artist jasmine.4.t’s new song ‘Skin On Skin,’ which was produced by boygenius. Also The New Garde with Alyssa Vingan, a new podcast about the future of fashion and beauty. Enjoyed listening to the recent episode with Brenda Weischer (@brendahashtag) on my way to Berlin.

Talking about colour trends is something very close to Red’s heart, for obvious reasons. So he was a little disappointed this week to discover his namesake absent from this chart showing top colours for bridesmaid dresses. However, he thinks that while green spiked post-pandemic, the reign has likely reached it's peak. Red next?

If you’d like to adopt Red or one of his friends, click here to learn more.

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear how you’re finding Capsule - let me know here. And if you have a friend who might like it, please forward on 🥺

See you next week 💋