How does the air pollution where you live compare to the world’s most polluted city?
How friendship changes with age, according to three older women (we love that they included a woman with no lifelong friends)
Hurrah, the 2019 best book lists have started to make an appearance! The New York Times list includes two of Vanessa’s fave 2019 reads (Anne Patchett’s The Dutch House and Julia Phillips’ Disappearing Earth), while over at The Guardian, a number of writers and celebs were asked to name their 2019 favourites. Hilary Mantel said Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout, while Anand Giridharadas chose Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion and Lisa Taddeo picked Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments.
This bar chart race animation of the 10 most popular primetime TV shows from 1986-2019 is fascinating (and makes us want to crack out the ER boxsets again)
Who’s your artist of the decade? (Lizzie’s is Bon Iver, Vanessa got Josh Pyke)
… speaking of which, this is how Spotify creeps on you to create your Discover Weekly playlist
This wedding announcement in the New York Times had Vanessa sobbing into her keyboard (“He got up at 5 a.m. Saturday and drove 12 hours straight, stopping only for gas and to buy a bouquet of pink and white carnations when he hit Gahanna. When she answered the door, he knew what to do. “I had called my son, Bryan, and said, How do I do this? Do I just run up and plant one on her like it’s 1956? He said, ‘Go for it, Dad.’” So he did. “I handed her the flowers, and then I cupped her face in my hand and said, ‘Whether you like it or not, I’m going to kiss you.”)
Reader’s block (we feel seen)
This eggplant parmigiana is the absolute dream
How to be grateful without being annoying (“Specifically, she advocated for developing a gratitude practice that involves telling people things — thanking them, explicitly, for the gestures and actions that have been especially meaningful. Think of people who did things that made a difference in your life, she said, and tell them so.”)
The Royals delivered some truly excellent internet fodder this week, including the Queen scolding Princess Anne for snubbing Trump, and old Charlie flipping Trump the bird
The new Netflix series Heartstrings has eight stories inspired by Parton's songs and is wonderfully addictive
An exquisitely written TinyLetter about London and Agnes Martin and job applications and soft boiled eggs (“I am the best at being alone when cooking and eating a soft-boiled egg. Each of us has inherited a different way of timing the boiling of an egg, like cooking rice. My mother, like many Asian mothers, places her finger into the pot of uncooked rice and uses her first and second knuckles as lines of measurement.”)
Every recipe in Nora Ephron’s The Heartburn (Stealing her recipe for the perfect four-minute egg immediately)
