For people who want to know more than everyone else.

Hello my love,

History isn’t just dates and wars, it’s drama, betrayal, obsession.

Alexander the Great died weeping over a lack of worlds to conquer.

Cleopatra spoke nine languages and weaponized charm like strategy.

Philosophers argued under olive trees while plagues spread outside.

This is a list of the history books that continue to appear in university reading lists, political discussions, military academies, biographies, documentaries, and conversations between historians decades and sometimes centuries after they were written.

Reading these books will help you recognize why borders exist where they do. Why countries behave the way they do and why certain ideas refuse to disappear.

This is where your historical education begins.

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1.

The Histories

— Herodotus

Often called The Father of History, Herodotus wrote one of humanity’s first attempts to explain not only what happened, but why.

His stories travel through Persia, Egypt, Greece, Babylon, and beyond, mixing politics, geography, culture, warfare, and human curiosity.

You’ll quickly realize that people have always loved power, feared change, spread rumors, and justified war.

Some things never change.

Why it matters: Because every historian since has been responding to the question Herodotus first asked:

“How do we preserve human memory?”

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For people who want to know more than everyone else.

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Hello my love,

On November 30th, 1900, a man who had once been the most talked-about writer in London died alone in a cheap Parisian hotel room, under a false name, with an unpaid bill of 2,643 francs pinned to the wall behind him. He was 46 years old. The wallpaper in the room was, by his own account, hideous and in one of the last things he ever wrote, he joked that he and the wallpaper were fighting a duel to the death, and that one of them had to go.

He was right. He went first.

Let me tell you the story of Oscar Wilde’s final years, why more than a century later it’s still one of the most instructive falls in literary history and what it should teach you.

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Hello my love,

August carries fullness.

The days are still warm, but the evenings begin to hint at change. Gardens have become generous. Trees hold the weight of everything they’ve spent months growing. This season asks for nothing more than your presence.

Pay attention to the obvious victories and the smaller ones too. The habits you kept. The fears you survived. The conversations that softened you. The version of yourself you are slowly becoming, often without noticing.

Some prompts may ask you to celebrate. Others may ask you to grieve what never came to be. Hold both with tenderness. Sometimes growth happens so gradually that you only recognize it when you pause long enough to look behind you.

Happy journaling.

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August 1

What have you grown into this year that six months ago would have surprised you?

August 2

Describe a place where you feel completely at peace. What makes it feel like home?

August 3

What have you been avoiding, and what do you think it is trying to teach you?

August 4

Write about a small moment that made you feel deeply alive.

August 5

If you could thank one version of your past self, which one would it be? What would you say?

August 6

What do you wish you worried less about?

August 7

What does abundance mean to you beyond money?

August 8

Describe someone who changed your life without ever realising it.

August 9

When do you feel most like yourself?

August 10

What belief about yourself are you ready to let go of?

August 11

Write about a memory you return to whenever life feels difficult.

August 12

If today became an ordinary day you relived forever, what would you change before it ended?

August 13

What is something beautiful you’ve overlooked because it became familiar?

August 14

What conversation have you been postponing?

August 15

What have you forgiven yourself for? What are you still learning to forgive?

August 16

Describe your perfect Sunday in as much detail as possible.

August 17

What kind of life are your daily habits quietly building?

August 18

Write about a risk you’re grateful you took.

August 19

What are you protecting your energy from?

August 20

If your heart could write you a letter today, what would it say?

August 21

What is one ordinary thing you hope you never stop appreciating?

August 22

Describe a time you realised you had changed.

August 23

What would your younger self admire most about you today?

August 24

What dream still refuses to leave you alone?

August 25

What does rest look like when it isn’t earned?

August 26

Write about someone you miss, not only who they were, but who you were with them.

August 27

What are you carrying that no longer belongs to you?

August 28

If you could freeze one season of your life forever, which would it be and why?

August 29

What does success feel like, rather than look like?

August 30

Describe the person you’re becoming without mentioning your career, achievements, or possessions.

August 31

Looking back on this month, what did you discover about yourself that you hope you never forget?

I hope these journal prompts give you some comfort and reflection.

love,

A.

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Hello my love,

Your library tells on you. It shows who you are and who you want to be. Those who read and those who are well-read are differentiated by quality and not quantity. A good literary palate is not formed by reading more, but by reading across, across cultures, philosophies, and ways of seeing the world that are not your own.

Because there are books that inform you, and there are books that rearrange you, your taste, your thinking, your sense of what is worth returning to.

This list is the latter.

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Cornerstones of literature and books that shook the world. Their impact have lasted long after the ink dried.

Here are 12 books that separate the well-read from everyone else

1.

The Bridge on the Drina

— Ivo Andrić

A bridge witnesses four centuries of ordinary lives.

Empires rise.

Religions collide.

Children become old men.

The bridge simply remains.

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Hello my love,

It is not lost on me the irony that I am writing about vulnerability when I happen to be an expert at avoiding it but maybe that is what makes me just the person to tell you about vulnerability and why it feels like a sin.

Everyone has their own reasons as to why vulnerability terrifies them, for me i have a plethora and I am truly dyinggg to know yours.

Vulnerability is a risk, a great risk. Vulnerability is saying “I miss you” before you’re certain they’ll say it back, Vulnerability is publishing a piece of writing you’re convinced isn’t good enough, vulnerability is asking for help before exhausting yourself proving you’ve never needed it.

At its core, vulnerability is the willingness to be altered by another person’s response. It is placing something very alive between your hands and saying, “Here. You could destroy this if you wanted to.”

