Recommended: April 2024

The best things I read, watched, listened to & ate in the last month!

Welcome to Recommended, a monthly series about the things I’ve been consuming recently. Writing about trauma can be heavy, but one thing that makes it possible is living a good life outside of my work. Here are some of the things that have brought me joy over the last month.

Before we start, I was honoured to feature in two beloved publications this month.

Ali Griffin Vingiano

included me in this post about the things we’ve learned from The Artist’s Way.

What "The Artist's Way" Taught Us, Part 1

And, I was thrilled to open the Cup of Jo newsletter,

Big Salad

and see myself inside it. They asked for reader recommendations and I submitted my practice of making silly signs when I’m meeting people at the airport. Click through to see what I mean (& huge thanks to

Joanna Goddard

&

Kaitlyn Teer

for including me!):

Big Salad Readers Share 22 Favorite Things, and We Are Very Into Them

My friend Sarah Swandell recently published her first short story, Totality, in The Hopkins Review. I was lucky enough to share some feedback with Sarah on an earlier draft, and was delighted to see that it got picked up. Click through to enjoy 2.5 sex scenes and a story which has also been nominated for a PEN/Dau award. 

I finished The Bee Sting by Paul Murray which lots of people loved, but I was disappointed by. It’s 642 pages long and ultimately, I felt that the story just wasn’t compelling enough to warrant the many, many hours I spent reading it. There were some things I liked about this book (deft characterisation, smooth dialogue, a few slick plot points) but more things I didn’t (whole sections without punctuation and a frantic & ultimately unsatisfying ending). 

I’m currently listening to Molly Roden Winter’s More, which is her memoir of an open marriage. It’s not a great book TBH but it’s pulpy and fun as an audio experience. 

The best film I saw this month was Origin, Ava DuVernay’s expansive adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste. It’s stylish, moving, essayistic and just as paradigm shifting as the source material. Somehow DuVernay has crafted a compelling cinematic experience about how systems of oppression reinforce each other. It’s the kind of movie I wish everyone would see. (Intrigued? Start with this conversation!) 

I watched this apartment tour in a bad mood one day, and felt noticeably better afterwards! 

This interview between Terry Gross and Andrew Scott is worth your time. While discussing his recent film, All of Us Strangers, Scott smoothly divulges that his mother died just three weeks before. It’s a moving conversation, which reminded me of an iconic moment in Irish TV. Live on air, a competition winner on The Late Late Show reveals that her daughter died the previous night. I re-watched the clip, and the hairs stood up on the back of my neck all over again. 

I’ve been reading Emily Gould since her blog days, and am still thinking about this essay she wrote about her decision NOT to get divorced. If you enjoyed the essay, you’ll love this conversation about mental health, creative ambition and what it takes to recover. 

These are my favourite pancakes. The wee bit of melted butter feels like a faff (“why am I dirtying another bowl?”) but it changes everything! I’m gonna make ‘em this weekend. 🥞

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