Wondering what to do with your upcoming free time? Good thing we have some suggestions for what you should be watching, playing, reading, listening to, etc.
Lauren’s Book Pick: Atmosphere – In honor of every sapphic’s current astronaut obsession Christina Koch, now is the perfect time to read Taylor Jenkins Reid’s newest novel, Atmosphere. Set during the early 80s, the book follows Joan Goodwin, an astronomer training to become one of the first women to make it through NASA’s space program and into that starry sky that has inspired such wonder throughout so much of her life. Those such as myself who are still suffering from the emotional damage wrought by other TJR protagonists, such as Daisy Jones and Evelyn Hugo, fear not, Joan is about as unmessy as they come. That’s not to say her life is without drama or complications — the book starts with a catastrophic disaster in space, after all — she’s just not the one complicating it 98% of the time. She’s safe, often speaking in lessons you’d likely learn while watching her beloved Sesame Street — love is love, all people are born of the same stardust, women are awesome and exceedingly capable — which, in all fairness, the world could definitely be reminded of daily. Some might find this seeming lack of flaws boring, but I appreciated the earnestness in the way she interacts with the world. And, honestly, sometimes it’s nice to just sink into the fluff of a woman discovering who she is and who she might love without heartrending angst (though I did still cry twice when the angst did finally angst). Sometimes a girl just wants to giddily kick her feet for hundreds of pages — I love you, Vanessa Ford.
Ben’s Movie Warning: Mission Impossible 2 – Though I usually like both John Woo’s unique filmmaking style and the moderately-entertaining-at-worst Mission Impossible movies, mixing the two just did not work. MI2 has some strong action beats, sure, but it is so tonally different from the first that it doesn’t feel like a sequel; what it does feel like is an action flick that’s unsure of what kind of action flick it actually is. It also feels like, more than a few times, Woo and Cruise were heavily influenced by Brosnan-era James Bond, and I’m sure glad that didn’t set the tone for the following MI movies. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some campy Bond, but I don’t think we’d have so many Mission Impossibles if the franchise hadn’t solidified its own identity with Mission Impossible 3 — my favorite Mission Impossible.
Ben’s TV Pick: Primal (Season 3) – What Genndy Tartakovsky (creator of cartoon classics like Samurai Jack and the 2003 Star Wars: Clone Wars miniseries) and his team have done with Primal is astonishing, easily the animation legend’s magnum opus — maybe even one of the greatest TV series ever created. The entire, emotionally weighty story surrounding caveman Spear and tyrannosaur Fang isn’t told through dialogue, but thoughtful world-building, endearing, believable characters with distinct personalities, and some of the best animation I have ever seen. And even though we’ve only been given what feel like small glimpses of Primal’s wider world three seasons in, you can tell it’s one that is vibrant, lived in, metal-as-fuck, and packed with all kinds of insanity that Tartakovsky could continue to blow audiences away for dozens of seasons to come. However, if the story of Primal‘s core characters does indeed end here I’ll still be over the moon about it. I could go on, but like the show itself, more words really wouldn’t do Primal justice.
So what do you think about these picks? What content did we miss over the past two however many weeks while we were spending time with these? Be sure to leave a comment below letting us know about everything (both current and simply new to you) you’ve been consuming lately!
Middle of the Row 