What are you up to this weekend? Around here, we’re getting together with friends and attending our first Christmas party in two years. I hope you have something to look forward to these next few days, and that these interesting reads and fun things help ease you into that weekend frame of mind.
My favorite finds from around the web:
- The Books. Terrific piece from Alexander Chee. “One of the funniest and most interesting questions you can ask a group of couples at a party is whether or not they have combined their bookshelves.”
- Shelf Life: Lily King. No wonder I enjoy her books so much! We have so many favorites in common.
- Decades later, ‘Home Alone’ fans are still casing the iconic house. We read this piece out loud with the whole family.
- Speaking of socks: I ordered these Fair Isle beauties for my kids for St Nicholas Day. (Bombas is a WSIRN sponsor: use this link to get 20% off your first purchase.)
- Who Owns a Recipe? A Plagiarism Claim Has Cookbook Authors Asking. “In the publishing world, it is well known and largely accepted that recipes, for the most part, can’t be copyrighted. But the “Makan” incident reinvigorated a debate about recipe ownership, leaving many writers and editors wondering how they can — or even if they should — protect their work in a genre that’s all about building on what came before.”
- It’s entirely possible this mug will be in someone’s stocking at my house this year.
- The Wheel of Time: Why It’s So Hard to Accept Adaptations of Our Favourite Books. “Adapting any beloved book to screen will always threaten a young mind’s most sacred faculty: imagination.”
- Despite the Heaviness I Carried, I Kept Stirring. Stunning essay by Elizabeth Acevedo. “Perhaps I thought the only thing holding us loosely together was the idea of a better day, a better decade, better care that might result in better health for a beloved.”
- You wouldn’t believe how many emails and messages I get asking what my husband Will is reading right now. The current answer: this 2015 nonfiction book.
- Being Stranded at Ikea Sounds… Good? If it’s going to happen somewhere…
- Out There I Have To Smile. Very moving. “For parents of kids with disabled bodies, out there can be exhausting. It maintains chipper myths about babies that your child breaks. What’s with that feeding tube? It tosses questions at your feet like it’s throwing you something between flowers and rotten fruit. Why’s she so small? What happened? What’s wrong? You answer with a smile, or you answer with fatigue, or you turn your head because none of your business.”
- 200 Books That Shaped 200 Years of Literature. How many have you read?
- They Hacked McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines—and Started a Cold War. “On social media, meanwhile, the McDonald’s ice cream meme has come to represent everything disappointing about modern technology, capitalism, and the human condition.”
Don’t miss these posts:
- 9 cozy winter favorites for the cold and dreary season. I’m craving all things cozy these days.
- 10 book + gift pairings to delight the reader in your life. Elevate the gift giving experience by pairing a book with a little something special.
- A book lover’s guide to literary Edinburgh. This brings back such good memories. I can’t wait to go back someday.
Upcoming Events:
- December 16: Live chat with author Ingrid Fetell Lee: Time for our Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club discussion of Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness with author Ingrid Fetell Lee! (Events are available as replays for members who cannot attend live.)
- January 27: Choose Your Own Bookish Adventure: Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club is mixing things up this month! Join us to discuss your choice of the following books from Book Club history: Before We Visit the Goddess (2016), Beartown (2017), This Must Be the Place (2018), The Gown (2019), The Poet X (2020), and Kitchens of the Great Midwest (2021). (Events are available as replays for members who cannot attend live.)
You can find more upcoming events here.
Have a great weekend!
Photo credit: Debby Hudson (who is also an MMD reader!) on Unsplash
8 comments
I liked “Beartown” and recently finished Backman’s “Anxious People.”
Currently I’ve just finished “Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie” and am working on Alan Furst’s novel “Under Occupation” and Marvin Kalb’s memoir “The Year I was Peter the Great.”
When will the 2022 reading challenge be announced?
For Will…Andrea Wulf wrote The Brother Gardeners which is absolutely fascinating and oh, so well written!
Thank you for your generosity in the shout-out! And thanks for the hours of good reading, including authors/books I’d never have discovered without your compelling book lists.
It just occurred to me that new 2021 books by such popular authors as Amor Towles, Anthony Doerr and Elizabeth Strout were NOT listed in your 2021 Reading Guide…..Hmmm. Telling.
I think those three books came out in the fall, too late for the summer 2021 reading guide, if that is the reading guide you are referring to. I don’t have access to the other reading guides, as I’m not a book club member…
Don’t be too concerned about this! Those books were all published in the fall, and the Summer Reading Guide didn’t include any books published later than August.
Thank you for the link to the Elizabeth Acevedo article. She’s one of my very favorite authors. I’d read the recipe article before. So interesting!