Coffee Letter #013: Staycation Monster
An odd love letter to the first day of the year...
It feels like we collectively decided that we are not doing anything outrageous for New Year’s Eve, or at least the people in my bubble were all celebrating at home with a couple of friends or alone. Personally, I’m here for it and I hope it sticks for the following NYEs too!
I was never big on big NYE celebrations. I hated starting the New Year tired or hangover. I can’t even remember the last time… oh, yes, I can and it was awful!
Which is exactly why I opt instead for a chill gathering with friends, playing rummy or other board games, with home cooked dishes (usually prepared by my friends’ families to which I’m always grateful), watching the fireworks in the city centre at midnight (or the drone show as it was the case this year), drinking champagne and going to sleep at an unreasonable hour for a migraine warrior — I’m forced by my partner and my neurologist to go to sleep at an ungodly early hour so staying up on NYE is by far my favourite activity.
I always perceive the first day of the year as existing outside of time or the realm of reality. It has a peculiar feeling to it because I’m one of those people who registers the new day only after they go to sleep but on NYE the passing from today to tomorrow is so evident (duh, counting to midnight, fireworks, champagne toasts and welcoming in the New Year) that when I wake up I think it’s January 2nd, only it isn’t! Therefore I must spend a couple of moments remembering that it’s only the first day of the year and the peculiarity of this event stays with me the whole day, and I love it.
It’s also such an unusually slow day that time almost doesn’t exist, no? Everyone is still sleeping, everything is closed, there’s nobody outside. It’s a beautiful moment in time when there’s no rush, no KPIs or targets to achieve, nothing. Nobody is calling you assuming you are asleep. There is no rush cleaning the dishes from last night’s gathering (this year it took place in our tiny apartment). I don’t need to do anything. I don’t need to be anywhere. I can just exist between blankets and books.
~ read
A strong start to January so far, mainly because of all that mumbo-jumbo new beginning energy — that means I totally ignored the books I’m currently reading and started some great new books: Violeta by Isabel Allende, this month’s pick for our book club, and The Dutch House by Ann Patchett, which Mads recommended months ago, though I’m glad I waited to read it because this year I’m doing Ben’s Read Good Challenge 2025 on Storygraph and the prompt for January is “Ann-uary: Read a book by an author called Ann, or with Ann in the title”.
I’m staying on top of the books I got for review, so I read a bunch of picture books for kids (I need to showcase My First Book about Water, illustrated by Åsa Gilland — amazing illustrations and info too) and some cocktail books (from which I loved Atlanta Cocktails by Trisha Pintavorn, it’s the second book that I read from this series of US cities and their drinking scene; these books make me want to visit the US — they are part cocktails, part history, part culture). But I also read some fiction:
Before the year ended I managed to finally finish If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio. Enfin! I think this book had so so much potential, but it fell short because the plot is pretty basic and the characters are not fleshed out enough for me to care about them. But I loved Shakespeare, all the dark academia elements and the writing was not bad at all, I just wanted something more. It might also be me… It took me two years to finally finish this book. Once I started reading, it went quick. The issue was I did not want to sit down and open this book. Maybe I will reread it in the future. Maybe.
I started my year with the beautiful short prose of Katherine Mansfield. So far I’ve read only Miss Brill, from the Penguin Little Black Classics collection, but I plan to read everything I have from her — another volume of short stories and fragments from her diary entries and letters. Miss Brill contains three of her short stories:
Marriage à la Mode follows a husband who feels his wife is slipping away from him but he’s unable to communicate his feelings.
Miss Brill, about an old lady and her thoughts on a Sunday afternoon spent in a park, in France.
The Stranger, about a husband waiting his wife’s return after months of separation.
I love how terribly mundane her stories are, yet she surprises her characters so intimately, in moments of lonely sadness (or sad loneliness). They seem simple, yet she plays with the story’s structure and her readers’ hearts too. Even Virginia Woolf said:
“I was jealous of [Mansfield's] writing – the only writing I have ever been jealous of”
~ watch
Last Friday I went to the cinema to see Babygirl (2024), d. Halina Reijn and I was quite happy with it. The film follows the affair between a CEO and an intern, started because she was dissatisfied with her sex life. Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson were exquisite! I liked that the film strays away from clichés, at least in most parts, and it surprised me. Desire and sexuality are things I think should be discussed more and I’m glad to see them treated with such care and no judgement in Babygirl.
