Hello! Today's letter is brought to you by my hormone-induced bad mood. I'm skipping my scheduled corporate feminism-related rants and am bringing you only good and interesting things, such as a long article about the decline in sex, the greatest or at least most rewatchable film of all time (Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, obviously), a book on borders and a playlist.

Article: Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex? by Kate Julian, published by The Atlantic in July 2018
This long article is a couple of years old now, but I only listened to it last week (it is a whopping 1:26:03 and takes a while to get through). Research has shown that American – but not only American – young people are having sex later than previous generations; they also have less of it. Instead of offering any specific conclusions, Kate Julian explores various aspects of the romantic and sexual life of adults under age 35, from masturbation, hookup culture and online dating to changing perceptions of the self and other (both are: bad and sad). This article made me feel old and slightly out of touch with what is happening, even as I recognised some elements from stories I'd heard from friends.
Note: I'm a millennial, so I could care less about declining birth rates and whether or not people my age and younger behave like people in previous generations, but the author of this article, who is clearly Concerned, does.

Film: The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), directed by Peter Jackson
I was going to recommend one of the several good, artistically challenging films I've seen recently, but as I sat down to write this email, I thought about what I've loved most recently and it is this, my second rewatch of LotR in the past six months. I was *very* into LotR as a teenager and while I grew out of most of my teen obsessions and haven't re-read the books since then, the first film in particular is still a staple in my household. On this rewatch I couldn't stop thinking about how this film was shot twenty (!) years ago, and how well most of it has aged. What's not to love: it's a classic quest story (love a quest); the script and dialogue hold up; there's a minimum of cheesy layered shots (Elrond's disembodied head only floats over the screen once), no tedious battle sequences and no Gollum (thank god); the acting is great (especially when compared to the awful Hobbit trilogy, Martin Freeman has as much charisma as that other British staple, Weetabix); those landscape shots are gold. Also, and I cannot stress this enough: Aragorn. Most things I liked as a fourteen-year-old haven't aged well, including the guy I had a crush on back then, but The Fellowship of the Ring is forever.

Book: Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova (Granta, 2018)
In her wonderful and hard-to-classify book about the border region between Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria, Kapka Kassabova remarks, "History is written by the victors, they say, but it seems to me that history is written above all by those who weren't there, which may be the same thing." She's right (and not just about history – in my bleaker moments I wonder why we think we have the authority to assess, review or judge anything, especially art, when we haven't been there, but that's another story). In Border, Kassabova returns to her country of birth, Bulgaria, to write a travelogue about a region and its inhabitants that used to be part of one multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, multi-confessional empire before becoming a site of competing nationalisms and, later, a militarised border first between the southernmost European outpost of the Soviet bloc, and now the EU. Unlike much of what is written about the extended Balkans region, Kassabova doesn't exoticise or other what she sees (no matter what the blurb of the book might suggest): she's more than just a curious observer. I loved this book and hope you will, too. 
Note: I was lucky to interview Kapka Kassabova last year; you can read it here. Worth it for her concise take on Balkanism (Maria Todorova's term describing how the Balkans are described, analysed and vilified by the colonising, usually Western, other, analogous to Orientalism).

Other: Dancing!
I used to go out dancing most weeks, but then I grew older, more tired, and sick of dodging men. Now I mostly dance around the kitchen, which I've tried to do more lately in order to boost my mood. Here's my only slightly embarrassing playlist. I always shed a (more or less metaphorical) tear when I get to the part of Hot Chip's "Easy To Get" when he sings, No fear / fear doesn't live here anymore.

That's it. Tell me what you dance around your room to and send me some Lord of the Rings content. Until next time!