Yesteryear
Yesteryear, Caro Claire Burke’s debut novel, is the picture of America presented to us through prairie dresses and buckets of raw milk. It’s homesteading, a small army of children, and a picturesque farm you’ve convinced yourself will Change Your Life. This aestheticized, traditional Americana lifestyle is the perfect backdrop for the tradwife influencer to flourish in, to cater to her audience of those aspiring to be her and those who want her and her kind off the internet forever. Natalie Heller Mills, the protagonist of Yesteryear, would rather die than refer to herself as a tradwife, but she’s more than happy to reap the benefits and profits that title affords her. Every couple of months, the literary scene goes absolutely feral over an upcoming release, like frothing at the mouth waiting for the book to come out. Yesteryear officially hit bookstores on April 7, but I feel like I was hearing about it for at least half a year. Before its release, Yesteryear was the subject of an intense bidding war, with Alfred A. Knopf ultimately acquiring Burke’s manuscript in a seven-figure deal. Shortly after, Amazon MGM purchased film rights, with Anne Hathaway attached to the project as both star and producer. As someone who cares maybe too much about whether books live up to their hype, I needed to get my hands on a copy ASAP, and the publisher was kind enough to send an advance copy my way. What initially caught my eye about this book was the premise; Natalie, our tradwife influencer, is the quintessential fantasy for traditional America. One day, she wakes up, and instead of her normal routine of baking a new sourdough loaf and passing her children off to the nannies, she’s in her house, but it’s 1855. The children aren’t her children, and her husband, Caleb, is a rough and harsh version of the man she married. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve read (or wrote) an essay or a tweet criticizing the tradwife influencer phenomenon; criticism that essentially boils down to how these are women who are viewed in some circles as the pinnacle of womanhood, but their vision of womanhood is antiquated and rooted in patriarchal ideals. Yesteryear takes that criticism and puts a face and a name to it, Natalie is a hypocrite to everything she stands for, she’s meant to be the vision of domesticity and traditional femininity, but in her life, career, and relationship, she takes on a more dominant and masculine role, even telling us, the reader, that she would have been the perfect husband with her drive and passion contrasting her husband’s more nurturing personality. She’s forced back into a time when the version of femininity she performs for millions of followers was the norm. In her new reality, she’s not baking bread in front of a tripod and a ringlight, she’s washing clothes until her fingers are raw and losing all power over her previously docile husband. Yesteryear is a story that feels uncannily real. Or at least part of it does. Natalie Heller Mills is a massively successful tradwife influencer married to Caleb, a billionaire politician’s son turned farmer. They’re homesteading on their massive farm with 5 children (another on the way!), and it appears that they’re doing everything – raising and homeschooling children, tending to the animals and crops, and making all of their food from scratch, all while Natalie is creating content for her immensely popular social media page. If you’re like me and have stumbled down a tradwife rabbit hole, you might be asking yourself, “isn’t that just Ballerina Farm?” or “doesn’t Nara Smith do that from scratch stuff too?” and you’re not wrong. I’ve seen some online discussion about how Burke is essentially writing this novel to vilify Natalie and inflict punishment on her as a way to metaphorically punish the Ballerina Farms and Nara Smiths of the world. Putting it bluntly, Natalie sucks. We’re in her thoughts for the entire book, from when she’s recounting her days at Harvard and mentally slut shaming the women in her hall, to when she’s describing her husband’s general laziness and the coldness she feels towards her children. This characterization is what makes the novel so gripping. Burke has often described Natalie as an “antihero,” and mentioned on her podcast, Diabolical Lies, how male characters that fit into this archetype are rugged heroes – they’re committing violence and leading with cruelty. They represent the harshness of America, but are idolized and viewed as the blueprint for manliness. Natalie possesses similar traits and is by no means a saint (although she would love to be one), but the reaction to her characterization and the jump to “Natalie’s entire character exists so Burke can bash tradwives” diminishes the poignant picture this novel paints about what womanhood in America looks like. Using a tradwife as a weapon to execute this point, someone whose entire existence and livelihood is rooted in her role as a woman, is an incredibly strong storytelling tool. One of the most interesting elements of Yesteryear is how performance versus reality is explored. Natalie, being an influencer, so much of her life is curated. Producer Shannon plans her content and works to include scenes of her children gazing reverently up at her. Her followers would never know that she has nannies behind the scenes, essentially raising her children for her. The Online Natalie persona is a softened, more palatable version of her, nothing like the narcissistic woman we follow throughout the novel. In an era of #MomTok, Yesteryear serves as a reminder that as glossy as the images look on our screens, what lies beneath is often much murkier. Talking about this book without spoiling the ending is a perilous quest, but I’ve accepted that burden, and I do have to pat myself on the back for getting this far without a peep. Honestly, I’m doing this for you because going into this and trying to figure out what’s happening
Lady Bird
