Moving On Down
A change of location, the year's best reads, and a refresh edit
I’m editing this from the passenger seat of my car, where my mom and I have spent the last eleven hours driving down to Charleston, South Carolina, tucked in amongst all my worldly belongings (a lot of books, my cast iron pan, and a regrettably small amount of sweaters). I’m moving, an appropriate action for January second—new year, new digs, I guess.
I’m moving to Charleston to take an editorial internship with Garden & Gun, a prominent magazine covering every nook and cranny of Southern culture. Food and bev, travel, home & garden, sporting, arts & culture—they cover it all with class and stellar reporting, for a fairly specific clientele. I’ll be working with their print magazine, so it really is a dream for me.
This is not something I’d foreseen occurring. I’ve been mostly focused on trade publishing, only submitting an application for rogue Conde Nast or Dotdash positions on the rare occasion they cross my desk. But this G&G internship has been on my radar since my junior year, and since it’s only open to post-grads, I figured I’d apply since I’ve had the cover letter written for three years. I didn’t expect to get an offer—after all, I live in New Jersey and this was an in-person position requiring some serious logistical finesse. After many lists and conversations on how realistic it would be to accept, anticipation won over. I’ve always wanted to work in publishing at large— book or magazine, whichever happened to work out first.
Working in print. It’s a dream. Long live!
I‘ll admit to a ribbon of apprehension about moving down. While I’m technically from the South, it’s more a family connection—I don’t consider myself Southern beyond my choice to let it influence certain stylistic or aesthetic choices, the use of “y’all”, and a deep commitment to SEC football. My mom and grandma, on the other hand, are distinctly Southern; I can still remember shopping trips or restaurant outings with my grandma, where I would delight in every person lavishing compliments or curiosity about her Southern accent. The lilt and inflection of certain words bring me a sense of comfort to this day.
I can also admit that I’m eager to be so close to the deep tradition that permeates this region. I’m enamored with the live oaks and architecture of the lowcountry, not to mention eagerly anticipating the amount of seafood I will undoubtedly be consuming over the next six months. If you happen to know when there are good farmer’s markets, how I can meet someone who will bring me oyster harvesting, or the best spot for food, drink, or books, please send me a note! Word of mouth is always the best way to find good spots and kind people.
Leaving home after three months back was not necessarily my plan (I’ll be away from the farm for peony season for the fourth year running, which is mildly devastating) but I’m thankful I didn’t depart before festive December could run its course. Fires in the den, a visit to the tree farm, and Christmas breakfast would have been sorely missed.
One of the most endearing things we did this month as a family was watching a late-night screening of Die Hard at the Princeton Garden Theater, our local independent theater. I love the Garden Theater because they show hard-to-find indie films and often screen National Theater plays, in addition to showing retro movies and hosting professor talks at screenings. Die Hard is a Christmas tradition for us but I loved seeing it on the big screen, preceded by a generous cone of Bent Spoon. I missed the beloved fir tree ice cream by a single day. Alan Rickman’s German accent made up for it.
It’s been a mix of nervous excitement to move somewhere new and a slight reluctance to leave the ease that accompanies being home. I wasn’t eager to miss the familiar weight of my cat on my bed every night or the family dinners. I missed snow by a few days (but we did have a dusting on the ground at Christmas, so I really shouldn’t complain). But I cannot wait to start a new job and live in the lowcountry for a season. Everything feels challenging in that sparkly, divine way where fear has been beaten out by curiosity.
I can’t wait to be curious this year. This is the 2025 thesis statement: You can do anything for six months.
My top five favorite books I read this year represent a great batch of humor, pristine prose, captivating plot, and general delight. These are all books I would recommend to someone regardless of their reading taste! If you enjoy end-of-year reading lists but want something that isn’t NYT Book Review, try looking through NPR’s “Books We Love”, a 350+ selection of recommendations from their staff that they compile each year. Their lists are so much more comprehensive and backlist-focused and they have a super-customizable feature that can help you pick your next read.
Kelly Link’s 2024 release The Book of Love is a 600-page stunner. Three dead (ish) teenagers wake up in their high school music teacher’s classroom and must figure out how to cross the barrier back to the living. Despite the magic that is the backbone of this book, banish the thought that this is a fantasy or YA novel below your reading level; it’s very adult. This being said, one of the best elements of this book is that if you’ve ever deeply confused (which is likely), Link does a really stellar job of making everything happen for a reason, with some well-done plot progression for such a long book. The sense of environment is incredible—it takes place in a fictional town called Lovesend, and from the cliffside mansions inhabited by writers to the names of local institutions (What Hast Thou Ground? is the name of a local coffee shop) there’s such a magical sense of place throughout the book. I was surprised by how much I loved this and if you have the time to get into it, I recommend you do. It makes a great long winter read.