I’ve started my year with Dune (2021), d. Denis Villeneuve and Dune: Part Two (2024). I decided to finally watch them because I want to watch the new TV show Dune: Prophecy (2024-) since the Bene Gesserit fascinated me when I first read the book. I know everyone and their mother love these films, and they were very good indeed. Visually stunning, for sure, and the music was… well, it’s Hans Zimmer, the guy is brilliant at his job. Needless to say now I want to reread the books. Available on Max.
I haven’t started Dune: Prophecy yet because — surprise, surprise — my mood for Supernatural (TV Series, 2005-2020) is back! Season 10 was a bit of a snooze-fest and it took me months to get through it (maybe I just wasn’t in the mood?), but season 11 is so much more fun. Is this show maybe a bit too long? Maaaaybe. It’s also very repetitive and from one point on it repeats the same plot, different strokes, but I’m way too deep with the characters now and they are just too much fun to spend time with (especially Crowley), plus Jensen Ackles is hot (the heart wants what it wants). Available on Max.
I also just started One Hundred Years of Solitude on Netflix and it’s absolutely gorgeous!
~ and other things I did last week
Music: I’m continuing the One Album A Day challenge although I’m behind (no pressure, no pressure) and after 6 albums I was finally surprised with Pulp’s Different Class. From the challenge so far I also enjoyed Lou Reed’s Transformer and Depeche Mode’s Violator, but these albums were not new to me.
Naturally, Father Figure by George Michael is still on repeat. 🥛
Food: For NYE I made my friend’s tuna spread — recipe below. And this week I also made carbonara, which is basically the traditional recipe, except my husband hates pecorino so I use parmigiano instead.
Other things consumed last week:
The outsider: why Katherine Mansfield still divides opinion 100 years after her death (The Guardian). Since I’m currently fascinated by Katherine Mansfield; I also went on a bit of a deep dive into her friendship with Woolf and read Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, and the Benefits of Jealous Friends (The Paris Review) and Envy & Inspiration: The Friendship of Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield (Literary Ladies Guide). These articles really made me want to read A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney (also the writers of The Paris Review article).
Does Morality Do Us Any Good? (The New Yorker). Thinking about good and evil, right and wrong, it’s one of those eternal things, isn’t it? The article discusses morality but it’s also a book review of The Invention of Good and Evil: A World History of Morality by Hanno Sauer, which I now want to read.
Do you feel overwhelmed? Here’s why – and how to fix it (The Guardian). I get overwhelmed easily, especially if I need to clean the house. Combine this article with Make a much shorter to-do list! 15 quick, simple ways to avoid overwhelm (The Guardian).
“Black Doves” Offers a Sentimental Spin on the Spy Genre (The New Yorker). I’m the happiest for this new media rise featuring spies and assassins and such, because as I wrote a few coffee letters ago: “these are a few of my favourite things”. I’ll start The Agency (TV Series, 2024-) soon — it will be available on SkyShow next month.
Substack Book Group Directory (Footnotes and Tangents). I just wanted to share this amazing directory of all the book clubs and readalongs that are happening on Substack (I’m considering joining some).
The year in stuff – from chicken wine to cucumbers and mini mullets (The Guardian). Ending on a fun note — how many of these things became part of your life? My husband is still making me Logan’s cucumber salads as a snack all the time!
On Wednesday I’m going back to work. My staycation will be over and I’m not sure how I’ll adjust back to the real world. I really embraced slowing down and not having a to-do list these past couple of weeks and for the first time in a long while I feel rested. And it’s not like I did nothing — I’ve met with friends, I’ve tidied up the house, cooked more than I usually do and had time for all my hobbies. Now I just need to figure out how to mix work in without getting tired or overwhelmed.
Thank you for reading my letter!
