What people recommend, in their own words, with the receipt.
Writes Useful Fictions on agency
5 things
Cat's CradleBook Kurt Vonnegut
I think I’ve read this book five times, which is 2.5 times more than my next-most-read book. It is both a totally straightforward, easy to read short novel and a work of incredible inventiveness and wisdom.
Guest-curated reading list Cate Hall wrote for Matter's Words That Matter newsletter
words.getmatter.com ↗·2026-04-18
The Goddess of Everything ElseOther Scott Alexander
A gorgeous allegory of the forces of cooperation and competition, as personified by the title character and the Goddess of Cancer. I love this piece because it reminds me that everything good in the world doesn’t just arise in spite of the bad, but in a perverse way because of it.
Guest-curated reading list Cate Hall wrote for Matter's Words That Matter newsletter
words.getmatter.com ↗·2026-04-18
The EggOther Andy Weir / Kurzgesagt
A work of great beauty that has exerted a buffering effect on my sanity throughout different eras of my life, acting like a psychedelic during my most grounded times and a grounding influence during my most psychedelic (psychotic) times.
Guest-curated reading list Cate Hall wrote for Matter's Words That Matter newsletter
words.getmatter.com ↗·2026-04-18
The Book of Hours: Love Poems to GodBook Rainer Maria Rilke
The only good poetry about God I’ve ever found. (You are welcome to point me to better.)
Guest-curated reading list Cate Hall wrote for Matter's Words That Matter newsletter
words.getmatter.com ↗·2026-04-18
For Jane: With All the Love I Had, Which Was Not EnoughOther Charles Bukowski
This poem, written six months after the horrifying, alcoholism-related death of the great love of his life, is the best poem about love or grief I’ve ever read.
Guest-curated reading list Cate Hall wrote for Matter's Words That Matter newsletter
words.getmatter.com ↗·2026-04-18
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 small bar beside a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The bar shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Full and green is recent. It drains, and turns amber and then grey, as the post gets older.
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 bar is empty after about:
A striped bar means the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no bar.