I first watched Lady Bird when I was seventeen years old in 2018, a year after it first released. My first viewing was pretty memorable because I’d watched the entirety of the on my iPhone 8 on the upper floor of the church I’d grown up going to while waiting for my youngest sister to get out of a youth event. I thought it was pretty apt in the moment because of Christine (the main character) having grown up going to Catholic school. And while I wasn’t Catholic, there were just a lot of similarities in theme in my upbringing, having been surrounded by church for most of it. Along with that, I was quite literally the same age as Christine, and going through all of the moods and phases that were being displayed through her character in the film. We also even share the same MBTI and Enneagram type (ENFP 4w3), which might say a lot about the kind of person I am – or rather, was, in high school. I’d like to say I’ve matured since then – I hope I have. But anyways. I have always been the type to be easily bored with my current situation and wish for something new and exciting to happen to me. I think I’m a bit less extreme about it now, but I definitely related to the way Christine would seek out trouble and drama for the sake of something interesting happening to her, because she actually had it pretty good in comparison to her peers. Of course, she had the typical, turbulent relationship with her mother that most teenage girls have at that age due to growing pains and seeking independence, but all-in-all, her life wasn’t half bad. I understood that on a deeper level at the time as someone who had been going through and experiencing quite literally the same thing. More often than not, the problems that arose in her life were a result of her own actions. She didn’t know how good she had it. Christine generally led a lucky life – she was a good person at her core, but she was also selfish and spoiled, and I think that’s the whole point. And also exactly why I felt like I was looking into a mirror, whenever I watched it during my teenagehood. Her positive traits felt similar to my own, but so did the negative ones. We were both dumb adolescents who constantly thought the grass was greener on the other side, and didn’t know we were actually really lucky. Throughout the movie, there’s a running bit surrounding where Christine lives, in the sense that she thinks she lives in the lesser part of town. She tells one of her love interests, Danny, that she’s “from the wrong side of the tracks”, as a joke—because she lives by actual train tracks, but also in a neighborhood she deems secondary than her classmates’, but also insinuating that she’s dangerous and/or mysterious, both as a joke and to come across as more interesting to him. Funnily enough, I pulled a similar stunt to this (before having seen the film, believe it or not), telling people I was from “the wrong side of the tracks”, simply because I also lived right next to literal train tracks. I was completely unaware of the derogatory connotations attached to this idiom, and genuinely just thought it was a phrase that implied the person saying it was calling themselves mysterious, brooding, etc. (I was and am the total opposite of that, so it was obviously a joke whenever I said it.) Like me, Christine doesn’t initially find anything with this statement, but when it comes up later, her mother is hurt and offended. Hearing her daughter casually dismiss their neighborhood as “the wrong side of the tracks” probably felt like a rejection of her efforts and a lack of appreciation for what they have. I can’t help but think that’s how my parents might have felt at the time, whenever I took our life for granted. There’s a scene toward the end of the movie that I love, because it reminds me so much of my friends and I in high school. After ditching her loser prom date (sorry Timothée I love you…but your character was a real d-bag!), Christine arrives at her best friend Julie’s apartment to make amends after a short period of quarreling, and to convince her to attend prom. But upon opening the door, she finds her in her pajamas, and in tears. The film just feels like a love letter to the monotony that comes along with being a teenage girl, bored with life in the suburbs, the stupidity and selfishness that accompanies it, and the inevitable bad decisions she makes in an attempt to combat it. I think it’s safe to assume I’m a Superfan of this film. I mean i’s been sitting in my Letterboxd top 4 for as long as I’ve had my account (which is since like 2019) and it’s been a top favorite since I first saw it eight years ago. I definitely think it’s a movie that can only resonate with and be deeply understood by a specific audience, so I understand why it might not land for some, but I do think everyone should try watching at least once for its artistic value. I love this movie!!! YAY!!!!
A Moment of Stillness in the Thorns
I have a small handful of kpop groups that I genuinely get giddy when I hear they’ll be releasing new music. NCT Wish, Boynextdoor, Illit, KiiiKiii, aaaaand Tomorrow x Together. It’s also wild that 4/5 of those groups are all releasing new music within the span of 3 weeks???? The first of those groups to drop an album is TXT whose album I was Very much anticipating after their last KR release marked the end of their years long album lore journey. We are now in post-Starseekers society… It’s an interesting change because their new releases won’t be following a strict story created for them. Instead it seems like they’re finally able to get Experimental with it. YIPPEE!!! They released 7TH YEAR: A Moment of Stillness in the Thorns last week and immediately I had to form my ranking list that I share with my bestie who also loves TXT. Back when I was deeply into kpop in high school, I was far more forgiving of bad releases because I was into EVERYTHING. I took a hiatus sometime around 2020 and only came back to kpop around early 2023. The break was a huge factor in how I viewed the industry and the releases and now I Cannot get into most new groups. Make good music like damn!!! Can’t everyone just make bubblegum pop like the Wishies… Anyway. Backstory over, it’s review time. The album starts with Bed of Thorns which, for almost the entire first listen, I was convinced was going to be my favorite off the album. It starts with this synth-y beat that immediately pulls you into their album’s neon lit world. Immediately obsessed. You can tell their direction for future releases will take on a less boxed in style and test the waters with genres that might not have broken into the kpop mainstream before. Second track, Stick With