What’s in store for you this weekend? I’m looking forward to warm spring temps and sunshine as my town enjoys a taste of false spring. Daisy is loving it! One of my college kids is home this weekend, so I’m thankful for family time in advance of her heading back to school on Sunday. And I have an hour to go in an audiobook I’m very much enjoying.
I hope YOU have something to look forward to these next few days, and that this collection of interesting reads and favorite things helps ease you into that weekend frame of mind.
Our 2026 Reader Survey is happening now!
Our 2026 Reader Survey is live! If you haven’t yet, would you pop over here to take it? I hear it takes 3-10 minutes, depending on how decisive you’re feeling. Thank you so much for your help!
My favorite finds from around the web:
I offer gift links for articles whenever possible (you may still need to create an account with the publication); if there’s no gift link and you’re not a subscriber, check to see if your library carries the publication or use a bookmarking service.
The 2026 Tournament of Books is underway. (Tournament of Books) “But it’s not really a contest. We’re not even sure it’s a “tournament.” What the ToB has been and will be, as long as we’re putting it on, is a month-long conversation about novels and reading and writing and art that takes place on weekdays in March.”
The yoghurt delivery women combatting loneliness in Japan. (BBC) “The suited woman is a Yakult Lady – one of tens of thousands across Japan who deliver the eponymous probiotic drinks directly to people’s homes. On paper they’re delivery workers, but in practice they’re part of the country’s informal social safety net.”
Go on an adventure with these 10 novels set at museums. (MMD) If you can’t visit a museum in real life, visit one via the pages of these novels.
50 Ways to Meet Your Neighbor. (One Million Experiments) “To jump-start neighborly relations, try one of our (mostly untried) ways to meet your neighbors. As Paul Simon sang, ‘The answer is easy if you take it logically. I’d like to help you in your struggle to be free. There must be fifty ways to…’ meet your neighbor.”
Madewell’s beautiful woven shoulder bags are on sale now—I just picked up the green to carry me from spring through fall (and maybe the rest of the year, too). The color is gorgeous! I’ve had their Signature Woven Tote in the coffee bean for several years and love it. Their Organic Cotton Bandanas are also adorable. And I’m trying their Perfect Vintage Wide-Leg Jean during the sale; I’ve heard great things and will report back. (Madewell’s “standard” sizing for this style runs 23–33, with an array of short, petite, and plus options also available.)
Time and Light and All That Sits In Between. (Wallflower Chats) In honor of Daylight Savings and her hard-won sophomore novel, Thao Thai shares 8 favorite books about time travel.
I Hired a Lab to Counterfeit-Test a Dozen Suspicious Beauty Products I Bought Online. Every Single One Had a Problem. (Wirecutter) “I’ve now spent months entrenched in the super-shady, ridiculously confusing, and astonishingly pervasive cesspool of counterfeit beauty products sold online. And I’m here to tell you that, at least in certain corners of the internet, your chances of buying an item that isn’t what you think it is are unfortunately and shockingly high.”
Introducing: Free Time. (McSweeney’s) “Want lower blood pressure? Less work anxiety? Fewer violent urges? Free Time delivers all of those according to groundbreaking research at the Johns Hopkins School of Leisure.”
What Should I Read Next episode 517: Seeking contemporary novels to complement Jane Austen classics. Are you an Austen completist? This week’s guest is gearing up to finish the last two books on her list, and is in search of contemporary novels to go with them.
Dani Guindo’s Dramatic Aerial Photos Reveal the Ghostly Outline of an Icelandic Glacier. (Colossal) STUNNING photos. “His latest series, Terminus, captures a glacier’s many rivulets amid a rocky landscape, along with a ghostly, rounded outline revealing evidence of the glacier’s earlier phases.”
Should Nonfiction Books Just be Podcasts? (Dear Head of Mine) “It behooves writers, editors, and publishers to realize what they can offer these listeners in book form that they can’t get in podcast form: more substance, more focused arguments and narratives, and something that doesn’t get lost in an archive but that you could also, if you wanted to, hold in your hand.”
The 25 Essential American Cheeses to Try Right Now. (Food & Wine) An interesting look at what’s happening with American cheese right now, with lots of enticing-looking options to try.
Aspen Institute Announces Shortlist for the 2026 Aspen Words Literary Prize. (Aspen Institute) I’ve read and loved three of the five.
National Craft Month is here—and to celebrate Craftsy is offering a full year membership for just $0.75 (Regularly $123.) (Wait a few seconds on the page and the price drops to $0.49.) This has proved popular with MMD readers for the options found under “writing” like journaling, hand lettering, and fiction and memoir writing, plus the more usual crafting suspects like sewing, knitting, quiling, photography, home decor, and more.
