10 Things: Sun, Swiss, Spices, (& Salad)
All my recommendations for what to listen to, read, watch, consider, download, and cook this week.
My ones!
Happy Sunday — still the weekend, technically. I hope yours was restful or exciting or both. Mine was exhausting with ribbons of joy.
My recommendations this week run the gamut! The first three are free; paid readers get photos of magic in real life, two recipes, and two confection-y things to stream. Consider a paid subscription!
The new-ish boygenius album.
I rode my bike to the lake yesterday in the GLORIOUS CHICAGO SUN and wanted music for that. The music for that is so specific: it has to be lush and not too upbeat but not-NOT upbeat… it has to be the kind of music that makes you want to adopt a kitten. Or lie on a boat sipping tangerine lemonade BUT NOT ACTUALLY SAIL THE BOAT. THE BOAT STAYS IN THE HARBOR. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, listen to this album all the way through, beginning to end. (One of the most wonderful things about this album is that it works so WELL as an album — it takes you on a specific journey and one song flows so nicely into the next one, which was something more typical of albums of yore.) Anyway, much has already been written praising this lovely album of harmonies and friendships, but if you’ve somehow missed it, or you were needing me to tell you to listen to it, I’m telling you. Listen to it. In the sun. Near water that looks like this:
This was recommended to me by my number one internet crush forever Lindsay Pugh, and when Lindsay recommends a book, I read it as fast as I possibly can. Never has a person’s literary taste so closely aligned with mine. What Lindsay said about this book was, “It’s about this 45-year-old woman who ends a long term relationship and moves to Hudson, NY to live in a crumbling old farm house with a friend. She starts working as a transcriber for a sex/love coach and ends up becoming obsessed with one of his patients, who she eventually meets and forms a relationship with irl. I loved it. It didn’t at all go where I expected and it was more about existential shit/trauma than relationships. The writing is very different than most contemporary novels I’ve read.” The things I would add to that are: the farmhouse is filled with bees but in a good way; the sex therapist calls himself “Ohm” and he is the worst and it’s the best; and this book has made me laugh out loud more than five times. But also, it’s beautiful and SO WEIRD. It’s a writerly novel, but not at all in a pretentious or dense way. I’m not done with it yet; I’m savoring. (Apparently, they’re making it into a TV show, and Lindsay says not to look up who is cast in it, so I will not, and neither will you, OK?)
A conversation on the car ride home, after we watched “Under the Tuscan Sun,” which I discussed with you last week.
Sophie: They’re putting a coffee shop in there, and I felt excited, but Luke said that it looks like an Herbalife place.
Kat: It probably is one.
Sophie: But how can you know?
Kat: There are ways to tell.
Sophie: Man!
Kat: I follow a Facebook Group about how to spot MLMs.
Sophie: That topic interests me so much more than it should. I am obsessed with MLMs. I watch every documentary about them, and I like the documentaries so much more than I want to tell you. The Lularoe one? An actually perfect piece of art. Chef’s kiss.
Kat: Mmhmm. I really liked the podcast “The Dream.”
Sophie: (crazed eyes) IS IT ABOUT MLMs?!
Kat: The first season is.
Sophie: A WHOLE SEASON!!?!?!?!??
Kat: (Says lots of nice things about the podcast, like she thinks the journalists are coming from a really kind place, from a place of compassion and not ridicule, but all Sophie hears is “You can spend 10 hours listening to journalism about MLMs.”)
It really IS all of those nice things I assume Kat said about that, but mostly I care that it was informative, entertaining, heartbreaking, infuriating, and riveting. I binged it in like three days. I’m late to the game here, as there’s already a full second season, but guys, I fucking loved it.
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