Supplemental Reading - June 2025
Our supplemental reading(+) recommendations for June's Dear Readers selection, Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti
A quick note from Cassie and Stevie: Our “Supplemental Reading” is a way for our discourse on each month’s book to continue. We’ll be recommending other books that you may like if you liked the month’s pick; related books or articles by the author (or others); the source text that may have inspired the author; and movies, articles, and other media that feel appropriate to consume in light of the topic at hand. None of these lists are intended to be fully comprehensive, so please give us your suggestions as well.
Happy reading, Dear Readers!
xxoo, C+S
Our June 2025 book club pick: Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti. This memoir is an alphabetic retelling of the author’s life in 10 years' worth of diary entries. Heti took 500,000 words from her journals, put the sentences in a spreadsheet, alphabetized them, and cut them down to 60,000 words to produce this memoir.
If you want more on Alphabetical Diaries or Heti’s other work:
“Sheila Heti Talks with Parul Sehgal About Alphabetical Diaries” on The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Guardian’s review of the book
“How Should a Diary Be? Sheila Heti Scrambles Her Life in Alphabetical Diaries by Ariella Garmaise, The Walrus
This review of Pure Colour in The Atlantic
Just a Little Blip: A Conversation with Sheila Heti by Fiona Warnick
If you want more from Sheila Heti herself:
A short story by Sheila Heti from January in the New Yorker
Her most well-known novels: How Should a Person Be? (2013), Motherhood (2019), and Pure Colour (2023)
If you were inspired to start journaling or keeping your own diary and want some resources:
On Keeping a Notebook by Joan Didion is a favorite and constant companion of Stevie’s.
The Isolation Journals was started by author Suleika Jaouad (highly recommend her memoir Between Two Kingdoms and her new release on creative practice, The Book of Alchemy) during COVID and continues to drop prompts on Sunday. Stevie and Cassie are both paid subscribers and highly recommend becoming a paid subscriber yourself, as it allows you to participate in journaling meet-ups and interact with contributors. One time, Stevie got to ask Dani Shapiro (one of her favorite writers and our July selection’s author) a question about her own journals!
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron provides an introduction to a journaling practice called, “Morning Pages”—a daily writing ritual of three pages of stream-of-conscious—that Stevie has been doing for years.1 Since the point is literally to write whatever pops into your head, it’s a method with a low barrier to entry.
Journal to the Self by Kathleen Adams offers journal and creative prompts brought to you by nationally renowned therapist.
Note to Self by Samara O’Shea includes journal entries from her own life and others and suggestions, techniques, and exercises for keeping your own.
If you’re feeling voyeuristic and want to see more of what others have penned about their inner lives (& their art):
Daybook: The Journal of an Artist by Ann Truitt was kept over a period of seven years of Truitt coming to terms with the forces that shaped her art and life.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin (Volume 1) is the first in a nine-volume series in the artist’s own words.
The Diary of Frida Kahlo is an illustrated journal documenting the last 10 years of the artist’s life.
The Nomad by Isabelle Eberhardt was recommended by Suleka Jaouad and features the diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904), a woman who came to be known as the ultimate enigma and representative of everything that seemed dangerous in nineteenth-century society (i.e., she was an illegitimate daughter of an aristocratic Russian emigree, cross-dresser, sensualist, and an experienced drug-taker who didn’t adhere to anyone’s standards but her own).
The Substack by (an English professor at CUNY). Noted is a weekly newsletter “focused on a particular note-taker with an overview of their note-taking life, inspiring quotes, archival photos, and meditations on what [Hess has] learned from their notes. Recent favorites include posts on Beatrix Potter, Eminem, and a history of the daily planner.” Cassie is also a paid subscriber to this Substack and highly recommends giving it a deep dive.
The diaries of Virginia Woolf, which were published in five (yes, FIVE) volumes. Volume 1 found here.
If you just want a morsel of poetry on which to muse, we offer a Stevie favorite from 24th Poet Laureate of the United States (who Stevie & Colleen were lucky enough to see IRL at the Seattle Public Library in April and who also has a new book coming soon!!):
Against Nostalgia
by Ada Limón
If I had known you were coming, back then,
when I first thought love could be the thing
to save me after all—if I had known, would I
have still glued myself to the back of his motorcycle
while we flew across the starless bridge
over the East River to where I grew
my first garden behind the wire fencing,
in the concrete raised beds lined by ruby
twilight roses? If I had known it would be you,
who even then I liked to look at, across a room,
always listening rigorously, a self-questioning look,
the way your mouth was always your mouth,
would I have climbed back on that bike again
and again until even I was sick with fumes
and the sticky seat too hot in the early fall?
If I had known, would I have still made mistake
after mistake until I had only the trunk of me left,
stripped and nearly bare of leaves myself?
If I had known, the truth is, I would have kneeled
and said, Sooner, come to me sooner.
The entire Artist’s Way program is worth undertaking in Stevie’s opinion, and she may be taking a group through it in 2026, so let her know if you’re interested.
(& raddest fucking)