You, is their title track for this album which surprised me because I thought Bed of Thorns was the title when I listened to the track previews LOLLLL It makes sense though, the chorus is CRAZY. The music video was pretty funny to me though because this group is gay as hell and seeing them pine over the same pretty girl was incredibly funny. I wasn’t fully on board with the title right away, the verses didn’t hit as much as the ultra-vibey chorus, but it’s certainly not a skip. I need to live in that chorus. Then we get to Take Me to Nirvana. Dreamcore is a Super fun genre pull for TXT and really fits with their album concept. The featuring artist, Vinida Weng, adds in vocals that compliments the group’s tone so well that I feel like that floating Spongebob gif. LOVE. Easily my third favorite track. Now. So What. I have a bit of a vendetta against kpop rap focused songs unless they’re from Boynextdoor. So my initial reaction was Skip. It has absolutely grown on me though. It’s a continuation of the style formed for Yeonjun’s recent solo album, No Genre, which had THE best marketing I’ve seen in recent kpop history. So What is still one of the weaker songs on this album to me personally. 21st Century Romance. Here’s their ballad number. I also didn’t fully love this and I think it was because it was coming right on the heels of So What so the energy change was total whiplash. I’m a HUGE ballad lover. Have you ever heard Xdinary Heroes’ Good Enough… Oh my GOD. So I think if I had heard 21st Century Romance on its own, I would’ve had a much better listening experience. And I just relistened to it and LOVED it on its own. I think its placement in the album is just.. kinda strange. And then it gets followed by one of the best songs TXT has ever made so it does not do 21st Century Romance any favors. LOLLL Now we get to my number one. I looped this song like a crazy person after my first album listen like are you KIDDING. Dream of Mine, you beautiful piece of art. Dream of Mine is the final song on their mini album and what a way to go out. The instrumental is a pretty bare unrelenting beat + bass synth but it’s paired with continuous vocals in a style that I don’t normally hear in kpop. My jaw genuinely dropped Several times listening to this. You get to the bridge which drops into an acoustic version of the instrumental allowing for a tiny break from the neverending synth. Not to mention the vocals are INSANE. My favorite thing in any song really is MODULATION. GIVE IT TO MEEEEE. The journey this song takes you is crazy and it’s only 2:21. Make it longer what is wrong with you guys. The only downside to this song being the final on the album is that when I try to put the album on loop in Youtube Music, it doesn’t listen to me and it’ll play some BULLSHITTTTT after. My Thorns album ranking is: It’s such a great new direction for the group to take moving forward after finishing such an impactful era in their careers. I hope they continue with the experimentation on future albums and hey, maybe they’ll eventually make a song that dethrones Song of the Stars. Tough song to beat though. And you don’t even have to ask, yes I am a superfan of this album and the group itself. #TXTFOREVA
Baby Assassins
I love Baby Assassins so much and I need the world to know this. My favorite genres have always been very male dominated. I love love love lighthearted scifi and cheesy horror and super bloody fighting comedies which are Absolutely primarily male focused. And that bugs me a lot because I want to see more in this genre but with women PLEASEEEEEE. When I discovered the Baby Assassins trilogy last year, I couldn’t believe it existed. Everything I’ve ever wanted? And there’s THREE OF THEM??? Bloody, unapologetic violent action comedies about two teenage assassins who are forced to live together after graduating high school like you are Kidding?!?! While this review just focuses on the first movie, I Beg you to watch all three movies (and the tv show!!!). These movies are not just good because they’re the first movies to fit my exact genre tastes while focusing on women as opposed to literally every other piece of action comedy on my favorites list, but also.. these movies are REALLY well done. Your minimal-to-no-spoiler overview is this: Mahiro and Chisato are teenage assassins. They’ve worked together for quite some time, but their agency needs them to move in together now that they’re out of school so they can learn how to be “normal” adults. They don’t ~love~ this development and butt heads pretty often, but when it comes to actually killing their targets, there’s No issue. That is all I will say regarding the first movie’s plot. PLEASE WATCH FMLLLLL IT’S SO GOOD One of my favorite elements of the movie is how natural their dialogue and conversations feel. It’s a little glimpse into their lives. Sure, they’re assassins, but also they’re just girls!!! And it’s SO FUN. Chisato’s super hyper and neurotic personality clashes like crazy with Mahiro’s anti-social and detached personality while somehow matching perfectly at the same time. It’s a push and pull that draws you into their relationship and really makes you care about them. There’s a scene I think about constantly where Mahiro and Chisato are about to eat dinner back home. Chisato has just gotten back from her cover job and she’s going back and forth from the kitchen to the couch making little sounds as she runs. Mahiro is confused in her own subdued way and asks what she’s doing and Chisato replies that she’s mimicking the sound of dogs’ nails on hardwood. Chk-chk-chk-chk-chk-chk-chk-chk. IT’S SO SILLYYYY. Small additions like that are what make the writing feel so natural and lived in and give more depth to the characters’ personalities. Writing is a huge reason why this series works so well, but no matter how good your script is, you have to find the right actors for the role. And let me tell you. There is no one more suited for these roles than Saori Izawa and Akari Takaishi. We are witnessing levels of chemistry never before seen. GUYS I LOVE THEM SO MUCH……. I’m gonna be sick. Their relationship development in the first movie alone is so perfect. They’re soulmates. What the hell!!!!!!! I especially want to focus on Saori Izawa as Mahiro. I was blown away by her performance