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Please feel free to share your own current favorites in any or all of these categories!

Reading: I’ve been back and forth to the library, picking up any Tana French novels I missed over the past few years — The Wych Elm, The Searcher, et al. I also recently whipped through Emily Mandel St. John’s The Glass Hotel and Sea of Tranquillity.

Audio: Kirsty MacColl, Sam Phillips, Holly Cole. Women whose music I’ve loved since the 90s, I guess. Comfort music. (Wonder why that is?)

Video: Recent movies…I really enjoyed Conclave. Going further back, I watched Blow-Up and The Red Shoes during a recent bout with a head cold.

Drinks: Ginger tea made from actual sliced ginger root. Why haven’t I been doing it this way all my life?

(Tr)eats: Polished off a box of See’s Chocolates that we received as a New Year’s Day gift. You gotta do what you gotta do.

Garb: New earmuffs, big scarves, woolly socks. I finally got some favorite boots repaired and they’re working hard on these cold days.

Beauty Products: I got pulled into the metallic nail polish trend, via Olive & June. And my new favorite bedtime hand cream is a very dense, yet fluffy, shea cream blend with an all-natural rose scent from Lotus Garden Botanicals.

Fragrances: Lots of ambers and irises…Dawn Spencer Hurwitz Stratosphere, Frédéric Malle Heaven Can Wait, Perfumer H Dust, 4160 Tuesdays Hush Hush, Neela Vermeire Creations Niral.

Recent pleasures: Getting started here on Substack! 😉 Taking an online Morbid Anatomy class about New Year mythology (and practical planning for the year ahead). Some inspiring chats and scent outings with other aroma aficionados.

Up next: Finish recovering from my cold and get back to being a little more active. Take down the holiday decorations! (I know, I know, but we needed every little bit of sparkle we could get over the past few weeks.) Meet a mid-February writing deadline. Keep posting here!

Slightly spooky image via Google Bard, one of my very rare uses of AI.