#60// aliens and salads

"Quiet humans who don't complain get nothing"

Dear Reader,

I know you are thinking ‘how is it March already?’ Here is a bit of love, food and aliens as you mentally prepare for Spring.

1. Ever since Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman made waves, I have gotten messages asking to recommend books that feel like it. (Side note: Love the book. It is feel-good, warm, hopeful; here is my review). I have come across books that almost feel like it but not hit the spot. But I was in for a lovely surprise when I started listening to Life Hacks for a Little Alien by Alice Franklin through Libro FM (press copy), narrated by Sally Phillips. I absolutely enjoyed tuning into this with my evening cup of coffee.

   This novel is about a little girl in the south of England who doesn't seem to understand the world like other kids her age. When she hears on late night TV about the Voynich manuscript, an ancient book written in an indecipherable language, she gets obsessed with it, thinking it might hold the key to her people (who might be aliens). She tries to understand language and how people use it to communicate.

   

   The way this book unfolds, through the mind of the protagonist, is really beautiful. You, the adult reader, understands the incidents narrated but the toddler/child protagonist doesn’t, especially when she is experiencing something for the first time—like her mother being paranoid, or her mother lying about having a job, or the first time her dad gets angry. Something that lingered in my mind was the way the book explores our education system, and the boxes and rules that kill creativity. There’s an incident where the child writes a carefully researched essay about her hobby (studying the manuscript) only to get a ‘re-do’ from her teacher because it is ‘not a hobby’ and ‘fiction’, following which she writes the paper again on a made-up hobby of ‘climbing’ which was actually fictional, but perhaps more palatable to those who grade her.

2. I really enjoyed Marie-Helen Bertino’s Parakeet (where a grandmother comes back to life as a parrot and tells a young woman not to marry) and the funny winter comfort-read 2 am at the Cat’s Pyjamas. So I was interested in her latest novel, Beautyland, about a girl born in 1977, who leaves her small town and goes to New York. This child discovers that she is an alien, sent to Earth to observe humans and give updates to her alien society through a fax machine. This book follows the autistic asexual experience, and makes you think, in general, about being human. Some of the 80’s nostalgia was lost on me but the quotes are nice:

   “I require speech lessons and corrective lenses and most likely teeth braces. I am an expensive extra-terrestrial’’ / “Living in New York,” Adina writes in a notebook, “is like sitting at a nine-million-person blackjack table. We work together against the dealer.”/ “Human beings who are squeaky wheels get everything they want. Quiet humans who don't complain get nothing.”/ ‘‘Adulthood seems like a years long equation to beat traffic’’

3. Newsletter spotlight: I recently discovered Petya K Grady’s newsletter, A Reading Life, and absolutely loved it. So much that I read through the archives like someone who couldn’t get enough. Here is the story on why everyone is reading Middlemarch right now that introduced me to this wonderful newsletter. As someone who loved Middlemarch and highly recommends it (Read my thoughts here), Petya’s writing made me want to give up on my reading pile and simply give this old classic another read.

4. Watch a Malayalam TV series Love under Construction (2025) directed by Vishnu Raghav, which follows a man who works in Dubai trying to build his dream house in Kerala. You might’ve often heard the older generation discussing why the youth wants to go abroad, a sentiment they cannot understand, and this show attempts to answer a few of those questions.

   

   A still from Love under Construction

   Vinod (Neeraj Madhav) is let go from his job and is forced to return home. He struggles to continue paying for the construction of his house while being unemployed, and he is also trying to get married to the love of his life (Gouri G Kishan). When the couple is uprooted from the expat life in Dubai into a claustrophobic society where everyone knows everyone’s business, life feels different. Now gossip flows easily, parents oppose things vehemently (despite no religious or caste differences between the couple), moral policing is dominant, construction business is unprofessional, and paperwork and corruption create hassles in arriving at the dream. I loved how the episodes show how restricted the youth feels, and a feeling of otherness crops up even in their own home.

   I found the show to be intense and often sad in contrast to the posters that give off comedy vibes (I wrongly assumed this is more of a feel-good). It is slightly depressing, especially if you are a young person, but there’s simply LOTS to think about, and it kind of ends well.

5. Cook : I am always in the hunt for easy recipes. I do not believe good food needs you slogging over a hot stove for hours. I loved this delicious salad by Caroline Chambers recommended by

   Aysha
   . Instead of turkey, I added chicken sausages, and modified it into a pasta salad. The kewpie sesame dressing felt a little strong to me but everyone else loved it—even asked for more of the dressing—so that’s more of a me-thing. I added very little dressing to my bowl. (I usually have a meat and veg bowl in the house for pasta salads).

   I also cooked Aysha’s delicious soy sauce chicken months ago and it is on my meal plan this week. It involves no chopping (that’s right) if you buy pre-cut chicken. It is very easy and a perfect Friday night dish when you do not want to spend a lot of time bent over the stove. I tried it with paneer for a vegetarian twist, but I wasn’t a fan (it wasn’t bad), but maybe I could experiment with eggplant or tofu? Tell me if you do.

6. This story about 3 parrots, a shared wall, a broken friendship and a $750,000 in a Manhattan co-op could be a movie. (NY Times)

That’s all for today. Don’t forget to put your phone aside for twenty minutes and do something you wanted to (read a book? make that salad? walk around your apartment? recommend this newsletter to a friend?)

If you made it this far, do give a ‘like’ because the Substack algorithm has become like any other algorithm out there and likes/comments/shares help with visibility.

Until next time,

Resh x