#410: Dashwood Books

🧴 Cetaphil as face cream, 📖 Second Place by Rachel Cusk, 🥗 Yu Susuki, and more.

Perfectly Imperfect is a newsletter offering “A Taste of Someone’s Taste” from guests like Charli XCX, John Cale, Julian Casablancas, Lena Dunham, Mac Demarco, Dasha Nekrasova, Tim Heidecker, Ayo Edebiri, Michael Imperioli, Rayne Fisher-Quann, Mel Ottenberg, Chloe Cherry, Matty Matheson, Anna Delvey, The Dare, Caroline Calloway, Snail Mail, and more. Check out our full archive here.

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Cool people like cool things, which is why we asked Miwa Susuda to share a taste of her taste on Perfectly Imperfect.

Miwa Susuda is the New York City-based manager of Dashwood Books and the founder of the Foam Paul Huf Award winning Session Press. Miwa has served on the review jury for the Paris Photo/Aperture Photo Book Best Book Prize, Woodstock Air Residency, NYFA Artist Fellowship, and Chico Review. She’s one of my favorite people to follow on Instagram because of her “Favorite Photo Book Of The Day” series that’s put me on to incredible finds such as Hiromix’s “Girls Blue” which I ended up recommending on the newsletter. Miwa’s most recent publication with Dashwood Books, Daido Moriyama Shashin Jidai 1981-1988, was released in November and her next publication Solace by Wing Shya is set to be released this spring. Lucky for us, Miwa is here to tell us what she’s been into.

You can bookmark Miwa’s recs on PI.FYI.

Without further ado

Miwa Susuda (instagram, pi.fyi)

🧴 Cetaphil as face cream

In Japan skincare is important and women spend so much time in front of the mirror, I am no exception. Skincare is important for me and I know that I should be using fancy anti-aging creams, I have tried but always breakout. My skin can only really handle cetaphil!

📖 Second Place by Rachel Cusk

I used to be into fiction when I was young, but as I get older I feel like fiction books are not satisfying. I feel more attracted to philosophy or criticism books. My co-worker, Edan Wingfield, suggested I would like Cusk’s book, so I gave it a try. I surprised myself with how sophisticated her writing style is, and I found it was deep and fundamental as any good philosophy book.

🥗 Yu Susuki

My work is very important for me, if I’m not at Dashwood, I am working for my imprint Session Press. I don’t have much time for eating. I used to rely on protein bars from drugstores. I found Yu Susuki’s book a month ago, he advocates for Paleo Diet, which means that whole unprocessed foods are good for your body. I am usually not impressed by life coaching, but this book made sense to me, so I listen to Suzuki-san have to say about healthy habits. I like being a paleo woman.

🎥 Typhoon Club by Shinji Sōmai

At Dashwood, me and my boss and co-workers (David Strettell, Yeon Cho, and Martha Naranjo Sandoval) like to talk about the films we watch over the weekend. I saw this movie at IFC over the summer. The plot is simple and there is not a huge budget, but it does not matter: money is not what makes films moving, it is emotion. This is a brutal movie that does not sugar-coat the experience of youth. There is one scene in particular that is very raw and does not hold back, it features violence against a young woman and depicts a young student’s hidden desires. It is poignant. No wonder it gained such international acclaim!

Bonus recommendation for paid subs from Miwa below!🧘 ???