Books

This week, the Wall Street Journal wrote a great piece about classic books we haven’t read, and how to get over the guilt. In it, there’s a poll asking people if they’ve read Pride & Prejudice and, as of this writing, 53% of respondents had not. As someone who’s devoured it and multiple iterations of it at least a dozen times, I audibly gasped.

It seems like every year, droves of new holiday albums come out—so many that it’s hard to keep track of them all. Sometimes the best Christmas songs are right under our noses, we just have no idea because there’s too much to choose from.

Maybe it’s not that you hate all holiday music; it’s just that you’re sick of hearing the same peppy-on-the-verge-of-cheesy songs with the same message year after year. You’re tired of hearing “Jingle Bell Rock” at every single Christmas party (and really, everywhere you turn) and getting “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” stuck in your head for weeks on end.

With all the added expenses that come with the holiday season and the time to set your 2017 goals just around the corner, now is the perfect time to get serious about your finances. Here are five money books that are chock-full of wisdom that will help you take your finances to the next level. Whether you want to mend your relationship with money, develop a wealth mindset, or start investing some of your hard-earned cash, there’s a book here for you.

St. Florian Monastery in Austria (Image credit: flickr user Renate Dodell) cc by-nd 2.0Hearst Castle in San Simeon, CA (Image credit: Joseph Sohm) shutterstockFonthill Castle in Doylestown, PA (Image credit: flickr user neverbutterfly) cc by 2.0George Peabody Library in Baltimore, MD (Image credit: Andrea Izzotti) shutterstock If you missed Disney’s live action remake of Beauty and the Beast, the dark academia deserves a look.

Given the events of the past couple of months, and today in particular, I was really happy to hear new music from Ani DiFranco this week. The DIY folk hero and acoustic activist released a video for “Deferred Gratification,” a song off her upcoming album “Binary,” due out in March. When you consider the tenor of political discourse lately, and DiFranco’s legendary feisty streak, it’s a surprisingly gentle song.

In case you missed it, NBC’s The Good Place wrapped up its first season last week with a pretty unexpected finale. If you’ve been sleeping on this new comedy, now’s the time to catch up—even if it’s just to check out the set design. Come for the aesthetics, stay for the surprisingly solid philosophy jokes! The Good Place is about Eleanor (Kristen Bell), a bad person who’s mistakenly sent to a section of the afterlife intended only for humanity’s best.

Mary Tyler Moore just passed away at the age of 80. While she accomplished much in her decades-long career, many will remember her best as Mary Richards, the single, never-married career woman that was the center of Moore’s eponymous show. We’ll also never forget that sweet, sweet apartment.

I’m the first to get ridiculously excited about a good reading list, but Black History Month is something special—not to mention a time to honor the history of black Americans and further your education about past and present issues. From biographies to historical fiction to memoirs (and even a classic children’s book), here’s a starting point for what you should be reading during Black History Month and beyond.

Long live indie magazines for smart content, innovative style, and an often fearless approach to navigating the editorial waters. Whether its art, design, travel, fashion, or lifestyle, these magazines explore topics in ways that are exciting, honest and a little sexy (because to me, being original is sexy). And these magazines are very original.

There’s never enough time given to understanding the past, and to how it’s shaped and influenced our thinking now. In “The Specimen Jar”, we’ll try to correct that deficiency by considering a variety of designers and their works, from many different periods. Because a beautiful and intelligently designed home is a living response to not just our own moment, but to history and to our hopes for the future.

Hoarding is more like a spectrum than a binary classification, and most of us fall somewhere between KonMari and get this person a TLC special. In fact, collecting needless things is such a common human experience that the Japanese have developed a very specific word for my particular favorite flavor: hoarding books. Yep, it’s true: The Japanese word “tsundoku” originated as a slang term to define the habit of buying books and letting them pile up without reading them.

Forget the Wheel of Life (and our home-oriented Life Balance Wheel) — or, don’t forget them, but after you maximize those wheels’ utility, there’s a new wheel in town: the Historic Paper Odor Wheel, developed by a team out of the University of London to more precisely describe and categorize the smell of old books.

Netflix giveth and Netflix taketh away. While we’re excited about what’s returning to the streaming service next month, that means some things have to go. So to prioritize your watch list for the remainder of June, here is everything that’s leaving Netflix in July. Sorry, Sandra Bullock fans: Two of the actor’s classic rom coms starring floppy haired leading men are giving their notice.

