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On BeautyBook

by Zadie Smith

Who uses, recommends or left On Beauty, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.

2 people

Matt Sheehan
Matt Sheehan is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
recommended

And the last one, just for fun, uh Zadeie Smith's On Beauty. You know, you had Zadeie on the show. I just I think she's the goat. I think she's the best. And On Beauty is uh just a hilarious novel of an academic family. And um you know, her ability to to pierce into the psychology and the insecurities of of each of us [music] and and put that on blast in a way is just I don't know, it just brings me a lot of joy.

Answering The Ezra Klein Show's closing question, three books to recommend, in “The ‘But China!’ Dilemma Driving the A.I. Race” (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/15/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-matt-sheehan.html). Quoted from the episode's YouTube auto-captions.

2026-09-15·youtube.com ↗

Esther Perel
Belgian-American psychotherapist and author of Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs; hosts the podcast Where Should We Begin? and writes on desire, commitment and infidelity in couples.
read

In my monthly fiction book club, we’re reading Zadie Smith’s On Beauty.

Letters from Esther newsletter, in its compendium of highly recommended sources of inspiration and information

2019-09-10·estherperel.com ↗

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:

Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.