How is your final weekend of the year shaping up? Around here we’ve been reading up a storm and watching piles of holiday movies: most recently the whole family loved Something from Tiffany’s, which vastly exceeded our expectations. (If you have any good recs, please share them in comments!) This weekend we plan on more of the same, plus enjoy visits with friends and a holiday celebration we postponed due to illness.
I hope this collection of interesting reads and favorite things sets the right tone for your weekend.
My favorite finds from around the web:
- All Hail Dead Week, the Best Week of the Year. (The Atlantic) Living it and loving it!
- How Publishers Make Old Books New Again. (Publishers Weekly) An interesting glimpse behind the curtain.
- Without a Doubt, These 8 Nail Colours Will Be Everywhere Next Year. (Who What Wear) So pretty! These shades remind me of my longtime favorite OPI Dutch Tulips.
- The new year is almost upon us … so get your fresh new reading journal now! Or this adorable option for younger readers. (If you like the sound of a signed copy, order from Carmichael’s Bookstore.)
- We’re drowning in old books. But getting rid of them is heartbreaking. (Washington Post gift link) “Despite the advent of the digerati and eBooks, hardcovers and paperbacks continue to flood the market for readers who prefer the look and feel of physical books, the weight in their hands, the pleasure of turning a page.” Relatable.
- This “out of office” sweater made me giggle.
- The Year in Sequels. (The New Yorker) “But there are other reasons for going back to the well. Amid the chaotic present, the past offers escape, a sense of coherence….The pleasure sequels provide is the pleasure of endlessness.”
- Why You Need to Try Tubing Mascara. (Southern Living) The product all my friends are talking about these days. Have you tried it? While I do indeed like the Trish McEvoy tubular mascara I got in a beauty Advent calendar, I’m not sure I like it as much as the non-tubular mascara from Ilia I’ve been using lately.
- On the Gift of Longhand. (The Millions) “When you write with a fountain pen, you experience writing as a truly physical activity, one that affects all your senses.”
- Cormac McCarthy Loves a Good Diner. (New York Times gift link) “His novels are full of food scenes, often in modest digs. Why do they resonate so much?” (I loved spying the reference to The Toast—how I miss it!)
- I love a little greenery to brighten the dreary days: this faux eucalyptus wreath is darling.
- Researchers say time is an illusion. So why are we all obsessed with it? (NPR) I find these questions fascinating—even if they make my head hurt.
- What Can We Learn from Barnes & Noble’s Surprising Turnaround? (The Honest Broker) “If you want to sell music, you must love those songs. If you want to succeed in journalism, you must love those newspapers. If you want to succeed in movies, you must love the cinema.”
Have a great weekend!
43 comments
I love tubing mascara, but it doesn’t love me! After I started using it, my eyes got dry…like I couldn’t open my eyes in the morning dry. It took me forever to zero in on the tubing mascara as the culprit. Once I stopped using it, the dryness was gone.
Also, it’s terrible for the environment. When you wash it off, it goes into the aquifer as a micro plastic!
Agreed! I have given up on tube mascara.
Thanks for pointing out the environmental impact, something we really need to be aware of in the products we consume.
Alas, my birthday falls in “dead week”! As a child I hated it because all my gift receiving opportunities fell in the same six days. But as an adult, I’ve loved it! Everyone seems relaxed and more low key during this week and it’s a grand time to have a birthday.
Thanks for sharing this article.
This!!!!!!! As an adult it is my favorite week of the year. I have no expectations of me or anyone else these days. Happy birthday to you!
My birthday was this week too! And I’m a teacher so I always have the day off and many times I still have family visiting who are able to celebrate with me. Oh and now I just ask for one big Christmas and birthday combo gift. I love it!
I love Dutch Tulips, I remember the year it came out. Also love Cajun Shrimp by OPI. Unfortunately, for healthcare this week is busier than ever with patients trying to have babies prior to 1/1 and people trying to get elective surgeries and procedures done prior to 1/1 for deduction and deductible purposes.
One of the rabbit holes I traveled down from the original Things I Love, Friday, December 30, 2022 post led me to this website: https://booksbythefoot.com/ which I had never stumbled upon before. Have you? I am not totally surprised to see something like this exists since I love to look at bookish pictures and love bookshelf pictures too, these look so put together and beautiful. But, I can’t decide if I like it or not. I have bookshelves in my home and I like the haphazard order and seeing books that I’ve read and enjoyed (or those who I love have) even though they are not a beautiful collection of all blue, or green or some mosaic of colors. Obviously a themed-look collection of books is a beautiful display as they have pictured on the site, but would I / could I do that myself? Does a person then actually read those beautifully displayed books or are they merely a display for non-reading people? I am curious…
The article about the Barnes and Noble turn-around is not only interesting, but it also gives me hope! The new CEO has the courage to let his staff participate in choosing books to sell, where to place them in the store……brilliant!
And I enjoyed the article – I signed up for the free subscription to see how well I like the author’s other insights before committing to a paid subscription.
Me too!
Off topic but is the bench in the photo yours? Could you tell me where you got it?
It looks like one at Kirklands. The bench caught my eye too😉
I can’t find it but thank you!
Restoration Hardware sells a bench that looks like this one.
Man, I loved the story on Barnes and Noble. Capitalism done well can make the world go ’round. Thank you for finding something I never would have, and Happy New Year!
