gratitude szn: I'm gifting one lucky sunday series reader a stack of *stellar* books
plus, a dozen gift guides and a Q&A with Jenny Jackson, author of PINEAPPLE STREET and VP Executive Editor at Knopf
happy thanksgiving week!! ‘tis the season for gratitude, so as a small thank you for being a sunday series subscriber, I’m gifting one lucky reader a stack from Nantucket Book Partners! to further sweeten this thanksgiving week fun, the stack of four reads was selected by the one and only Tim Ehrenberg—be sure to check out my latest post @curatedbykayla (embedded below) for the giveaway deets to ensure you’re entered! I’ll announce the winner in next week’s sunday series newsletter where we’ll be checking in with Tim of @timtalkbooks to learn more about his career trajectory within the book world, including the inspiration behind starting the Books, Beach, & Beyond podcast with Elin Hilderbrand.
when I think about what I’m most grateful for this holiday season, it all comes back to COMMUNITY. this substack has certainly become a part of my extended community, especially as I’ve connected with so many inspiring voices in the literary world in recent months to share their stories. my goal for 2024 is to continue to bring you interviews with authors, bookstagrammers, and book podcasters—and the wider the audience of the sunday series, the more opportunities there are for us all to connect! with this in mind, any shares of this content amongst those who you think would enjoy it would mean the world to me.
of course, West Village Book Club is also a huge part of my gratitude when it comes to community. we’ve been overwhelmed by the number of requests to join and are actively figuring out what it could look like to evolve WVBC into something more accessible to all, so I’m thrilled to share that this week, we launched our Instagram @westvillagebookclub! so, perhaps you can take a page out of Elin Hilderbrand’s book and follow us (yes, you better believe the WVBC group chat was blowing up when we got that notification…) to see what we’re reading and what we’re up to in the neighborhood! this will definitely be a fun space for even more book talk, book club hosting tips, and, as always, love for all things west village.
on the topic of books (what else?), this morning, I finished my forty-fifth book of the year, The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power by Katherine Morgan Schafler. there were two main themes in the book that stood out to me, one being that perfectionism isn’t something meant to be squelched, and the second that perfectionists’ proclivity to measure our worth by our productivity is…problematic. instead, the author introduces reframing time management into energy management. this concept nods to a study that appeared in a 2007 HBR article titled “Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time” which presents some fascinating learnings.
if you too fall into the perfectionist camp and want to dive into some of these ideas further, you can start by taking the author’s quiz to learn which of the five perfectionist camps you fall into: classic, Parisian, procrastinator, messy, or intense. I’m a messy perfectionist which is characterized by, “effortlessly pushing through the anxiety of new beginnings, being a superstar idea generator, adapting to spontaneity well, and being naturally enthusiastic. But, left unchecked, they struggle to stay focused on their goals, ultimately spreading their energy too thin to follow through on their commitments.”
on a completely different note, it’s that time of year where we are all looking for the perfect gift. sometimes, that’s a gift from you, to you. but the trickier predicaments are along the lines of something small for a colleague, or the ever-elusive predicament of what to get for your dad. linking up some roundups and gift guides below that have caught my eye this week!
Meghan Donovan’s What Meghan Wants for Christmas
26 Classic Camel Coats For Instantly Chic Cold-Weather Dressing from Vogue
- ’s latest substack: Holiday Gift Guides for Everyone on Your List
Franccesca Acciardo’s Gift Guide for the Girl Who Has Everything
The Best Early Black Friday Fashion Deals to Shop Now from The Cut
- ’s 3 Beauty Must-Buys and 3 Early Black Friday Deals You Won’t Regret Shopping
Carly Hill’s Gift Guide for Holiday Stocking Stuffers
The Best Gifts for Chefs, According to Chefs and Restaurant Owners from The Strategist
- ’s 36 Holiday Gifts Under $100 (and literally ever other gift guide she creates!)
and just for fun…The Ridiculous but Awesome Gift Guide from Goop
meet Jenny Jackson
[ Image by Celeste Sloman for The New York Times ]
When Jenny Jackson wrote back to my email agreeing to a Q&A for the sunday series, you better believe the WVBC got an *instantaneous* alert! We’d read her debut PINEAPPLE STREET this summer and went so far as to conduct a casting call (shoutout, Laura!) for its eventual screen adaptation. I’m enamoured with Jenny’s writing style and can’t wait for what’s next from her—which she shares more about below!
Kayla Douglas: Jenny, in the words of The New York Times, you've established yourself as "a literary hitmaker with a track record of fostering best-selling authors who straddle the line between literary and commercial fiction." What was it like hanging up your established editor hat to go into full writer mode?
Jenny Jackson: I’ve been a book editor for twenty years and I really felt like I understood the process of revision. I had given authors editorial notes hundreds of times, spent thousands and thousands of hours talking with writers about how they should revise, should write new scenes, should cut or build out characters. It was shocking and hilarious to be on the other side of this and to realize how limited my understanding was of the mechanics and emotional toll of revision. I had often asked writers to create new scenes, not always understanding how hard it can be to get back into the emotional state of a character mid-way through a book. I had often asked writers to “try something out” and “write a scene we might not end up using” neglecting to really see how horrible it is to pour yourself into a piece that could end up on the cutting room floor! The whole thing has made me a better—more empathetic!—editor.
KD: Your debut novel, PINEAPPLE STREET, was heavily inspired by your first-hand experiences living in Brooklyn Heights. At what point did you realize your neighborhood was planting the seeds as a setting for a work of fiction?