All in all, vulnerability is expensive. Every vulnerable act asks you to give something up before you ever know you’ll receive something in return.

To tell someone you love them is to surrender the comfort of uncertainty, to apologize is to give up the satisfaction of being right. To ask for help is to sacrifice the illusion that you can carry it all alone. Even sharing a piece of writing feels like handing over a part of your soul in the hopes that someone may understand it , knowing fully well that they may skim through it , misunderstand it or worst of all, decide it wasn’t worth reading at all. Do you feel that way too my love?

Vulnerability always comes at a cost, and I’ve spent most of my life deciding it isn’t one I’m will to pay.

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All children are vulnerable children. A chilld misses someone and says so. They cry in supermarkets. They wave enthusiastically. They tell you they love you seventeen times before breakfast. They don’t stop halfway through a sentence because they’re worried they’ll sound “too much.”

Did adulthood kill that part of us? Were we shamed and disappointed so many times that we learnt to guard our weaknesses so desperately? Or are we just cowards?

Every time you choose not to say something, your mind keeps writing alternate futures. The message you never sent might have changed everything. The person you never confessed your feelings to might have loved you back. The manuscript sitting in your drafts might have become the novel that changed your life. Possibility is incredibly generous. It gives us endings reality never promised. How liberating.

We are so attached to the futures we haven’t tested because they’re untouched by disappointment. Our minds are good at preserving hope when nothing has been put at risk. Hope is easy when nothing has been put at risk. As long as we don’t ask the question, every answer remains available to us.

And vulnerability interrupts that fantasy.

It takes every imagined future you’ve carefully collected and asks you to exchange them for one real one. Possibly a painful one.

The moment you say, I love you, you are pulled out of the hundreds of imaginary conversations you’ve gone through and into the only one that will actually happen. You can never return to the version of reality where you didn’t know. You can never take it back. You leave the safety of speculation and arrive, all at once, in the future.

So I truly hate to be vulnerable but I hate even more are what-ifs. Some of the heaviest things I’ve carried weren’t heartbreaks or failures. They were unwritten endings. Conversations that existed only in my imagination because imagination is kinder than certainty. In my head, people always understood me eventually. They always chose me in the end. They always replied with exactly the words I wanted to hear.

Reality doesn’t have that obligation.

But if every door remains open forever, you never actually walk through one.

And that my love is the tragedy of avoiding vulnerability. In trying to protect ourselves from one painful future, we sentence ourselves to live inside hundreds of imaginary ones.

With love,

A

Last month we organized a Substack intensive course for our readers to help start, grow and market their publications and so many of you signed up, some of the students who signed up have already grown by hundreds and others have fully set up or rebranded their publications!

We’ve gotten questions about whether or not we’ll host another one and guess what???? We’ve decided to! So substack writers you’re going to want to sit down for this tea!

The top ten writers on susbtack make over $40 million per year according to recent platform estimates.

I saw a joke online where a substack writer said he missed bitcoin in 2011, NFTs in 2021, TikTok in 2019 so he’ll be damned if he misses the opportunity to join substack’s growing creator economy lol and he was absolutely right. Most of us tend to recognize life-changing opportunities when it’s too late.

By the time everyone understood Bitcoin, it was already expensive.

By the time brands took TikTok seriously, the early creators had already built their careers.

By the time people realized YouTube could turn ordinary people into household names, the first generation was already way far ahead .

And now, the same thing is happening with writing.

Newsletters are becoming mainstream again (thank you Carrie Bradshaw) and Substack is still early.

Not early because nobody knows it exists but early because very few people understand what it is becoming.

A new class of writers is being built online and you’re sleeping on it .

Right now, there are writers building careers from their publications. They are getting brand deals, book opportunities, paid subscribers, devoted readerships, speaking opportunities , recognition, income, and influence, all because they started before everyone else realized this was possible.

And the sad truth is: most people will watch this happen instead of participating in it.

Not because they aren’t talented but because they never learn how to position themselves properly.

You approach Substack way too casually.

You post inconsistently.

You overthink every sentence.

You write beautiful things nobody ever sees.

You wait until you “feel inspired.”

You restart your publication every few months and convince yourself the platform just “doesn’t work for you.”

But after working with so many writers inside Thee Book Club, we’ve noticed the same pattern over and over again:

The writers who grow are not always the most talented.

They are the writers who understand positioning consistency and audience psychology.

Writing matters but packaging matters too.

You can write the most beautiful article in the world, but if nobody clicks it, nobody reads it.

And it’s exactly why we created this.

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The August Substack Intensive

This is a focused, small-group writing intensive for people who want to take Substack seriously.

Not as a casual hobby.

But as:

• A body of work

• A readership

• A platform

• An income stream

• A career

• A name people recognize

Our team will be teaching the systems behind growing a modern writing publication online.

The things most writers never learn:

• how to position your publication so people instantly understand why they should subscribe

• how to write titles people actually click on

• how to create writing readers remember and return to

• how to market your work

• how to build consistency without burning out

• how to turn readers into an actual community

• how to grow without losing your voice

We’ll give you practical, direct, hands-on guidance.

What You’ll Get

Three 1-on-1 Sessions

Focused guidance tailored specifically to your writing, your publication, and your goals.

No generic advice, you’ll get real feedback and direction.

Publication Positioning

We’ll help you refine your niche, sharpen your identity, and structure your Substack in a way that actually makes people want to subscribe.

Growth & Marketing Strategy

You’ll learn:

• title strategy

• positioning

• distribution

• audience growth

• subscriber psychology

• retention

Writing Improvement in Real Time

We’ll show you exactly where your writing loses people, and how to fix it without changing your voice.

