Welcome to this week’s edition of breakfast in bed, a free newsletter delivered to your inbox every Sunday morning. The intention behind the newsletter is to serve as a distraction from your existential Sunday dread—AKA the Sunday Scaries. It is broken into five categories, each of which represents one of the ways I distract from my own Sunday Scaries. Thank you for reading!
reads
books
We are on the third week of three book recommendations, are we liking this new system? Let me know what you think!
This week’s recommendations are all among my favorite reads of 2023.
Starting with our romance recommendation, we have Guy’s Girl by Emma Noyes. This novel walks a fine line between contemporary fiction and romance, but it is marketed as a romance novel. This is a beautiful, heartbreaking, hopeful story about a young woman navigating her early 20s, struggling with heartbreak, and an eating disorder. Major trigger warning for the eating disorder piece. It is a huge part of the book and quite graphic at times, but the author is in ED recovery and writing the book was a huge part of her healing journey.
Next, our contemporary fiction recommendation is Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter. It follows a young woman living and working in Silicon Valley and tackles the disillusionment and depression that the woman is grappling with as she navigates this late-capitalist hellscape we live in. It is a very heavy read, but as someone who works in the tech industry and lived in the Bay Area for a bit, it really resonated with me.
And finally, our wildcard recommendation. This week the recommendation is Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll, which walks the tightrope between the historical fiction and thriller genres. It is a fictionalized telling of the Ted Bundy murders and I found it to be gripping. Jessica Knoll did such a phenomenal job of telling this story and really keeping the focus on the victims, without at all glorifying the murderer like many true crime novels/shows tend to do.
substacks
I am painfully behind on Substack reading because on Thursday I flew out to Denver for my best friend’s baby shower so the days leading up to my PTO were a little crazy. These are a few pieces I had the chance to read this week and loved!
That One Time My Puppy and a Little Old Lady Made Me Cry by
Getting Back to What Matters by
5 Hard Truths About Relationships by
Saying Goodbye for the Better by
The Mainstreaming of Loserdom by
Was Girl Math Invented By A Man? by
other reads from around the internet
The Case Against Being Nice (And Being Kind Instead) by Stephanie Fallon
How Romance Novel Covers Have Evolved Through Time by Olivia B. Waxman
What Kind of Mother Buys a Baby by Jessica Knoll (yes, the same Jessica Knoll who authored Bright Young Women above!)
eat
Happy National Ice Cream Pie Day!!
Yes, you read that correctly. Don’t worry — until a few days ago the mere existence of ice cream pie was unknown to me, forget the fact there is a National Ice Cream Pie Day. However, despite my ignorance, I love both ice cream and pie very much, so it is a holiday that I am very much down for.
Unfortunately, I am in Denver for my best friend’s baby shower and as such, I will not be able to celebrate today. If you would like to have the honor of eating enough ice cream pie for both of us, I found a couple recipes for you to try:
Gimme Some Oven Ice Cream Pie (this one looks super simple!!)
Sally’s Baking Addiction Peanut Butter Ice Cream Pie (slightly more involved, but looks unreal!!!!)
shop
Are you familiar with Good On You?
No?
Allow me to introduce you! Good On You is a website/app that focuses on sustainability and ethics in brands. They rate brands based on three categories — people, planet, and animals — and use a rating scale of great, good, it’s a start, not good enough, and we avoid, making it super easy to navigate.
Shopping more ethically and sustainably is something I am really trying to work on and I’ve loved using Good On You to evaluate brands and make better purchasing decisions.
scroll
listen
Do any of my readers listen to the Two Hot Takes Podcast? It’s been around for a few years and is clearly very popular, but I only discovered it the other week. Despite my late arrival to the party, I am obsessed!!! I’ve been binging all of the old episodes non-stop.
For anyone who is unfamiliar, the host — Morgan — along with a rotating cast of co-hosts spend nearly two hours an episode reading through crazy Reddit asks and weighing in with their opinions on the asks. It is absolutely hilarious — people are off their rockers!!!
Highly recommend if you’re looking for some laughs today!
That’s all I’ve got for today! Be back on Tuesday with a post I am so excited to share :)
XOXO,
Maddie
Oooh I’m intrigued by all of these book recommendations!
I just discovered Two Hot Takes this year and I love it!! So much fun to listen to when I just want my brain to shut off and laugh :)