This Week In Recommendations - 02.07.23

Comfort movies, a hilarious new TV show I fell in love with and a couple of other Substack’s to check out

👋 Howdy and welcome to this weeks edition of You Should Check Out. This week I’ve been firmly ‘in my feelings’ after experiencing some burnout. I haven’t spoken much about it on here but, this year I’ve been on a health journey that has been pretty easy … up until the last couple of weeks. So this week I’ve really needed to take a step back, push the reset button, watch loads of comfort movies and breathe. So this weeks newsletter is being penned from my bed as I multitask writing this and half watching vlogs on Youtube before diving into watching another movie. Gen Z are coining this as ‘bedrotting’. I saw this term last week on Tiktok (article linked for context) and it made me laugh because guys, I’ve been nailing this trend for years!!!

❤️ I’ve been obsessed with Jennifer Lawrence’s style this week. Every outfit I’ve saw her wear on the press tour of her new movie has been *chefs kiss*. She was also great on Chicken Shop Date which dropped on Friday! Speaking of chicken, this Chicken Satay recipe that was delightful and I’ve been watching Sissel’s vlogs on life in South Korea that are just so soothing.

Reading

📚 Normal reading has certainly resumed. I mean I read a book in a day?! Given how awful June was for me in terms of reading, we’re back on track!

📖 The book in question that I read in a day was New Animal by Ella Baxter. This was short but quite intense. Amelia works at her family’s funeral parlour as a makeup artist to the dead. She spends her free time scrolling dating sites looking for casual sex. When her mum dies suddenly, Amelia escapes to her fathers home in Tanzania, completely avoiding her mothers funeral. She ends up becoming involved in the local BDSM scene in seek of something to cope with her grief. It was a brilliant portrayal for losing a loved one, family, seeking belonging and sexuality. I flew through it and even though it wasn’t what I expected, it was turned out better.

📖 Groundskeeping by Lee Cole has been on my shelf for a few months now and I decided to pick it up. Described on the front cover as a cross between Sally Rooney and Anne Tyler, I was sold. And I do think that is a very apt description. Set in the run up to the 2016 US election, Owen has just moved back to Kentucky to live in his grandfathers basement after getting caught up in addiction and living in his car. This is his chance at a clean break and he takes a job as a landscaper at a local university where he is able to take a writing class. He meets Alma, a writer in residence from Bosnia. They soon form a connection but both come with complicated situations. This was a slow burn read but tbh, one I actually needed this week. It is so well written and I think it had a Normal People style dynamic at its core but the story was so much more than that exploring family, political divisions and class. I want to read more of Cole’s writing now and I highly recommend this one!

📖 I don’t have a book from the archive to share this week but here are some books I want to get to in July ….

📚 I’ve mentioned Bellies by Nicola Dinan before on the newsletter. It’s a novel about a young couple where one decides they want to transition. I also want to read Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang, the story of a cult like beauty store in South Korea. And from my shelf, I want to get to Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates that I have meant to get to read for ageeees now. But July will be the month. I also plan to buy some books when I visit London too. If you know any good book stores in the city you recommend, hit me up in the comments.

Watching

As I mentioned above, this week I’ve watched some of my favourite comfort movies. I watched Mean Girls for the 1000th time, Almost Famous and Matilda. All classics that I could watch over and over again. I did sneak in some new things too though.

📺 This week, my husband and I binge watched all the available episodes so far of Platonic on Apple TV. I haven’t watched comedy TV show in a while that I have loved in the way I have enjoyed this. It is so funny and just the kind of humour I needed. Featuring the super funny Seth Rogan and the even funnier Rose Byrne, this is about two estranged friends who reconnect. Jack is recently divorced, owner of a cool bar and Sylvia is now married with kids and a full time mom. Their friendship being rekindled causes so much fun and chaos. The humour is very similar to Knocked Up/This Is 40 so if you loved them, you should definitely check it out! Patiently awaiting the new episode which drops Tuesday.

📺 I also watched The Lewis Capaldi: How I’m Feeling Now documentary on Netflix after his moving Glastonbury performance and announcement of postponing touring for the foreseeable future while he tackles his mental health and recent Tourette’s diagnosis. This was a great watch!

📺 Then I watched Shiny Happy People - a docuseries on The Duggars who are an American family famous for their TLC reality TV show called 19 Kids and Counting. Their show captivated viewers. But in recent years, The Duggars have been rocked by a huge scandal. The family didn’t really have as much fame or reach here in the U.K. so I think this told the story of the family’s rise to success, the mechanisms of reality TV and how this scandal has affected this on screen “perfect family” with interviews from some of the children themselves. Some trigger warnings to check before watching this that I would advise looking at.

