The best way to get Trump out of your head is to read the smart, inspiring, eloquent website called Brain Pickings written by Maria Popova. Her piece on the new memoir by Bill Hayes about his relationship to Oliver Sacks and New York caused me to order it instantly. (Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me)  Her newsletter arrives every Sunday morning and what a pleasure to read her ideas and comments on books rather than the car crash of our current government.  newsletter@brainpickings.org

I’m rereading Vivian Gornick’s The Odd Woman and the City (also about New York) and feeling profoundly homesick for the city I love and left years ago.

A few other recommended books I’ve read recently: Euphoria by Lily King, The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford and Outline by Rachel Cusk (all novels), and memoirs: Hold Still by Sally Mann, Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance, Wear and Tear by Tracy Tynan (who read a chapter from it at the last Lit Salon), and Augustine’s Relic by my friend Kirk Smith who’s the Episcopal Bishop of Arizona. If you have some books to recommend please leave a comment.