It’s the New York Fashion Week, it’s the MET Gala tonight, it’s the new book releases, it’s people stepping out on the red carpet, it’s the awards, it’s the everything, and it feels so good.

(It feels so good indeed that I’m willing to let the cringeworthy Bennifer smooch-fest promoting the “couple’s” movies and merchandise pass without further comment. Except that I can’t, because boyfriend/girlfriend jewellery from the mid-90s seems to be back. It was actually Affleck who sported the broken heart -pendant with his then girlfriend Ana de Armas a while back, and a couple of weeks ago we could see J.Lo in absolutely accidental photographs, wearing a diamond Ben –necklace in Venice. The “couple” would later be photographed, again totally by coincidence, on a yacht while unwittingly mimicking the same pose they made notorious on Jenny From the Block music video, and all of this, people, is gold.)

Now, the latest James Bond movie will release soon, and the second season of the Morning Show drops this Friday. Iris Apfel turned 100 years this weekend. I got some new reading, too:

Maggie Nelson: On Freedom. I’ve enjoyed Nelson’s fiction, so am also expecting to like this study about our obsession about freedom and how it’s applied in the contexts of drugs, sex, art and climate. Everything you need to know about this book – and Maggie Nelson – can be read in her recent, excellent interview in the New York Times.

Gianfranco Calligarich: Last Summer in the City. It’s said to be the most beautiful love story of the year, so yeah I’m buying.

Amia Srinivasan: The Right to Sex (check her brilliant essay in the latest The New Yorker, she was also interviewed in August Vogue UK). I’m looking forward to this hopefully calm take on the politics of sex in the #metoo world that is also entangled in endless culture wars. The book has been praised to the moon and back, so expectations are high.

Natasha Lunn: Conversations on Love. I really like this one a lot already, it’s Lunn’s personal take on different kinds of love (romantic, family, friendships) and includes interviews with the likes of Roxane Gay, Lisa Taddeo, Alain de Botton, Esther Perel etc).

Then I just finished Mrs. March by Virginia Feito, and would warmly recommend it. It’s a very seductive mix of the styles of Virginia Woolf, Patricia Highsmith and maybe Ottessa Moshfegh. It’s about a posh Manhattan woman Mrs. March, whose husband’s latest novel throws her off the kilter. Set in the Upper East Side in a decade that’s not specified (but people wear hats and women gloves), it’s a psychological study of a seemingly healthy mind collapse amidst paranoia.

Despite the dark subject matter, Mrs. March is also very funny at times, and the stylistic English Feito uses to transport the reader to the era in which the events take place is impeccable. The book has been commissioned for a movie, starring Elisabeth Moss. Don’t wait for the film, though, the book is excellent.

On the top photo: Artwork The Swing (After Fragonard) by Yinka Shonibare, 2001.