What are you up to this weekend? I’m having dinner with my friend Alison, and she told me I could put her baby to bed. I cannot wait for a heavy head on my shoulder, squeee. Thank you also for the kind and lovely comments on our house tour. I felt surprisingly vulnerable posting it — I’m not sure why — but you always make everything feel like a soft landing. Thank you. Hope you have a good one, and here are a few links from around the web…
How do people find time to read so much? “Because there are so many other things I DON’T do,” explains Pandora Sykes.
What a pretty dress for a night out.
The Crown’s hot Prince William just dropped. (NYMag)
How Melissa McCarthy travels. “I hate when everybody glares at the baby… It’s a baby! I’m always the creepy one who says, ‘If you need me to hold the baby, I will.’ And they’re like, ‘We don’t know you, lady.’”
Have you tried this famous chopped salad?
What makes me happy is my very old dog, says Gabrielle Zevin. “Our wonderful vet offered the following diagnosis: ‘What you’ve got is a good pug.’ Nothing Frank has is fatal. He is old. That’s all. And old is not an ailment. Old is old.”
Would you do your own wedding makeup? I liked this tutorial.
21 great Oscar looks, including Angela Bassett and Paul Mescal. (NYTimes gift link)
Plus, three reader comments:
Says Jessica on the best book to put in a guest bedroom: “I offer The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America. It seems silly, but I gave it to my mom one year, and now EVERYONE who visits her ends up buying their own copy. People laugh so hard they cry; this book is a delight.”
Says Mary on the best book to put in a guest bedroom: “The Book of Delights by Ross Gay (mini essays that are just lovely! I can’t shut up about this book!). Plus, a surprise choice: a really good dessert cookbook, or any cookbook with good photos and chatty intros. A very pleasant thing to wander through before falling asleep!”
Says Lauren O. on my relationship with birthdays: “I felt like a slacker at 21, when I wasn’t completing a draft of my first novel, like Jane Austen. Then I turned 42, as she never did. In a piece I’ve been writing about robot cats (long story), I stumbled into Spinoza’s concept of conatus, or the striving of each animate thing to become itself; a good/ethical life is the one that is lived according to one’s nature. With each birthday I’m coming into myself, and I now see that for the great good fortune that it is.” Replies Sarah: “Another banger from Lauren O. Something I’ve thought about many times but never had the words for.”
(Photo by Meaghan Curry/Stocksy.)
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