Sometimes you need a YA novel that isn’t The Hunger Games or The Maze Runner for the millionth time—I’m picky about my dystopian novels because I was lucky enough to be a teenager during the peak of YA dystopia in books. Scythe by Neil Shusterman has held up surprisingly well against its contemporaries, and I thoroughly enjoyed it largely because it brought me back to an age of reading easy prose that was constantly moving forward. In a world where humans have developed technology to a point where no one has to die, Scythes are tasked with keeping the human population under control by killing citizens. Two teenagers find themselves as apprentices to a Scythe, but between a mysterious death, Scythedom politics, a hint of romance, and a good old-fashioned disastrous deadline, the stakes are high. I know this book is pretty old now but this is such a fresh take on dystopian society.
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers is the second installment in the Monk and Robot duology. I adored this series because it’s somehow casually cozy while being incredibly poignant. It’s a world crafted with extreme care and attention while being one of the most minimal dystopian settings I’ve read. Chambers doesn’t need to elaborate on the circumstances surrounding her world, Panga, or how humans and robots peacefully drifted apart. It’s a story that doesn’t need a million supporting characters or magic, just the oddly endearing relationship between Monk and their friend Robot. No notes on this series and it’s short enough to read in a weekend.
I was pretty critical of Stanley Tucci’s 2024 release What I Ate in One Year (and related thoughts)—sorry, Stan. The worst offense is the cover; it’s like they just put text over the first book’s cover and it feels quite lazy. This book is 300 pages of Tucci literally documenting what he eats or makes in a day, with related criticisms or praises of the eateries he dines at, so at times it just feels like a famous, (rightfully) snobbish sixty-year-old going on about flavorless pasta and the different kinds of Roman artichoke. I loved Tucci’s first book Taste and greatly preferred it to What I Ate because it felt like a food-focused memoir. This book feels less necessary. I would prefer to watch Tucci on a cooking show (which he mentions may be in the works). I still read and enjoyed parts of this whole book, but Taste still reigns supreme.
The Tectonic Theater Project’s very famous play, The Laramie Project, has been sitting on my shelf for a while—I love reading plays, but I’m absolutely terrible at reading more of them. Laramie Project is a play crafted from interviews the TTP conducted in Laramie, Wyoming, following the tragic murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay university student, in 1998, which was a story that created ripples throughout the country. The way this play incorporates the entire town and manages to examine humanity, religion, gender, sexuality, and class is truly incredible.
Last and least, my mom and I listened to My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite on audiobook for some of the drive down to South Carolina. We were mostly unimpressed. Certainly, it included some smart satire, tense chapters, and good humor, but ultimately the writing wasn’t anything special and the ending didn’t feel very satisfying to us.
Since it’s soup season, I made these sour cream and onion biscuits from Molly Baz and my family devoured them. They are rustic slab biscuits which means they could not be easier to make and they’re sour cream and onion-flavored so they are impossible to hate. They go wonderfully with veggie soups andd potato-based soups, and would also likely be great with a lighter chili.
Blood oranges are in season during the wintertime and citrus in general always feels like Christmas—my brother and I still get perfect Christmas oranges in our stockings every year. I wanted to make a gorgeous citrus cocktail and settled on the French 75, which includes gin, champagne, and citrus and is therefore one of the most pleasant cocktails out there. It’s light and bright. This Bon Appetit recipe includes blood orange juice and angostura bitters, and is very festive!
My favorite drink of the season is one my dad calls the Winter Cherry. Rye whiskey, cherry heering, spiced simple syrup, and aromatic bitters collaborate to create a beverage that has a hint of sweetness without sacrificing the depth of flavor that I love so much in whiskey cocktails.
The ice cream production continued in December, with two holiday-skewed flavors. The first was a Salt and Straw chocolate peppermint patty flavor, which required making a peppermint patty from scratch. It was super odd to think about how you could make one of those from scratch; it was exactly like a York, minus the silver wrapper. The second flavor was a rose and Turkish delight flavor—very Narnian. I was quite charmed by this flavor, but its texture didn’t hold up quite as well against the Salt and Straw.
As always, my family cooks up the greatest two days of feasts—we take Christmas Eve dinner, while my aunt and uncle take Christmas Day lunch. There’s rib roast and honey-glazed ham, twice-baked and scalloped potatoes, spinach salad, bright green beans, and scallops doused in shallot and rosemary butter. Christmas breakfast, one of my single favorite hours of the year, promises strata and brioche cinnamon rolls, fresh-sugared grapefruit and starfruit and citrus, mimosas and drip coffee. It’s a meal I look forward to all year, from the antique tablecloth my mom brings out to eating with our core four and my grandma all in our Christmas pajamas. Next to Thanksgiving, it’s the time I’m most grateful for a family who spends so much time around a table together.
Seven high-energy songs for the new year (from “fortune cookies for the fortunate”).
High Wire by Men At Work
On the Loose by Saga
Things Can Only Get Better by Howard Jones
New Sensation by INXS
Never Let Me Down Again by Depeche Mode
Secret by Orchestral Movements in the Dark
Here Comes the Rain Again by The Eurythmics
P.M. Dawn’s The Bliss Album…? was introduced to me many years ago and I always forget how much I enjoy it. “The Ways of the Wind” is a certified classic, but I think “About Nothing For the Love of Destiny” is the best song on the album. I find myself singing it throughout the day because it sticks in my head like no other song.
