1) Older – Sasha Sloan
2) Achilles come down – Gang of Youths
3) Somebody Else – Flora Cash
4) Our Song – Niall Hiram ft. Anne Marie
5) Shayad – Pritam
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: Book Review
Lori Gottlieb’s book is a book like no other. She’s a therapist, a single mother, a best friend, and a royal mess. The almost 500 page book alternates between Lori’s patients – mostly three very different patients, and Lori’s own therapy sessions with Wes.
Maybe you should talk to someone is funny, heartbreaking, comforting, and super witty at the same time. The lives of every person in the book soon become like your own best friend’s life and you’re invested and you’re rooting for everyone to find happiness.
Lori Gottlieb is a brilliant writer: the book flows so seamlessly that you can’t put it down and unlike mystery novels where you are waiting forever the inevitable killer reveal, Maybe you should talk to someone makes you wait (and wait and wait) for everything to finally work out.
When the book does finally end, you’ve met and known these people for a whole year of their lives and you are left so much for the better. I’d say that Maybe you should talk to someone is definitely a must-read and a major comfort read whenever life feels like it’s going off the rails.
Rating: 4.5/5
A very sporty update for July, 2021
My work has been quite hectic for the last 2.5 weeks. However, whatever time I’ve managed to carve out, I’ve used that time to watch sports – and man, have I watched tons!
Football: I started the second half of June watching Euro (like pretty much everyone else around the world) and I can never not enjoy football. I’m super excited for the finals of both Euro and Copa, and praying to watch Messi lift a trophy with Argentina!
Tennis: The end of June brought Wimbledon and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed watching Federer, Djokovic and various Indian players fighting across the stages. It’s always upsetting to watch Federer leave, but the new talent for the last few years has been magical. My weekend is packed with the Wimbledon finals as well. (and yours?)
Cycling: Welcome to my most important end of June-July update. Last week, my brother and I were flipping through channels and ended up watching a bit of Tour De France. Let me just tell you, that was a brilliant decision on our part. A men’s cycling competition, the Tour De France runs for a duration of little over three weeks and for around 3500 km. The days are divided into Stages and cyclists compete as teams of eight. As we’ve been watching regularly, we’ve been learning so many new terms, getting a virtual tour of beautiful places in France, and falling in love with these unbelievable athletes. Just Google Tour De France and watch a bit and you too will be obsessed!
Olympics: Oh, I’m so so excited for these games to start on 23rd July! I’ve already shortlisted the events I will most definitely be watching and I’m looking forward to India performing well. Another thing that’s making me anticipate these games even more are the swimming events. This is the longest I’ve gone in my whole life without swimming and I’m ready to live vicariously through these games!
Cricket: What Indian citizen is not watching cricket? Cricket is on continuously and is quite interesting (I also mainly watch it for a few cricketers I love) – cricket resumes soon with India playing matches against Sri Lanka and England and I’m ready to watch them all day!
I Told Sunset About You: Review.
Somewhere around mid-April I started watching Thai shows. This started so randomly – almost a year ago I had added a few new shows to my Netflix list and one of these was Love Sick: The Series. I added it on a whim and then started watching it and fell in love. This started my descent into a Thai-shaped hole of tv shows and I scoured the internet for similar stuff. That’s how I found ‘I told sunset about you’.
First off let me just say that the title itself sounded ADORABLE. I couldn’t believe there was a show called ‘I Told Sunset About You’? It sounded so wholesome so obviously I watched the trailer and once I’d decided it was definitely for me, I binged it.
I Told Sunset About You is my Pride Month recommendation for 2021. With five episodes in the first season, it follows the story of two childhood friends who were inseparable till a fight separated them. Teh and Oh-aew meet again in the 12th grade and with all their history still weighing on them, they slowly fall in love.
This show was so pure and told so beautifully that I couldn’t help but rave about it to everyone. With equal amounts of heartbreak, happiness, disappointments and major crying moments, this Thai show is a perfect watch for Pride Month.
There are so many things to love about I Told Sunset About You – the supporting characters are amazing, the dialogues are hard-hitting, the songs are beautiful and the character’s coming-of-age arc is very wholesome. My favourite character was Teh’s older brother who in my absolute favourite moment of the show tells him, “You are allowed to like anyone at anytime.”
