10 Things: Turtles, and Tinsel, and Tomorrow
What to read, watch, listen to, think about, and buy this week.
Hi Folks!
It’s a little late in the lazy Saturday to be coming to you with a roundup of beloved consumptions, but, well, it’s winter. I hope you get it.
The first three are free. Paid subscribers this week get a very good and adaptable recipe, a product I can’t live without (or, at least, I WON’T live without), songs, and MORE. And for a few more days you can get 40 percent off a paid subscription by clicking this long link! (Also, if times are tight and you can’t swing a paid subscription but really want to be in the paid subscriber cohort, just email me and ask for one. I’ll hook you up.)
1. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: A Novel by Gabrielle Zevin.
First, this text exchange between Kat and myself, on Thanksgiving.
This book was recommended to me by Real Life It Girl Lindsay Pugh (who blogs here), with enough fervor that I decided to put everything else aside and read it. Within the first 20 pages, I felt jealous of the Sophie who hadn’t started it yet. If you haven’t read this book yet, I feel jealous of you. You are so lucky, that this book lies in front of you, as-of-yet unread. Lindsay said she read it in a day; I read it over the course of a long weekend — and I have A BABY. It sucks you up, and then when you’re done, you’re sad, because it ended. Why did it have to end!? WHY COULDN’T IT HAVE KEPT GOING?
Loosely, “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” is about two friends who grow up to develop video games together. The themes are: friends, love, collaboration, creativity, life transitions, growing together, growing apart, and video games (but in a way where you don’t have to give two figs about video games). Honestly, I don’t remember the last time I felt quite like this about a book — where I entered a palpable phase of brief depression when it was over BECAUSE it was over. For that reason, proceed with caution.
2. I’m Glad It’s Christmas on Hulu
Well, it’s Christmas Movie Season — my favorite of the cinematic seasons. I have been waiting to watch the Lindsay Lohan one with my friend Bethany, and TBH, I’ve been pretty disappointed by the mainstream offerings this year so far. My friends Sammi and Caroline and I watched “Christmas With You” starring Freddie Prinze Jr., and it featured an entire plate of raw jalapeños, but was otherwise barely par for the course. (Sammi described it as, “I will never think about this movie again for the rest of my life.”)
“I’m Glad It’s Christmas,” which is a Hulu original, came out of left field. (It took me way too long to understand that it got its title from its featured actress, Gladys Knight.) The amazing badness of “I’m Glad It’s Christmas” is unsurpassed by any Christmas movie I’ve seen, besides “The Christmas Wedding Planner,” which is my favorite. The plot is weird and flimsy, the acting is stale and terrible, and it HAS AN ORIGINAL SONG. To be fair, Gladys Knight is beautiful and talented, but, luckily, that doesn’t detract from this film’s overall ridiculousness. Filled with impossible logic and crammed with meaningless Christmas cliches, this is the holiday fare you have been seeking — so long as you, too, like your Christmas movies bad enough to make you laugh out loud.
3. This article about how you are not that different from a blue undersea blob.
From last week’s NYT. I found out from
that this writer (Sabrina Imbler) also published "An Oral History of the Time Six Doctors Swallowed Six Lego Heads to See How Long They'd Take to Poo."Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
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