Issue #55: A Tour of My First Solo Apartment

And my favorite purchases.

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

📚 How to Fall Out of Love Madly by Jana Casale: There are certain snippets of advice you hear as a woman and internalize forever as prescriptions for how to do and be better. Casale’s novel, out last month, encapsulates this endless onslaught of advice (from our moms, Oprah, other friends, magazines) in the minds of 30-something friends Annie and Joy. Annie begins making pack lunches because, “Somewhere, she’d read of a woman who supposedly got a down payment for a house together this way—by making sandwiches at home and skipping Starbucks.” We learn about how much Joy hates her stomach, and what she’s tried to do about it, before we learn anything else about her. It’s cringey, but also insightful and recognizable. (Thank you to the reader who alerted me to Caroline Cala Donofrio’s Substack, which is where I came across this book—and promptly bought it from her description). On a related note… I haven’t watched it yet, but the Peacock adaptation of Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know About Love seems to cover similar themes! Loved the book and excited to watch the show.

🎧 “Missing Pages” Podcast: The publishing world is full of bad behavior: the nineteen-year-old who got a half-million advance and Harvard acceptance, before it was revealed that a good deal of her book was plagiarized, the questionable former William Morris executive who published The Woman in the Window, or Caroline Calloway’s multiple botched book deals. In this addictive investigative podcast, literary critic Bethanne Patrick dives into some of the most notorious book industry scandals.