Alright—as promised, I'm going to make up for two months of missed favorites.* It's a lot, so I'm going to switch up the format a bit. Also, just this once, for my own sanity, I'm not including links to everything. Here's a handy key to what I'm recommending:
Reading: 📚 = Book | 🔖 = Short Story | 📰 = Essay/Article
Listening: 🎸 = Artist | 💽 = Album/Song | 🎙️ = Podcast
Watching: 🍿 = Film | 📺 = TV | 📹 = Video Essay
Playing: 🕹️ = Video Game | 🎲 = Tabletop Game
* Okay, I tried doing this with everything and it ended up being way, way too long. Today I'm just including books, all the Listening bits, and films—which is still too long. I'll sprinkle the rest in over the coming editions of the newsletter.
📚 Heart the Lover by Lily King | I can see why every agent I've queried has asked for books that comp to this novel. It's beautiful from the line level to the overarching structure of the story. I have a handful of nitpicks, but this is kind of a great recommendation for anyone.
📚 Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval | A rotten fungal fever-dreamy bildungsroman novella? Sure! Very weird but very good. Probably not rated E for everyone, but you do you. Hval is also a musical artist; I recommend her music too!
📚 On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle | A literary time loop romance drama epic? Also sure! I have no clue how there are six more entries in the series, but I will be reading them.
📚 Stag Dance by Torrey Peters | One of the best books I've read in a while, composed of three short-ish stories and a novella, all having to do with the grey areas around gender, identity, and experience. Highly recommend this one.
📚 Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson | I was recommended this thrice in a week and so had to read it. It's been a minute since I've read a good hard sci-fi, but this was, truly, a good hard sci-fi. Really interesting on a lot of levels. I want to read the others, but will need a little break as these are quite long.
📚 Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson | A cozy-ish, quippy, meta-mystery set in Australia? Count me in! This was a good time from start to finish. Thanks to Danielle B. for this recommendation!
📚 Babylon, South Dakota by Tom Lin | This one is a recently released magical realism/military experiment novel. It follows three generations of a family that immigrates from China to a farm in South Dakota and experiences a long series of incredible events—kind of like One Hundred Years of Solitude and The Three Body Problem combined and folded into a beautifully-told immigrant story.
📚 Transcription by Ben Lerner | This is one of the first novels set during COVID that I've read and enjoyed. It's not about the pandemic, though that provides important background context—instead it deals with memory, perception, interpretation, and relationships. Short and sweet and poignant.
📚 Canon by Paige Lewis | I can't even begin to explain Canon. Like, yes, it's a biblical epic slipstream satire, but it also features a talking whale as one of the main characters and deals with gender, conformity, ontological evil and so much more in really nuanced ways. I'll be thinking about this one for a long, long time. Thanks to Sarah F. for recommending!
🎸 KatzPascale | Haunting, neo-classical-post-punk-anti-pop saxophone/cello duos are an easy recommend for me.
🎸 Skúli Sverrisson | Melancholic ambient/experimental Icelandic jazz soothes my soul.
🎸 KMRU | Dark, electronic Afro-European ambient soundscapes also soothe my soul.
💽 tiarn by Hana Stretton | Beautiful, atmospheric ambient soundscapes that give a real sense of place and evoke natural beauty in the best way.
💽 Los Ojos Del Cóndor by Hermanos Gutierrez | I listened to this album four times in a row when it came out. It’s both distinct and perfectly in step with the rest of their discography.
💽 Sunshine by Jungle | I love Jungle for their music, but the visual albums they put out are why I’m a fan. One of my favorite things to watch, period.
💽 I Built You A Tower by Death Cab for Cutie | On the one hand, I’d like people to stop making Ben Gibbard sad. On the other, I want him to keep writing incredible music for forever.
💽 I Must Be Dreaming by Alabama Shakes | The first album from Alabama Shakes in a decade didn’t quite live up to the heights of Sound & Color for me—but very few things could. This is still incredible!
💽 Ow ∞ by Sylvan Esso | One of my favorite albums in a while! Groovy with the right amount of gravity. We got to see them play it live a few days ago and it made me appreciate it even more!
💽 Either/Or by Elliott Smith | I've been getting back into Elliott Smith for the first time since grad school and gosh, why did I ever stop listening? His music influenced so many of my favorite artists, and tracing back those roots again has been a small joy.
🎙️ Philosophize This! | Long-time readers will know this is one of my favorite podcasts. There have been some really great episodes recently, including topics like modern cynicism and the failure of the modern university.
🎙️ The Climate Denier's Playbook | Season 4 is currently releasing! The premise of the podcast, for those who aren't familiar, is teaching folks how to respond to climate mis- and disinformation—which could be dry or overwhelming, but is instead hilarious, as the hosts are highly-informed climate communicators and comedians.
🎙️ Imaginary Worlds | Another favorite podcast with a few incredible recent episodes—I can recommend the entries on using mythology to interpret our relationship to AI, Widow's Bay, and the economics of the Alien franchise.
🍿 Obsession | As many of you know, I don't handle scary movies well at all—but there's been so much discourse around Obsession that I couldn't pass up the opportunity to watch it with friends. Yes, it super duper gave me nightmares, but it was worth the watch and compelling both on its own and for its commentary.
🍿 Resident Evil | Why am I doing this to myself? Again, this was nightmare fuel—but so good. It captured the spirit of the source material really well and was both scary and darkly humorous in the best ways. I'm discovering that horror-comedies, like this and Widow's Bay, are a new favorite genre for me (sorry, brain).
🍿 The End of Oak Street | This was such a weird, wonderful, and oddly stressful film—a little ridiculous and tons of fun from beginning to end.
🍿 The Odyssey | I mean, yeah, it was awesome. Everyone knows this by now. I don't think it was peak cinema, per se, and certainly not perfect, but it was compelling to watch and thoughtfully crafted from start to finish. It also got so many people into the original Odyssey for the first time and that's a plus in my book.
🕹️ Dredge | Cute little indie cosmic horror fishing simulator! Short and sweet but a ton of fun. This was my brain break after finishing the novel. I highly recommend.
🕹️ Baldur's Gate 3 | We bought BG3 when it came out and never found the time to play it. It's been fun to finally dive into it while I'm between projects and it does absolutely live up to its reputation.
🎲 Mysterium | A really neat board game I played with my writerly friends on our recent retreat! It's kind of like a collaborative Clue themed around psychics solving a cold case with help from the ghost. It's been added to my list of games to get!
