Lunchbox Guru is taking a bit of a hiatus. We love bringing you recipes and workouts and helpful reminders to just love your body already (and I'll do that here, bien sur), but there's a lot more to all of us than just the exterior. We like books, and movies, funny websites, bath products, shoes, and that kick-ass album that helps our commute not make us want to kill ourselves. So, in this here weekly corner, ye shall find a guide to delicious, fun, fabulous, smart, beautiful items in this wide, wide world, as picked by moi. Enjoy!

• The Dud Avocado is one of those rediscovered books from the '50s, about a sweet Missouri girl whose uncle gives her a bucket of dough, which she uses to spend a couple years bumming around Paris's Left Bank, wearing ball gowns on laundry day and saying things like "howling hailstones!". And then, when you don't see it coming at all, the story takes smartly sophisticated turns, proving its not all Pernod and Beatniks after all.

• Keep memories of Paris (or imagined memories after reading the aforementioned book) close to your heart with this necklace.

• If you're as totally clueless and, okay, maybe a little intimidated when it comes to pumping iron as I am, you might like things spelled out for you in easy beginner's terms.

• You know how when something smells super awesome people always say, "I wish I could bathe in this stuff!"? Well, you can! Juara's Jasmine Tea Bath and Shower Gel leaves your skin delicately perfumed in the most heavenly and relaxing scent to send you off to dreamland as soon as your head hits the pillow.

• Confession: I am supremely in love with Dirty Jobs' Mike Rowe, in part because he makes making love to a camera seem like the most natural thing in the world. But Mike Rowe selling Precious Moments figurines on QVC?  That's a dirty job.