Recommendations (May 2019)

(Newsletter May 2019)
The Luas broke down one morning last month leaving me and a few hundred other commuters standing in the rain. I listened to The Dropout which made it a little bit more bearable. A week later, the Luas was down again and my bus crashed so I went deep on West Cork. It's well made, but I feel very conflicted about it. Should journalists really be centring a murderer's story? He has since been convicted in absentia by a French court but even at the time the podcast was made, the evidence against him was overwhelming. (I'm purposefully not naming him, google if you're curious.)

Season 3 of Where Should We Begin lived up to the hype. If you want to listen to one audio story, make it this one. I went deep on Literary Friction after listening to their interview with Olivia Laing. The episode on masculinity with Thomas Page McBee is also worth a listen.

While getting over my cold, I read a bunch of books. Deborah Levy's 'The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography' is a small, quiet powerhouse. I read it in a morning and am still thinking about it. I've been trying to read more Irish books this year and Arnold Fanning's Mind on Fire was a gem.

On TV, Season 2 of Fleabag is absolutely worth your time. (The hot priest!) As is Vida, a show about 2 sisters who return home after their mother's death. You can watch the first few episodes for free on YouTube. Speaking of YouTube, the Skin Deep channel is right in my emotionally entangled wheelhouse.

I enjoyed Knock Down The House though the fact that just one of these great candidates won left a depressing aftertaste. The Long Shot is the rom-com we all deserve.