Jen V’s November Recs
Gosh, November has just flown by which is a shame because it is my favourite (birthday) month! Everything’s a bit of a blur but here’s what I’ve got for you this month.
I went to see the latest James Bond – No Time to Die. Now I have to admit I am a Bond fan generally (I’ve even read the books), but I really enjoyed this outing. It feels like a very fitting conclusion for Daniel Craig’s Bond, who I actually adore because he’s capable of human emotions. Amazing! I kinda wish they’d just leave it there but you know they won’t.
I also saw Eternals, which I think has been very unfairly maligned! Twitter was ripping it to shreds before it even came out, and I feel like it had that same apprehension the first Thor had, i.e. the sets and effects on this look terrible. Well, I loved the first Thor, and I actually really enjoyed Eternals. So, y’know, maybe hold off bagging things until you’ve actually seen them. I really enjoyed that this was a return to superhero films of old, so basically it had very little to do with humans and daily life. I also loved the diverse cast, and listen, any situation where we get to hear Richard Madden’s delightful Scottish accent has to be worth it.
I also managed to make it to one film festival screening – The Eyes of Tammy Faye. What. A. Ride. This is based on the life of televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker, and her husband Jim Bakker. It is wild. I didn’t know anything about these people before this, and I was riveted. Jessica Chastain is incredible, the way she manages to transform herself through the decades defies belief. Also, Andrew Garfield is just wonderful. Recommend checking this out if you’re into real-life drama.
As for books, I finished my Sandman graphic novel re-read and holy heck, it just finishes so strong! I’ve also been dabbling in some poetry this month, including reading the Penguin Book of the Prose Poem. Sometimes it’s just nice to shake things up.
I also finally read Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz (poignant coming of age story that does a great job highlighting that everyone’s fighting their own battles) and Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo (I really wanted to love this, but it did far too much telling and not enough showing).
The book that sparked the most conversation this month, however, was Loveless by Alice Oseman. This is a YA novel, with a wonderfully diverse line up of characters, all about self-acceptance and self-discovery. Kids these days are so lucky to have content like this available to them!
While reading this I realised I didn’t remember my first kiss, which of course meant I had to canvas my friends, work mates, and social media acquintances to see if that was the norm. It’s not! Of the 70 or so people I polled, 84% remembered their first kiss. I thought maybe if you kissed a lot of people, you were less likely to remember your first, and also less likely to remember how many people you’ve kissed. But further canvassing did not support this hypothesis – 68% of responders did not know how many people they’d kissed. I wasn’t able to draw any grand conclusions from that but so many people shared their first kiss stories with me unprompted as a result of this whole process and it was delightful. The stories, not the first kisses, which for the most part all seemed kinda terrible.
The biggest thing on the music front was, of course, Taylor Swift dropping Red (Taylor’s Version). Finally! That 10 minute version of All Too Well! Stick it straight into my veins! So good to re-live all the drama and honestly, it really hit a lot harder almost ten years later.
No new TV series or podcasts to recommend, alas. I’m now just gearing up for Spotify Wrapped to drop because I fear those two months I did nothing but listen to Panic! At The Disco has really skewed my results. Can’t wait to find out.
Catch you all in December!