These are the things that are getting us through this week.
This week, the Lit Hub staff is thriving off IRL engagements—podcast tapings, baby book clubs, canvassing, and music fests. If there’s a theme, it’s congregation. If there’s a theme song, it may be Bjork’s “Human Behavior.” (Emphasis mine.)
We hope you also get outside and have a chance to talk to some people this weekend. Or at the very least, feel their good vibes from the safety of your couch. Here are the actions, books, videos, comedians, and niche musical experiences that are getting us through the week.
Calvin Kasulke has been volunteering for Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayoral candidate running to lower the cost of living for working class city-dwellers. Because “turns out taking active steps to do something good for the place you live, among other like-minded people, is a pretty good (if temporary) antidote to despair.”
As of my hitting publish, McKayla Coyle is 200 pages into John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, which they’re reading for the first time in a two-person book club. We in the TBR fields are instructed to believe the hype. (M: “I literally can’t put it down.”) This reading experience is made extra-magnificent by sharing the book with a friend.
Oliver Scialdone recommends the latest Contrapoints video, which dropped this week. This series of visual essays, brought to you by “ex-philosopher” and “Ph.D dropout” Natalie Wynn, recurs on YouTube. The latest droll, super-compelling episode is a deep dive on the history of conspiracy theories, from J.F.K’s death to Alex Jones’ toppled empire.
Drew Broussard loves “the unrepentant weirdness” of Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney. The new special from your favorite uncle—I’m sorry, comedian—is characteristically laugh-out-loud bonkers while also staying “deeply awkward and raw and strange and sometimes even bad!” Drew tells us to stay for the human element, which makes this strange beast extra delightful.
Molly Odintz is heading to the Honk!TX brass band festival, which hits Austin this weekend. This free community event celebrates the marching band’s biggest stars, and acknowledges the long tradition of German polka in Texas and Northern Mexico. As Molly notes, “Brass bands are great, parades are great, and parading brass bands are even better.”
James Folta had a hoot and a half at the book launch for Alex Gonzalez’s rekt, an “excellent and nasty” debut novel that takes on toxic masculinity in the darkest halls of the internet. He also recommends Limousine, a reading series and podcast with a smart, chatty vibe and regularly great book recommendations.
Contra to my colleagues, I’ve been self-soothing…mostly indoors. In honor of World Theatre Day, this week I gifted myself a subscription to the National Theatre Live streaming service, which is home to dozens of beautifully shot plays from (mostly) over the pond. You can catch Andrew Scott’s one-man Vanya in the current archive, which is great news for those of us who want to see it but don’t have several hundred dollars to spend in New York City this weekend. There’s also this excellent revival of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, and the original cast recording of Sarah Bareilles’ Waitress: The Musical.
Also, the editors at Lux Magazine have prompted me to revisit this famous doc from the organizer Mariame Kaba. If you need a refresher on ways to take action “that are not protesting or voting,” this is a great place to start.
(You know, when you’re ready to get back outside.)
Happy weekend, all! Stay alive out there!
