Here’s what’s making us happy this week.
This was a week of adventure. Here at Lit Hub, we’re happy to be going places—mentally and literally. Into the wild, or the kitchen. Into a new romance. We’re headed uptown and skyward and forward. We are not dimension bound.
I, Brittany Allen, spent this week happily anticipating one of my favorite cultural events of the year—the New York Film Festival. Mostly this has meant a lot of listing and mapping and Letterbox scheming (all activities that make me happy, in and of themselves). There’s a lot to look forward to in indie and off-Marvel film this season.
I’ve already hyped the literary adaptations to watch out for, but new additions to my personal festival radar include this re-release of Ossie Davis’ Black Girl, adapted from J.E. Franklin’s hit 70s play, and Kelly Reichardt’s latest chamber piece. Give me quiet character studies and under-celebrated revivals!
Julia Hass is obsessed with Jet Fuel, a new newsletter/blog/time-bound experiment. Every week, architect and author Julia Doyle uploads a new culture essay or musing on “books, TV shows, essays she loves, [or] theories she wonders about.” The work is fleeting. Each Friday, a piece disappears, and another takes its place.
Says Julia: “[Doyle’s] writing is amazing: labyrinthian and surprising, familiar and poignant. This week it was about the idea of crushes, about vulnerability, hope, and seasons changing. It may be gone by the time you read this, but something just as exciting and satisfying will be sure to have taken its place.”
The natural world is thrilling Dan Sheehan this week. Or to hear him tell it, “it’s Fat Bear Week, motherf*ckers!” Tis the season “when Alaska’s chonky ursine overlords are loading up on salmon for the winter.” To celebrate, Dan’s dragging the family to Yellowstone to behold “some of our own husky, hyperphagia-heavy Grizzlies.” Godspeed, grizzly men.
James Folta tried a new King Arthur focaccia recipe and apparently, “it whips!” James says this spin on the classic flatbread is “a lot fluffier than what I usually make, but I think I’ve finally got putting caramelized onions on top without burning them dialed in.” Newbies and bread-curious, take note. “Focaccia’s a good one if you’re new to baking.”
Jonny Diamond recently discovered that “the creator of one of the all-time great TV series” is a Lit Hub fan. Real ones will know this show-runner by his conspiracy theories, his love of a slow boil, and his hand in building the greatest ever primetime will-they-or-won’t-they. Though our editor fears dating himself with this clue, he “used to go to weekly watch-parties of this show in college.”
And speaking of putting the truth out there. Molly Odintz happily wishes to soft-launch the new boyfriend, who she “seduced with a ‘Deny Defend Defund’ shirt and an enormous biography of Pancho Villa.” Romance, people. That’s the best adventure there is. (Or as Molly puts it, “Who needs Hinge when you have hatred of the American healthcare system?”)
Wishing you week of hardly working, mostly questing. May your days be surprising and satisfying.
