8/9/2021 - Quick Bites
Hi! Hope you had a nice Monday. Some quick recs for you tonight: the books I’ve been reading, the snacks I’ve been eating, and the movie I’m watching right now as we speak:
Books
Would you like to know a trick to reading more books? This is from me to you. Pick very short books!! A 150-page novel? You can read that in a couple hours! You could blow through a stack of five skinny lil stories in a weekend. Look at you go.
Here’s what I read last week:
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho: This book was very much my taste. I like a book about a quest, or a journey, or anything that the main character could be said to be “embarking” on. I thought this story was really lovely, and juuust magical enough.
La Bastarda by Trifonia Melibea Obono: This is “the first story about lesbians from Equatorial Guinea to be published in Spanish,” which is a very specific accolade. It was okay, but possibly too short? Reminded me of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie if that’s your vibe!
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata: This book was somehow extremely mundane (in a good way, that’s the whole point) but also a bit of a roller coaster! There was a while in the late middle where I thought it was going to wrap up really disappointingly but the actual ending made me smile. I would not have guessed that anything could successfully romanticize retail work, but it really did.
An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten: A collection of tiny little Swedish murder mysteries, except it’s not a mystery who the murderer is. It’s the the elderly lady. She just keeps killing people. The stories were obviously originally written as stand alones, so the collection got a little repetitive.
Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls: Ooooh boy a weird one! This is about a sad bored housewife who falls in love with a sea monster!!!! I wish it was a little funnier or rompier or maybe just more thrilling, but it was kind of bleak? It weirdly reminded me of Heartburn by Nora Ephron. To answer a few questions, the sea monster’s name is Larry and they DO have sex. This review made me lol.
I also read the first two thirds of The Power of Ritual by Casper ter Kuile, which (despite starting very strongly with some musings on You’ve Got Mail) was a little more about religion than I was expecting. I’ll probably finish it, but also it's three days overdue right now so I should really return it.
Snacks
Agh there have been several times in the past couple weeks where I’ve been eating something and thinking, I should rec this in the newsletter. And then I was like, ooh I’m building up a little collection here, I should save them up for a whole segment about snacks. And now can I remember what any of those snacks were? No I cannot.
One was probably veggie straws, which I’ve been eating a lot of in the past few months. Maybe these granola bites? IKEA cookies? This hilariously named product from Trader Joes? I really don’t know.
But relatedly, another Snacket is happening! This one is themed around summer snacks. Right now, just plain fruits and vegetables are winning in multiple categories which is really funny and disappointing. Some of my favorites are: Fudgesicles, cherries, Freeze Pops, toasted marshmallows, and churros. I’d like to see stadium hot dog go all the way. You can vote for the Salty Sixteen here.
A Series of Unfortunate Events
So earlier tonight we were eating dinner and watching Frasier, and Niles said the phrase “justice of the peace.” Some amongst you might know what tape that lead me to immediately pop into the VCR: 2004’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, a movie simply bursting with quotent quotables. I get that it’s extremely cheugy to be like “I only speak two languages, sarcasm and movie quotes” but I simply cannot and will not shake this movie’s script from my vocabulary. Literally single words will do it. Groceries. Guardian. Malaria. Troupe. Autogyro.
The movie is overwhelmingly star studded, main roles and cameos alike. You’ve got: Jim Carrey, Jude Law (kind of), Catherine O’Hara, the guy who plays Peter Pettigrew, Meryl Streep, Jennifer Coolidge, Dustin Hoffman (I didn’t know they had this kind of budget), Jane Lynch, Greendale alumni Luis Guzman, Cedric the Entertainer, and to bring it all full circle, Jane Adams (Mel from Frasier). I did also watch season one of the Netflix series when it came out in 2017, and I remember liking it. But nothing can quite touch this caliber of comfort movie. May you find solace within the womblike warmth of its... (clasps a bannister) ...downy plume.
TikTok Corner
Enjoy the rest of your week,
Ali