Read, Watched, Listened

I love reading just about everything (okay, you won't see any horror or sci-fi picks on here), watching things that make me think and especially if they make me laugh, and wholeheartedly embrace the podcast. Here's my two cents worth.

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READ
(Follow the links below or click through to bookshop.org to find all books referenced in this post and past Read, Watched, Listened posts. And here’s your friendly reminder that these are affiliate links!)

A Promised Land
To absolutely no one’s surprise, Barack Obama is a writer’s writer. While this memoir sometimes got lost in the weeds of policy, that’s also The Point of a presidential memoir. You have to defend every single decision of our presidency. And while that could be interesting, my favorite parts were when he talked about the more personal, behind-the-scenes moments of his presidency. I can’t believe there’s a whole second volume still to come!

Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch
I think it’s hard to get what I want from a biography of the queen. I want the details, the nitty-gritty, the exploration of personal relationships. That’s just not available from someone who guards their privacy and image as much as she has. This biography was well-researched, if tedious at times. Also long, but please explain to me how else you write about a monarch who’s been on the throne for 60+ years?

A Good Neighborhood
Meh. I didn’t love this one. The racial and religious themes felt trite. I feel like it could have been an interesting exploration of those things but it wasn’t. The ending was disappointing and didn’t make sense to me. Gah, I’m such a downer on this one.

My Life on the Road
LOVED this one. I checked the library for some Gloria Steinem books after watching Mrs. America (see below!) and this was perfect. The book’s premise of being about travel wasn’t all that interesting to me, so I was hesitant. I’m glad I went for it because this was lovely and a fascinating peek into history.

Amari and the Night Brothers
I wanted to love this one more. Also, please note this is a middle-grade book so I am decidedly not the target audience. I almost set it aside at one point. I couldn’t help but make comparisons to Harry Potter which also feels like The Most Unhelpful Thing of All Time—as if no one else can write a magical/fantasy book ever again? Still, I can’t help but admit that I wished I were reading Harry Potter the whole time. But don’t trust me. Please give it to the middle school kid in your life and see what they say.

The Fourth Child: A Novel
This novel was…intense. It’s a multi-generational novel about a mother and her daughters, one who was adopted after intense trauma from Romania, and touches on everything from religion to motherhood to pro-life groups to attachment disorder. The novel really focuses on the mother, Jane, and her oldest daughter, Lauren, as it tracks their coming of age. It’s by turns fascinating, disruptive, and challenging—I considered putting it down a couple of times. I’m still not 100% sure how I feel about it.

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
I don’t know what to say about this book that hasn’t already been said. All of America needs to have a come-to-Jesus meeting with this book.

Pachinko
As a self-professed lover of long, slow, family sagas, I adore this book. That’s exactly what this book is, set in Korea and Japan over most of the last century. Min Jin Lee is a master at creating characters.

The Joy Luck Club
This is a re-re-re-read for me, though I don’t think I’ve read it since high school. Amy Tan’s novel about Chinese mothers and daughters is a modern classic. The storytelling is beautiful, even when the subject matter isn’t.

RE-READS: Anxious People, Kitchens of the Great Midwest

WATCHED

Framing Britney Spears
Obviously, as a millennial of a certain age, I was so excited to watch this. I wanted so much MORE from it, though. Could we turn this into a mini-series? I want an episode to deep-dive the sexy-virgin culture of the late 90’s/early 00’s. I want another episode to deep-dive the child stars (particularly female child stars) of that era. I want an episode on the boy bands of that time and their experiences and how they all intersected the female pop stars in the culture. I want it all. There’s so much to unpack here that an hour-ish documentary can’t do it justice.

Schitt’s Creek
I’m pretty sure I’ve listed this here before but now we’ve finished the entire series and I don’t know what to do with my life now. Start it over again, maybe?

The Trial of the Chicago 7
This movie was SO GOOD. We’d put off watching it for a while, A. because of the 2+ hour length, and B. because I thought it would be kind of depressing. I was wrong. I mean, parts of it were a little depressing. I said, “Same story, different day” approximately a half-dozen times while we were watching. But it was also insightful and bitingly funny, which I didn’t expect at all. We will be watching this again.

Mrs. America
This. Series. I know I’m kind of behind the times but…wow. I could not get enough of it, even while it was totally infuriating to watch. Phyllis Schlafly is the actual worst.

Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admission Scandal
I questioned the sort of pseudo-movie style of this documentary, as actors played roles to re-enact certain parts of this story. It kind of worked, though, even while I don’t think there was anything particularly insightful in this documentary. Then again that might be my own fault for reading All the Things about the college admissions scandal when the news broke.

LISTENED
I could not get enough of Under the Influence with Jo Piazza. Give me alllllll the deep-dives into the mom/influencer internet, please.

Have I begun The Ringer’s deep-dive into every Taylor Swift album? Yes, yes I have. So far I’ve listened to the Folklore and Evermore episodes and they are * chef’s kiss *.