We’re spreading our wings to fly north, south, and around the world. This month, in the Northern Hemisphere, we open our much-anticipated Grand Central kiosk in New York, and a beautiful store in the Marais in Paris. In the Southern Hemisphere, we launch our Sydney city store, the ‘sister’ to our Bondi Beach location. We invite our customers worldwide to explore the improvements we’ve made to Aesop’s largest store: www.aesop.com. Here, you can make purchases, read about product launches, and enjoy our city guides. But enough about us. We encourage you to support Alice Rawsthorn’s admirable petition to save the architectural legacy of Chandigarh. We also suggest you peruse Harold Bloom’s How to Read and Why, and visit Fabulous Fanny’s in New York for reading glasses and sunglasses with style.

SUPPORT
The American Dialect Society, despite the fact they voted ‘app’ as the word of 2010. Previous winners are equally awkward but fascinating as time capsules: ‘information superhighway’ (1993), ‘metrosexual’ (2003) and ‘bailout’ (2008) all call up memories of the past. We’re thankful they haven’t cited ‘blogging’, which is surely the ugliest word to enter our language. The 121-year-old society gives us more to ponder than our linguistic crushes, and publishes a quarterly journal, American Speech, dedicated primarily to the use of English in the Western Hemisphere.

LOOK
At the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2011, designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. In our opinion, Zumthor can do no wrong, so we were not surprised that this joint effort with renowned Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf (who worked on New York’s High Line) received positive attention from the moment plans were made public. The simple timber structure with a central garden will sit on the gallery’s lawn for three months. Zumthor says walking through the building will be: ‘intense and memorable, as will the materials themselves – full of memory and time.’ 

WATCH
Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Solaris, a dramatic and contemplative science fiction film of the best kind, focusing on the human psyche and the challenge of meaningful communication. Be sure to choose Tarkovsky’s 1972 adaptation of Polish writer Stanislaw Lem’s novel, and not the 2002 Steven Soderbergh version. George Clooney is a fine actor but Solaris is an instance where the original work is far superior to its followers.

EAT
Fresh vegetarian food in Paris at Soya Cantine. Housed in a former atelier in the 11th arrondissement, the canteen manages to retain much of its past without feeling rustic. On a warm summer day, this unpretentious and quietly sophisticated space is the ideal place to enjoy organic fare that is delicious and nutritionally sound. The selection of wines is a cut above that found at most vegetarian restaurants, too. It can become crowded here, but we have it on good advice that the canteen will soon expand upstairs. 

LEARN
Why we applaud Jonathan Franzen’s stance on Christina Stead’s masterpiece The Man Who Loved Children. We’ve declared our admiration for Ms Stead before, and this deftly told tale of an American family in the 1930s is one of her best works. While Franzen’s New York Times’ article is a year old, this novel still does not have the attention it deserves. And it seems the situation for female novelists may, in fact, be worsening. Read Francine Prose in Harper’s on this topic, then visit a book store to purchase Stead’s novel or Franzen’s Freedom. Both stories will make you glad for the family you have.

ENJOY
Control, Aesop’s first anti-blemish gel. This highly effective formulation rapidly reduces the appearance and severity of blemishes by targeting bacteria and inflammation. Control contains a blend of synthetic and botanical ingredients, including Salicylic Acid, Vitamin C, Ginger Root and Tea Tree Leaf. Packaged in a small aluminium tube, Control is easy to carry and dispense. It soaks in without trace, making it suitable for application as often as required.  

READ
The extensive catalogue of works on the Lars Müller Publishers website, and order as your heart directs. This inspiring Swiss publishing firm was founded in 1983, and has a list of titles on visual arts and the built environment that speaks of quality and rigour. Currently, we are reading Paradoxes of Appearing: Essays on Art, Architecture and Philosophy (2009), a collection of work by writers including Olafur Eliasson.

SHARE
Shaun Tan’s story The Lost Thing (1999) with your children. This gentle, humorous tale of a young boy helping a strange creature find its way home can also be enjoyed as a 15-minute animated film. The film, which was eight years in the making, won an Academy Award in 2011. Shaun Tan has won many plaudits for his children’s books, which include The Red Tree (2001) and the graphic novel The Arrival (2006), and has illustrated stories by Gary Crew and John Marsden.

DISCOVER
Cretacolor charcoal, because using quality materials matters. Cretacolor offers drawing charcoal made from carbonised willow twigs or compressed charcoal mixed with clay, in the form of sticks or powder, with each offering a different result. Some artists prefer charcoal over pencil because it offers deep velvety black lines and greater shading possibilities. The potential for smudging is one of the material’s disadvantages, but placing a blank piece of paper across your work under your drawing hand can assist.

'Resolve to be thyself; and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery.' Matthew Arnold