Burden or delight: Fries on a salad

I'm really conflicted about this one!

Hello! We did it! We made it to another weekend!!!!!

Let’s jump into it, shall we, with a game of burden or delight!

Many of you are already familiar with this game, but in case you need a refresher: the idea is to pick a topic (in this case, french fries on a salad) and then determine whether that thing is in fact a burden or a delight. (Shoutout again to my friend the excellent human Gregory, who couldn’t remember the name of this game and renamed it “blessing or regret,” which also totally works!)

This edition of the game comes from GRETAGRAM subscriber Julie, who recently ordered an “Arsenal salad” at a restaurant in Pittsburgh. They said it consisted of “regular salad stuff with fries and melted cheese on top,” and luckily for ALL OF US, they sent a picture and said I could share it:

I love fries! I love salad! Does that mean they should be on the same plate????? Will the fries get too soggy??? Would your mind change if we called it “healthy poutine”? WHAT DO YOU THINK?

In case the poll is too binary for the reality of this situation, here’s the button to comment below:

Books books books!

THREE books came out this week that I’m really excited about:

• P. Djèlí Clark’s action-packed fantasy novel The Dead Cat Tail Assassins

• Lena Valencia’s short story collection Mystery Lights, which was blurbed by Kelly Link if you need a hint on the extent of the weirdnesses to expect in this one

• Halle Butler’s satirical novel Banal Nightmare, which I picked up because Zadie Smith’s blurb used the words “funny,” “smart,” and “vicious.”

• Speaking of books, congrats to GRETAGRAM member Nikki for winning the giveaway I did for a copy of Bear!

An idea for book club

As y’all know, I’m still figuring out what book club really means in this substack space. At the very least, it is a mechanism for me to help you keep reading great books, which you know I am more than happy to do! But I’d also love to figure out how to get y’all involved and build some community around it. I know some of you are way too introverted to want to do anything remotely social, and that is TOTALLY OKAY.

For those of you who are reading The God of the Woods and are dying to talk about it with someone, I want to schedule a time for us to meet up on zoom and hang! I’m aiming for the last weekend of August. (As with the newsletters themselves, everyone is invited, whether or not you’re a paid subscriber. That said, if you’re excited about the idea of events like this and want to make sure more of them happen, a great way to do that would be to throw me some bucks and tell me so!)

If you’d like to participate, let me know what the best time would be for you and I’ll schedule from there.

Yes, this is a two-poll newsletter, and I’m not sorry about that!

I hope you have lovely weekends, and I’ll talk to you next week!

P.S. Do you like this email?! Spread the delight and forward it to a friend! (Or spam an enemy, lol!)