Here’s what’s making us happy this week.
Happy Friday, Lit Hub readers! This week, as the cold rolls in up East, we’re returning to gratitude. Your favorite masthead has been braving the weather and blessing the couch.
Oliver Scialdone is looking forward to the Brooklyn Expo of Comics. This weekend, the free public celebration will take place in Williamsburg. Speakers include illustrator royalty like Chris Ware, Lisa Hannawalt, and Wendy Xu.
Our community editor is thrilled to find a successor to the late, great Comic Arts Brooklyn—even though he couldn’t grab tickets for a fireside chat with Caroline Cash and Alison Bechdel.
Down South, my colleague Molly Odintz is also awaiting a social event of the season. She’s skipping the Texas Book Fest this weekend to attend the 21st Street Co-op’s 52nd birthday party.
As a former resident of the first cooperative housing in North America to be “purpose-built as a co-op” (!), our CrimeReads editor is hyped to fete collective living. Especially at a moment that’s seen pretty great communal vibes in Texas.
Our podcasts editor Drew Broussard is riding the high of a new show. Black Doves on Netflix is a a fun spy thriller drizzled with political intrigue. Drew, who “forgot how much [he] enjoy[s] Keira Knightley as an actress,” is appreciating Ben Whishaw’s long gazes and a certain holiday-friendly vibe.
“I’m into it like I’m into my cozy sweaters,” says Drew. “Which is to say: very much so, right now.”
James Folta also reports from the cozy couch. Our staffer—and one wizard behind the Literary Bracket you should all have filled out by now—is spinning records this week. Inspiration comes from Habibi Funk, a Berlin-based label and deejay outfit that digs through crates to put out lost gems from the Arab music world.
James has been making his way through the H-Funk archive, but a standout so far is a compilation called Beirut City Pop.
The ten featured tracks from Lebanon’s “private press cassette scene of the late 1970s and 1980s” are all excellent. But James has been “especially drawn in by the delicate longing in ‘You Turn Me On,’ and ‘Someday,’ which has a killer main riff and a warbling synth solo about two minutes in.”
I, Brittany Allen, have been enjoying whatever the opposite of cozy is. (Thrills? Er, peril?) A buzzy new 4k restoration of Ken Russell’s The Devils is all over the arthouses this week, and I caught a screening Monday afternoon at the IFC Center.
Censored in England and the States, this hyper-theatrical allegory (based on an Aldous Huxley book, natch) depicts a sex-crazed convent, a highly amoral Catholicism, and the OG hot priest.
The beautiful new print honors what’s sacred and profane in this lush epic—from Derek Jarman’s spiraling sets to Vanessa Redgrave’s disturbed shoulder acting.
It’s one of those film experiences that’s hard to honor in print. So, suffice it to say—get thee to a nunnery.
Wishing you a weekend of free public fun, killer riffs, and remembered faves.
Brittany Allen
Brittany K. Allen is a writer and actor living in Brooklyn.
