The Wedding People, Ina Garten, and The Brutalist.
Week 219.
Hello hello! Thinking about the opening line of this poem a lot: “It’s been January for months in both directions.” Here’s a recap of my week:
Things I Read
Books
If you’re looking for a book to read, try this list of contemporary romance recs, this list of other fiction recs, or this list of non-fiction recs. I also track everything I read on Goodreads.
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang: I am finally here. Been meaning to read this forever and finally picked it up, and then did not put it down until I was done with it. What a MESS. This is about a woman named June, who is a struggling author. She’s friends with another author, Athena, whose career is thriving. When Athena dies unexpectedly, June steals her unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own novel, and she also changes her name to be more racially ambiguous. The whole novel is told from her point of view and she is just nuts. Nuts! This felt like watching a car crash, just one bad decision after another careening towards disaster. I could not put this book down, it’s very well paced and compulsively readable. It has a lot of behind the scenes stuff about the publishing industry and I always find that so interesting to learn about. The last third kind of lost me a bit as the plot went off the rails, but overall I would recommend this if you haven’t read it yet.
Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten: I loooooved listening to this memoir! I really didn’t know anything about her life and it was so interesting. I had no idea she worked in the White House?? Then spontaneously bought the Barefoot Contessa store in The Hamptons, she didn’t come up with the name herself! I loved how she talked about her relationship with her husband, Jeffrey. They do not have children and often lived in different places as they pursued what they wanted to in their careers, a very unconventional relationship (especially for their generation) but an aspirational one (to me, anyway). I obviously knew of her but I have never seen her show or any of her cookbooks, but now I’m kind of obsessed with her. This was so good!
The Wedding People by Alison Espach: I felt like I saw this book everywhere last year and rarely saw anything other than a rave review, so I’m glad I finally read it. This is about a woman named Phoebe, who arrives at a very fancy hotel with plans of taking her own life. As she is checking in, she realizes she is the only person there who is not a guest at the wedding happening on the property that week. This obviously has some heavy topics, but it is written in a way that also makes it feel breezy and fun and it’s often quite funny. I felt like I knew the characters so well, and by the end of it I was so endeared to all of them.
Articles
‘Hope is an embrace of the unknown’: Rebecca Solnit on living in dark times: What a fucking terrible week. We are living in a terrible time. It’s just going to be so bad, for so long. This time around I am doing a lot of work to not fall into a useless hole of doom. There is work to be done, work that is worth doing even if we do not win. Rebecca Solnit has so much good writing on this, on how to remain hopeful when everything is bad. Hope is “the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand. We may not, in fact, know them afterwards either, but they matter all the same, and history is full of people whose influence was most powerful after they were gone.” They want us to roll over and be quiet. That is what they want. There are more of us than there are of them. They are afraid that we will realize that. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving. You cannot sit out this time. It’s not to late to start. Pick the thing you care about and get to work.
Things I Watched
TV
If you’re looking for a show to watch, try this list.
Sex Lives of College Girls (Max): I’ve really enjoyed this show over the past few years but I thought this new season was a bit of a mess! Renee Rapp left the show a few episodes in, and I think they tried to correct for this by adding in a bunch of new characters, but I thought they did way too much. This season was just 10 episodes and they tried to squeeze in too much. The plot moved so fast that it didn’t leave enough time to adequately spend time on each thing that was happening, often a pretty big thing that we just sped right through. This has it’s moments and does still make me laugh sometimes, but it is not as good as it used to be. I’m curious to see if it gets renewed.
Movies
The Brutalist (theaters): My god, what a movie. I saw this last Saturday and have just spent all week thinking about it. This stars Adrien Brody as László Tóth, a visionary architect who survives the Holocaust and flees post-war Europe for America. He ends up in Pennsylvania, where he meets a very rich man who commissions a life changing project from him. This movie is so enormous, a decades spanning story that does so much. Visually stunning, remarkably acted by the entire cast (Felicity Jones! Guy Pearce! Joe Alwyn (hot!), incredible score. Adrien Brody really might win this Oscar, this is such a powerhouse performance from him (I think it’s between him and Timmy). This movie is 3 hours and 35 minutes long and I hardly felt the length at all. There’s a 15 minute intermission in the middle, a true revelation, every movie over two hours long should have this!!! I really thought it helped the pacing of the film. I do think I liked the first half more, the tone is much darker in the second half. This is difficult to watch at times because it covers a lot of heavy stuff, but there’s also so many beautiful parts. When reading about the movie afterwards I learned that the budget for this was only $10 million and I genuinely don’t understand how that is possible. It feels so massive, it does so much, to do it on that budget is just astonishing. I did not think I would like this as much as I did, I felt kind of speechless walking out of this. I swear, Adrien Brody walked off a boat and saw the Statue of Liberty and this started playing in the background and I felt like I was being hypnotized. Locked in from the opening credits. What a movie!!! Wow.
Things I Bought
You can read about my full skincare routine and favorite products here. If you need a sunscreen recommendation, try this list.
Le Bon Shoppe socks: I randomly bought a pair of these socks at a store in Brooklyn last year and they have become my favorite socks I own. They have no branding on them so a few weeks ago I frantically texted my friend who was with me when I got them, and thank god she knew what they were. I ordered another pair (just one, for now) and had to really stop myself from spending SO much money on this website. The ones I have are so warm, perfect for winter. They have so many other styles, I definitely want to try more. I want these, and these, and these!! Bookmarking this brand for next time I need a little gift for someone, too.
One Last Thing…
I made this tortellini soup for dinner this week and it was soooo good and perfect for this season of freezing weather.
That’s it for me! This week I am finally going to see Sing Sing. I hope you all have a good week.
TTYL,
Emily