I’ve realised something about Thai shows in these last few months – they are super feel good and much more progressive than I’d expected. With regular drama associated with LGBTQ shows, Thai shows (I feel) go a step further and create a society that supports their kids, loves them despite it all and doesn’t make everything a huge deal. I love it.
The second season of this beautiful show is called ‘I Promised You The Moon’ and I’m ready to binge in next week!
Pride Month Movie Recs!
It’s Pride Month and I’m always obsessed with queer representation on the big screen. Here is a list of mostly happy movies:
1) Love, Simon
2) Wish You
3) The Way He Looks
4) Call Me By Your Name
5) The Half of It
Pride Month Song Recs!
And here are some of my absolute favourite songs with queer storylines or queer artists!
1) Symphony – Clean Bandit
2) Same Love – Macklemore feat. Ryan
3) Heaven – Troye Sivan feat. Betty Who
4) Don’t Wait – Joey Graceffa
5) Too Good at Goodbyes – Sam Smith
6) Your Song – Elton John
Pride Month Book Recs!
I’ve been such an avid reader of books that I’m always discovering great titles and always have this incessant need to updating people about my reads. For Pride Month, here are some of my absolute favourite LGBTQ+ friendly reads from the last six years!
1) Simons vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
2) The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
3) The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily Danforth
4) Less by Andrew Sean Greer
5) I’ll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson
6) Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
Happy Pride Month! 🏳️🌈
Quote 1.14
I finished Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library at the start of this month. After seeing it practically everywhere online and seeing how much people loved it, I was very excited. In the end, I had mixed feelings about it – the book was gripping and thought-provoking at many parts but plain annoying or sad at some parts. And yet, here is my favourite quote for the book:
Also, a strong 3.75/5!
The Goldfinch (2019)
Donna Tartt’s ‘The Goldfinch’ is a 2013 novel that follows the life of one Theo Decker. Theo loses his mom to a senseless bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art when he is thirteen and everything in his life shifts monumentally after that.
Spanning all of Theo’s teenage, young adult and adult life, The Goldfinch is narrated with heartbreak and hope, both at the same time and is such a compelling read that it makes you root for Theo no matter what.
The Goldfinch is a 2019 movie directed by John Crowley starring Ansel Elgort as adult Theo narrating his life story. The movie roughly follows the book and most major events are duplicated in the 2.5 hour run. I’ve never been surprised at how much a motion picture leaves out from a book, but watching The Goldfinch if you haven’t read it, turns out to be a monumental task.
The movie doesn’t follow a linear narration like the book and if you have no clue of what the basic plot is, you’re lost. For me, the movie was an emotional ride. The performances are stellar and portray each character exactly as I’d made them up in my head. It was rewarding to watch Donna Tartt’s writing come to life because even where the movie missed out, I knew what would be happening and that was a comfort.
I did have a favourite part and that was this : the movie opens with Theo talking about how he dreams of his mother, and then he says ‘when I lost her, I lost sight of any landmark that might have led me someplace happier’. – A line straight from the novel that I remembered so clearly because of how it felt and then because of how Ansel delivered it.
All in all, The Goldfinch was a pleasurable watch, but only if you know what’s happening.
The Falcon and The Winter Soldier
Even before Marvel had announced this gem of a show, I knew I’d be excited. Really, what wouldn’t I love? I loved both Bucky and Sam individually and I loved what they brought to Cap. So when they did finally announce this show, I was exalted.
The Falcon and The Winter Soldier follows Bucky and Sam after the events of Endgame. After saying goodbye to the best guy they’d known, after losing friends but winning the war and after being away for five years and suddenly coming back.
With six episodes running for fifty minutes each, the Disney+ show is a treat to watch if you love both these men (Not sure if not loving them makes any sense). Every episode gift wraps small, important reveals for you as you go along watching and it’s the best thing. The show gets back quite a few characters and gets you new characters but nothing even comes close to what Bucky and Sam share. It’s almost like losing Steve makes them find something greater with each other and their friendship is pure and addictive.
I have to say here that I’m maybe obsessed with Sebastian Stan: right from his boyish charm in Captain America: The First Avenger to watching him break rules (and hearts) in Gossip Girl, he is both super cute and hot and one of the many reasons to binge Falcon and Winter Soldier.
Theres this part, where Bucky is in therapy and he says ‘I’m not used to this. For the last ninety years, I went from one war to another.’ – my heart breaks at that.
GO BINGE THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER NOW.
