Don't read this on Kindle

but do read it! Also, what should I wear for my True Crime debut?

Just want to hear the me and True Crime story? Scroll down, or stay for my e-reader fail.

The good: I hereby declare my decision to shift my #tbr into photos on my phone instead of buying the books just willy nilly a success. Travel loomed, and I needed to keep the bag light—which meant it felt great to load something I really wanted to read onto my Kindle rather than tucking in even the slimmest paperback, which this would not have been anyway.

I downloaded The Other March Sisters, and I really really liked it. But then… the bad:

Oh dear. The other March sisters were letter writers… and no amount of effort would make the italicized font bigger. I struggled through…and then it got worse!

Some of the letters, for unknown reasons, shifted into an even teensier-weensier font. Look, my eyes aren’t that bad. I do use reading glasses, but I can read messages on my phone and things without them. They just keep my eyes from getting too tired. This, however… this was flat out impossible. I handed it to my son who was like, oh, just no.

I decided I’d just have to miss whatever plot points were in that letter. Then it happened again. And again. Finally, I resorted to photographing the Kindle with my phone and expanding the text, which worked, but was definitely more of a digital reading immersion than I’d planned.

I liked the book though! If you, like me, are a Little Women stan, and you like the idea of getting a look at the action through the eyes of the non-author sisters, this one is for you. I liked Meg’s story best, and I loved the shift she led in all of her sisters’ relationships with themselves and with their mother.

The three authors did a great job of balancing the truth of the Alcott family with their fictional counterparts as well. I also appreciated the grounding in the era’s history that came from viewing it from a historical perspective—it made me more aware of how much of “Little Women” is essentially the water Louisa May Alcott was swimming in, and therefore didn’t feel the need to set out as much for her reader. I feel like my love for the book is even greater now—if you read it, tell me what you think!

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In other news… way way back in a totally different life, I helped to prosecute a fairly well known homicide in New York City. I was a bright eyed bushy tailed baby lawyer at the time and very much the most junior of the investigation team and now…I am the only person on it both willing to talk about it publicly and also not dead. (It’s the detectives who have died, and they were pretty senior guys and this quite a bit older than me but… not that old, but also being a lifetime NYC cop is not easy on the body. Meanwhile my fellow prosecutors are very much alive, but both are lifers in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, where I once worked, and it’s canon in the office that we do not speak to the press ever. But I left a long time ago and can do whatever I want!)

It seems that Dick Wolf of Law and Order fame is producing a true crime series, and they want to do an episode about this homicide, and they are willing to bring me down to NYC and set me up as a talking head in a studio to somehow tell the story. I have some mixed feelings about this—I’ll share more next week (including my discovery of my journal from the time, the longest that I ever managed to keep such a journal) but meanwhile, a very important question: what do I wear? Here are our options:

The blazer is… men’s Zara from my son’s closet. And I kind of suspect I look like I’m about to demand that you get your New Jersey trash picked up from my company, not my competitor… or else. But maybe it’s not that bad? My lawyer friend who watches a lot of these said, basically, OMG no I will lend you something. But what do you think? (I promise to put on some makeup and brush my hair.)

Next week, we become a temporary True Crime substack! More anon—