Why Learn From Us?

Because we’ve done it.

Love Letters to Literature grew from 0 to over 430,000 subscribers.

Thee Book Club has grown into one of the fastest-growing literary communities online, with readers across the US, UK, Canada, Australia, India, Nigeria, and beyond.

We’ve built viral essays. Loyal readerships. Brand partnerships. Paid communities.

And more importantly, we’ve helped other writers grow too.

Some of our students have:

• built hundreds to thousands of subscribers

• published articles that went viral

• finally developed consistency after years of starting and stopping

• found clarity in their voice and direction

• begun treating their writing like real work instead of a “someday” dream

Who This Is For

This is for you if:

• you’ve started a Substack but can’t seem to grow it

• you know you have something to say but don’t know how to position it

• you overthink everything you write

• you struggle with consistency

• you want your writing to actually reach people

• you want to build a serious audience around your work

• you dream of becoming a recognized writer online

This is not for people looking for quick hacks or overnight virality.

This is for people ready to build something real.

Pricing & Enrollment

The June Intensive is $250.

Registration is open between July 26th to August 1st

How to sign up

You simply upgrade to the founding member

Subscribe now

When you do this send us a dm so we can reserve your spot. Spots are intentionally limited to ten writers to keep the experience focused, personal, and high-quality.

If accepted, you’ll work closely with us throughout the duration of the course.

A Final Thought

A year from now, there will be writers making full-time incomes from their publications.

Writers building loyal readerships.

Writers getting opportunities because people know their names.

Writers who started taking Substack seriously while everyone else was still “thinking about it.”

And there will be people who watched it happen from the sidelines.

The window is still open.

But probably not forever.

If you’ve been circling the idea of building something real with your writing, this is your chance to finally do it properly xx

With love,

Thee Book Club Team

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Hi Squidward,

We have a few things to hash out. I know that growing up I called you bitter, soulless and a killjoy who sucks the life out of everyone around him but I’m 22 now and I know better. Adulthood sucks. So I’d like to formally apologize.

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You had to navigate rent, responsibilities and the crushing realization that dinner is something you still have to think about every single day, all while SpongeBob and Patrick laughed outside your window every morning and your stingy capitalist boss, Mr. Krabs, monetized your suffering.

Growing older is realizing I judged you too quickly and I think we’re a lot more alike than I’d care to admit.

I too have developed an unreasonable love for the arts , I fixate on books the way you do your clarinet, I’m irritated at loud noises and I would kill for a few moments of solitude everyday. We both have dreams that sound embarrassingly impractical when spoken out loud.

You wanted to be a famous clarinet player.

I want to have a world famous book club.

Neither of us are practical.

I use to think you were just a pessimist and you were, but you were far more complex than that, you believed life was supposed to be meaningful, beautiful, artistic. You wanted quiet mornings, recognition for your work, and enough time to pursue what you loved. You weren’t content with simply existing, you wanted more out of life and that honestly makes you braver than most of us.

I now understand your pessimism because the people who expect the most from life are often the ones most disappointed by it.

You taught me so much as a child, there’s an episode where you finally move into a neighbourhood filled with people exactly like you. Everyone is sophisticated. Everyone appreciates art. Everyone plays the clarinet.

It’s your dream.

For about five minutes.

Then you realized that perfection is just another kind of prison. I think about that episode a lot.

Because at twenty-two, I too have realized the life you imagine will save you rarely does.

You think it’s the city.

Then you move.

You think it’s the job.

Then you get it.

You think it’s the relationship.

Then you meet them.

You think happiness is always one achievement away.

And somehow, when it comes, you’re still you. Nothing changes. I’ve learnt to stop idealizing a life that is far away and appreciate the one I’m living.

You taught me that It’s possible to get exactly what you wanted and still feel empty.

In some ways you were the real star of the show, and I’m not just saying this so you’ll forgive me for saying your head looked like a deflated thumb, I mean it. SpongeBob was the fantasy, you were the reality.

You stomached it all.

Every failed performance.

Every customer at the Krusty Krab.

Every joke at your expense because your dreams seemed ridiculous to the outsider .

I know that feeling.

When enough things don’t work out, cynicism becomes a coping mechanism.

You stop expecting good things because hope begins to feel embarrassing, like a sin.

You laugh less. You risk less. You dream quieter.

And so why I owe you an apology.

I mistook your exhaustion for arrogance .

Your frustration for unkindness.

Your longing for bitterness.

The older I get, the more I realize there are two kinds of people in the world.

People like SpongeBob, who find joy wherever they are.

And people like you, who spend years believing joy only exists somewhere else.

The hardest part is becoming both.

I’m sorry I laughed at you before I understood you.

I’m sorry I thought ambition and dissatisfaction were flaws instead of evidence that you cared deeply about your life.

And I’m sorry that somewhere between childhood and adulthood, I became just enough like you to finally get the joke.

The only thing is…

I’m trying very hard to become a little like SpongeBob too.

With a sorry heart and all my love,

Amira

(P.S I still don’t know how you did it , I would’ve gone to jail living next to those lunatics)

For people who want to know more than everyone else.

Hello my love,

There are books you read because they’re entertaining.

There are books you read because everyone else is reading them.

And then there are books that shaped the way entire civilizations think.

This isn’t a list of basic philosophy books. It’s a list of the books that continue to appear in university syllabi, political speeches, psychology papers, business books, and conversations centuries after they were written.

Read these and you’ll start noticing references everywhere.

Essays will make more sense. Politicians become easier to understand. Writers begin borrowing ideas you can actually recognize.

This is where your philosophical education begins.

