Let’s talk about signing your name (hello, strange custom) and dig into Val Monroe’s Thingies! This genius woman—the former beauty director of O, The Oprah Magazine—writes the extremely thoughtful and epically named newsletter How Not to F*ck Up Your Face, and we’re fairly obsessed.

 

Sign up for Val’s newsletter at valeriemonroe.substack.com immediately. This is the moving installment on Facetiming with her granddaughter.

 

Val had a bunch of reading (and audiobook-listening) recommendations: the Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel, How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan, Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Tom Stoppard: A Life by Hermione Lee, Mike Nichols: A Life by Mark Harris (see also: Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood by Mark Harris and Rewrites: A Memoir by Neil Simon), The News Sorority by Sheila Weller, The Overstory by Richard Powers, The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal, and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.

 

For a companion newsletter to Val’s, subscribe to Jessica DeFino’s The Unpublishable. 

 

Beauty-ish things Val raves about: her aminolevulinic acid treatment experience, Colorescience Sunforgettable Total Protection Brush-On Shield SPF 50, the French perfumer Francis Kurkdjian, Laura Geller Baked Foundation, and Tocca Florence Laundry Delicate.

 

Share your favorite Thingies at 833-632-5463, [email protected], or @athingortwohq. Please!

 

If you’re in the mood for many more recs, there’s a Secret Menu membership for that.

 

Download the Zocdoc app for free and book that doctor’s appointment already.

Get your birth control online with The Pill Club, which will make a $10 donation to Bedsider.org when you use our link.

Feel fresh all day with Native and get 20% off your first order with the code ATHINGORTWO.

 

Produced by Dear Media