Worth It #18

the best notebook, a spring farro salad, and your pre-beach spring reads

Wow, Winter (terrible, terrible Winter) really put up a fight on its way out. I had some deadlines, some flu (or flu-adjacent) maladies, some Big Sadness, and maybe I broke my toe? I drank two whole bottles of cough syrup (not all at once) before deciding I should probably see a doctor. One day in my Sadness, I drove out of my way to a gas station and bought a bag of fancy gummy worms, a bag of gummy bears, a bag of wintergreen Lifesavers, AND a bag of watermelon Sour Patch kids.¹ I haven’t eaten candy in years—like AT ALL—and I chewed a whole family-size bag of gummy worms sitting in my car in the parking lot holding back my tears over… what? Literally everything?

But now. Now it is SPRING!

I have aerated my lawn wearing nail shoes. I made the decision to cold-turkey abstain from the news.² I took the kids to Florida, where I visited the 57 six-toed ancestors of Hemingway’s six-toed cat and watered a manatee. I planted climbing roses and canna lilies and started nearly 1000 flower seeds inside. I’ve gifted all of last season’s anemones, which are fortuitously exploding in what I thought was the wrong month. And I bought some spicy romance books from my friend Lilly’s pink bookmobile.

Things are looking up.

Just for you, here are all the things I have recently enjoyed, mostly while sick in bed.

Isola

A fancy French noblewoman ends up marooned on an island. Beautifully written historical fiction with lots of plot.

Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend

A couple is disappointed when the sun explodes just a few days after they begin their tropical vacation. A ridiculous but funny beach read that I read because I saw it described as The White Lotus meets Kevin Wilson (one of my favorite shows + one of my favorite writers).

Vantage Point

Sometimes I feel like I have to choose between pretty sentences and plot, but this is maybe the best-written thriller-style novel I’ve ever read. It’s a tad dark but not too bad. I loved it so much I bought her other novel… see next.

Take Me Apart

Another female protagonist thriller with high page-turning potential. Darker than Vantage Point so I had to take some breaks, but overall I loved it.

Paradise

This one is my favorite. I will tell you nothing about this show because it will be so much better if you don’t know the premise going into it. Except that it’s got Sterling K. Brown.

The White Lotus

Ever heard of this one? (Ha.) It’s the worst season so far IMO, but the worst of the White Lotus is better than the best of a lot of other things. Parker Posey FTW.

The Pitt

A modern-day ER! The cast is superb. (Noah Wyle is the most endearing character I’ve seen on tv in a long time.) The prosthetics are mind-blowing. The stakes are high but also low in a sense (?!), so mostly you can watch it without feeling too many feelings, although one episode did make me cry.

Severance

Season 2 is exponentially weirder than Season 1, and that’s saying something. It’s a phenomenal show but unapologetically dark (literally and figuratively, now that I think about it).

It’s me! I’m on the podcast!

Listen to my episode of For the Curious and Confused, hosted by Don McTaggart. I really can’t express to you how much I liked this guy and enjoyed this conversation. We talk about everything from intellectual humility to why kids need to get bored to the juicy details of my marriage.

This is my spring recipe. I hope to make it once a week. Get the good salt!

Charlie Bird’s Farro Salad

I teach a writing class about how writers can benefit from a notebooking practice called “The Writer’s Notebook.” One of the things I stress in that class is not getting caught up on what type of notebook or what type of pen because it makes you precious about your paper and your aesthetic [insert eye roll], and then you don’t do the actual writing-in-the-notebook thing which is the whole point.

I am here to publicly confess that I have changed my mind.

This is the notebook. ³As in, THE Notebook. (Not to be confused with The Notebook.)

And these are The Pens. Although, if you need to switch it up, which any writer sometimes does, these could also be The Pens.

THE Notebook and The Pen in action

“People's reaction to me is sometimes ‘Uch, I just don't like her. I hate how she thinks she is so great.’ But it's not that I think I'm so great. I just don't hate myself. I do idiotic things all the time and I say crazy stuff I regret, but I don't let everything traumatize me. And the scary thing I have noticed is that some people really feel uncomfortable around women who don't hate themselves.”

— Mindy Kaling

❤️ See you next time!

1. Please formally include watermelon Sour Patch Kids in my spring recommendations.

2. Please also add this tip to the recommendations.

3. If you are local to Greenville, buy these at Dear Greenville!