What's got my attention this week #79
Links and recs to get you through the holidays. Last one til January so it's a monster (and possibly too long for email!)
SCROLLING
• Yesterday Gisèle Pelicot saw her husband and 50 other men convicted of her rape. The 72-year-old French grandmother seized the narrative and became a hero for women the world over but, says Rebecca Solnit, true change will only come when men engage with the culture that led us here. While
• has excelled herself with this brilliant piece on the era of the ‘undetectable facelift’.
• I did ’s Body, Brain and Books questionnaire.
• Seven ways in which you being “selfish” helps other people. So says our guru, .
• Love this on the ghosts of Christmas past, present and yet-to-come by .
• And this by Catherine Hillier on on the weird surprise of growing old.
• “How my dad’s bedtime stories shaped my life.”
• Fascinating piece on microdosing Ozempic. £
• on staying sober when everyone else is drunk (and frankly really bloody boring!).
• It’s game over for facts. It’s all about a vibe now.
• A mother and daughter go on a road trip to say goodbye. ❤️
• 20 things has learnt from 20 years in the therapy room.
• on the links between depression and menopause.
• Five things we can learn from Frida Kahlo.
• Heartbreaking piece by on the loss of a friend.
• How changing your location can change your life. Seconding this .
• “Finally, in my forties, I learnt to love my body.” £
• believes in sequins.
• Capitalism, marriage and dishwashers.
• Anna Wintour admits to having emotional support sunglasses. Me too, Anna, me too.
• How to make friends during the apocalypse.
• ’s annual reminder that you are not a giving tree.
• A garden in winter.
• You might have seen me banging on about Caroline Blackwood’s lost novels on here a couple of weeks ago. Here’s more on that subject.
• The pure liberation of a personal urination device. (Gift link.)
• Bit early for new year’s resolutions, but has some great advice for being less online in 2025. I’ve already adopted the partial OOO.
• Which ties in neatly to this piece about reclaiming your nights from the infinite scroll, recommended by .
• wants you to have a do-what-you-love Christmas.
• 12 days of writing advice from a stellar list of writers.
• Everything I know about Ballerina Farm I know because of , but the Raw Milkmaid is a gift too far!
(A note about the links: some are behind a paywall, but almost all (eg The New York Times, New Yorker, The Cut, and many, but not all, Substacks…) allow a few free articles if you register. Those that definitely don't are marked £.)
READING
Microdosing fiction
I’m losing count of the number of people who have told me they’ve lost the capacity to read anything longer than an Instagram post this year. That they’re too distracted and knackered (and too busy doomscrolling) to focus. Well, Dr Baker is here to help and I prescribe microdosing fiction; a poem, short story or novella. Something you can dip in and out of, guilt-free, to get you through the festive season.
• Short stories are the obvious place to start. I’d suggest Antarctica, Claire Keegan’s debut short story collection. Although, TBH, anything by Keegan, who is the master of the unwasted word. Choose from her Booker shortlisted Small Things Like These (now a film and already afforded the status of a modern classic), Foster, So Late In The Day and The Forester’s Daughter. All very short! By the same token, Booker Prize winner Orbital by Samantha Harvey is not a short story but is a nifty 144 pages and has been described as “uplifting in every sense”.
• Prefer a classic? Top of my regularly re-read list are Breakfast at Tiffany’s (160 pages), Wide Sargasso Sea (192), The Great Gatsby (176), and, not quite in this company although still small but perfectly formed, Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach (176). I’d also throw Tessa Hadley’s The Party (128) into the mix.
• This time of year I have a hankering for tales with a touch of magic/ menace. Elspeth Barker’s lost classic, O Caledonia (pushing it at 224!) is a mixture of Dodie Smith’s I Capture The Castle (way too long, don’t even think about it) and Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle (176). Angela Carter’s macabre fairytales, The Bloody Chamber. Or, at the cuddlier end, The Wood at Midwinter (64) by Susannah Clarke is more short story than short novel, but it spirits us back to the world of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (which is definitely far too hefty to qualify).
• Christmas is a time of ghosts, so for hauntings try Daphne Du Maurier’s Don’t Look Now & Other Stories, Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery & Other Stories or embrace the seasonal spirit with The Winter Spirits (ghostly tales for frosty nights), The Haunting Season (from the same group of writers) or go for some classic spook with The Ghost stories of MR James.
• Not spooky but definitely enchanting is Nancy Campbell’s Nature Tales for Winter Nights. And if you haven’t read her 50 Words for Snow, in which she explores an icy world of myth and story through language, do. It’s gorgeous.
• Last but not least, if you’re a fan of slim read, something you can devour in a few hours on an afternoon in the betwixtmas, you need to get to know Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux. Her books rarely cross the 200 page barrier, and Simple Passion, her account of her two year affair with a younger married man is a snackable 56.
• These are just a few suggestions, I’m sure you’ll have loads more. Please add them in the comments at the bottom.
WATCHING
Christmas movies
I was going to treat you to a big list of limited series to catch up on, but I figured if I mentioned Slow Horses or Bad Sisters one more time you’d think I was in the pay of Apple TV+. Sadly not. So, instead, here are the Christmas movies that always make it on to my seasonal watch rota.
The undisputed king of Christmas - Muppet Christmas Carol.
The annual go-tos - Scrooged, Nightmare before Christmas, Die Hard (yes, it is a Christmas movie, don’t argue), Until the Lights Come Back (if you’re thinking, what? This is a schmaltzy-ish Japanese film in which there’s a Tokyo-wide powercut on Christmas Eve and we follow a disparate but connected (of course) group of people coming to terms with lost loves. It’s a Christmas Eve must-watch in our house), the Home Alones, Love Actually, The Holiday, The Family Stone.
The one my husband hates - Elf. Inexplicable, I know.
The new addition - The Happiest Season. Also quite enjoyed Spirited, don’t hate me.
The one that’s so bad I can’t stop watching it - A Castle for Christmas. (The movie that marked Netflix’s stint at moonlighting for Hallmark, so bad it’s… actually terrible.)
AND ON THE SHIFT PODCAST THIS WEEK…
…we’re revisiting some of our favourite archive episodes over the break. First up, the winter queen
who joined us to talk about why we all need a little more wonder in our lives (and how). Plus how to wrest back control of our lives from our work, entering perimenopause at 29 but still being absolutely livid in her mid-40s, “white male gurus” and opening up the conversation about meaning.* A note: this post contains affiliate links, which means that a very small percentage of any sale goes to help fund The Shift. If it’s orange, it links! (But not all orange links are affiliates…)
Lovely to see our podcast episode re-upped! And I ADORE the idea of fiction mircrodosing - the world needs more short books!
I recently read Rohinton Mistry's 'A Fine Balance'. It is not a short novel, over 600 pages, but it's some of the finest and most sensitive story telling I've ever come across, and I found it impossible to put down. Within a week I'd finished it. I enthusiastically recommend it to you and all, if you haven't already read it.
The novel is prefaced by a quotation by Balzac:
‘Holding this book in your hand, sinking back in your soft armchair, you will say to yourself: perhaps it will amuse me. And after you have read this story of great misfortunes, you will no doubt dine well, blaming the author for your own insensitivity, accusing him of wild flights of fancy. But rest assured: this tragedy is not a fiction All is true.’