Happy Friday, all!
I didn’t send out a newsletter last week, even though by last Friday morning we were all pretty sure Biden had won; I was still just too tense about everything to even think straight. But then Saturday morning happened, and we all got to celebrate all day, and wow that was some absolute joy that day. (All of the baseless legal challenges and toddler tantrums coming from the White House won’t affect anything). (If you are upset that I’m talking about politics here, you have apparently reached this newsletter in error and/or have not read any of my other work!). This election will not solve everything, we know that, but the sheer relief that everyone on Biden’s pandemic task force all have Dr. in front of their name, for example, was just amazing.
Since I didn’t send out a newsletter the week of the election, I neglected to tell you all that I was on The Today Show the morning of the election, recommending a bunch of books! Thinking about all of these books in the weeks before the election definitely helped give me something else to think about other than my anxiety, and since we still have a while left of this pandemic to go, they’re perfect to keep you company in the next few months. The books I recommended are The Address Book, I Am Every Good Thing, Memorial, Once I Was You, Ties that Tether, and What Would Frida Do, and I hope you enjoy them all!
In other book news, Party of Two made it to the semifinals of the Goodreads Choice Awards! It’s there with so many fantastic books, and I’m so grateful for all of you who voted for it. You can vote for it to move on to the finals here!
If you’re looking for gifts this holiday season, my friends over at East Bay Booksellers here in Oakland are on top of things. First of all, for anyone wanting to buy signed copies of my books (for yourself or for a gift) you can order them there — you can either call them and do it over the phone, or just request a signed or personalized copy in the notes area of the payment page when you’re ordering online, and say how you want me to personalize it, and I’ll go there and sign them and they’ll send them out (or you can pick them up from them if you live nearby). But also, they’re doing something this year that I’m very tempted to buy for myself: a Stationary Club. They have the prettiest notebooks and cards and pen and pencils there, and so they’re starting a three times a year club where they send a collection of their favorites out. This would make an amazing gift for anyone who is into stationary, and I feel like many of us have gotten more into things like that this year. I know I’ve gone through more notebooks this year than in the past like…three years combined. Maybe four.
The recipe that I’ve fallen back in love with this week is one that I gave you back in January, and I possibly love it even more now? It’s for the pan banging chocolate chip cookies that are in Sarah Kieffer’s book 100 Cookies. I didn’t know they were her recipe when I wrote that newsletter, because I found it through the New York Times and they used to have a policy where they would credit the staff person who tested the recipe instead of the original person who wrote the recipe, but they’ve since fixed that. Now I follow her on Instagram and all of her recipes look incredible; her cookbook just came out a few months ago and I’m very excited to dive into it this holiday season. But please click through and read that recipe and make the cookies, because they’re so so good and I’m so glad I made them again this week for the first time in a while. Yes, you have to do a lot of fussing with the 15 minutes in the freezer and then the pan banging but it’s totally worth it, and they’re very celebratory cookies. But I still stand by what I said in that newsletter, that there’s no way to do four on my size cookie sheets without making them all run together, so I’d stick with three at a time.
I hope you all have a good weekend! I’m about to run outside and plant some seeds just in time for it to (fingers crossed) start raining in Oakland.
xo
Jasmine
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Buy The Wedding Date, The Proposal, The Wedding Party, Royal Holiday, and Party of Two!