particularly in the fight scenes and turns out.. she’s a professional stuntwoman who has worked on sets like John Wick!!! So she might be the coolest person alive. There’s so many scenes in the movie that contrast the two characters and make me love them for their differences. Their agency needs them to get new cover jobs and one spot they try is a cafe where the waitresses dress up as cats to serve weird men. It shows so much about the two main characters and how they fit into the world of this film. Chisato is Almost a natural right off the bat, using her super high strung charisma to jump right in with the other waitresses while Mahiro can’t bring herself to even pretend to embody a catgirl. It serves as additional characterization at the same time as showing a visual social gap forming between the two girls. Chisato is good with people, she always has been, and all Mahiro wants to do is kill people and not pretend to do anything else. Which is awesome. Be true to yourself girl. I also want to mention that their relationship with Tasaka, the crime scene clean-up guy, is so funny. This dude sucks in a really awesome way. I just love the humor and character style of these movies SO MUCH. All I need in life is a million more Baby Assassins movies with Saori and Akari. Honestly it doesn’t even need to be Baby Assassins, I just need them to never be separated. But if it’s through more Baby Assassins media I will NOT be complaining. If Baby Assassins has no fans I am DEAD. Watch out for a review of every piece of media in this universe. You don’t even have to ask me if I’m a superfan of this series because I genuinely think this is my favorite action trilogy ever. ALSO?!?! HELLO didn’t even mention that you can watch for FREE on Tubi like what the hell. I’m a huge jdrama/jmovie enjoyer and it’s pretty rare for the ones I love to actually be accessible to everyone. I love it. I love women beating people up and getting bloody. Please never stop.
EVERYONE’S A STAR!
I would consider 5 Seconds of Summer to be one of the very first bands I was ever a true Superfan in every sense of the word. I had multiple fan accounts over the years, wrote fanfiction, genuinely the whole shebang. I’ve seen this band through literally every era, and they’ve been a constant favorite over the years that I keep in my rotation. I grew to love pop rock music largely because of them – they’re a big reason why I gradually began playing electric guitar alongside my beloved acoustic. I’ve been to every tour with the exception of one (which I regret not getting tickets to every passing day) and I’m seeing them twice this summer. Basically, I really love these guys and the music they make, regardless of era and style as they’ve evolved their sound over time. They feel like close personal friends that I used to have big, stupid crushes on (and maybe I still do. So what if true…). What I’m trying to say here is that they and their music hold a very special place in my heart and this new album is no exception. EVERYONE’S A STAR! is phenomenal to say the least – I might be super biased because of my long-drawn out history with this band, but I truly mean that. I feel like they went a whole new direction with their sound, look, and overall aesthetic, which honestly did wonders in refreshing their branding. The past three albums before this were amazing as per usual and definitely had their own distinct qualities that made it a different era for each record, but something about the last one before this (5SOS5) honestly felt repetitive to me. The songs were great, don’t get me wrong, but it felt like something they’d touched on before. Familiar territory. With EVERYONE’S A STAR!, the band ventured into a world of music and fashion and aesthetics that they had never wandered into, at least in terms of the work they had put out publicly so far. It’s so fresh, new, and you can really tell they feel refreshed by the new energy through the music. The first single that dropped from the album before the whole thing came out was “NOT OK” and when I first heard it, I GENUINELY felt insane. It was a completely different sound for them, but it still somehow felt so distinctly THEM. I’m not sure how else to phrase that. But it just made so much sense. Something I think is really great about this record in particular is how #different it feels from their past work but still remaining so true to the 5sos we know and love. I am obsessed with the more electronic alt pop vibe they went for, and how they still managed to keep the individual, manually played instruments at the forefront of their sound as a band. I know some people were unsure about the direction they were taking, but I don’t know – it just clicked for me, and I was like yeah. This really makes SO MUCH SENSE. And I felt like literally screaming. I still feel crazy about it as I type this and think about listening for the first time. When the entire record came out… guys I was literally insufferable. Not a single skippable track, every single one a banger. Hearing “I’m Scared I’ll Never Sleep Again” for the first time was a spiritual experience to say the absolutely very least. After listening through the album for the first time all the way through, I immediately returned to that song and looped it for what feels like a million times. I am actually looping it right now as I write this. I really do believe it is the best song they’ve ever made. I do not say that lightly!!! Obviously I love the entire thing, but if I was being held at gunpoint and was asked to name my favorites, my top tracks are “I’m Scared I’ll Never Sleep Again” (obviously), “Jawbreaker”, “Evolve”, and “Telephone Busy”. This turned out to just be a glazing session for the album (excuse my Gen-Alpha speak, I am also a teacher and I am surrounded by 67 and the like literally every single weekday so it’s bound to enter my vernacular… unfortunate I know), but I don’t know what else to say about it other than please listen if you haven’t yet. I think it’s such a unique record and is so different from anything they’ve ever made while also staying true to their energy and chemistry as a group. And yes, a million times yes, if it wasn’t already clear: I am a Superfan of this freaking album. Okay. Time to go loop it a million times again. #5SOSFAM4LIFE!!!!
