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THIS WEEK: THE ODYSSEY • BOOK CLUB DRAMA • REACHING THE FINISH LINE
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THURSDAY • AUGUST 6 • 2026
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Good morning,
My grandson, Hal, short for Harold, is one of those lucky kids whose mom takes him to the library several times a week. Last weekend, while I was babysitting, he wanted us to read one of his library picks over and over: Harold's Hungry Eyes by Kevin Waldron, about a black-and-white Boston terrier named Harold. Since our Hal has a black-and-white Frenchie named Poppy, close enough as far as he's concerned, I spent an embarrassing amount of time tracking down a copy.
It reminded me that books are rarely just books.
One of the reasons we started the PROVOKED Book Club is because a book is the best excuse there is to have interesting conversations.
Next Wednesday, we're doing exactly that with bestselling novelist Jane Green.
You don't have to read the book. I clearly failed to say that over the past couple of weeks, so I'm saying it now.
We'll talk about Rewilding, of course, but I suspect we'll spend even more time on what it means to walk away from a life you've carefully built and find the courage to build another one. Jane is warm, funny, and wonderfully candid about all of it.
That's the conversation I'm looking forward to.
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CULTURE
Who Gets to Translate The Odyssey? Emily Wilson, Nolan, and the Fight Over a Hero
BY JENNIFER GREEN
"Slut." "Whore." "Nymph." All words English translators have used for the women of The Odyssey. Emily Wilson went back to the Greek and found that some of that contempt isn't in Homer at all—it arrived later, in English. Then Christopher Nolan spent $250 million on a film he says her translation helped inspire, and she publicly said she'd be ashamed to have written a line of it. Odysseygate looks like a fight about casting. It's really a fight about who still feels entitled to the story.
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HUMOR | Book Club Drama Episode 5
Book Club Drama is PROVOKED's monthly comedy series by Emmy-winning writer Judy Rothman Rofé. Eight episodes in season one. Eight women, one book a month, and a group chat that goes off the rails. Quick reads. Fiction, technically, but it reads like our own book clubs, chaos and all. New here? Start with Episode One.
Book Club Drama: The Correspondent
BY JUDY ROTHMAN ROFÉ
Book Club Drama is back for episode five. The book had Gloria crying into a biscotti wrapper at 30,000 feet. What it couldn't survive was a bird flu exposure, a rescheduling crisis, and a separate group thread one member wasn't invited to. This month, the drama isn't in the book. READ MORE
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LIFE
'Aging Gracefully’ Is Code for Disappearing. I Opted Out.
BY MARGIE ZABLE FISHER
Women are told to take up less space. One woman's answer wasn't another face cream or diet. For her 50th year, she established a rule: every experience had to be something she'd never done before, and she couldn't do it alone. Then a friend said the word triathlon. What she got out of it was bigger than the finish line. READ MORE
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TAKE NOTE
Timely and worth your attention.
🩺 Dr. Erica Schwartz is the first Black woman to lead the CDC, confirmed to an agency that hasn't had a permanent director in almost a year and is currently facing the worst measles outbreak in decades. She needed a medical degree, a public health master's, and a law degree to get considered. Her predecessor lasted 29 days.
🔥Debbie Millman gets it. Her recent TIME article, “What Octogenarian Pop Divas Show Us About a Life Well-Lived,” is a powerful treatise on why living loudly and authentically is both brave and necessary for maintaining relevance and a sense of self, illustrated through some of our most treasured female celebrities.
🤖 A new study found readers couldn't reliably tell AI-written stories from human ones—and often rated the AI stories higher when they believed a person wrote them. Meanwhile, Substack rolled out Pangram and LinkedIn added a button for flagging AI slop. We can't tell the difference, so we built machines to tell us. What could go wrong?
🍇 Donna Mills has an unexpected side hustle. At 85, the Knots Landing star has joined OnlyFans to connect directly with fans. The oddest request so far? A video of her stomping grapes barefoot. Turns out the internet has a thing for toes—and Donna Mills has a sense of humor about it.
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JOIN US FOR BOOK CLUB
There's still time, and it's shaping up to be exactly the kind of conversation we do best. Honest, unapologetic, and a little messy.
I'm sitting down with Jane Green, 18-time New York Times bestselling author, for our very first PROVOKED Book Club. We'll get into Rewilding, her memoir about making a major change, living with the consequences, and finding your way to a new normal.
And if you're short on time, I listened to Rewilding on Audible, and loved it. Jane narrates it herself, and hearing her tell her story in her own voice brings it to life in a way the page can't. Worth every minute of a few dog walks or car rides between now and Wednesday.
August 12 at noon ET. The PROVOKED Book Club is for PROVOKEDplus members. If you're already in, watch your inbox for the link to save your seat. If you're not, this is your last chance to join us.
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READER SPOTLIGHT
“I devoured this piece. The way you describe all the nuances between women’s friendships is spot-on. All the layers of emotions around this topic, you explore so thoroughly. I learned a lot!” —Theresa on GLP-1 Envy: Let’s Talk Want to be featured next? Comment on your favorite piece—we read them all.
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DEAR READER
BY CHRISTINA DAVES
She spent decades building the life she'd dreamed of. It took an anniversary trip to discover that the hardest part was believing she was allowed to enjoy it. READ MORE
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