Welcome to a new issue of The Weekend Edition, a weekly series where I share a mini medley of links and reviews for you to read with your morning coffee. Think of it as a little dose of delight to start your weekend. Enjoy!

📺 With Love, Meghan on Netflix – At this point, I’m sure you’ve heard and seen the reviews for Meghan Markle Sussex’s new show, With Love, Meghan. I had only watched the first episode before I saw the reviews roll in. The Guardian called it “toe-curlingly unlovable,” The Independent said it was “queasy and exhausting,” and who could forget Variety describing it as “a Montectio ego trip not worth taking.” With a 33% score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 2.9 rating on IMDb, I began questioning if I even watched the same show as all these other people because I enjoyed the show. Sure, there were moments of hesitation when one of the ‘plot points’ in the first episode was of her pouring a bag of peanut butter pretzels into another bag. Thankfully, Meghan found her rhythm by the third episode. I found the overall tone of the show to be heartwarming and cozy. It provided the escapism I needed to help me relax and get through a particularly stressful week.

💿 I Said I Love You First by Benny Blanco and Selena Gomez – This is Selena Gomez’s newest album in five years, and this time around, she paired up with her music producing fiancé, Benny Blanco to bring it to life. I always said I was a bigger fan of Selena’s acting rather than her singing, but Benny and she surprised me with this new album. My favorite songs are Younger And Hotter Than Me, Call Me When You Break Up (with Gracie Abrams), Don’t Wanna Cry and I Can’t Get Enough (with J Balvin and Tainy). 

On a side note, I had never heard of Benny Blanco until he started dating Selena Gomez. I knew he worked in the music industry but didn’t realize just how influential and successful he was until I watched his interview with Daniel Wall. Benny Blanco has written/produced basically every hit song from my adolescence: Payphone, Love Yourself, Eastside, Diamonds, Stereo Hearts, Don’t, Castle on the Hill —and these are just a few of them. He has amassed 29 number-one hits by the age of 37!! This man is incredible. I’m so happy he and Selena found each other. ❤️

📚 My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff – a charming and deeply moving memoir that is about navigating the New York literary scene in the late nineties and discovering your own artistic instincts while working for the agency who represents the American literary icon, J.D. Salinger. As someone who studied English in university and is in the pursuit of living a creative life, I could relate to Joanna so deeply. This is the type of book you want to read with a pen nearby because you’ll end up underlining countless lines and passages throughout the book. Here are some of my favorite quotes from My Salinger Year:

All day we sat, our legs crossed at the knee, on our swivel chairs, answering the call of our bosses, ushering in writers with the correct mixture of enthusiasm and remove, never belying the fact that we got into this business not because we wanted to fetch glasses of water for visiting writers but because we wanted to be writers ourselves…

‘Writing makes you a writer,’ he told me. ‘If you get up every morning and write, then you’re a writer. Publishing doesn’t make you a writer. That’s just commerce.’

I didn’t want to be normal. I wanted to be extraordinary. I wanted to write novels and make films and speak ten languages and travel around the world. I wanted everything.

How could she spend her days–her life–ushering books into publication but not love them in the way that I did, the way that they needed to be loved?

I glanced into her cool, intelligent eyes. Was I wrong? Was this all wrong? Had she once been just like me? And time–and publishing–had changed her?

He surrounded himself with fools–the broken, the failed or failing, the sad and confused–so that he might be their king Which, obviously, made him nothing but the king of fools.

‘Your boss doesn’t get it’

‘Get Salinger?’ I asked.

‘Salinger,’ agreed Max. […] ‘Publishing. Books. Life.’

Publishing, books, life, I thought as I waked, though the cool air, up to the L at Third Avenue. It seemed possible to get one right. But not all three.

Salinger had not always been Salinger. Salinger had once sat at his desk, trying to figure out what made a story, how to structure a novel, how to be a writer, how to be.

▶️ Not Buying Anymore Groceries by justine_snacks – I recently discovered cookbook author and recipe developer, Justine Doiron’s content and became an instant fan of her and her not buying anymore groceries series. The concept is simple – don’t buy any new groceries (unless it’s something like fresh produce) and instead focus on making meals using things you already have stocked in your pantry and freezer. The dishes she has made by using random ingredients have all looked delicious! Last weekend I was inspired by Justine to take stock of what’s in my pantry and freezer and start my own not buying anymore groceries challenge. So far my dishes haven’t turned out as tasty looking as hers, but it has encouraged me to get creative with the ingredients I have on hand.

• I loved how transparent and genuine Amanda Seyfried was about her struggles with perioral dermatitis in Vogue’s Beauty Secrets series.
• Looks like peep toes and satin shoes will be all the craze this fall.
• It’s jelly bean szn, so Taste of Home tested 10 popular jelly bean brands to see which one was the best. I’m really happy with their ranking. Starburst Jelly Beans FTW!!
• 2025 Coachella Viral Outfits

Thanks for reading!

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