For your stray attention this weekend...

Briefly: Kathryn Schulz Lost & Found on my Patreon book club | Returning to my trees | Wintering on The Shift Book Club next week

Hello,

This time of year foments excitement in me - change is in the air, tangible, revolutionary. 

I was fascinated by Alanna Mitchell’s NYT article on the leap second, and all the different ways that we have to tweak the clock and the calendar to keep the dates in line with the seasons. The way that we break down the fundamental units of time has become separate from the astronomical events that it refers to. Some people think it’s time to re-align.

Many of you will be experiencing a drop in mood as the days shorten. Ayesha Khan’s (aka @wokescientist) considers whether winter itself is the problem - or whether the fault lies in a society that doesn’t let us make the seasonal adaptations that our bodies require. It’s such a useful perspective-shift. Seasons aren’t causing our depression, capitalism is.

In Orion Magazine, Linda Åkeson McGurk suggests an answer in the form of the Norwegian concept of frilufsliv, or ‘the open-air life’. I’m certain we’d all benefit from living by its central tenets: Live simply. Go outside often. Be kind to the earth.

But some of us find it hard to change. Zoe Williams was on hilarious form in the Guardian last week, when she received a visit from none other than Marie Kondo. ‘She dropped three cheese-and-onion crisps and a tooth into my hand’: what happened when Marie Kondo tidied my home is guaranteed to make you feel better about the dark corners of your own house.

Finally, you all know that Elissa Altman’s Poor Man’s Feast is one of my very favourite newsletters. This week, she wrote about the pressure we can put ourselves under to create the perfect feast, whether that’s at Thanksgiving or Christmas. It’s wonderful (and a little bit funny), and please, please remember that what everyone wants most of all in the festive season is your contented presence at the table.

I’m listening to…

Decoder Ring on the racist history behind our love/hate relationship with large derrières. (Sorry, I am too English to cope with the phrase ‘big butts’.)

If Books Could Kill (the new podcast from Maintenance Phase’s Michael Hobbes)  on the (many) problems with Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers. 

The Loudest Girl in the World on the nearly-lost art of Susan Te Kahurangi-King.

I’m reading…

I am deep in research-land, so this list is a bit thinner than usual. But I can confirm that Alice Vincent’s Why Women Grow is gorgeous, capturing not only the pleasures of gardening, but also the uncertain point in many women’s lives when they wonder whether they should start a family. I’m so glad to be past that!

Next on my TBR is a proof Marina Benjamin’s A Little Give - the closing third of her trilogy that began with Middlepause and Insomnia - which this time turns the author’s exquisitely-sensitive eye towards the inescapability of ‘women’s work’. 

I’m also excited to delve into Winter in the Air & Other Stories, a collection of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s New Yorker short stories. You know how much I already love her, right? 

That should all keep you busy for a while. If, indeed, you want to be busy. Naps count as productivity around here. 

Take care,

Katherine

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