Hi everyone,

What is up? Hope you're feeling super this Friday morning or afternoon. Wherever you are on the "feeling super" scale, though, I have some lovely things for you to read that will soothe and enliven in equal measure.

This is, I suppose, an old fashioned mixed bag of a Fem Fri, because the theme is, things I enjoy reading and will read again when I want to cheer up. Maybe they will be good for you as well! Let's start with Elif Batuman's long, detailed, hyperliterate article on "programme fiction". Whatever your feelings on literary fiction there is much here to think about and enjoy. Plus it is funny:

There is no arguing with taste, and there are doubtless people in the world who enjoy ‘the virtuosity of Butler’s performance of narrative mobility’. To me, such ‘performances’ are symptomatic of the large-scale replacement of books I would want to read by rich, multifaceted explorations whose ‘amazing audacity’ I’m supposed to admire in order not to be some kind of jerk.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n18/elif-batuman/get-a-real-degree

Here's Brandi Jensen, writing about an experience I have, not just frequently, but almost every day of my adult life. Enjoy Everything Should Take Twenty Minutes:

I realized this recently when I was once again running late to an event — only one train ride away — because I had assumed it would take me 20 minutes to get there. I was bewildered and then upset that it took 40. There were no facts or previous experiences or reasons behind this assumption, just the bone-deep certainty that it should take 20 minutes, because that it the correct time for everything.

https://theoutline.com/post/7425/everything-should-take-twenty-minutes

I've also been reading and listening to a lot of poetry recently. Here is a poem that I keep to hand to enjoy reading and thinking about; via the lovely newsletter Pome, here is an extract from Lorna Crozier's This Is a Love Poem without Restraint:

This poem has no restraint

It will not say

plum blossom

sunset

rubbing stone

cat's cradle

It refuses to be evasive

I miss you

Come home

Lots of love,

Alex.