Fahrenheit-182
Maybe it’s my budding infomanicism or just the incessant pull of being a Superfan (ha) of literally everything, but I currently have 10 books on hold at the library. And they’re all about modern music history. It started with your average rabbit hole. I wanted to read more about bloghaus (or indie sleaze as it’s called now) and started digging into magazine articles and firsthand recounts from people actually old enough to experience the 2000s indie music scene. I was like 8 years old, so I could only listen to the Two Door Cinema Club Slacker radio and hope I’d find a new band to add to my growing collection. Devastating. There’s a book titled ‘Never Be Alone Again: How Bloghouse United the Internet and the Dancefloor’ I ended up buying off Ebay and I’m not sure where it is… But in the meantime, I went on the library’s website and tracked down the Dewey decimal number for rock history centric books and put everything that looked remotely interesting on my holds list. Most of the books were at other locations and had to be transferred to my local spot. The only book that was sitting at my library of choice was Fahrenheit-182 by Mark Hoppus. Listen. I grew up in the 2000s. Of course I listened to blink-182. But it’s mostly been casual listening through the aforementioned Slacker radios I’d put on. And if you don’t know what Slacker is, it’s basically just Pandora if it flopped. Anyway. My knowledge of blink was really just their 4 biggest songs and a vague recollection of the members’ names. I put the book on hold because the cover was cool #judgingbythecover Honestly, my week was so busy with work and then freelance after work because I am crazy like that, and I was excited to pick up another book. I started reading it that night and one chapter in, I thought about how inconvenient having to sleep that night would be. Mark’s story was fascinating from page one, starting from childhood on a desert military base and quickly getting into the catalyst for everything that happened to him as a result of his parents’ divorce. The point of view we see this separation happening through feels so visceral and devastating that kids so young would have to experience the fallout of a failed marriage. At this point I was thinking huh.. I was prepared to read a pop punk band behind the scenes book, not a deeply personal examination on how your childhood experiences dictate everything in your life. The story of how Mark navigated all that and it culminated in him discovering skate culture and the music that comes along with it and eventually getting his first bass. I thought the behind-the-scenes look into the life of a punk band would be the most interesting part of his story, but I ended up really connecting with his struggles with OCD and anxiety. Dealing with OCD and anxiety as a normal person is hard enough, imagine having that while being in one of the biggest bands in the world. He’s stronger than me, I would’ve gone into hiding like ?!?! If someone pulled the Box Car Racer stunt on me, you’d see me on national television committing crimes. A consistent motif in Fahrenheit-182 was how “one-in-a-million happens to him all the time.” This applied to blink becoming a household name, but also to the numerous awful situations and events he found himself in. I heavily related to his OCD fixating on how insane situations always happen to him, so why would his other OCD spirals not come true? I’ve never read something that captured my OCD experience so well before like that’s my mirror… I’ve never reread a memoir before, but I think this has to go in my super rereadable list. The way it’s written is so engaging and fun the whole way through. After reading, I’d put on blink songs, hear a line he had talked about in his book, and go WAIIIIT. Feeling like an #insider <3 So, basically, yes I am a superfan of Mark Hoppus now!!! Who wants to start a punk band with me and live life like it’s the 1990s <3 I’ll be Mark (plays bass, wants to sing, has OCD, people at work call me Mark over email because they think I am a man) (Side Note: There was a point in the book where it suddenly felt like it had switched genres to horror and all I could think about was how killer it would be as a movie scene. Sorry Mark, I have Live Action Brain.)
