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Listen up, Emma Straub fans: If you’re ever in Brooklyn or Brooklyn Heights, stop by an independent bookstore called Books Are Magic. Look toward the bottom of one of the shelves in the fiction section, and you’ll find a row of books written by Straub. Go ahead, pick one up. Then seek out the woman with the blond bob and glasses—she’s in charge. And tell her that she’s a wonderful author. (Not to mention a modest one. “My books are displayed but not in an impressive elbow room kind of way,” she says. “I could probably do better.”) The bestselling author of five novels (including 2022’s acclaimed This Time Tomorrow ), three picture books and a short story collection is living the childhood dream of every literary lover. Since 2017, Straub and her husband, Michael, have owned Books Are Magic in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill neighborhood. Known for its vibrant atmosphere and extensive selection, the shop is a favorite among locals and has proven so popular that a second spot opened nearby in...

On a solo trip to Mexico City a few years ago, I found the perfect souvenir at the flea market La Lagunilla: a modern ceramic art bust of a chic woman with dramatic, flowing brown hair. I couldn’t wait to display the piece. Back at home, I carefully unwrapped her, only to discover she had suffered a horrifying hair mishap in transit. Those luscious locks had snapped clean off, leaving her head in two pieces—and me heartbroken. As I went down an internet rabbit hole in search of the best way to repair her damaged do, I stumbled across kintsugi , or “golden joinery,” the traditional Japanese art of mending broken ceramics with lacquer mixed with gold powder. Rather than disguising imperfections, kintsugi quite literally illuminates them. The fracture becomes the focal point, with the idea being that flaws can add interest and even beauty to an object. That resonated with me. I became obsessed with kintsugi , and last year, that battered bust from Mexico led me halfway around the worl...

For two years, every time I opened my closet, I felt it there—an ominous presence lurking in the darkness, waiting, judging. OK, it was just a dress. But it was a really great dress I bought on a killer sale, fully convinced that surely, any day now, someone would invite me to a grand occasion. Want to know how many black-tie occasions I’ve been invited to in my life? Exactly zero. And that number is as true today as it was two years ago. Yet I love that dress in all its glorious layers of poofy chiffon and tulle. It deserves to be worn. So wear it I did. To church. On a completely ordinary Sunday. Was I slightly overdressed? Absolutely. Did multiple women stop me to compliment me? Also yes. Did I feel, for the first time in a long time, like a human being who takes care of herself rather than someone who hoards nice things for a hypothetical future that never quite arrives? Um … more on that below. If you’re honest with yourself, you probably have a version of this same dress in you...

I travel a lot, so it’s always a challenge to keep up on my favorite shows—especially if the Wi-Fi at my destination is a little iffy. (To say nothing of the potentially sketchy public Wi-Fi networks on the way there.) Sure, today’s streaming services give us tons of options for watching on the go, but there’s just one problem: You need a reliable internet connection to stream, and that’s not always an option when you’re away from home. Thankfully, Netflix has a solution to ensure your next work trip or vacation doesn’t get in the way of your must-watch TV . It’s a little-known Netflix trick that you’re probably not taking advantage of, and it lets you binge even without Wi-Fi or a data network. Read on for all the details. Get  Reader’s Digest ’s  Read Up newsletter for more entertainment, tech, humor, travel and fun facts all week long. What little-known trick should you use for your favorite Netflix series? It’s called Smart Downloads, and if you haven’t tried it ye...

Housework isn’t just about what gets done. It’s about who does it, and how often. Between the dishes, the laundry, the dust bunnies and the ever-returning to-do list , the upkeep required to keep a home running isn’t always a clean divide: Across the United States, men and women still spend their time differently at home. Some of that gap has narrowed over the years, but not by as much as you might think, and not in the same ways across every task. New data from the Pew Research Center takes a closer look at how those hours break down, tracking how much time men and women spend on housework each day. And no, it doesn’t all come out in the wash . Get  Reader’s Digest ’s  Read Up newsletter for more cleaning, humor, travel, tech and fun facts all week long. How did Pew researchers determine time spent doing housework? To get a clear picture of daily life, researchers at Pew analyzed data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), a long-running dataset from the U.S. Bureau ...