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1.

Meditations

— Marcus Aurelius

If you only read one philosophy book this year, make it this one.

Written by a Roman emperor nearly two thousand years ago, Meditations wasn’t meant for publication. It was Marcus Aurelius’ private journal—a collection of reminders to himself about discipline, humility, mortality, anger, leadership, and virtue.

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Hello my love,

What do you lack? Is it happiness? Love? Success? Purpose?

What I mean to ask is, are you suffering ? And if so , does your suffering mean something ?

Sorry if I’m prying but I’ve come to the understanding that a lot of time, our pain is not caused only by our suffering. Sometimes, we are in pain because we suffer and we don’t know why.

We have been taught to think of suffering as an interruption, a mistake in the architecture of life. Something to eliminate as quickly as possible.

Painkillers for the body. Distractions for the mind. New cities after heartbreak. New jobs after failure. A rebound after a breakup . Anything to escape discomfort but suffering is easier if you believe it has a purpose.

Each time my life has hit a stalling point and I felt as though nothing was moving or working out, I would tell myself that it is because I am being prepared for what I’m asking for, for when everything works out , I’m being taught patience, humility, perseverance, all these qualities I would need for when I finally succeed, for when everything works out for me.

You might find this arrogant or delusional but why wouldn’t it work out for me? That is my purpose, the meaning of my suffering is preparation. And this makes it so much easier to endure.

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When Viktor Frankl arrived at Auschwitz (the infamous nazi concentration camp) , almost everything that could be taken from a human being was taken from him.

His family.

His profession.

His manuscripts.

His name.

What remained was a question.

How does a person continue living when life has stripped away nearly every reason to do so?

Frankl noticed that the people who survived were not always the strongest or the healthiest. They were people who believed there was something waiting for them beyond the camp.

A wife.

A child.

A book left unwritten.

Work left unfinished.

A promise they had not yet fulfilled.

It was never simply hope that sustained them.

It was purpose.

Nietzsche wrote, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”

Meaning is not something we find after suffering ends

Meaning is what allows us to survive the suffering while we are still inside it.

So much of our lives depend upon understanding this.

A medical student survives years of exhaustion because she believes becoming a doctor is worth it

Parents endure sleepless nights because every burden comes from someone they love.

Athletes willingly submit themselves to pain that would otherwise seem absurd because every repetition points toward a finish line.

The suffering has not disappeared.

It has simply been given a reason.

Purpose changes the weight of pain.

This is why two people can experience almost identical hardships and emerge entirely differently.

One loses their job and concludes that life has abandoned them.

Another loses their job and believes they are being redirected.

One sees heartbreak as evidence that love was a mistake.

Another carries the grief as proof that they were fortunate enough to love deeply at all.

The event remains unchanged.

Its meaning does not.

And meaning, more often than circumstance, determines whether suffering crushes us or remakes us.

Meaning is oxygen.

Without it, even comfortable lives would be unbearable.

So search for meaning please.

Who will you become because of your suffering ?

Because pain, by itself, has never transformed anyone.

People are transformed when they decide their pain will become something greater than itself.

Life will not always feel fair.

Not every suffering will make sense.

But that there is almost no darkness a human being cannot walk through once they believe there is something waiting on the other side worth walking towards.

So maybe the next time life feels unbearably heavy, don’t ask yourself, “Why is this happening to me?”

Ask the harder question.

What is this asking of me?

With love,

Amira

Literature is a window to the soul. There are parts of ourselves that remain invisible until someone else gives them a name.

Sometimes that person is a friend. Sometimes a stranger. Sometimes, impossibly, it’s a fictional character who has never existed.

I don’t think we truly know ourselves until we’ve met ourselves in a book.

A lot of what I know about myself was taught to me by characters I was attached to. A lot of my flaws were shown to me my characters I hated. A lot of my dreams and passions were woven in between stories I’ve read.

Literature offers the greatest form of recognition. Every novel has held up a different mirror. Sometimes I loved the reflection staring back at me. Sometimes I wanted to close the book because it revealed something I wasn’t ready to admit.

The characters I adored often carried pieces of me that I hadn’t yet learned to articulate. Their ambitions became language for dreams I couldn’t explain. Their fears exposed anxieties I had buried beneath busyness. Their hopes made me wonder if I wanted those things too.

Even the characters i couldn’t stand were revealing.

My anger towards them exposed things I’ve been excusing in myself. Arrogance. Self-righteousness. Cowardice. The inability to apologize. Fiction has a way of stripping away our justifications. We judge characters with a clarity we rarely extend to ourselves and somewhere in that judgment, we accidentally become honest.

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I have learned as much about my flaws from the people I couldn’t stand on the page as I have about my virtues from the ones I admired.

Jo March taught me that ambition doesn’t make a woman difficult, it makes her alive.

Elizabeth Bennet taught me that first impressions are often just well-dressed prejudices.

Sydney Carton taught me that no life is beyond redemption.

Jean Valjean taught me that kindness can remake a person more completely than punishment ever could.

And Dorian Gray taught me that beauty without character eventually becomes its own kind of ugliness.

When I look back at the books that have shaped me, I don’t just remember the plots, I remember the parts of myself they uncovered. My admiration for certain characters revealed the person I wanted to become. My frustration with others exposed the flaws I was still trying to outrun. Somewhere between all those pages, I wasn’t just meeting unforgettable characters.

I was meeting myself.

But no single character built me.

Instead, hundreds of them left fingerprints behind.

Every story quietly asked me questions I hadn’t thought to ask myself. What kind of life would satisfy you? What are you willing to sacrifice? What do you mistake for love? What kind of person do you become when no one is watching? Which regrets would haunt you? What would you protect at any cost?

