The Buzzcut Best (2024)
Picking favorites from a year’s worth of reading, listening, shopping, and more
Buzzcut is always better in your browser or on the Substack app
Buzzcut is a newsletter of close-cropped commentary on travel, style, history, and nature by writer and strategist Zander Abranowicz. Find the best of 2023 here, and read our previous endorsements of libraries, rainwear, the Star of David, electric bikes, Rachel Carson’s first novel, and more.
Uncompensated Endorsement
A paean to what moves me
The Buzzcut Best (2024)
Reading
Annihilation by Michel Houellebecq (2022)
From Bauhaus to Our House by Tom Wolfe (1981)
Rise and Kill First by Ronen Bergman (2018)
Eating
Hot dog au poivre at The Portrait Bar (New York, New York)
Liver at St. JOHN (London, England)
Seafood at Golden View Firenze (Florence, Italy)
Shopping
L’Elsass knife with juniper handle from Eustache (Riquewihr, France)
Opera incense from Astier de Villatte (Paris, France)
Rope leash from Found My Animal (Brooklyn, New York)
Wearing
Italian wool sport coat from Todd Snyder (New York, New York)
Trebbio leather tote bag from Il Bisonte (Florence, Italy)
Japanese Ford Denim Standard Jean from Buck Mason (Los Angeles, California)
Podcasting
Honestly with Bari Weiss (The Free Press)
For Heaven’s Sake (Shalom Hartman Institute)
The Rest is History (Goalhanger)
Substacking
Watching
The Vanishing (film) by George Sluizer (1988)
The Incomparable Mr. Buckley (documentary) by Barak Goodman (2024)
The Terror (miniseries) by Dan Simmons (2018)
Sleeping
Floating Villa at Perivolas (Santorini, Greece)
Mansion Suite at The Fifth Avenue Hotel (New York, New York)
Cavendish Hall (Suffolk, England)
Listening
Opus by Ryuichi Sakamoto (2024)
False Lankum by Lankum (2023)
Here in the Pitch by Jessica Pratt (2024)
Something You Should Know
A sharp fact for your cocktail party quiver
In Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, the voice of the masked woman who saves Tom Cruise’s character during the famous orgy scene was Cate Blanchett’s