The Monday Media Diet with Lillian Wang Selonick

On Story Graph, Focus Keeper, and Eden Center

Lillian is a writer in the DC area. Her stories have appeared in Variant Literature, Joyland Magazine, Ricepaper Magazine, Passengers Journal, and Obelus Journal. Additionally, she publishes weekly essays on her Substack, The Lillian Review of Books.

Tell us about yourself.

I’m a classicist turned scholarly publishing professional turned writer. I publish The Lillian Review of Books on Substack, where I write laid-back literary criticism of an eclectic mix of Great Books, science fiction, and Jewish literature.

I earned a BA in Classical Studies from the University of Chicago, moved to Washington DC for an internship at the Smithsonian Institution, and then fell into a career of managing the editorial workflows for peer-reviewed scientific journals. Most recently, I was an assistant managing editor at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), which is the world’s third most prestigious interdisciplinary science journal, after Nature and Science.

At the end of 2024, I took the leap of quitting my job at PNAS to write full-time, and ever since I’ve been working on my first novel (a speculative book that I’ve been describing as “a Saul Bellow novel, but on Mars”) and writing literary criticism on Substack.

Describe your media diet.

Since I quit my 9-5, I’ve been reading more than I have since college. I strongly prefer physical books, which I accumulate at an unhealthy rate from thrift stores, library sales, used bookstores, and estate sales.

While doing housework, cooking, or taking walks, I usually listen to podcasts, although lately I’ve been trying to wean myself off of them and listen to more audiobooks. The podcasts I regularly listen to fall into a couple of categories: political/cultural and historical/edutainment. For the former, I love Time to Say Goodbye (an Asian American-ish leftist show hosted by Jay Caspian Kang and Austin Harper), Know Your Enemy (a rigorous but fun examination of the history of the conservative movement in America), and the Ezra Klein Show (my most normie take is that Ezra Klein is the most thoughtful public opinion-haver we have today).

For the latter, I love Revolutions by Mike Duncan, Literature and History, and Hardcore History by Dan Carlin.

I go through cycles with my TV-viewing. Sometimes I’ll binge old favorites (like Stargate SG-1 or Battlestar Galactica) every day, other times I’ll only watch new episodes of whatever prestige show I’m invested in (recently: Andor, Severance). Occasionally I’ll get really sucked into a k-drama. I’m half Korean, so I justify that as language learning practice (even though I’m 99% dependent on the captions).

My husband and I are semi-cinephile snobs, so we also try to make use of our Criterion Channel subscription by watching a few classic films per month.

What’s the last great book you read?

I just read the play Aias (Ajax) by Sophocles, translated by Herbert Golder and Richard Pevear. I’ve encountered Pevear previously as a co-translator of The Brothers Karamazov, so I was intrigued to read his Sophocles translation. I didn’t read much Greek drama in college, so I’m trying to fill in some gaps. I was blown away by the power and urgency of the play. Aias depicts a murderous rampage by the titular Greek hero Aias (more commonly romanized as Ajax) and the consequences of this spree, after Achilles has been slain but before the end of the Trojan War. It exists on a moral axis that is entirely alien to a modern American reader, but I found myself completely enraptured by it nonetheless.

I also recently finished Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata, which is a very strange novel about an alternate Japanese society in which all children are conceived via artificial insemination and sex and love are stigmatized. I’m still processing it, so I’m not sure if I’d call it ‘great,’ but it certainly made an impression on me! It is highly disturbing.

What are you reading now?

Currently reading: Social Distancing by @Scott Spires, Bellow: A Biography by James Atlas, and Ulysses by James Joyce. And I’m listening to the audiobook of Leonard Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson.

What’s your reading strategy when you pick up a print copy of your favorite publication?

Very chaotic; when I have a print copy of The Point or The New York Review of Books, I’ll skim the table of contents, pick out the article that looks most interesting to me, read it first, then flip around at random to see what catches my eye and read in no particular order.

Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?

