With her Baked by Melissa cupcake shops dotting Manhattan and Long Island, Melissa Ben-Ishay has built a sweet empire selling brightly packaged, bite-sized confections in flavors such as triple chocolate fudge and chocolate chip pancake. But the 40-year-old CEO and mother-of-two has also revealed herself to be a wizard with vegetables. On social media, she’s … Read more
People who like to read action/adventure books are the most generous tippers, according to new research. A survey of 2,000 Americans who read frequently looked at the personality differences between lovers of different genres and found that adventure readers are the likeliest to tip over 20%. Unsurprisingly, romance readers “always” or “often” daydream the most … Read more
Turns out, it’s a longer, stranger trip. While LSD is often associated with 1960s hippies and Timothy Leary, that’s not the whole story. “The first era of global experimentation with consciousness-expanding substances took place much earlier than commonly thought, in the 1920s through the 1950s, rather than the 1960s and 1970s,” Benjamin Breen writes in … Read more
Irish heartthrob Paul Mescal claimed Sunday that straight men should be allowed to play gay roles depending on who is in charge of the film. “It depends [on] who’s in charge of telling the story,” Mescal, 27, told The Sunday Times. “The issue is that there have been so many queer performances in cinema that … Read more
Two decades after it first debuted, the movie ‘Mean Girls’ has never been more popular. A cinematic remake has just been released — along with “So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls (And Why We’re Still So Obsessed With It” (Dey Street, out Tuesday) by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong. The book tracks the meteoric rise of … Read more
They’re the real paw patrol. A new photo book, “Paws of Firefighters: The Dogs & Other Animals New York Firehouses” (Schiffer Publishing, out Jan. 28), focuses on the adorable, loyal four-legged creatures that give companionship and support to firefighters in the city and beyond. “No matter the mischievous behavior the firehouse animals may get into, … Read more
According to some corners of the internet, in addition to attending the Golden Globes, dating an NFL star, re-recording several albums, and performing her three-plus-hour “Eras” show 60 times and releasing it as a major concert film, Taylor Swift found time to write a spy novel that’s being called the next James Bond. The thriller … Read more
In ‘Trash Talk – The Only Book About Destroying Your Rivals That Isn’t Total Garbage’ (Public Affairs), Rafi Kohan charts the history of sports’ braggarts and blabbermouths to find out why they hurl insults and what it achieves. From ‘holler guys’ and ‘bench jockeying’ in baseball to ‘sledging’ in cricket, trashtalk permeates most sports. In fact, given it dates … Read more
In 1889, the impresario Will “Buffalo Bill” Cody met with Thomas Edison on a visit to Paris. As two of the most famous Americans in the world, Cody arranged a breakfast together to show his admiration for the inventor. Along with pork and beans, fried beef, mince pie, and peanuts, there was sole, quail on … Read more
Jessica Chastain is flattered that fans want her to star in Netflix’s film adaption of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s bestselling novel, “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.” However, the Oscar winner, 46, won’t be signing on for the project to play Celia St. James. “[There is] zero possibility,” Chastain recently told E! News. “But I love … Read more
They’re paging New Yorkers. House of SpeakEasy, a Manhattan-based nonprofit, is delivering reading materials to needy New Yorkers with its bookmobile. The organization’s modified box truck, which has 54 feet of shelf space, made a stop Saturday in the Bronx. Devoted bibliophiles gave away nearly 600 new books — including volumes donated by The Post … Read more
Nearly half (47%) of Americans think they could write a self-help book based on their life experiences, new research suggests. A recent survey of 2,000 US adults discovered that youth and wisdom are not mutually exclusive, with Gen Z (81%) much more confident they could pen a book with life advice than millennials (48%) or … Read more
So much for his novel idea. Inspired by a viral video, book lover Kevin T. Norman asked his boyfriend to make him a book advent calendar — the drama that ensued divided the bibliophiles of TikTok. “You do it. Say it’s from me,” the unidentified man says off-camera to Norman. “I don’t have time for … Read more
If you’re looking to motivate a friend at work or make someone you care about more enthused about their career, consider these thoughtful books and gadgets, all ready for gifting. ‘Know What Matters: Lessons From a Lifetime of Transformations’ by Ron Shaich (Harvard University Press, $30) Ron Shaich writes about how to build our own … Read more
In the summer of 1991, Susannah Breslin, a 23-year-old college student, agreed to meet with Jack Block, a prominent psychologist who’d been spying on her for most of her life. From the time she was three, Breslin had been part of a groundbreaking program at the University of California, Berkeley, called the Block and Block … Read more
When you have been around Hollywood as long as acclaimed screenwriter David Mamet has, you develop a sixth sense for BS, as Mamet explains in his new memoir “Everywhere An Oink Oink: An Embittered, Dyspeptic, and Accurate Report of Forty Years in Hollywood” (Simon and Schuster). “In Hollywood,” he writes, “everyone is flogging nonsense.” But even though Mamet’s enjoyed a … Read more
Royal snub? Prince Harry, 39, and his wife, Meghan Markle, 42, have reportedly been excluded from the wedding of Hugh Grosvenor, the Duke of Westminster, 32. Grosvenor — a godfather to Prince William’s eldest son, George, and Harry’s son, Archie — is said to be inviting King Charles III, Queen Camilla, William, and his wife, … Read more
Paging Santa … When it comes to holiday gifting, read between the lines to find a great gift for everyone on your list. No matter if you’re shopping for a bibliophile or a sports fan, a foodie or an artist, a child or grandparent, there’s a perfect book for them. There are juicy memoirs and … Read more
Nearly six in 10 (57%) Americans have bought or read a book based solely on its cover, new research suggests. A survey of 2,000 U.S. adults found that surprisingly, a whopping 96% of those who did so said the book largely met their expectations. Two-thirds (67%) also admitted they only read books that have been … Read more
Space agencies, huge corporations, and media-savvy billionaires — ahem, Elon Musk — have all promised that building colonies on the surface of Mars “will fix just about everything” and give humanity a chance “to try out something completely new and leave all the bad stuff behind,” Kelly and Zach Weinersmith write in their new book, … Read more