pop culture

Nice books and not too trashy websites

If you're gonna be online might as well not hate yourself for it

Claire Zulkey

Claire Zulkey

— 5 min read
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Nice books and not too trashy websites

I know most of us are struggling to spend less time online, or at least mean to struggle to spend less time online. For the Not Right Now Podcast my co-host Quinn and I recently spoke with Amanda Hess and Kaitlyn Teer, and in separate interviews, they each admitted to repeatedly deleting and then re-downloading Instagram. Brick and an app called Self Control This works occasionally, with the reward being more book and crossword time (I list some recent reads below.)

But sometimes you just need to sit down and surrender your sweet tired brain to the internet, especially if your kids are not old enough to leave you alone for enough time to get into something analog. It doesn't have to be toxic stuff. You don't have to subject yourself to reading about, say, war, or the idiot UFC White House fight and how a standup comedian you recently spent a lot of money to see decided to go to the show and be photographed there. There are nice and useful things out there too.

How do I know all this? Evil Witches told me! In our survey I asked the paid subscribers, "What website or app do you tend to go to when you want to disassociate?" Below are some answers that didn't come up repeatedly (which included Pinterest, New York Magazine's various verticals, Target's website, plus Tiktok and Reddit writ large) that people did not seem to feel too abashed to tell me about, if you want something new:

Fashion

  • Go Fug Yourself "Pretty celebs in beautiful clothes, been my go-to for 20 years!"
  • ThredUp "I haven't opened Instagram in six weeks and I highly recommend it. My disassociation website is ThredUp. 90% of the time I don't even buy anything, I just scroll."
  • Nicky Bell on Instagram
  • "r/whatthefrock for the great gowns beautiful gowns"
  • Mina Baie. "It's technically a diaper bag brand and I'm way out of the diaper bag stage, but I have a lot of their bags, and it's the eye candy I need when I feel down."
  • "I go to Fashion Jackson which grosses me out but I do sometimes wonder if I could do a capsule wardrobe."
  • @garancedore on Instagram
  • The Mom Edit

Humor and comics

House and home

Nature, animals and travel

Games

Culture and lifestyle

Calm & cozy

Pop Culture

Weird medical shit

Some books I've been able to fit into my life in 2026

I'm only going to list the books I've liked because I am a hater in many ways but, as a certified 3.5 author on GoodReads, I don't like being a loud and proud book hater.

Currently reading/listening to and enjoying:

  • American Fantasy by Emma Straub
  • Famesick by Lena Dunham (I am relating to this much more than I thought I would since I consider myself a Xennial and Dunham the ultimate millennial.)
  • Half His Age, Jennette McCurdy (this is fun to read at the pool/beach. People ask about it because it has a semi-salacious cover.)

And before that:

  • Rasputin: The Downfall of the Romanovs by Antony Beevor
  • Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier
  • Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt (this was soooo good and melancholy; I think it may be a heart-tugging one for mothers of daughters or daughters with complicated relationships with their moms.)
  • Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

I also read Nobody's Girl by Virginia Roberts Giuffre which is technically good/interesting but it's so NSFL I hesitate to say anyone should read it. Strangers by Belle Burden, too but it feels like so many people in our demographic have or will read it so it feels kind of basic to recommend it.

Hit us up in the comments if you have a book you want to tell the internet about.

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Thank you for reading Evil Witches, a newsletter for people who happen to be mothers who sometimes look at things other than their children or pictures of their children or things related to their children. This issue is free to all but if you want to get additional exclusive content including posts only paid subscribers can comment on, please consider joining the coven so I can continue to pay for this non-Substack, ergo non-free platform. If you would love subscriber-only access and can't afford it, reply to this email and I'll comp you. If you won the lotto lately or something and are up for paying slightly more for your subscription to cover those who can't, the Witches 4 Witches tier is for you.

Real quick, I wanted to show you this Reddit thread that I loved where a new mom was freaking out about how she broke her baby by looking away for a second. In a true act of kindness, all these other parents chimed in with stories about the ways they had also broken their babies. We did an old thread about this for Evil Witches back in the day too. I recently thought about whether an infant-age head bonk was the reason why my kid was being such a dick the other week but then he brought home a good report card so maybe it's the reason for it.

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