The August Roundup

Delivered a little late, but I was at a film festival.

Hello my Lovely Reader!

That was that. Summer is officially over. We closed it off with a lovely family road-trip to the shores of Lake Huron. We sang old country songs in the car, ate mandazi lathered with Nutella for breakfast, hiked through the forests of the Bruce Peninsula and sat around the fire discussing life, the universe and shows we’re obsessed with.

Speaking of which, August was the month the first batch of Emily in Paris Season 4 came out. Naturally, I watched all 5 episodes in one two days, and I hereby declare myself a Team Gabriel member— Emily started the show with a Gabriel crush, she should end it with one too. And with that I move on to ↓

📚 In the world of books

I started off August with

✼ Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld. The book does for ‘late night New York comedy sketch shows’ what Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow does for video games. Reading it, you feel like you’re spending a week behind the scenes of Saturday Night Live.

The female lead, Sally Milz, is a sketch writer for “The Night Owl,” a late night live comedy show. When her male colleague, Danny Horst starts dating and gets engaged to a beautiful actor, she comes up with a sketch called The Danny Horst Rule, about the double standards of heterosexuality, “where men at TNO date above their station, but women never do.” But as the romcom fates have it, in walks that week’s guest-host, pop sensation and heart throb, Noah Brewster, and we spend the rest of the book seeing how her theory is turned on its head.

✼ Just Like a Movie by Francesca Bossert, which is hilarious and sweet and spicy too, about a recent divorcee and a pop star she’s in love with. If you haven’t read Francesca’s interview here, she has quite an original story of how the book came about, which just goes to show that every writer’s journey to publication is different.

✼ All Fours by Miranda July, a novel I got recommended by

Petya K. Grady

, who writes a fantastic BookStack. But— I have mixed feelings about the book, which, can I just say from the start, is superbly written— and it’s okay to have mixed feelings about a superbly written book. I still recommend it.

The story starts off with the character, a wife, mother and successful multi-media creative, embarking on a solo road trip from Los Angeles to New York City as a gift to herself on her 45th birthday. Except she doesn’t take the road trip. She stops in a town thirty minutes away from her home. Without giving away any spoilers, what she decides to do in this town, was for me, at first, audacious and hilarious and completely different from what I would have expected, and I was so excited about the possibilities of where the story would go.

But then, after twisting my expectation, disappointingly, the author returned to the more predictable plot. I guess it was a necessary move for the kind of story and themes she wanted to tackle— aging, identity, and sexuality. But still— a small part of me wished Miranda July would have done it without the character falling in love and pining over a younger man.

✼ After reading a heavy book, I’ll often move to something a little lighter, which I did with Not In Love by Ali Hazelwood, a stem romance, with just the right mix of conflict, drama and spiciness I need from a romcom.

🎬 In the world of film

I watched two this month:

✼ Trap, a thriller, written, directed and produced by M. Night Shyamalan, about a dad who takes his daughter to the concert of her favourite pop-star, Lady Raven (played by M. Night Shyamalan’s daughter), only to find out from a chatty vendor there, that the whole concert is a trap set by the FBI to catch a serial killer who he, the dad, happens to be. I was surprised to find out that the film’s premise was inspired by an actual sting operation in the1980s known as Operation Flagship that resulted in the arrest of 101 wanted fugitives.

✼ It Ends With Us, the film adapted from Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel and directed by Justin Baldoni.

Sadly, although the film was supposed to be about breaking the cycle of domestic violence, I found the whole subject somewhat trivialized in the movie’s promotion. On its press tour, the only one to actually focus on the subject of domestic violence was the director. Blake Lively, the star of the film, seemed more inclined to talk about its fashion choices and her hair care line. A wasted opportunity, I thought. To add to that, the film came with a lot of behind the scenes drama à la Don’t Worry Darling, which I have to admit had me more hooked than the film itself.

🍨 In the world of food

Thanks to

David Lebovitz

’s recipe in The Perfect Scoop, I discovered how to make the perfect blueberry cheesecake ice cream. I had to adapt the measurements to fit my Ninja Creami, but I’m here to report it was exactly what I’d been looking for. I’d been hunting for a cheesecake ice cream recipe for a while when I came across this one. It was delicious, and if I may boldly say, even more delightful than real cheesecake. And also— making your own ice cream is life changing!

On that sweet note, I’ll say, thank you for reading August’s roundup. Let me know in the comments below what you’ve been reading, watching or doing. I love a good recommendation.

Until next time,

XO Ingrid