Research data from 160,000 adults in 31 countries concludes that a sizeable home library gave teen school leavers skills equivalent to university graduates who didn’t read.
According to the paper, teenagers with only lower levels of secondary education, but who came from a home filled with books, “become as literate, numerate and technologically apt in adulthood as university graduates who grew up with only a few books”

During Manet’s long final illness, he began painting the flowers that friends brought to his Paris sickroom. Carnations & Clematis in a Crystal Vase is one of his last works, his unpretentious last testament 💔

I saved the 16-hour audiobook Intermezzo by Sally Rooney to treat myself during the holiday. I just finished it, and I feel like there’s still much more to process. The book seems to be about nothing in particular, yet everything all at once. It’s an existential blend of grief, unconventional love, despair, bleeding family knots, the weight of others’ opinions, kindness, and pure-hearted souls. It’s the kind of story that makes you reflect on yourself and those around you long after it’s over

Ann Lockley taking tea with a baby hawk and a lobster. Ann lived on the island of Skokholm, where her family were the only inhabitants and animals were pals. This photo was taken for a 1938 National Geographic story ‘We Live Alone and Like It — On An Island’

I love how Holly develops from a shy, grey mouse in Mister Mercedes into a private detective with her own agency. I’ve enjoyed every part of Holly’s saga, and it seems like my guy is already plotting something new 🕺

I would add that maybe not hating THE WORLD. I think it’s possible to love the World but hate something that happens in the World. Hating a feature, not the whole.

The word hate is too strong. I'd say something like "contempt for the way things exist"

A walk is like a conversation: it puts distance between oneself and the other, a close distance, a distance made of a closeness that transforms the landscape of the soul into a murmur, a noising abroad.

— Paul Celan

“Transition" by Fredrik Raddum

— James Baldwin

1972. THE GODFATHER. Al Pacino as Michael Corleone - his breakthrough part - 'isn't cutting it'. Coppola sends him to have lunch with Brando.

Extract from Pacino's new book 'Sonny Boy'

F*cking legend 🕺