The Reading List: November 29, 2020
Elizabeth
Yes, I am ready to laugh like a youth in an early 2000s teen comedy, how did you know?
You know I am a big supporter of the romance novel industry, but I somehow did not know until after the election this year that Stacey Abrams was a celebrated romance author?! And that these women are helping her turn Georgia blue?
Of course Jeb Bush hates Room Rater.
This just makes me sad on a few levels: America’s Dive Bars are Among Those Hardest Hit by the Death of Alex Trebek.
I can actually attest to this — I tried to buy some mason jars for pantry storage, and they are sold out in so many places! I had never thought about the connection of canning to our economic security and how this played out in 2020.
I’ve never watched The Sopranos — is this my moment?
May the rest of us have a glow up like the Rockefeller Center tree.
Shannon
A deep examination of Carrie’s farewell dinner in the penultimate episode of “Sex and the City.” (I assume they ate dinner at 6 p.m. because Carrie had a redeye flight to Paris later in the evening…) (But also, as someone whose best friend moved away from New York, I can confirm I absolutely was ugly-crying at her going-away party, unlike Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte.)
I love these quarantine cooking tips from Bon Appetit. Here’s mine: don’t cool Bolognese unless you’ve got at least 9 hours to spare.
A great profile of George Clooney.
Congrats to Kim Ng, the first female General Manager of a Major League Baseball team!
Quibi launched right at the beginning of the U.S. lockdowns, and never actually became a thing—what happened?
How we lie to ourselves about history.
Moira
Whatever happened to The Drudge Report?
On fighting loneliness with old sitcoms. My husband is finishing his quarantine, but the truly cruel thing about COVID-19 quarantine for caretakers is that if we never get sick our quarantine extends an additional two weeks. Obviously, there are far far worse fates, but I’m getting sick of the same old. Anyway, we’ve been rewatching Scrubs, which has helped fight the bored sadness.
What grooming rituals and trappings of femininity have you given up in quarantine?
I was very excited, of course, about Champ and Major moving into the White House. But I’m thrilled to say there might also be a White House kitty cat!
Every so often this Joan Didion masterpiece does its rounds again, and every time I have to share it.
"To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which, for better or for worse, constitutes self-respect, is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference.”