The remarkable thing about literature is that it lets us rehearse lives we will never live. We fall in love, lose everything, betray friends, forgive enemies, cross oceans, start over, grow old, and grieve people we’ve never met, all from the safety of a chair.

And after living a thousand fictional lives, we return to our own changed.

We noticed what made us angry. What made us cry. Which endings we desperately wanted to change. Which characters felt like old friends. Those reactions are not accidents. They are clues.

And that is what reading has always been.

A journey toward ourselves.

The greatest books don’t simply leave us with memorable quotes or beautiful prose. They leave us with an uncomfortable, wonderful realization:

“I didn’t know that was me.”

And perhaps that’s why reading feels so intimate. Every bookshelf is, in some way, an autobiography. Every beloved novel is evidence of the questions we’ve been asking, the lives we’ve longed for, and the versions of ourselves we’ve been slowly uncovering.

Maybe that’s why I believe you don’t really know yourself until you’ve met yourself in a book.

Somewhere, on a page written by someone you’ve never met, a stranger has already described the person you’re still becoming.

With love,

A.

Hope you had fun answering these, can’t wait to see your replies.

with love and literature,

Amira

Hello my love,

Reading more does not necessarily make you well-read.

Reading well does.

Taste is cultivated.

It is built by wandering through Russian drawing rooms, Japanese kitchens, Argentine labyrinths, Nigerian villages, and French cafés. By allowing yourself to think with philosophers, grieve with poets, and argue with novelists who lived centuries before you.

The best readers are never loyal to one country, one genre, or one era.

They travel.

Not always with suitcases but pages.

This list isn’t filled with the books everyone has read.

It’s filled with the books everyone should read.

Books that linger. Books that sharpen your thinking. Books that rearrange the architecture of your mind.

Here are ten books that belong on the shelves of someone with impeccable taste.

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1.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

— Leo Tolstoy

A man spends his life chasing respectability.

Then he learns he’s dying.

Tolstoy asks a terrifying question:

Did he ever truly live?

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Hello my love,

I suffer thrice when confronted with despair. Before it happens , while it’s happening and while I’m getting over it. And I can say with certainty that I am in the most pain while I’m waiting for grief to overtake me. While I’m preparing myself for the worst and most of the time, the worst never comes.

Are you familiar with anticipatory grief?

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It is the peculiar habit of mourning things that are still alive.

Grieving futures that haven’t arrived, conversations that haven’t happened, relationships that haven’t ended, opportunities we haven’t even lost. Rehearsing tragedy so often that by the time life finally arrives, we’re already exhausted from living it a hundred times in our minds.

I’ve realized I spend an embarrassing amount of my life anticipating.

I anticipate failure before I’ve even begun. I anticipate rejection before I’ve introduced myself. I anticipate losing the people I love while they’re still laughing beside me. Sometimes I catch myself grieving the end of a beautiful moment while I’m still standing in the middle of it.

It’s strange, isn’t it?

How quickly the mind abandons the present in search of disasters that don’t yet exist.

I’ve often wondered how many versions of my life I’ve lived that never came true.

Do you feel that way too my love?

How many nights have you sacrificed to problems that never arrived? How many tears have you spent on endings that quietly rewrote themselves? How many moments have you been physically present for but mentally absent from because you was busy preparing for a future that had no intention of happening?

The cruel thing about anticipation is that it demands payment upfront.

Reality only asks you to suffer once.

Your imagination asks you to suffer every single day until it gets here.

And most of the time, when the day finally arrives, reality is almost disappointingly ordinary.

The interview wasn’t as terrifying as you imagined.

The conversation wasn’t as catastrophic.

The move wasn’t as lonely.

The exam wasn’t impossible.

Even heartbreak, as devastating as it can be, is rarely identical to the monstrous version we’ve been feeding for months. Reality has edges. It has details. It has people who comfort you, strangers who smile at you, unexpected joys that interrupt your pain.

Imagination has none of those mercies.

It only knows fear.

The Stoic philosophers understood this long before psychologists gave it a name. They believed we are disturbed less by events themselves than by the stories we attach to them. We manufacture suffering inside the theatre of our own minds, then mistake it for reality.

And that is why fear feels so convincing.

It borrows tomorrow’s certainty without any of tomorrow’s evidence.

There’s another tragedy hidden inside all this anticipating.

Time.

The Tuesday afternoon you spent worrying instead of noticing the rain.

The dinner you barely tasted because you were thinking about next month.

The holiday you couldn’t enjoy because you were already grieving its end.

We speak so often about death stealing life from us, but anticipation is the real thief.

It doesn’t take your years.

It takes your moments.

It convinces you to exchange today’s peace for tomorrow’s possibility.

And what a terrible trade that is.

Sometimes I wonder whether this urgency comes from ambition.

I have so many things I want to build. Books I want to read. Rooms I want to fill with people. Conversations I want to have. A future I care deeply about.

Perhaps that’s why I find myself rushing toward tomorrow so often.

But I’ve begun asking myself a different question.

If everything I’ve worked so hard to build eventually arrives, will I have actually lived enough to enjoy it?

Because that is the danger in constantly preparing for life.

You forget to participate in it.

The future deserves planning.

It does not deserve your presence.

That belongs to today.

Maybe peace isn’t found in believing that nothing bad will happen.

Something eventually will.

People leave. Bodies fail. Dreams change. Loss is one of life’s few guarantees.

Peace comes from trusting that when life asks something difficult of you, you will meet it then, not now.

