Recommendations

  • Recommendations,  Required Reading

    Wednesday Words

    East Coker T.S. Eliot   V So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years — Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres — Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure Because one has only learnt to get the better of words For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling, Undisciplined…

  • Reading Watching Listening,  Recommendations,  RWL

    Reading Watching Listening

    Reading… What Happened by Hillary Clinton. It’s important. Watching… Good Girls Revolt. Fantastic writing. Kickass costumes. This show will make you want to stand up for something. And that is just about the most important thing these days. Listening… The The Is Us soundtrack. It’s so good. So. Good. For a show that makes me cry every single episode, the soundtrack makes me oddly happy. Plus, I’ve been waiting years for a new song from Mandy Moore, and she kills it on her cover of “Willin'”  

  • Recommendations,  Required Reading

    Wednesday Words

    When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be John Keats When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, Before high-pilèd books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain; When I behold, upon the night’s starred face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love — then on the shore Of the wide…

  • Recommendations,  Required Reading

    Wednesday Words

    In the Drawing Room How they’re all around us, these gentlemen in chamberlain’s dress and jabots, like a night growing ever darker around its Order Star, implacably, and these ladies, slight and fragile, yet made large by their dresses, one hand in their laps, small, like a tiny dog with its collar: how they’re around us all: around the reader, around the peruser of these bibelots, of which several remain their property. Tactful, they let us live life undisturbed as we conceive it and as they fail to understand it. They wanted to blossom, and blossoming is being beautiful. But we want to ripen, and this means being dark and…

  • Recommendations,  Required Reading

    Wednesday Words

    Renamed. Reworked. Same basic premise as the “Required Readings” I was doing before. I recently wrote a review of Sue Sinclair’s Heaven’s Thieves, and I still find myself thinking about it almost daily. Vacation The shoddy balconies, sliding glass panels, reflected swirl of leaves.   Why does everything that appears in glass look like a face?   The mirror-trees stand half in this world and half somewhere else, a place not necessarily better than this one   but faraway and therefore enviable.   — from Heaven’s Thieves (Brick Books, 2017)

  • Reading Watching Listening,  Recommendations,  RWL

    Reading Watching Listening

    Reading… Wine. All the Time. by Marissa A. Ross. The book has blurbs from both Mindy Kaling and Leandra Medine, so OBVIOUSLY I was going to get it. And it’s great. I’m now swirling and smelling and sipping and taking tasting notes. I’ve learned A LOT. Plus Ross is hilarious and I kind of want to be her best friend. Watching… Fleabag. WHY DIDN’T I WATCH THIS SOONER!? Phoebe Waller-Bridge is brilliant. It’s dark. It’s twisted. It made me sob. Really sob. The pacing is so spot on. The comedic rhythm is just off kilter in a way that works so well. Breaking the fourth wall has never worked so…

  • Reading Watching Listening,  Recommendations,  RWL

    Reading Watching Listening

    Reading… Scrappy Little Nobody by Anna Kendrick. I would like to be best friends with Kendrick, please and thank you. This book is hilarious and smart.   Watching… Company. I’m am fully on board basically any time I can watch a filmed version of a stage musical. It’s as close as I get to Broadway. The cast in this production is phenomenal (though my deep love for Raúl Esparza may make me a touch biased…).   Listening… The soundtrack to Violet. It’s weird. It’s good. It’s Sutton Foster.

  • Reading Watching Listening,  Recommendations

    Reading Watching Listening

    Reading… Theory. Endless amounts of theory. But also this: Stephanie Bolster’s “Long Exposure“. I’m writing about it for the dissertation, which is why I am re-reading it now as I’m (hopelessly, inchingly, painfully) attempting to finish the proposal. But it’s good. It’s one of the texts in my dissertation that I’m almost scared to write about because I so don’t want to destroy it.   Watching… Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. Obviously.   Listening… Hamilton Mixtape. Hamilton. Mixtape. All day every day. Especially Sia’s version of “Satisfied” because DAMN it is good.

  • Recommendations

    Read (Watch) This

    If you have about 17 minutes today, then I recommend you spend them watching this video of dialect coach Erik Singer analyzing movie accents. Accents are endlessly fascinating to me. And y’all know that I love a good critique. I appreciate that he provides lots of specific information; that bit appeals directly to my nerdy side. (Video discovered via A Cup of Jo)

  • Reading Watching Listening,  Recommendations

    Reading Watching Listening

    Reading… How To Ruin Everything by George Watsky. I 100% purchased this book for two reasons: it has an amazing title and there is a review from Lin-Manuel Miranda on the front cover. Turns out these were solid reasons. I’m reading this probably as slowly as a human being can read any book, only making it through a handful of pages in bed every few nights, but I’m seriously enjoying it.   Watching… Conviction. I have a handful of shows that I watch via network apps and this is one of them. The storylines are engaging, but what I am most enamoured with is Hayes Morrison, the lead character. She’s an…