Pop Song
As someone who loves the idea of love but has a deep-seated fear of letting themselves fall into it in a real way, this book was like reading my own thoughts but having them written by someone else. It was kind of freaky. There have been so many times that I’ve felt something unconventional or like I felt was an original experience but strayed away from writing it down because if I wrote the words out, it would manifest into something tangible. I tend to be more into the idea of falling in love and living vicariously through characters in romance-centric media rather than making something real happen, and I’m sure that’s rooted in something I need to unpack… but that’s for another day. That being said, Pop Song is one of the most brilliant and genuine works I’ve ever read. Not to be confused with Haley Pham – if you know you know… brb yielding to a conglomerate of pedestrians – I first stumbled upon Larissa Pham’s work a whopping four years ago now when someone I followed on Instagram shared a link to her essay, “Crush”. I wish I remembered who it was so I could tell them thank you for changing my life forever. I literally sat here thinking for like ten minutes racking my brain for who it could’ve been but I literally cannot remember. Anyway! I read “Crush” and everything shifted. It had been published on some literary mag site and at the bottom of the page, THANK GOD. A link to a full-length book, Pop Song, of which “Crush” was a part of. I wanted to read it in physical format, but I literally couldn’t wait, so I got the Kindle version first and breezed through that like nobody’s business, leaving a trail of a million gazillion highlights behind me. She has a way of phrasing things that makes me both jealous as a writer, because man I wish I wrote it first, but also in awe as a reader, because wow am I grateful that I got to read these words and feel understood and less alone. Pham magically takes us through a narrative of a love affair from start to finish, where she so perfectly strings together how it feels to start falling in and out of love with someone. At least that’s how it feels for me. Each part is integral to the experience she is trying (successfully) to convey, almost like a concept album but in written form. Every single essay could be read as a standalone piece and strike the reader in its own way, but when placed in a specific order among several other written works, ultimately tells an even bigger and more profound story. My favorite piece in this is obviously “Crush” by far – there were just so many instances while reading this where I had to pause and read certain passages over and over. How she managed to put (what feels like) my own experiences and feelings into words before I could have even acknowledged them on my own… I will never know. A quote I think about literally all the time is this (and hopefully this convinces you to pick it up as soon as you finish reading this post): “If I’m willing to lose myself in what can be said without words, it must be the voicing of my own feelings I’m frightened of. Or, no, it’s the asking, and worse yet, the needing. That’s what paints me as a discrete and vulnerable subject, and opens me to disappointment—and that which is worse than disappointment, the kind of hurt I can’t anticipate” (Pham, 82). Like. Are we kidding. There are so many other parts I want to share with you but then this entire review would just be a bunch of quotes. So you should just go read it instead. Other standout sections to me are “Camera Roll (Notes on Longing)”, “Haunted”, and “What we say without saying”. The entire body of work is worth reading in order from start to finish for the sake of cohesion and a more full sense of understanding, but if you only had a bit of time to check out a few essays, those would be my recommendations! Guys, I don’t put it lightly when I say that this collection of essays changed my life. I don’t just go around saying things like that. It’s a book I find myself picking up over and over again, after accumulating more life experiences, and having new revelations and a-ha moments each time I read it. In a similar way to how hearing certain artists’ music have helped me discover the kind of artist I want to be and the music I want to make, this book came to me at an extremely formative time that helped me solidify the kind of writer I wanted to be. And for that I am eternally grateful. I think it goes without saying that I am a Superfan of this book. Everyone say THANK YOU LARISSA PHAM!!!!
Project Hail Mary
I want to preface everything I’m about to say with this: I loved the movie very very much and every element of it was so well done. The crew that worked on producing Project Hail Mary is the best possible crew they could have gotten and I’m sure they know they’ve made a generational hope-infused film. That being said, the book is still better and I don’t care what anyone else says!!!!!!!! Okay. Now that we got that out of the way, I have to talk about One Million Different Things. A big reason why people are so resistant to the concept of live action adaptations is because they don’t understand how much of a difference there is between the mediums of books and movies. When you read a book, you get to see the most pure version of the author’s vision for their story. You experience the characters’ inner thoughts and understand the more nuanced bits of the story because the author is able to write exactly how they see it in their mind. Film is so different. You’re restricted to a purely visual medium. If you want to show a character’s thoughts, you have to: insert a voiceover, convert the thought into a Not Super Corny piece of dialogue, or show it through actions. All options are more clunky than reading a character’s motivations from a page. There’s only so much that you can feasibly translate into a movie format. Even so, I was going into the theater with extremely high expectations (regardless of how much I tried to mitigate them..) It’s the biggest sci-fi book in the last 10 years, if not more AND it’s my favorite book of all time. I HAVE A TATTOO!!! I WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO EDIT BOOK RYLAND!!! I GOT LITERALLY ALL MY FRIENDS AND FAMILY AND COWORKERS TO READ IT!!! And come ON. Directed by Lord and Miller. Score by DANIEL PEMBERTON??? OF LITTLE BIG PLANET???? My Whole Childhood. Cinematography by Greig Fraser who had done Dune and The Batman. Rocky being a PUPPET instead of CGI??? And Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace. They have the same initials so it’s basically fated. There has never been a movie more poised for success. And that’s what we got. Arguably one of the