The antithesis of a digital detox, this pop-up glamping experience encourages Londoners to literally Netflix and chill while binging on their favorite shows. With hundreds of their friends, in public. The “Bed ‘N’ Binge Retreat” is a first for Netflix, with 15 themed “glamping” bunk room suites and communal spaces popping up on a National Trust park property in West London now through Sunday July 9th, with the last guests checking out on Monday July 10th.

They say that if you want to know what the future will hold, then you should study history. But it might be more accurate to substitute the word “history” for movies and television shows. For decade after decade, movies and television shows like “Back to the Future” and “The Jetsons” have depicted their take on what day-to-day living would be like in the future.

99 Percent Invisible is not a new podcast, and The SoHo Effect is not even a new episode. But on a recent re-listen during a long car trip, I realized that there’s a whole lot of overlap in the Venn diagram of Apartment Therapy readers and people who would probably find this story fascinating. So here we are. I’m writing, and you’re reading, a very forthright recommendation: Go listen to this 19 minute, 38 second podcast.

We bet the sheer mention of some of these shows from the classic era of Saturday morning cartoons will bring their theme songs back to earworm status. The good news is, many of them are now available to watch again — this time digitally remastered, sans commercials — thanks to the magic of streaming TV.

Although I was the grown age of 22 by the time my parents split up, I was still hoping for a fabulous Parent Trap ending. Not the one where my parents reunite, but the one where I get to live on a California vineyard AND in a London townhouse. If you don’t remember, in the 1998 remake of the Parent Trap, Lindsay Lohan plays Annie James and Hallie Parker, twins separated at birth and fortuitously reunited at summer camp.

Sad news for Fixer Upper fans: The HGTV renovation show’s fifth season will be its last. Chip and Joanna announced the news this morning on their blog, citing the need to “catch our breath for a moment.” The couple have been going full force with the show, its spinoff, books, and new products, including a line for Target called Hearth & Hand that debuts in at the store in November.

Oh, American Horror Story. You have such campy, spooky promise, and when you deliver, you really deliver. The scenery was always a draw: even when the plot flailed, the sets gave your eyeballs a treat. Now that AHS is gradually leaving Netflix, queue up your television and relive the architectural highlights, before the episodes disappear like so many bodies. Begin with Hotel, arguably the weakest season and the first to get the axe.

A starring turn on television, much like it does for actors, can also make a house famous — or infamous as the case may be. That was what happened to this picturesque Everett, Washington colonial home. The house took center stage on TV’s cult hit Twin Peaks, during its original two-season run from 1990-1991, as the home of the fictional murdered teen Laura Palmer.

Is a plaid shirt the only dead give-away sign that helps you tell HGTV’s Property Brothers, Drew and Jonathan Scott, apart? Well soon there’ll be another way to differentiate between the TV star twins — a wedding ring.

I don’t know about you, but I am so tired of hearing about “man caves” and “she sheds” all the time. Don’t get me wrong—I’m totally here for people carving out their own spaces in their homes (personally I would love a separate room where I could just hang out and do crafts and practice my guitar and have alone time whenever I want it). But… why do we need to gender rooms? And why do they need to be so binary?

30—the magical percentage of take home income that people are supposed to spend on housing and housing related expenses like utilities for their living situation to be considered within their means—might be harder and harder to achieve, but at least us regular, real life people aren’t alone. TV characters often live in unrealistic places, and a new study shows just which ones could afford their homes, and which would be spending more than they should.

I don’t know how to write for television. I mean, I have a general sense of how to format a script, if I’m being generous with myself, and I can imagine sitting around a table with a group of people saying something like “Does it make sense for the Commodore to be in that scene, or does it mess with the timestream?

Last year, Man Repeller’s Amelia Diamond wrote this brilliant article about the weird prescience of the clothing choices in Napoleon Dynamite. The wheel of fashion is always turning, and suddenly, more than a decade after the movie’s release, some of Napoleon’s strange, frumpy getups are the height of chic. Which got me thinking: I wonder if the same thing has happened for the movie’s interiors?

Don’t worry people, the Gaines might be leaving their HGTV show, but they aren’t leaving Waco. Here’s what went down. Fixer Upper fans were freaking out all over the internet yesterday at reports that the couple behind Magnolia Market was selling their farmhouse and skipping town.

