This Week In Recommendations - 03.08.23

Approaching celebrating another year round the sun, a new favourite author? An edge of your seat documentary and a solid selection of podcasts

"August is a time of growing up, of forgotten forever's, full of the sweetest intent."
- Meka Boyle

👋 Welcome to this weeks edition of You Should Check Out. I write this as I take a quick look out the window to see nothing but grey sky and rain drizzle on my window. A standard Scottish start to August. I’ve been in quite a reflective mode this past week. It is my birthday this Saturday and I’m prone to start overthinking about where I am in my life as I am about celebrate another year around the sun. When I was younger I was guilty of dubbing August my “birthday month” and declaring it meant I could celebrate for 31 full days. Looking back now, it seems a little self indulgent. Getting older means I’ve realised it is all about spending one special day with your favourite people. Some low-key quality time with my family with a decent takeout at home is all I need.

Now onto what I’ve been reading/watching/listening to and loving this week …

Reading

📚 I’ve been making my way through the books I picked up during my London trip in early July. I bought eight and I’ve now read five of them, DNF’d one and do plan to get to the last two v, v soon. I did a bookshelf reshuffle as 1. it was so disorganised and 2. I needed a serotonin boost and my overconsumption made me feel sick. I need to be much stricter and do what I have been doing - creating a TBR and sticking to it even though it is a struggle - #moodreaderproblems.

📖 I read Sagittarius by Natalia Ginzburg that I loved. This is my second book by this author and I absolutely adore her writing style. It is sharp and beautiful without being flowery and over-descriptive. She is fast becoming, potentially, a new favourite author of mine. I have another of her books on my TBR on my shelf and I have bumped it up the priority list. Anyway, back to Sagittarius. It is 110 pages long about a domineering mother who moves to an Italian suburb. She soon gets restless and lonely until she strikes up a friendship with a lady named Scilla. She is mysterious but she is the only friend our protagonist has. It becomes clear midway through what Scilla’s intentions are but it did not take away from the story. A 4/5 star.

📖 Then I DNF’d Your Love Is Not Good by Johanna Hedva. I wanted to like this one so bad. I love art and stories of obsession. I just couldn’t click with it and after 73 pages, I gave up. Not to sound all Love Island like but “this should have been my type on paper” and I was bitterly disappointed.

📖 Continuing on with my London haul, I spotted this in Daunt Books and hadn’t heard of it before. I read Another Person by Kang Hwagi that was an extremely dark, challenging book that felt like dark academia around violence against women in South Korea. Jina was a victim of assault by her lover and colleague and posted her account of events online. It goes viral and she stays holed up in her apartment, obsessively reading comments written about her online. When she spots one that she’s convinced has been written by someone who knows her from the past, her mind spirals back to her time at university. She returns there to face her past head on. The book is told from different perspectives, varying in tone and how others perceive Jina. There are so many trigger warnings I would advise reading before going into this around sexual assault and violence towards women. I think the book covered so many important topics and I’m glad I read it. I wanted to pluck the character Yuri from the book and give her a huge cuddle. I found it hard thought to keep track of the characters at times and wish the structure would have been slightly better. I gave this a solid 3.5/5 stars and I do recommend this one - just check the TW’s before diving in.

📚 One from the archives this week is a book centred around the #MeToo movement and it is called Young Women by Jessica Moor. This is similar to Another Person in the way there are different attitudes and tones towards different subjects around sexual assault/violence against women. I preferred this one as it was more sharp and cutting. Highly recommend!

Watching

🎥 I binge watched the TV series remake of High Fidelity that I loved, loved, loved! I have to admit, I wasn’t a huge fan of the movie. This series though had me hooked. Zoe Kravitz is so bad ass in everything she does. She plays Rob who owns a record store and takes us through her five biggest break ups plus her current love life. I love that Kravitz’s mom, Lisa Bonet, was in the original movie too. Zoe knocked it out the park with this performance. I loved the acting, storyline, the different characters, the NYC setting and of course, THE MUSIC! The soundtrack is wonderful. And there was a Debbie Harry cameo?! I was sad to learn once this finished that it wasn’t renewed for a second season. I have no idea why because it ticked so many boxes for me. Highly recommend this!

🎥 I also watched The Deepest Breath on Netflix that was jaw-dropping. This is a documentary on free diving that blew my mind because I didn’t even know free diving existed let alone the extreme of it. I also can’t swim very well and deep water is my biggest fear so I watched not only stunned but scared LOL. This was intense but such a phenomenal watch that I’ve recommended to my nearest and dearest to watch - and now you too! I’ve read that this could be nominated for some big awards and it is easy to see why. One that had me on the edge of my seat.

📺 Last recommendation I have is a movie called Newly Single that I’d not heard of until it came up on Letterboxd. This is a low budget, indie movie about a movie director who has just recently been dumped by his girlfriend. It is a black comedy with commentary on loneliness, dating and self discovery. Is it groundbreaking? No. It is though, one of those movies to tune into, cut off and just mellow out to. A nice, pleasant random find.

LISTENING

Lots of podcast recommendations this week. I have listened to some great things so, without further ado, let’s dive into them …

🎧 Believe In Magic, produced by the BBC, is the story of a hugely successful charity in the U.K that was founded by a mother and her sick daughter. I actually remember it from back in the day because One Direction promoted it heavily. This story is all about the duo behind Believe In Magic that is a sad, heartbreaking and bizarre story.

🎧 A podcast also produced by the BBC that I dip in and out of is Great Lives. Last week, an episode went live called Jon Ronson on Terry Hall. One of my favourite journalists/writers on one of my favourite music icons? I was sold. This was so interesting and I really recommend listening to this if you are a fan of The Specials. I learned so much and loved the personal stories people shared of Terry Hall. He is such a huge loss to music.

🎧 And on the subject of music, this episode of LSQ interviewing Albert Hammond Jnr was a joy to listen to. I am extremely biased. The Strokes are my favourite band of all time. That being said, Albert was super engaging and his love for not just music but belonging to the band shone through. Loved it.

🎧 I enjoyed this small interview on Teenage Golden Age with author Kate Anderson Brower who wrote Elizabeth Taylor: The Grit And Glamour Of An Icon. If you don’t know me, I am a huge Elizabeth Taylor stan and I’ve read this book and enjoyed it. This was a great, short interview and I loved the questions the host asked Kate on her personal opinion on Elizabeth’s life.

🎧 And lastly, I loved this episode of You’re Booked featuring Yomi Adegeoke, an author who has just published her new novel The List that I can’t wait to read. She was such a high energy guest and I loved the books she recommended. When she said she doesn’t trust anyone who didn’t enjoy An American Marriage by Tayari Jones, I laughed nodding my head in agreement.

INTERNET BROWSING

👩🏻‍💻 This Substack piece by Platonic Love called I Was The Flaky Friend was such a flawless read. I am guilty of owning that title but this digs deeper into friendship, stats around ‘bailing on plans’, loneliness and social anxiety. A brilliant read and if you don’t subscribe to this Substack already then do check it out. It is one of my faves!

👩🏻‍💻 And lastly, this article on a new study that shows most students with the highest GPAs are Swifties I found so interesting.

And for once, I have no etc or wish-list this week!

And that is it for this weeks You Should Check Out. There is now an option to pledge any £ to You Should Check out as a nod to the time and work that goes into this Substack. And the newsletter has its own Instagram now so go follow for more content on there.

Thanks for reading. See you next Thursday!