Not a hundred imaginary versions before it arrives.

There is enough suffering waiting for each of us.

We don’t have to volunteer for extra.

So tonight, try something different.

Return the hours you’ve stolen from yourself.

Leave tomorrow where it belongs.

With all my love,

A.

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There’s something fitting about reading Jane Austen in July.

After a close vote, our Book Club has chosen Persuasion by Jane Austen as our July read, and I couldn’t be more excited to experience this beautiful novel together.

Want to read along with us?

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Often described as Austen’s most mature and quietly moving work, Persuasion tells the story of Anne Elliot, a thoughtful and gentle woman who, years earlier, was persuaded to end her engagement to the man she loved. Now, eight years later, their paths cross once more, giving them both an unexpected opportunity to revisit the past and ask whether love can survive time, regret, and missed chances.

At its heart, Persuasion is a novel about second chances. It’s about growing into yourself, learning to trust your own voice, and discovering that some stories aren’t over simply because they didn’t unfold the way we imagined. Beneath Austen’s signature wit is a deeply emotional story that rewards careful reading and thoughtful conversation.

Whether you’re revisiting this classic or reading it for the very first time, I hope you’ll join us throughout the month as we read together, share our thoughts, and uncover the little details that make this novel so enduring.

As always, paid subscribers will receive a digital copy of the book, along with our curated reading guide filled with discussion questions, annotations, and prompts designed to enrich your reading experience. If you’d like access, you can upgrade your subscription at any time.

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However, everyone is welcome to read along and discuss. Our Reading Room thread opens on the 22nd, where we’ll spend the rest of the month discussing the novel together. Everyone is welcome to read along, whether you’re participating in the discussions or simply enjoying the journey at your own pace.

I’m so looking forward to reading this one with you all.

Happy reading,

Amira 🤍

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July is suspended between beginnings and endings. The excitement of a new season has settled, yet there is still enough of the year left to become someone different. It is a month that invites us to linger, to spend longer evenings outside, to notice.

This month’s journal is about curiosity. About examining the life you’re building with honesty. Some prompts may feel lighthearted, others uncomfortable. Sit with each one for as long as it needs. There are no right answers here, only an opportunity to know yourself a little better than you did yesterday.

Happy writing.

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July 1

What do you hope this month changes in you?

July 2

Describe the version of yourself you feel most at home being. When do they show up?

July 3

What have you outgrown that you still find yourself holding onto?

July 4

Write about a conversation that quietly changed your life.

July 5

What does your ideal ordinary day look like—from morning until night?

July 6

What are you chasing? Why does it matter to you?

July 7

If your life were a novel, what chapter would you say you’re in right now?

July 8

When was the last time you felt completely present? Describe the moment in detail.

July 9

What belief about yourself are you ready to let go of?

July 10

Write a letter to your younger self. What do they need to hear today?

July 11

Who inspires you—not because of what they’ve achieved, but because of how they live?

July 12

What is one fear that has been making more decisions than you have?

July 13

Describe a place that feels like a sanctuary to you. Why does it have that effect?

July 14

What have you been postponing, and what is it costing you?

July 15

List ten things that made you smile recently, no matter how small.

July 16

If someone paid close attention to your daily habits, what would they assume your priorities are?

July 17

What part of your life currently feels neglected?

July 18

What is something beautiful you’ve noticed lately that others might have overlooked?

July 19

What does success mean to you today? Has that definition changed over the years?

July 20

Write about a book, film, or piece of art that altered the way you see the world.

July 21

What do you wish people understood about you without you having to explain it?

July 22

What kind of people make you feel most like yourself?

July 23

Describe a recent moment when you surprised yourself.

July 24

If you could spend an afternoon with any writer, philosopher, artist, or historical figure, who would it be? What would you ask them?

July 25

What are you currently learning about yourself?

July 26

Write about a memory you never want to forget. Capture every detail you can remember.

July 27

In what ways have you become kinder to yourself over the past year?

July 28

What does “a meaningful life” look like to you?

July 29

Imagine your future self writes you a postcard. What does it say?

July 30

What chapter of your life are you ready to close with gratitude rather than regret?

July 31

Looking back over this month, what have you discovered about yourself? What do you want to carry into August and what are you leaving behind?

Happy Journaling.

Love,

A.

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Hello my love,

Reading more does not necessarily make you well-read.

Reading well does.

Taste is cultivated.

It is built by wandering through Russian drawing rooms, Japanese kitchens, Argentine labyrinths, Nigerian villages, and French cafés. By allowing yourself to think with philosophers, grieve with poets, and argue with novelists who lived centuries before you.

The best readers are never loyal to one country, one genre, or one era.

They travel.

Not always with suitcases but pages.

This list isn’t filled with the books everyone has read.

It’s filled with the books everyone should read.

Books that linger. Books that sharpen your thinking. Books that rearrange the architecture of your mind.

Here are ten books that belong on the shelves of someone with impeccable taste.

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1.

The Brothers Karamazov

— Fyodor Dostoevsky

A murder becomes an excuse to ask impossible questions.

What is goodness?

What do we owe one another?

Can faith survive reason?

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Hello my love,

This is for the ones who underline their books, whisper lines aloud, and feel personally offended when an adaptation gets it wrong. For the ones who want stories that linger, not explode. These films are handpicked for readers who crave feeling, subtlety, storytelling, and atmosphere. Some are based on books. Some feel like they should’ve been.

Light a candle. Press play. Fall in love.

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1.

Dead Poets Society (1989)

“Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.”

No list for readers is complete without this classic. Literature, rebellion, loss, it aches in all the right places.

2.