most faithful book adaptations ever made. I loved all 156 minutes in that theater and I got to experience it sitting next to two people who read the book from my recommendation and loved it too. And yet, I had the slightest of mixed feelings afterwards. I had never experienced having my favorite book adapted into a feature film before. I’m the biggest proponent of live action adaptations and I’m so forgiving of live action anime/manga adaptations, but after seeing Project Hail Mary, I kinda understood people who go THEY DIDN’T DO THIS SCENE EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE SOURCE MATERIAL WHY WOULD THEY CHANGE THIS!!! I’ve just been so hyper-critical of things I’ve consumed lately that it translated to my brain reminding me that they didn’t put in my favorite line or the stakes didn’t feel as high or that we didn’t get to know the additional crew as much through Ryland’s memories. These are all valid criticisms of the film, but the book was so jam-packed that even trying to fit the story under 3 hours is a massive undertaking. If they had tried to fit every single line from the book into the movie, it’d be at least 2 hours longer, so while removing parts referencing the damage done to Earth (mass astrophage production by paving the Sahara Desert with solar panels and attempts to speed up global warming to save time for the mission to solve the issue of their dying sun) did end up lowering the stakes, it’s not something that absolutely killed the plot for me. (Scenes I wish they had put in: I AM HAPPY. YOU NO DIE. LET’S SAVE PLANETS! (my tattoo line hehe), I WISH THE BEGINNING PART WAS LONGER ‘I am Emperor Comatose. Kneel before me.’ ‘I am scary space monster, you are leaky space blob,’ Rocky not realizing Ryland only has 2 arms ‘Use third han- hmm. Get beetles. I make new screws’) Don’t get me wrong, this is one of my favorite movies of all time and I actually loved a lot of the changes they made and little additions they wrote in. The hugs they did were so adorable and Ryland’s ocean motif manifesting in his own ocean biome was so beautiful. AND RYLAND GOT TO SEE ROCKY’S SHIP!!!!!! The cinematography was deeply beautiful. The Adrian scene where the infrared light kicked in and the universe was sparkling made me tear up and !!! GUYS THE CLOSEUPS WERE DONE WITH PRACTICAL EFFECTS. HOW FUCKING COOL IS THAT??????? Everytime they showed a flashback or a memory and we weren’t experiencing it fully yet, it had this amazing analog texture to it with light streaks connotating the past. I had never seen memories shown in that way and it was easily one of my favorite elements of the film. Rocky being a puppet was the coolest option they could’ve done in bringing him to life. #ThatsMyRocky!!! Plus his reveal was sooooo darling… ROCKYYYYYYYYY I’m gonna cry again. Seeing Rocky moving into Ryland’s spaceship and acting like a hyper puppy knocking everything over was SO CUTE. They changed up the scene where Rocky rescues Ryland and instead of Ryland’s arm getting burned by Rocky’s enclosure’s air, Ryland now has a Rocky hand shaped scar on his arm. I. Love. That. So. Much. THEY’RE BONDED BRO… And the addition of Ryland getting to see Rocky’s ship was something so considerate of the medium they were telling this story in. They couldn’t include absolutely everything from the book as it just wasn’t possible with their constraints, so to include a new scene that feels like it was meant to be in the original story and letting us into Rocky’s world
Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party
As a longtime fan of her and her work, obviously I loved Hayley Williams’ third solo studio record Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party – or EDAABP for short. But there was something different about this album that stood out amongst her released solo work so far that she’s been dropping outside of Paramore. Not sure if you’ve heard of them. They’re kind of underground and not super well-known (me when I lie). No but seriously, these songs feel the most honest and raw she’s ever been lyrically, and if you know me, you know I love a good lyric. I feel like there are two types of music listeners in this world: people who listen for overall sound (instrumentation/production), and people who listen for composition (lyrics/storytelling). As a writer and songwriter myself whose music has a big emphasis on lyricism and narrative, I am very much part of the latter group of folks. I just love words and all the different ways we can use them, and it’s so special when a songwriter can manipulate language to get their message across through music. Especially when there’s lore attached that listeners are aware of and can find easter eggs or connections to. Hayley does such a phenomenal job with this throughout the album, drawing us into her world and really inviting us into her brain a little more with each track. Also, this is not to say that the way that a song sounds doesn’t matter, because of course it does. It most definitely does for me personally in order to enjoy a piece of music. I’m a musician!! It would be sooooo silly if I thought that it didn’t matter. I just personally place a tonnnn of emphasis on lyrics when making a song. What I don’t think really matters in the long run, is if the mixing is imperfect or if anything is the teensiest bit off from the click at certain points (specifically if it’s something tracked by a real person like singing or playing an instrument) and it’s unnoticeable to anyone except pretentious music dudes. IF THE SONG IS GOOD, THE SONG IS GOOD!!! LET ME LIVE!!! Sincerely, Girl Who Despises Using A Metronome To Record <3 Anyways, back to EDAABP. When this album dropped, as far as the general public knew, she was still in a relationship with Paramore bandmate, guitarist Taylor York. Real ones know they’d been romantically linked for YEARS in a yearning way, because everyone loves a friends-to-lovers slow burn. And mannnnnn had they been burning for a while. It was just kind of always speculated that they were secretly in love or had a crush on each other. And then in 2018, they seemed to be getting closer… Yay… Then, around her first solo album Petals For Armor released in 2020, she included songs that hinted at these speculations being true. FINALLY, in 2022, they officially confirmed they were together. Everyone rejoiced!!!! And so for a while, the #Tayley truthers of Paramore nation were satisfied and content in knowing their favs were finally a couple (including myself obviously). But then EDAABP dropped in 2025 after a bit of silence on the #Tayley front. We heard “Parachute” and we all freaked out because it sounded like a breakup song. And then there were deluxe tracks that trickled in one by one: “Good Ol’ Days” and “Showbiz”. The former dropped first, and basically confirmed their breakup with the lyrics “Not easy letting go of the one / I’m not Stevie, I won’t hex ya / But my voice may surely vex ya / For that, I’m sorry / I just wanna love ya, but you won’t let me” – like… it truly couldn’t be clearer. Drawing a comparison to the infamous #SituationshipOfAllTime between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac is not only insane, but so incredibly apt. A “Silver Springs” reference??? Are you kidding me??? Like yeah. Huh. They really are the Nicks and Buckingham relationship of our generation… I was genuinely speechless. Full body chills. You should’ve seen what Twitter looked like on release night. The other deluxe track, “Showbiz”, further confirmed the split with “Guess that’s curtains / Was it just showbiz?”