This week has absolutely flown by and I’m not really ready for the weekend. I’m going away on holiday next week and still have so much work to do. Send help! However, I’m very excited to share my Friday Faves with you this week: there’s another excellent podcast, a book that has been helping me to switch off before bed, along with a perfume that makes me feel like a femme fatale with a cigarette holder and a withering glare. Don’t forget to leave your Friday Faves in the comments below, I love to hear your recommendations!
If you know me at all, you will know that I have a lot of emotions. All of the time. In fact my emotions went viral at one point. I’m quick to cry, very quick to laugh, I feel other people’s emotions very keenly, and you do not want to be on the wrong end of my temper. My degree was in Sociology and in my previous life before blogging I was a qualitative researcher – basically, I’m nosey and I love finding out how people tick. I got The Book of Human Emotions by Tiffany Watt Smith for Christmas and I’ve been reading a few chapters each night before bed and it is SO interesting. It has chapters on emotions we’ve all heard of (envy, anxiety, happiness) and discusses their origins in etymology, culture or science… but also talks about emotions from other languages as well. My favourite so far is ‘L’appel du vide’ (the call of the void) which is that urge you get when near the edge of a cliff or bridge: you shuffle towards the drop and are half tempted and half petrified, which is always something I thought no one else felt but am very glad it’s a common feeling! You can buy it HERE.
I’m not a perfume connoisseur but I know what I like and what I don’t. I’m not a floral, girly scent kind of woman; I tend to be drawn to either fresh and clean smelling fragrances, or warm masculine scents. Miller Harris Vetiver Insolent Eau de Parfum* is a really unusual earthy fragrance – it starts out smelling quite green but then over the day it becomes more spicy. I took the notes from the website so here you go: top notes of Bergamot Italy, Black Pepper, Elemi, Cardamom India; heart notes of Iris, Lavandin Absolute and Crisp Amber; and base notes of Vetiver Haiti, Tonka Bean Absolute and Moss.
Miller Harris don’t believe in gendered fragrance, they think you should be free to choose whatever appeals to you without being told what is a typically male or female scent, which I love. They do some absolutely incredible scents, I fell in love with quite a few of them so I’d really recommend heading into a boutique to sniff your way around if you can.
My last item in the week’s Friday Faves is another podcast, as people seemed so pleased with my previous podcast recommendations (HERE and HERE). I started listening to the Criminal podcast last week and have binged the entire thing – why do I keep doing this?! Criminal is a crime podcast but it takes a really interesting approach. Each episode covers something to do with crime but is often an unusual angle. For example, one episode talks about a victim who wasn’t believed by a court because he dressed in an eccentric way, and so discusses the innate fallibility of a jury. Other episodes discuss the reliability of lie detector tests, look at the relationship between police dogs and their handlers, and PMS as a murder defence. If you like crime but find My Favourite Murder and Sword & Scale a little bit gory, this may be the podcast for you. Plus, the episodes are really short and there’s no chit-chat: just pure information.
Let me know your Friday Faves in the comments below, especially if it’s a podcast recommendation as I need new ones to listen to. I’m not just a crime junkie, I will listen to most things if it’s interesting!
Lex
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A lovely post and this book so so interesting! I love reading books to learn. I also like the Miller Harris fragrance too, I have used it all up.
I am really loving the second season of Someone Knows Something. It’s a Canadian podcast where the host is trying to solve an old missing person case. Case File is a really well done Australian crime podcast that delves into some unusual cases.
As for non-crime, my favourite ever podcast is The Mystery Show – just gorgeous, life affirming journalism. And I recently discovered Heavyweight, which is similarly brilliant.