The Secret Garden (1993 )

An enchanting film about grief, loneliness, and the slow blooming of hope. It unfolds like a novel, tender, atmospheric, and full of things that grow in silence.

3.

The Picture of Dorian Gray (2009)

Even if you’ve read the book, the film gives something else entirely. Velvet decadence, moral decay, and the haunting beauty of youth that refuses to fade , until it does.

4.

Paterson (2016)

A film about a bus driver who writes poetry every day. Nothing happens and yet everything does. A meditation on art, routine, and the beauty of ordinary life.

5.

Brooklyn (2015)

Adapted from Colm Tóibín’s novel. Quiet but powerful. A story about leaving, longing, and the impossible ache of two homes.

6.

The Theory of Everything (2014)

A tender, aching film about brilliance, illness, and the quiet unraveling of love. It’s not just about science, it’s about devotion, sacrifice, and what remains when everything else fades.

7.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

A painter. A subject. A love story written in glances and silence. Every frame looks like a painting. Every pause feels like a paragraph.

8.

Little Women (2019)

Greta Gerwig’s adaptation makes Jo March’s ambition, grief, and restlessness feel fresh. You don’t just watch this one, you feel every emotion in ink.

9.

Atonement (2007)

Based on Ian McEwan’s novel. Gorgeous and gutting. Themes of guilt, storytelling, and consequences, made even more tragic by that unforgettable ending.

10.

Pride & Prejudice (2005)

A love story told in silence, glances, and wind-swept fields. Every frame feels like poetry, restrained, aching, and impossibly romantic. Even if you know how it ends, you’ll still hold your breath.

There you go my love, enjoy xx

With love,

A.

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Last month we organized a Substack intensive course for our readers to help grow/market their publications and so many of you signed up, some of the students who signed up have already grown by hundreds and others have fully set up or rebranded their publications!

We’ve gotten questions about whether or not we’ll host another one and guess what???? We’ve decided to! So substack writers you’re going to want to sit down for this!

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The top ten writers on susbtack make over $40 million per year according to recent platform estimates.

I saw a joke online where a susbtack writer said he missed bitcoin in 2011, NFTs in 2021, TikTok in 2019 so he’ll be damned if he misses the opportunity to join substack’s growing creator economy and he was absolutely right. Most of us recognize life-changing opportunities too late.

By the time everyone understood Bitcoin, it was already expensive.

By the time brands took TikTok seriously, the early creators had already built careers.

By the time people realized YouTube could turn ordinary people into household names, the first generation was already far ahead .

And now, the same thing is happening with writing.

Newsletters are becoming mainstream again and Substack is still early.

Not early in the sense that nobody knows it exists.

Early in the sense that very few people understand what it is becoming.

A new class of writers is being built online in real time.

Not through publishing houses but through audience.

Through community.

Right now, there are writers building entire careers from their publications. They are getting brand deals, book opportunities, paid subscribers, devoted readerships, speaking opportunities, recognition, income, and influence, all because they started before everyone else realized this was possible.

And the truth is: most people will watch this happen instead of participating in it.

Not because they aren’t talented but because they never learn how to position themselves properly.

You approach Substack casually.

You post inconsistently, without clarity.

You overthink every sentence.

You write beautiful things nobody ever sees.

You wait until they “feel inspired.”

You restart their publication every few months.

You convince yourself the platform “doesn’t work.”

But after working with so many writers inside Thee Book Club, we’ve noticed the same pattern over and over again:

The writers who grow are rarely the most talented.

They are the writers who understand:

• Positioning

• Consistency

• Audience Psychology

• Titles

• Distribution

• Retention

• Identity

Writing matters.

But packaging matters too.

You can write the most beautiful article in the world, but if nobody clicks it, nobody reads it.

And it’s exactly why we created this.

The July Substack Intensive

This is a focused, small-group writing intensive for people who want to take Substack seriously.

Not as a casual hobby.

But as:

• A body of work

• A readership

• A platform

• An income stream

• A career

• A name people recognize

Our team will be teaching the systems behind growing a modern writing publication online.

The things most writers never learn:

• how to position your publication so people instantly understand why they should subscribe

• how to write titles people actually click

• how to create writing readers remember and return to

• how to market your work without sounding artificial

• how to build consistency without burning out

• how to turn readers into an actual community

• how to grow without losing your voice

We’ll give you practical, direct, hands-on guidance.

What You’ll Get

Three 1-on-1 Sessions

Focused guidance tailored specifically to your writing, your publication, and your goals.

Not generic advice but real feedback. Real direction.

Publication Positioning

We’ll help you refine your niche, sharpen your identity, and structure your Substack in a way that actually makes people want to subscribe.

Growth & Marketing Strategy

You’ll learn:

• title strategy

• positioning

• distribution

• audience growth

• subscriber psychology

• retention

• what makes writing spread online

Writing Improvement in Real Time

We’ll show you exactly where your writing loses people, and how to fix it without losing your voice.

Why Learn From Us?

Because we’ve done it.

Love Letters to Literature grew from 0 to over 430,000 subscribers.

Thee Book Club has grown into one of the fastest-growing literary communities online, with readers across the US, UK, Canada, Australia, India, Nigeria, and beyond.

We’ve built viral essays. Loyal readerships. Brand partnerships. Paid communities.

And more importantly, we’ve helped other writers grow too.

