What to Read This Weekend

Introducing a brand-new feature for this blog: weekly reading recommendations. Here are this week's picks:

1. Fern Hill, by Dylan Thomas. One of the most beautiful and poignant poems ever to grace the English language. Even if you've read it before, take another look. It never fails to delight.

2. "The Power of Lonely," by Leon Neyfakh. A thoughtful reader pointed me to this highly informative essay on the benefits of solitude. I'll probably do a longer post about it some time soon. The gist: until recently psychologists have assumed that time alone meant loneliness and misery. But now they're beginning to uncover the many social, emotional, and intellectual benefits of being on one's own. (Of course, you knew that already, didn't you?)

3. "After the Show: The Many Faces of the Performer," by Scott Barry Kaufman: Fascinating piece on the simultaneous introversion and extroversion of many creative people. Kaufman's blog, "Beautiful Minds" (on intelligence and creativity), which appears on the Psychology Today website, is quickly becoming one of my favorites.

Happy reading!

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