LISTENING

I have comfort go to podcasts I love to listen to and I have been leaning into them this week. These include Shameless, Every Outift and A Made Made In Manhattan. But here are some new episodes from other podcasts I’ve listened to this week that I highly recommend.

🎧 Prospect Magazine published an episode this week called What’s Going On With Russell Brand? Now this is one celebrity that was completely undergone a humongous transformation. Once a Channel 4 regular known for his flamboyant personality, party lifestyle, womanising etc has shunned fame and swapped it for daily broadcasting on political topics via an app called Rumble. His core message is to be spiritual, shun societies demands, materialism and individualism. He was interviewed this week on Diary of A CEO that explores this in more depth. Side note - I watched Russell on DOAC after the podcast episode and was disappointed that there wasn’t more probing questions into some of the topics this podcast raised that are pretty much common knowledge. The podcast instead dived into what Brand does now from daily broadcasting, wellness etc. There is a brilliant discussion on the message he is putting out via Rumble. He moved onto this platform after being banned on YouTube for spreading misinformation on Covid. But, he has built up a huge following on this new app and this podcast questions his popularity, his influence and his ideology. This is extremely fascinating and a brilliant discussion on the influence he has built and if what he is doing actually harmful.

🎧 After someone who was in a creative slump earlier this year, Slate had a great episode this week on Shaking A Creative Slump. This included lots of good tips from getting into the groove of a routine, shaking things off and breaking things down into small tasks.

🎧 Forever 35’s episode titled Why Can’t We Be Friends? is one I really connected with. It talks about the difficulty of making new friends and maintaining them as we get older. It made me think so much about my friendships, how these have evolved now we are in our thirties with responsibilities and why it can be challenging to meet new people. There was a part about grieving friendships that I found relatable. I feel as we grow up, friendship is something that constantly changes - especially female friendships - and we don’t talk about this enough. So it was lovely to hear a very frank, open and honest conversation on it.

INTERNET BROWSING

👩🏻‍💻 I read In Writing by Hattie Crissel’s piece called What's the point of a bad review? that is a must read. I thoroughly recommend Hattie’s Substack if you haven’t heard of it. She was commissioned to write a piece for Bustle on E.L James, the author of the Fifty Shades Of Grey series. There has been so much discussion lately on ‘review bombing’ aka tanking a book before with bad reviews before it’s released (see this piece on the NYT) after the backlash of Elizabeth Gilbert’s new novel being pulled (more context here). This was an honest take on how E.L James wrote something without predicting it would be so popular and despite this, the enormous strutiny she faced. There is a part on the snobbery within the book world on what books ‘belong’ on the shelf of a bookstore and what doesn’t. I was sad to learn some of the negative effects success has had on E.L James. Highly recommend checking this out especially given the ongoing discussion on bad reviews, review bombing and the snobbery in the book industry with the rise in #Booktok etc. I loved it!

👩🏻‍💻 Another Substack I subscribe to is Mixed Feelings. This is an advice style column with responses from a selection of different authors, experts and therapists. This week there was a piece titled The Shrinking Influence Of “It Girls”. It feeds into a piece I shared that I was obsessed with that The Cut did on IT Girls from all the different generations a few weeks ago. It was such a fun read on the lack of IT girls these days and how social media has dismantled this model with Gen Z more likely to like who they like, not who they’re dictated too. Someone commented on the piece with a brilliant observation that really what made IT girls attractive was the air of mystery they possessed. They had us curious. We never really “knew” them and there was always an air of mystique. In this digital age, this is something that is hard to achieve. I found this so fascinating!

🔗 Other links to check out are The Atlantic on Being Alive Is Bad For Your Health after the news of diet drinks links to cancer, The Cut on Shein’s recent influencer trip and The New York Times Looking Back At Bridget Jones’s Diary.

ETC

📱 One thing I have been loving is the Letterboxd Tiktok account. They have a series were they ask actors their four all-time favourite movies and I’m addicted to watching these. Off the back of these videos, I have added tons of movies I’ve never heard of to my Letterboxd to hopefully watch.

🗞️ I got a free six month subscription to Apple News with my bank account and I’m loving this more than I thought I would. It’s normally £9.99 per month but it includes access to over 250 different news outlets including magazines such as Grazia, Elle, Time, Variety, Radio Times and New York Magazine. I actually already subscribe to NY Magazine for their access to their outlets like The Cut, Vulture, Curbed etc. Sometimes I feel the news can be depressing but I love that this app, I can have all my favourite sources all in one place, can bookmark articles and news no longer feels so full of doom.

And that is it for this weeks You Should Check Out! The newsletter now has its own dedicated Instagram that I promise, I’ll be more active on. So a follow would be greatly appreciated. Wishing you a lovely Sunday ❤️ thanks for reading xx