Some of our students have:

• built hundreds to thousands of subscribers

• published articles that went viral

• finally developed consistency after years of starting and stopping

• found clarity in their voice and direction

• begun treating their writing like real work instead of a “someday” dream

Who This Is For

This is for you if:

• you’ve started a Substack but can’t seem to grow it

• you know you have something to say but don’t know how to position it

• you overthink everything you write

• you struggle with consistency

• you want your writing to actually reach people

• you want to build a serious audience around your work

• you dream of becoming a recognized writer online

This is not for people looking for quick hacks or overnight virality.

This is for people ready to build something real.

Pricing & Enrollment

The June Intensive is $250.

Registration is open between June 24th to 30th

How to sign up

You simply upgrade to the founding member

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When you do this send us a dm so we can reserve your spot. Spots are intentionally limited to ten writers to keep the experience focused, personal, and high-quality.

If accepted, you’ll work closely with us throughout the duration of the course.

A Final Thought

A year from now, there will be writers making full-time incomes from their publications.

Writers building loyal readerships.

Writers getting opportunities because people know their names.

Writers who started taking Substack seriously while everyone else was still “thinking about it.”

And there will be people who watched it happen from the sidelines.

The window is still open.

But probably not forever.

If you’ve been circling the idea of building something real with your writing, this is your chance to finally do it properly.

With love,

Thee Book Club Team

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Hello my love,

You are not that important, and I say this with a lot of love. No one noticed that your left eye looked weird in that photo you posted, no one noticed that the person you thought was waving at you was actually waving at someone 5 feet behind you. No one noticed that you failed that thing you built a lot of courage to try. No one cares.

It took me a really really long time to realize that I perceive myself far more than anyone else will ever perceive me. You are not being watched the way you think you are my love, you are the performer and the audience so why are you still performing?

Some of the most brilliant people in history had the tragic quality of caring far too little what others thought of them: poets, artists, politicians, civil rights activists, and performers. They embarrassed themselves constantly and showed their vulnerabilities to anyone who would look. That’s why they moved people. They reflected what all of us wish we could have: the ability to think about the world beyond ourselves.

You’ve buried your passions and played into this nonchalant role because you don’t want the world to know how much you care. But you can only achieve what you openly care for, excessively care for it.

I want to succeed immensely. I want to be great. One of my worst fears is to live a life that amounts to nothing. I’m telling you this so you can know that I care. No one ever got anything they wanted by not caring.

Turn the lights off in your theatre. Maybe no one is watching. And if you do have an audience, it means there is very little meaning in their lives, and so they look to yours.

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Why are you performing for people who aren’t brave enough to be themselves?

Why are you performing for people who don’t even know themselves because they’ve spent their whole life watching others watch them?

Why are you performing for people who will never applaud you??

A few years ago, psychologists at Cornell University ran a simple experiment.

Participants were asked to wear an embarrassing T-shirt into a room full of strangers. Afterwards, they were asked to estimate how many people noticed the shirt.

The participants believed that around half the room had noticed.

Turns out, far fewer people did.

Psychologists call this the spotlight effect: our tendency to dramatically overestimate how much other people notice us, think about us, and remember what we do.

In other words, most people are far too busy worrying about themselves to spend nearly as much time thinking about you as you imagine.

The fear of perception follows us everywhere.

It follows us into conversations.

Into our careers.

Into our relationships.

Into the decisions that determine the shape of our lives.

And yet, none truly cares

Most people are trying to answer their own emails, survive their own insecurities, and figure out what to make for dinner.

You are a supporting character in most people’s stories.

Just as they are in yours.

Isn’t that liberating??

Once you realise that nobody is paying as much attention as you think, you are forced to confront a harder truth:

Many of the restrictions in your life are self-imposed.

The fear is real.

The audience often isn’t.

This does not mean people never judge.

Of course they do.

Humans are social creatures. We make assessments constantly. It is one of the ways we navigate the world.

But most judgments are fleeting.

A person may form an opinion of you at 2 p.m. and forget you exist by 2:15.

Meanwhile, you may spend six months arranging your life around a judgment that lasted fifteen minutes.

That is a terrible trade.

The tragedy is not that people judge us.

The tragedy is how much of our lives we surrender trying to prevent it.

How many books go unwritten because someone might laugh.

How many opportunities go untouched because someone might disapprove.

How many versions of ourselves never get the chance to exist because we are busy managing perceptions instead of living.

The older I get, the more I suspect confidence is not the belief that everyone will like you.

It is the acceptance that some people won’t.

And continuing anyway.

The people who are genuinely building interesting lives rarely have time to obsess over yours.

They are too occupied with their own work, their own families, their own ambitions, their own failures.

The audience you fear is usually busy worrying about its own audience.

An endless chain of people performing for one another while nobody is actually watching.

The next time you find yourself shrinking, hesitating, or editing yourself into something smaller and safer, remember the participants in that psychology experiment.

They walked into the room convinced everyone was staring.

Most people barely noticed.

The same is often true of life.

The spotlight is rarely as bright as it feels.

And once you step out of it, you might finally have enough freedom to become who you were trying so hard to hide.

With all my love,

Amira

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Hello my love,

Your library tells on you. It shows who you are and who you want to be. Those who read and those who are well-read are differentiated by quality and not quantity. A good literary palate is not formed by reading more, but by reading across, across cultures, philosophies, and ways of seeing the world that are not your own.

Because there are books that inform you, and there are books that rearrange you, your taste, your thinking, your sense of what is worth returning to.

This list is the latter.

Cornerstones of literature and books that shook the world. Their impact have lasted long after the ink dried.

Here are 12 books that separate the well-read from everyone else

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1.

The Book of Disquiet

— Fernando Pessoa

A man spends his life observing the world rather than participating in it.

Part diary, part philosophy, part existential wandering.

Pessoa turns loneliness into an art form.

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