I’m often frustrated with your links, because unless you are a subscriber, you can’t read the article (The Atlantic, The New Yorker). A gift link makes all the difference — I can totally relate to Drowning in Books. When we moved from Alaska to Washington, I had hundreds of books to dispose of, because moving companies charge by the pound. Ultimately I was able to donate all the hard cover books to the local senior center. My husband is thrilled that now I use the library almost exclusively, and have not refilled our house with bookcases.
Sheila: I hope you don’t mind me replying – but as an FYI some of the linked articles have pop-ups that appear as you scroll or read the article but if you close the pop-up window, typically you can read the article behind it. I didn’t have any trouble today with reading the linked articles.
The Barnes and Noble article was fascinating. Makes me want to stop in a store soon!
We watched Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and really enjoyed it.
Our family really enjoyed Enola Holmes 2. Of course, we loved the original Enola Holmes, also. Looks like there might be a third one!
We recently watched 8 Bit Christmas and loved it!
Thank you for sharing that B&N story. I recently went into the store looking for something else and came out with 3 other books. I found some books I had not heard of through all my normal channels, which was a nice surprise. This is what a bookstore should be, in my opinion, because if I already know what book I want, I can put it on hold at the library or (horror!) order it from Amazon. A bookstore should be an experience, not just a transaction. I am impressed the new CEO sees it that way, too.
“A bookstore should be an experience, not just a transaction.”
This thought applies in so many contexts. Thank you.
McFarland USA! Not a holiday movie but a great family movie. Google it too. It is based on a true story and the real story is even better than the movie. It involves a cross country team, so should be a hit at your house.
We live 30 miles from McFarland, CA. The story is true, the coach a gem, many of the extra runners in the film were top county high school runners. What a class act all around!
I couldn’t find the links to good tubing mascara in the article. Care to share the kind you love? I want to try. Thanks!
Nevermind! See it now in your post! 🙂
I LOVE this “All Hail Dead Week” article! Right now, I’m cozied up on my sofa (at almost 1 p.m.), with cloudy skies and frigid temps outside – hands wrapped around a hot cup of coffee and Christmas lights twinkling in every room. Dead week is heaven!
I especially love the last paragraph of the article: “Dead Week is forgiving—everyone loses track of time; everyone forgets; everyone decides not to worry about it until January. These days at the end of the year offer a kind of grace, a time when simply existing is enough, outside the records of success and failure.” Bingo.
I also love the article on Barnes and Noble. James Daunt, you are my hero!
I too loved the Barnes and Noble article!! In 2023 I promised myself not to buy a book from Amazon to fight against the monopoly…if that means also going to Barnes and a noble to support this as well….I’m there!!
I thought Something from Tiffany’s was cute – I heard about it on the Best Friend Energy podcast (podcast by The Home Edit ladies). The new Knives Out movie – Glass Onion was quite clever and enjoyed by all of the family including two teenage boys.
I particularly liked “We’re drowning in old books” article from the Post. While I don’t have 12,000 books, I can relate! Books are old friends and have stories behind them. Books are decoration on our walls, comforting and familiar. While I have a fairly strict policy now (if one comes in, then one has to go out), I have been dealing with my 84 yr old mother’s book collection—she doesn’t want to part with a single one, but she does not have room. She has all sorts of sentimental reasons….It’s hard! The article was well written.
I’m not sure what it is about our humanity that we want to control our lives but we also have a tendency to not make timely decisions. It seems that so often our elderly family and friends do not make hard decisions when it is still a choice so then it hits like a ton of bricks when there is no choice and they must downsize whether that is to move into a home with support or simply a more manageable, smaller home. My husband and I are in our 40s and I’ve said repeatedly that I want us to downsize along the way and, to the extent possible, make decisions for ourselves that don’t result in decisions being forced upon us. We’ve watched on both sides of our families as people have stayed in homes that they can no longer maintain with stuff they don’t need or us and it’s like a ticking clock.
“A Spectacular Holiday” on the Hallmark Channel. 1950s Philadelphia society girl lies to her parents so she can go to NYC and perform as a Rockette before “marrying well” — so delightful!
Something from Tiffany’s was a sweet, better than expected movie! Thanks for the recommendation.
We just watched it last night. It FAR surpassed our expectations also!
Same!
Your Christmas or Mine is a cute new holiday movie on Prime. A not-well-known favorite of mine is The Nine Lives of Christmas on Hallmark. I’m not even a cat person but it’s cute and happy and I look forward to it every year!
Before tubing mascara I felt like I’d tried every brand, every method of mascara application to avoid smudging and nothing worked for me. Maybe I have the world’s oiliest eyelids/watery-est eyes? Tubing mascara has been the magic answer for me. It’s not the most dramatic mascara look, but it never ever smudges, which is all I’m asking for.
We watched a bunch of movies for the holidays this year. One of my favorites was Arthur Christmas on Prime. It was just so fun. It is animated.
Just wanted to say that my dry, itchy, sensitive, occasionally watery (allergies) eyes are much happier with tubing mascara than with others. Also, fun to take off and no panda eyes!
That Washington Post article is *chef’s kiss* Fran Lebowitz makes me feel SO SEEN!
Just adding a comment to say that whatever makeup you use, please make sure it’s cruelty-free. It’s a simple Google check or look on the package. There’s no reason beagles should go blind in a lab for our vanity. So many more companies are cruelty-free now and this should be the first consideration for makeup or just go au naturale and save your conscience…