What I Loved This Week (110)

I'm all about Eric Bana goodness, a beautiful read and trinkets this week

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Instructions to best enjoy this note: Grab a beverage of choice, sit somewhere cozy, blanket highly suggested, and enjoy!

📚What I Read and Loved

My Friends: Backman is one of those authors who always writes a good book. He’s a wonderful storyteller and makes the most innocuous or mundane story into something grand and epic. This is the case with “My Friends”, a cross-country adventure told in two timelines with a lot of heart and tenderness, it is an ode to friendship. Be warned, the pace is slow, and it’s meant to be savored.

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise
Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.
Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be placed into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it.

📺 What I Watched and Loved

The Institute: I’m a sucker for Stephen King novels, and this adaptation, based on the 2019 novel, feels old school in a good way. I’m finding it very entertaining so far. Also, Mary Louise Parker! Dare I say more? (MGM+)

Untamed: If you are new here, you ought to know: My favorite TV genre is Eric Bana masquerading as law enforcement (The Dry is my favorite detective show). So, of course, I needed to watch Untamed, where Bana plays a federal agent (with demons!) in a breathtaking setting (Yosemite National Park!). I enjoyed the show very much! (Netflix)

💕 Micro-Joy

My family and I are doing what we call a “Pastry Sunday”. We prioritize high-protein breakfasts during the week to fuel ourselves as we are in our weight-lifting era, but we both crave bread at the end of the week. On Sundays, I’ll go buy fresh croissants or another fun bakery item, and we have it with coffee on the couch while watching something or reading, and it’s divine. Balance is everything.

✅ To-do List

• Popular mysteries to read

• A summer movie round-up

• Best TV episodes of the year so far

• Best books of the year so far (I’ve only read 1 lol)

🐰 Rabbit Holes I Went Into

• If you read something this week, please do yourself a favor and check this out. People need to have better critical thinking and not give out to AI scam writing. As

  Nina P.
  put it very eloquently last week in my comments:

  “I'm bothered by two accounts, let's just say the word ‘Milk’ is in both of their titles, with an impossible amount of daily, impersonal, AI-generated essays. And so many people love it! People, you're reading AI, and it's resonating with you. Is this the end of days?” (Sara: Yes, it’s the end of days!)

• How incel language got into the mainstream internet

• What’s happening to Parties? via

  Derek Thompson

• This experiment of printing your Instagram via

  Tiffany

• A Mona Awad short story!!!!

• I’ll leave this section with a cool gimmick, a literature map to find similar authors to the ones you love

🧜🏼‍♀️  Articles and Bits I loved

• This piece made me think about how travel is losing authenticity and imposes an ethical risk via

  Katie Knecht

• Have we reached peak trinket? Yes.

• Grocery hacks to save money

• Camp visiting day for the ultra-rich

• The lore of the summer novel

😄 Free Happiness

• Zeitsgeist

• 1999 summer

• Propaganda I’m not falling for

👋🏼 Classifieds

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