JJ: I wrote the book in that weird part of the pandemic, the winter of 2020 into spring of 2021, when we were all tentatively going outside, but we were not in the office, we were not taking the subway, we were not going to restaurants. I spent my days wandering the neighborhood and peeking in windows, looking at my neighbors and daydreaming about having a social life again. It’s no coincidence all my characters are always going to parties and dinners and flirting and fighting! I was dying to be seeing people! But I also just fell even more deeply in love with Brooklyn Heights and found myself researching places and history in a new way. I dove into the story of Truman Capote’s house at 70 Willow, of the tunnels hidden under Columbia. There was a whole juicy world just outside my door. It was strange, but being confined to one small neighborhood ended up forcing me to take a closer look at the place.
KD: The end of your debut leaves readers questioning our social conscience. What do you hope readers take away from your book?
JJ: I wanted to ask people whether or not it’s possible to be a good person in an age of income inequality. For a long time, I think we fetishized people born into money. I remember growing up and hearing people spoken about as being “independently wealthy.” That phrase makes no sense. That person inherited money. That person was a product of generational wealth. And we have all these tax laws put in place to make sure that rich families can stay rich and continue to pass down their wealth with limited exposure to taxes. How is that fair? Gen Z doesn’t seem to blindly fetishize the rich in the same way previous generations did. They call out nepo babies, they are much more vocal about income inequality. This makes me really optimistic about the future.
KD: How did you approach applying discipline to your writing practice while balancing your role as VP and Executive Editor at Knopf, family life, and, all the while, staying sane as you wrote, pitched, polished, and published PINEAPPLE STREET?
JJ: “Staying sane” LOL. I was utterly insane while I was writing my first draft. I was waking up at 4:30 in the morning to write. I was talking to myself all the time. I was basically possessed as the story poured out of me. It was a really wild—fun—bizarre time where my kids watched too much TV and mostly ate granola bars for breakfast. It was really about getting as much done on Pineapple Street as I could between the hours of 4:30 and 9:30 every morning and then switching gears and acting like a responsible human until 5 or 6 when I’d pour a glass of wine and get writing again.
KD: What's next in your journey as a writer?
JJ: I’m leaving the rich in Brooklyn and writing a novel set in my hometown, Ipswich, Massachusetts. While Pineapple Street explores the intersection of family and money, this new novel is about a group of friends who have grown up together, who are now married, some with kids, and navigating what partnership and adulthood looks like in an age of changing social mores. What does it mean to be partners who aren’t married? What does it mean to have a kid on your own? What does it mean to love someone but not want to live with them? I’m having fun letting my characters run wild in the place where I grew up.
KD: What do you think would surprise readers about the day-to-day life of an editor?
JJ: I think people would be surprised by how little reading and editing takes place between 9 and 5. I spend most of my workday writing copy, pitching sales, navigating the art department cover design process, talking about price promotions, and looking at publication date grids. The reading and editing happens at night and on weekends. It’s too hard to get that part done while answering hundreds of emails!
KD: The publishing landscape has evolved significantly since you started in the business. What changes have you most excited about the future of publishing?
JJ: It makes me incredibly happy to see that we have MORE readers today than we did pre-pandemic. A lot of folks discovered books or came back to books in 2020 when they were home, and then the habit stuck. It’s also incredible to think about how mostly unchanged books are despite the evolution of the media landscape. I grew up buying CDs, but the music industry has utterly transformed. I used to rent VHS and then DVDs at Blockbuster. Obviously, the film and TV industry is entirely different. While books have seen the advent of the ebook and audiobook, the physical book is basically unchanged, and the reader experience remains the same. I think that speaks to the fundamental appeal of books in a really validating way.
KD: Tell us about the most recent work of fiction that left you with a book hangover.
JJ: Dolly Aldterton’s GOOD MATERIAL, which is coming out here in the U.S. in January. Dolly is a huge star in the U.K. where she’s a famous journalist in London. Her memoir, EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT LOVE was made into a TV show and has suddenly become really popular here in the US. But GOOD MATERIAL is so fresh and funny and heartbreaking. It’s the story of a breakup told from the perspective of the guy, and he’s really trying to “fix himself’ in all the wrong ways. Then the story flips, and the reader learns, from the perspective of his girlfriend, what really happened. It’s just such a blissfully funny read.
KD: What book is on your TBR that you're most excited to pick up?
JJ: I love the writer Naoise Dolan. She wrote EXCITING TIMES. Her new book is called THE HAPPY COUPLE, and it comes out this month and I’m dying to get my hands on a copy!
KD: The Sunday Series was conceptualized as a love letter to my favorite day of the week. If we were with you in Brooklyn on Sunday, where would you take us to spend the afternoon?
JJ: First stop on our Sunday is L’Apartment 4F on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights. We’ll have to wait in line, but it’s worth it for the Nutella croissants. Then we’ll go browse around at Books Are Magic, where I will somehow spend a hundred dollars on books even though my nightstand is teeming. Next, we will walk down into Dumbo for a few rides on Jane’s Carousel, then we’ll meet some friends in Brooklyn Bridge Park where our children will run wild throwing rocks in the river. We’ll end up on the roof at Fornino for beer and pizza. Because croissants, beer, and pizza is a balanced diet when you have small children.
KD: Where can readers order their copy of PINEAPPLE STREET?
JJ: You can get your copy at Books Are Magic (and see their new 2024 “Authors Doing Stuff” calendar!) or anywhere books are sold!
