WORDS

• Book Riot recommends 10 short story collections about race and culture.
• If you love paper like I do, you’ll enjoy Flow magazine. I like this piece from Publishers Weekly about Flow’s founders and what’s coming next.
• Meg Wolitzer (author of The Female Persuasion, one of my favorite books of 2018) shares her 10 favorite books with Vulture.
• I’ve made efforts to read more diversely over the past few years, but there’s a lot of room for improvement. I appreciate the ideas in this piece about the whiteness of PBS’s Great American Read.
• Though I don’t work in an international school like she does, this post by Mrs. Readerpants about anxiety and her role as a librarian resonated with me.
• Barbara Kingsolver gives fun answers to the New York Times in their By the Book feature.
• Children in Tennessee surprised their deaf janitor with sign language for his birthday.

MUSIC

I’m not typically a fan of country music, but I started listening to Kacey Musgraves earlier this year and am in love with her music, specifically her newest album. It’s been on constant rotation this week.

NPR shared this video of Musgraves singing Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know,” and it’s lovely.

FOOD

• The Magnolia Table cookbook has been one of my favorites lately. I made the sour cream chicken enchiladas for dinner one night this week, and they were delicious. Also, the chocolate chip cookie recipe in here resulted in the best cookies I’ve ever made.

What have you been loving lately?

WORDS

• Sometimes when I read personal finance articles about living on a budget, the budget in question is two or three times what I make in a year. This piece from the Financial Diet about living on a $24K salary in New York City is both interesting and more relatable.
• The New York Times gathered 12 pieces of writing from authors including Barbara Kingsolver and Amy Tan in which they share their love for libraries.
• Lit Hub is highlighting 10 books that define a decade. The focus is on 1920 here. (I’ll be posting a similar series soon where I talk about my favorite books from certain decades.)
• If you’re a person of faith, check out this thoughtful post by Addie Zierman. Her ideas about love and judgment are beautifully expressed and much needed right now. This follow-up post is also excellent.
• As someone who occasionally struggles with anxiety, I’ll take any tips I can get, including this one from Cup of Jo.
• Speaking of anxiety, Matt Haig talked to the Guardian about his new picture book for children and how he hopes it will help those who struggle with mental health issues. (I recommended Haig’s book Reasons to Stay Alive in this post.)

INSPIRATION

As part of some recent library training, I’ve been assigned a course by Ryan Dowd about the best practices for interacting with patrons who are homeless. I’m about halfway through the course and have been impressed with Dowd’s insights, not only about homelessness but also trauma and poverty. I looked him up on YouTube and found this talk he gave about moral failure. It’s worth your time.

SCREEN

I saw A Star Is Born last Sunday and am still thinking about it. It’s a phenomenal film.

MUSIC

The soundtrack to A Star Is Born has been on frequent rotation this week.

WEBSITE

Wakelet is a site I discovered for the first time this past week. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s as if Pinterest and Pocket had a baby. It allows you to create collections of links, photos, text, PDFs, and tweets. Wakelet is easy to use and is well designed. I’ve been playing with it a lot, and am a big fan so far.