House Hunters has been a staple at HGTV since 1999 and has spawned a plethora of spinoffs, including House Hunters International, Tiny House Hunters, House Hunters Off the Grid, and House Hunters Renovation. Have you ever wondered what it takes to be on the popular real estate show? Here’s what we found out. According to CheetSheet.com, you don’t need a minimum budget (like you do for Fixer Upper), but you have to have already put in the leg work.

We had to wait a few extra weeks this year but finally, the temperatures are dropping and cozy season is officially upon us. Now is the perfect time to drink as much hot cocoa as you’d like, wear all your scarves at once, and immerse yourself in the world of any Diane Keaton character, for her movies have the most cozy interiors of them all. Here are a few movies featuring cozy homes that are sure to warm you up.

December is creeping up on us, and that means that we have news on what will be leaving Netflix next month. Just know that new arrivals are around the corner, and take some solace that there’s a holiday happening this week, so you can sneak in one last viewing of your favorites. Say goodbye to some beloved witchy sisters (and one of our favorite Halloween houses of all time). See ya later, Paddy’s Pub—seasons 1 through 11 are leaving the streaming service next month.

First Eloise, now Kevin McAllister leaves his mark on the iconic Plaza hotel. The famed hotel is now offering Home Alone 2: Lost in New York inspired packages for the wealthy and nostalgic. As a celebration of the movie’s 25th anniversary, the hotel has set up an exhibit, crafted a ’90s inspired menu and even offers up a room package that includes a stay at The Plaza and the opportunity to live out some of the more memorable scenes from the movie (Joe Pesci not included).

As any ’90s cartoon fan can attest to, Nickelodeon’s beloved football-head hero, Arnold, lived an idealized, but pretty realistic urban life. So how exactly did the show get city living so right? In an interview with City Lab, series creator Craig Bartlett discuss the making of Arnold’s idyllic urban environment. The landscape of the show was largely inspired by Seattle, where Bartlett grew up, and Portland where he attended art school, with pieces of Brooklyn and Chicago.

One of my worst travel pet peeves is binge-watching shows on my iPad or laptop — after taking all the time to download them before heading out the door — and then having the battery run out right at the most climactic moment. But what if you could strategize which types of shows to stream or download based on how much energy they expend, and how much electricity it takes to watch them?

Sharing a space when everybody doesn’t like each other is no fun. It’s almost harder when the ones who are fighting have four legs and don’t speak. That’s every episode of Animal Planet’s new show, Cat vs. Dog, where cat whisperer Jackson Galaxy and dog trainer Zoe Sandor help a household with interspecies fur children become one big happy family—or at least attempt to.

Hear ye, hear ye: The Crown season 2 is now available on Netflix. While the world was caught up with royal engagement fever, you probably forgot that the period drama was returning for another ten episodes. Here’s what you need to remember from season 1 and what we can expect from season 2 (spoilers ahead, but not really because it’s based on true events, you know?).

While the frenzy around it has cooled slightly, we are still very much living in The Golden Age of Television, aka Peak TV. And while I look forward to telling my robot grandchildren that I lived through the years when they put The Good Place on air, there is a downside to living in such a content-rich time, and that is having to say goodbye to some of our favorite (and not so favorite) shows.

Netflix quietly handed us all another gift in the form of Christmas Inheritance, their latest original holiday movie, starring Eliza Taylor (The 100) and Jake Lacy (Carol, Obvious Child). If you were pleasantly surprised by last month’s so-bad-it’s-good A Christmas Prince, you might be able to get into the spirit of Inheritance. Taylor plays Ellen Langford, the daughter of a wealthy retail owner (What do they sell? Gifts. There’s no need to be any more specific than that).

Now is the time when year-end book lists abound, hardcovers are gifted at family holidays, and your favorite writer announces that they’ve got something in store for 2018. But even if it feels like there are too many books and never enough time, that could actually be a good thing. “Antilibraries”, those collections of books we own but never get to, can keep us intellectually curious and humble.

I want to read more. I really do. But it’s easy to let myself off the hook, with all the responsibilities that come from having a gaggle of young children, a house to care for and work to do. But I also know that reading — good, solid, offline reading — adds a dimension to our lives that only books (or e-books) can offer. Let’s determine to find a way to make more time for them in the coming year.