This is another Friday Bouquet, a smattering of things I’ve enjoyed recently and gathered here to share with you. No, don’t think of it like dead rodents a cat left on your porch. Think of it like a bouquet.

offline reading

I recently finished White Teeth by Zadie Smith and it is as good as everyone told me it would be! It lived up to the hype, frankly, in the same way that Dickens did when I finally read some Dickens. Only in this case, instead of being annoyed that a dead white guy was appropriately lauded, I was infuriated, sickened, that Smith published this thing when she was 25. It’s a work that’s both beyond its years—in the confidence of her narrative style, in the observations of its multigenerational characters—and age-appropriate—in the vitality and lustiness of the prose.