. People cried (me). I think trying to decode (no Paramore pun intended) all the little signals and references was what really made the listening experience for me. That’s something I’ve always wanted to happen out of my music – people analyzing and picking apart my lyrics, guessing what things are about, getting invested in the lore… it sounds so silly but this is My Truth!!!! Because I really do intentionally place and word lyrics in a specific way for a specific reason, and I’m sure Hayley does the same. It’s just more fun for fans of her, because she’s so famous that her personal life and relationships are public knowledge, too. But even besides knowing the lore, I firmly believe that just as a standalone project with no prior context, anyone would have a great experience listening. It’s truly a testament to her artistry, creative spirit, and ability to be an artist outside of the band. She doesn’t just touch upon her relationship lore, but also her own personal history and spiritual reframing. “True Believer” stands out heavily to me in terms of how lethal and bold she is with a pen, and how brave she is to release a song criticizing the state of the country in relation to the biblical values that most claim to hold – when in reality, they’re not “true believers”, they’re just bigoted nationalists. I also think about “Ice In My OJ” a lot because it interpolates a song from one of Hayley’s first recorded records from 2003, which was an Christian CD and comic series – another subtle reference to how she’s navigating her evangelical upbringing versus her relationship to spirituality and religion as an adult, which I also personally relate to. If I had to name my top
Ubik
I am officially a Dickhead. And by that I mean, I read my first Philip K. Dick book the other day <3 I’m the biggest scifi enjoyer you’ll ever meet, so it’s surprising it’s taken me this long to pick up one of his books, but also not surprising at all (just look at my favorites list…). My go-to book choice will most of the time, if not always, be a silly little scifi comedy. Project Hail Mary, Redshirts, Dungeon Crawler Carl, etc. etc. So it’s a little out of my comfort zone to be reading Serious Science Fiction. Even more to be reading Serious Science Fiction written in the 60s!!! And what’s so awesome is I absolutely lovvvveeeeed Ubik. Ubik is a mind-bending, twisty, thriller story about weaponized telepathy and the organizations tasked with fighting back against those trying to invade everyone’s minds. At least, it starts out like that. It quickly spirals into a nightmare where nothing and no one can be trusted and also what in the hell is Ubik. This book was the first physical book I bought in a hot minute. I’ve been reading on my cute little sage kindle for far too long and I needed to actually touch real paper. Maybe it’s the ability to actually see how many pages I had left, or the ability to tab all my favorite lines, or even just how good the plot was, but I finished Ubik in less than 2 days. I found it fascinating that in this book alone, Philip K. Dick already essentially predicted our dumbass subscription based society. Our protagonist, Joe Chip, is terribly broke and can’t even afford to pay his electronic talking door to leave his conapt. Every appliance in this story requires a fee to function which made me think about that new Samsung AI handle-less fridge you have to talk to in order for it to open. Say hello to Dick’s dystopian vision of 1990, Samsung fridge users. Man that fridge is so stupid. The world Dick made (ha get it) within this story is so trippy and inventive. He goes from corporate espionage to a dream within a dream within a half-life so seamlessly that you’re not even sure when the switch occurred; who actually is in tech induced half life and who’s attending the funeral. Each chapter begins with a commercial advertising this mysterious, ever-changing Ubik product. It’s instant coffee, and a razor blade; a used car, but also a bowl of frosted flakes? It’s only in the last act that the reader gains any information as to the function of Ubik and why it’s been threaded throughout the plot since page one. I actually really wanna make myself a fake can of Ubik. Put it on my bookshelf next to my SLIGHTLY SHORTER COPY OF UBIK. Okay, not to derail this review, but I had bought three Dick books: Ubik, Time Out of Joint, and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch AND UBIK IS LIKE 1/4 OF AN INCH SHORTER THAN THE OTHER TWO. What is wrong with Mariner Classics. These books are from the same exact reprint set. Whatever. Anyway. I Love The Twists In This Book. On a reread, everything would seem so obvious, but my first go, my jaw was fully dropped. Dick writes his twists where you’ll only see them happening a few sentences before some bombshell of a line and you’ll be sitting there like WAIIIIIIT. It’s kind of devastating that while Dick’s works have been adapted something like 10-11 times, Ubik isn’t one of them. Not to say that no one has tried, the rights have been passed around since the book had been released, but by virtue of the plot’s insane timeline and time-devolvement, it unfortunately makes sense. But like.. man. GIMME UBIK ADAPTATIONNNNNNN. I’m not someone who’s great at fancasting (other than Matt Berry should’ve been PJOTV’s Dionysus and Seth Green needs to voice Mordecai in the Dungeon Crawler Carl tv adaptation), but if anyone has a fancast for Pat Conley, please talk to me about it. I’m so curious. Am I a superfan of Ubik? Well, as you could probably tell, yes! But also, I’ve already jumped into reading Philip K. Dick’s Time Out of Joint, so I might be considering superfan status for Mr. Dick as well… If anyone has recommendations for which PKD book to pick up after Time Out of Joint, hit my line!!!