Hello. How are you? Doing okay or not so much or a combination of all of the above?

Here are some fun things from the internet to entertain, delight, and/or tickle your brain:

• Doing some reading while social distancing? Check out Bookshop, an online book retailer that supports your local indie and aims to provide a counter-option to Amazon.
• Love this Paris Review article on the fabulous, under-remembered Vita Sackville-West. (Sounds like she was 100% that bitch.) I need to do some more reading.
• This eerie, beautiful collection of images from isolated cities around the world will move you, via New York Times.
• I learned a new word this week! (Compliments of my friend Brian P.) A “Paracosm” is a “detailed, imaginary world,” often stemming from childhood. I didn’t exactly have a paracosm as a little human but sort of. You?
• “‘A matter of common decency’: What Literature Can Teach Us About Pandemics,” from NPR, shouting out Camus, Geraldine Brooks, and Karen Thompson Walker’s The Dreamers.
• The inimitable George Saunders writes a letter to his students, giving advice that applies to us all.
• Last, this supercut of the song “Non-stop” from Hamilton, compiled from people doing #HamAtHome, made me laugh, then laugh-cry, and then full on weeping. It was fun, and then there’s the way that I find it moving whenever people sing together, and then I was overwhelmed by how beautiful it is that so many people share a love for this piece of art to such depths that they perform it on the internet to entertain themselves and others. This is what fandom can and should mean. I’m not crying, you’re crying!