Weekend Reading
Writing worth reading - 1st/2nd June 2024
The Secret to Hosting a Party for The Ages, according to Jackie Kennedy & Wallis Simpson’s Preferred Party Planner Elsa Maxwell by Elsa Maxwell
“But the brutal, callous guests of the over-serious hostess push her aside, still expostulating, and, with grim determination, leave her special Pommery frapped 1915 champagne – to relax happily in the stuffy, unbelievable atmosphere of a nightclub, where the band is bad, the drink undrinkable, the people unthinkable, and everybody completely happy. “What is the use of entertaining?” sobs the unhappy hostess of a most lamentable soirée. “I sent out invitations a month ago. I have spent weeks in preparation and hundreds of what Daddies makes in the city – and not a cat stayed after 12.” This is the epitaph of most parties, carefully arranged and prepared long in advance – when the edge of spontaneity has been rubbed off and the delicate flower of anticipation has withered with so long an interval between desire and fulfilment …”
The Vampire Problem: A Brilliant Thought Experiment Illustrating the Paradox of Transformative Experience by Maria Popova
“Our minds, lest we forget, are prone to misleading us — just as people’s confidence in their beliefs is not a measure of the quality of evidence upon which those beliefs are founded, the cost-benefit estimations we make of an as-yet unknown state reflect the suppositions drawn from our current state and not the actual features of the potential and wholly unfamiliar state. When faced with a choice on one side of which lies life as we know it and on the other a transformative experience, we can’t imagine what life on the other side would be like — what we are currently missing — until after we’ve undergone the transformation … ”
Are We Talking Too Much About Mental Health? by Ellen Barry
“The researchers point to unexpected results in trials of school-based mental health interventions in the United Kingdom and Australia: Students who underwent training in the basics of mindfulness, cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy did not emerge healthier than peers who did not participate, and some were worse off, at least for a while ...”
Upcoming meals with 9others
Tuesday 2nd July 2024 — Manchester — details and signup here.
The 9others Summer Party 2024
Thursday 20th June 2024 — London — details and signup here.
Please book in & share with good people you know in the above cities.