I’m bullish on Literary Substack, so let me recommend three Substackers who are consistently putting out stellar work. First, Henry Begler’s A Good Hard Stare is a delight to read. He has a penchant for reading and synthesizing a range of cultural, literary, and political histories and memoirs into entertaining and erudite essays. These are the kinds of books I’m unlikely to ever read, but Begler makes them fascinating.

Second, Alexander Sorondo’s big reader bad grades is a discursive take on odd corners of the literary world. He rightfully received a lot of praise for his rigorously reported epic profile of William T Vollman’s new novel in The Metropolitan Review, but I’ve also been enjoying his series on Sherlock Holmes and the way he draws in different elements of culture (we particularly share a love for Leonard Cohen) into his reviews.

Third, Isaac Kolding’s Amateur Criticism is consistently thoughtful and accessible, from a PhD student in literature who is nonetheless committed to clarity over academic obfuscation.

What is the best non-famous app you love on your phone?

Does Story Graph count as non-famous? I never tracked my reading through Goodreads or even a notebook before 2023, when I started using Story Graph. I find it super motivating to look back on all the books I’ve read, and I think it’ll be a helpful reference to look back on after a few years and I’ve forgotten what I read and when—assuming the app remains supported. It’s slightly clunky and I definitely don’t use all the features it claims to have, but I kind of love that about it. It’s not a ‘fun’ app to be on, so it’s not sucking away my time and attention, but it’s just useful enough that I feel motivated to log my reading there.

Focus Keeper, a pomodoro timer app, is a definitely non-famous app that I find useful. I’ve been using the pomodoro method off and on for over a decade; it’s the only ‘productivity hack’ that has ever reliably worked for me. I prefer to use a physical kitchen timer that I keep on my desk (I use a cheap knock-off of the Time Timer), but if I’m away from my desk, Focus Keeper does the trick. The only problem with using an app for this is that I have to interact with my phone to use it—which can be dangerous for distraction.

Plane or train?

Train. I love staring out the window and watching the land and cityscapes gradually change.

What is one place everyone should visit?

Eden Center in Falls Church, Virginia. It’s the oldest and largest Vietnamese shopping center on the East Coast. I’m not Vietnamese, but I love the cuisine and the bustling spirit of Eden Center. It’s like stepping into another world. On weekends they have live music: aunties and uncles singing a mix of old Vietnamese pop songs and American rock ballads. Hands down my favorite place in the DC region.

Tell us the story of a rabbit hole you fell deep into.

This is kind of embarrassing, but during the 2019 Democratic Primaries I got really into Andrew Yang. At first, I was just curious because there was an Asian candidate, so I looked into him out of racial solidarity, I guess. I thought his slogan was funny and clever: Make America Think Harder (MATH).

I liked that he was young and vital, a stark contrast to the gerontocracy that’s been running our country into the ground on both sides of the aisle. He looked like he was having a blast on the campaign trail. I became intrigued by his tech-literate platform, utopian vision of work and creativity, and advocacy for Universal Basic Income. His top message was: automation is coming for our industries, so our culture and our economy need to be ready to adapt.

The more I learned, the more enthusiastic I became. I watched every interview I could find on YouTube. I listened to every podcast he went on. I bought a MATH hat. I wrote an angry letter to the New York Times when they consistently failed to cover Yang campaign events. I genuinely, delusionally believed that he had a shot to change people’s minds.

After he dropped out of the primaries and then ran for New York City mayor, Yang made a series of gaffes that made support for him embarrassing. The spell broke. I put my MATH hat into storage and exited the rabbit hole.

Now, though, it feels like the rest of the world has caught up to Yang’s message. His alarmism over ‘automation’ has been vindicated. AI really is here and it really is coming for our jobs. More municipalities are experimenting with UBI. But it’s too little, too late. We all should’ve listened to Andrew Yang in 2019; maybe then we would actually be prepared for the massive technological revolution that is in the process of upending all of our lives.