Issue #14: Take Care of Yourself This Season

The holidays demand it.

Morning Person is a weekly newsletter packed with obsessively-curated recommendations and ideas—let’s get to it!

📺 Sex Lives of College Girls on HBO Max: Mindy Kaling’s latest series follows four highly watchable college freshmen roommates exploring all that their liberal arts college has to offer: naked frat parties, hot upperclassmen, sorority rush. But it’s Bela (played by Amrit Kaur), an aspiring comedian who enters college guns a’blazin’ with sex positivity who makes the show. P.S. Keep your eyes peeled for the serious shift in tone at the end of Episode 1 that somehow works?

📚 Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart: I resisted reading this novel for a long time, on the basis that it felt too soon for a novel about friends quarantining together—but after reading Shteyngart’s unrelated, but captivating New Yorker piece and listening to his interview on Fresh Air, I finally picked it up and spent the weekend devouring it. In it, five friends—a famous actor, a smattering of high school friends, a former student—are invited to stay at a family’s country home in March of 2020. Tensions and affairs ensue, as the weeks turn into months. Read if you enjoyed Liane Moriarty’s Nine Perfect Strangers.

🎥 The Beatles: Get Back: I loved every moment of this three-part documentary on The Beatles writing their album “Let It Be,” though it is admittedly for super-fans (my family was split down the middle, between the totally captivated and the bored). But if you do happen to be a super-fan: Watching Paul write “Get Back” is like watching a baby being born. It’s also endlessly fascinating to see the group’s dynamics with Paul as the defacto leader post-Epstein—he literally writes “Let It Be” while the rest argue about set design—to witness John and Yoko be JohnandYoko, and to watch the decision to play on the rooftop of Apple Records unfurl. Worth every penny of the Disney Plus subscription I had to buy just to watch it.

1. Meditation Pillow, 2. Boots, 3. Tea, 4. Notebook, 5. Glasses, 6. Packing Cubes