One of America’s Great Traditions Is Dying. I’ll Never Let It. Not Now That I Have Proof I Was Right All Along. (Slate) On the declining popularity of bar soap: “I wanted to know if I was as obsolete as my favorite bath product. What I found is that our prejudices about what we keep in the shower—about what keeps us clean—go far deeper than the skin we scrub.”
Why Jane Austen Adaptations Just Keep Coming—And We Keep Watching. (Literary Hub) “In Austen’s novels, the main female characters always get to have their cake and eat it, too: love without security is simply not good enough.”
Don’t miss these posts:
My favorite subgenre: emotionally resonant fiction. Realistic stories that hold moments of piercing insight into what it means to be human.
Why I track my reading on spreadsheets. An ode to reading spreadsheets.
15 immersive historical fiction books about overlooked events. You probably didn’t learn about these events in history class!
Have a great weekend!
12 comments
These Friday links are so good this week. Thank you! The McSweeney’s article made me do a spit take and the cheese round-up is making me hungry.
Thanks for the recs on two wonderful books I am listening to on audio: Alix Harrow’s The Everlasting. So glad I stuck with this imaginative tale. And I just finished Book 2 of The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower. The narration is fantastic, the story light and a perfect distraction from the news headlines.
Thank you for the link to Thao Thai’s Substack, and her great list. I’ve added the Emma Straub to my list.
The article about replacing non-fiction books with podcasts for non-fiction: I love the idea of listening to a podcast, but I rarely complete any, because my brain moves more quickly than the s l o w movement of the talker and I lose interest. Give me a book any day! I certainly am a visual learner.
You can always speed up the podcast. I do!
I enjoyed the spreadsheet article! I started tracking books on a spreadsheet when I brought home my first desktop in the late 1980s. It operated on DOS, came with packaged software that included a word processing app & also a spreadsheet. Docs weren’t transferable to other apps, so eventually it was lost & I started over. I start a new tab/sheet every year. Below books read, I list books added to my TBR, date, how I heard of it, procurement method (Hold, Saved Search, Tagged, Purchased) and other notations. At the end of the year, the “books read” data transfers into an “All Years” master list tab. Books on TBR that are not read transfer to the next year if I still plan to read them, unless they have a late year pub date. I allow a couple of months into the new year to finish those books. Of course, they are recorded as read in the next year. I also keep a few other tabs, including one for a reading challenge. As books are completed for the challenge, I indicate the challenge item # in the main list for that year, so I remember I’ve already used it.
Always find the Friday post interesting, today one of the most ever so far! I tend to buy straight from the company site for body /cosmetic care, now I am relieved that I have. And thoroughly enjoyed the article about bar soap! I’m a bar soap fan with strong emotional ties to Ivory, Yardley lavender (from Grandma’s linen cupboard in the sheet section) and Dove, leaning towards more eclectic types now.
Thank you!
I’m reading everything wrong today.
Your line that began, “I hired a Lab…” I thought was a sniffing dog to condemn bad beauty products. (LOL!)
Then I read, “One of America’s Greatest tTraditions is Dying”. I thought “DYING?” How is this an American tradition.
Cleary there is something with my brain processing right now. 🙂 At least I understood it after a bit more reading and more context clues.
Oh, this made me laugh! And also…I feel seen…I do this all the time!
We switched from shower gels to bar soap a while ago, and we’ve eliminated a whole bunch of plastic bottles from our lives. Highly recommended. My favorite is Australian Botanical Soap – also so inexpensive.
I switched to liquid soaps as soon as I found out that whatever it is that makes soap “cake” is what creates soap scum! Get rid of cakes of soap, and voila! No soap residue. My sister who cleans for a living, made all her clients switch to liquid soap. I’m a believer. (I couldn’t get the article, so if it mentioned this, then sorry!)
And I loved the Yakult Lady article! We need that in the US! I feel like I would volunteer to be one, if there were such a thing…
Anne & team, what is happening this weekend is Pi Day!! The 14th of March (3.14) is a day for us to remember that science is both delightfully magical (how can a number just go on and on and on and…) and wonderfully mundane (an mathematical term as a date! words that sound alike but are NOT the same! an excuse to have pizza or dessert (or both!)) at the very same time. Happy Pi Day everyone!!!
I might be” old school” to still use bars of soap also but prefer Beekman 1802 & Naples Soap Company ( variety of products)
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