It’s Seal season; January always feels like the proper time for a Seal II re-listen. I adore every single song on this album. Also due up for a full album listen: Eric Johnson. Greatest guitar work aside from Alex Lifeson. Ah Via Musicom and Venus Aisle are masterclasses.
Not sure why all of my heavy rotations are from the 90s this month, but for another kind of niche pick: my midday enya nap playlist. Enya, for those of you who do not know, is an Irish woman who now lives in a literal castle with her cats, but before this lifestyle was (is) an incredibly famous New Age artist. You may know her from her single featured in The Fellowship of the Ring film (did anyone else do their annual post-Christmas pre-New Year Lord of the Rings extended edition rewatch?). I think I’ve been listening to Enya before I even exited the womb; my dad and gran loved her. She has the most ethereal music that puts me right to sleep.
Severance on Apple TV+. Part corporate satire and part mystery, this clever, masterfully shot piece of television gets its long (long) awaited second season this month. I recently rewatched season one with my dad in preparation and found so many hints and clues that I’d missed the first time! This show has such a specific sense of humor and is often quite odd or irreverent, but the pacing is so well done, with one of the best season cliffhangers I’ve ever witnessed. Adam Scott and Britt Lower are truly brilliant.
Campbell’s of Beauly jumper. I got this sweater (the one linked is the closest I could find) on sale at the delightful menswear mecca that is Campbell’s of Beauly in the Scottish Highlands. I talked about this store in my July newsletter, but it truly is one of the most organized, gorgeous stores I’ve ever been in. This jumper is particularly heavy, and with suede elbow and shoulder patches was designed to be worn on hunts amongst the damp Scottish heather. Given that it’s a men’s piece, it fits slightly oversized and the ribbing on the sleeves and hem will take a few years to stretch out before it falls perfectly.
The Incredibles architecture. Mid-century modernism is easily my favorite architectural style; I have dreams of taking a mid-century modernism road trip through California because it possesses some of the greatest examples. Until that time, however, it comes as no surprise that Disney’s The Incredibles is one of my favorite examples of both illustration and architecture. The design techniques differ based on character: the Par family exemplifies mid-century modernism, Edna Mode’s house exemplifies Brutalism, and the various villain’s houses exemplify retro-futurism and were modeled after James Bond villain lairs. The correlation between these styles and the values they were built on connects back to the character who lives there, which I find clever. The dark tones, clean lines, and color schemes feel grounded but otherworldly, space age-y but with an attainability that makes me hopeful I’ll live to see the trends come back.
It’s been a while since I’ve put together a little edit, but things are cooking on the back burner and I feel in my bones that 2025 is going to be a good newsletter year. Here, a mini edit for five different things to aid in any resolution to refresh, renew, and realign in the new year.
Kule Bathing Bundle. When was the last time you looked long and hard at your towels, fraying at the edges, hole-ridden, or missing their pair? If your bathroom linens are crying out for a refresh (or maybe any attention at all), consider this Kule-Brooklinen collaboration that is handsome, soft, and still looks good lying on the bathroom tile.
Made In Stainless Clad Frying Pan. We are not using nonstick pans in 2025 (from microplastics to general longevity, they’ve got to go) and this is an instance where the investment pays off. Made In has some of the best cookware aside from All Clad and this pan is a workhorse that will upgrade your kit and last your entire life.
A long book. I think this could be the year you buckle down and dive into that 600-page novel that I know sits on your bedside table or lies in your vacation bag, spine unbroken. My best literary advice for the new year is to focus on the quality, not quantity, of your reads.
Uni 24-Hour Serum. Tis the season for new skincare regimens and booking a slot with your facialist, but in our haste we often forget about the rest of our body. Sure, it’s not as “customer-facing” but it still deserves the best. This body-specific serum supplies you with the same Vitamin C and exfoliating agents you lavish on your face.
Moonjuice Magnesi-Om. Supplements can be confusing, but this Moonjuice fan-favorite is dead simple—relaxation is the name of the game. Promoting calmness, reduced anxiety, and mental clarity, this supplement gets mixed into a glass of water daily. How easy is that?
Happy New Year, all! And thanks for another year of reading this little catch-all—it means a lot. For all the joy it brings me to put this together each month, I hope it brings you a little joy, too. And I hope this new year brings you all an abundance of peace, because really what more could we ask for in our current climate? Be well! Send Charleston advice!
I sometimes post on Instagram @gracerobrts!
My Goodreads is here and I am always looking for reading recommendations.
My Apple Music is @gracecroberts, where my playlists are regularly updated and cared for.
If you should need to contact me for any other reason, or just want to say hi, my email is gracecroberts@gmail.com.
See you next month!
Sincerely yours,
Grace
Go get em, Grace! Charleston is one lucky city to have you in residence for 6 months!
Sad to see you go but super proud of you for taking the opportunity!