The January Log: Here's How I Spent My Time, Is It Worth Yours?
I unexpectedly fan-girl about Scorsese (what?), dragons (double what?), and "clean writing". 2024 is our year!
Me: No resolutions this January, I’m going to let myself figure it out day by day.
Also me:
January is such a pressure cooker of a month. Coming out the gate on New Year’s Day, everyone wants to become the version of themselves they’ve always thought they could be. That’s not for me this year.
These abstract goals that always remind me of what I could be doing better, or how I could be different, don’t always resolve the questions of “what do I want to be doing?”
Often, these expectations I have of how I could improve have origins in wider societal expectations (get fit!) or career expectations (get rich doing something you love!) or personal dissatisfactions around my (and start eating flax seeds!).
I’m not good at focusing at what I already have, and I’m not trying to turn that into a resolution (be grateful, loser!). I really thrive off validating my actions via productivity, so I’m trying to be gentler, though it’s not always working. This is especially toxic for someone who is still trying to figure out their next job. Thoughts can spiral fast about what am I doing wrong to be unemployed?
This month was full of moments, people, and food that existed not because I earned them but because they…happened.
a 90-minute wait on a Saturday for an Italian restaurant
one Ultimatum binge marathon in New York, and another in Charlotte
a hot tub debate where high school friends divided into “yay” or “nay” camps to discuss someone’s relationship issue
lots of good (purchased) sushi
meeting a new therapist
a dermatologist recommending Lexapro
a Tuesday rom-com movie
super loud and inappropriate conversations at a nice tapas place in Asheville
a last day walking my favorite Brooklyn dog that ended with a new squishy toy
lots of reading
lots of sweatshirt sleeves used as tissues
a new projector and white, foldable screen that turn my bedroom into a movie theater
a great green curry shrimp, a good burger, and a great long walk also in Charlotte
I’m trying to Mary Oliver it, as I told my new therapist. I want to appreciate the little things and make sure I’m just staying afloat day to day. Reading and watching things has helped me work my brain, sometimes too much, but these are my favorite things of this past month.
THE BEST MOVIE I WATCHED: Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple)
What’s it about?
Based on the true story of the Osage murders, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) moves to Osage Nation in Oklahoma after serving in World War I for a job with his uncle William King Hale (Robert DeNiro). After the Osage tribe discovered oil on their land, Hale is one of the first white men to move to the area and integrate himself with the community, earning their respect by learning their native language and becoming a pillar.
When Hale suggests Ernest court Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone) since her family owns a significant amount of “head rights,” he falls in love and marries her. Though Ernest moved to Osage Nation as the Indigenous people were murdered unexpectedly and without investigation, he is torn between his greed and his love for Mollie.
What’s my take?
After ploughing through The Irishman a few years ago to be “with it” culturally, I have felt personally victimized by Martin Scorsese. I don’t think that reflects his work as much as the press and hype around him as a cinematic great (not contested by me) that inflates the word “masterpiece” to equate “a continuation of greatness from one of the most iconic director’s long-running canon.” (Can you tell I’m even nervous to say anything aligning “I don’t think Scorsese is for me” for those cinephiles to reveal to me my own stupidity?)
For the movies I’ve seen, his movies focus on the destruction of male vice, particularly greed, and its quicksand effect of pulling someone under it, even to devastating consequences: Goodfellas, Wolf of Wall Street, Shutter Island, The Irishmen. Though there’s a lot of Godfather influence in the underground, family-tight ensembles, there’s also a Grecian tragedy twist that from the first agreement to sign onto this terrible vice, the character’s life will be derailed and ultimately doomed.
Killers of the Flower Moon? It feels different.
With the underground mob crime of The Irishman or Goodfellas, there’s a bubble around the crime. The open secrecy of these crimes and the inability to prosecute them makes their impacts feel geographically limited in the pursuit of growing their reach and their financial prospects.
Killers of the Flower Moon shows how this greed and crime of the white men clamoring for Osage head rights as an institutional abuse. This story isn’t about Ernest as a white man opening his eyes to the tortures other white men inflict as his Indigenous wife teaches him otherwise á la Green Book or Driving Miss Daisy or The Help. For the first half of the movie, as the orchestrated murders come for her own sisters, we can’t tell what Ernest’s role is. What is he doing to help her? How has this marriage changed him? … Or has it?
The gaslighting of this tribe through financial, medical, and marital institutions feels like a painstaking construction to show how man-made organizations can work like an emotionally abusive partner. For Scorsese to embed that frustration and confused agency takes listening to the Osage narratives and stepping outside of his comfort zone of worlds where murder is common, emotionally consequential, but justified by the characters’ shrunken morality. In this world, the vice is a poison.
I loved this review from Joel Robinson on Letterboxd to understand the wider history and context of Scorsese’s adaptation of a tribal history from someone in the Wahzhazhe (Osage) tribe today:
Before I saw this, I spoke with Jim Gray, former Chief of the Osage Nation. In our conversation, he told me that he's never seen a film immerse itself in a culture like this one did with ours. Having now seen the film, I have to wholeheartedly agree. Language was taught by our teachers, including Christopher Cote who gave a wonderful interview after he saw the film at the LA premiere. The costumes were made by Osage artists. Everything feels so authentic to the time period.
As far as the story itself goes, I do not think that this is quite the story an Osage would've told. I was hopeful from all I read about them refocusing the perspective of the story that we would experience this tragedy through Mollie. However, I do think that viewing this through the lens of Ernest grants the non-Osage audience the opportunity to gain more knowledge and understanding of the murderous scheme as the movie goes on.
Like Christopher said, I think it would take an Osage to make this film from the perspective of an Osage person. The problem is that, like Lily Gladstone said, no one is giving an Osage filmmaker Scorsese money to tell our story right now.
Technically, the acting is phenomenal. DeNiro is in some of the best acting I’ve seen from him in the last decade. I’m rooting for Lily Gladstone to win the Oscar, and I’m stunned that Leo has been snubbed, yet again, by the Academy considering he runs through every emotion under the sun here. The shots are beautiful, and the pacing, for the length of the movie, moves pretty quickly.
So seriously, for 200 minutes, is it worth your time?
It depends. If you are a patient movie lover, buckle in and enjoy on your couch with, don’t kill me, subtitles. (This is a long-ranging ensemble, and the white dude nicknames were crossed in my head otherwise.) Otherwise, watch Lily Gladstone most likely accept a Best Leading Actress awards at the Oscars in March. This feels like the critical favorite to also win Best Picture versus Oppenheimer, if I had to guess where the Academy’s votes will go.
HONORABLE MOVIE MENTIONS OF JANUARY: Spike Jonze’s Her (rewatch); Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (rewatch); Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things (I went in with too-high expectations, but I feel like it warrants a rewatch)
THE BEST BOOK I READ: Family Meal + Fourth Wing
Bryan Washington’s Family Meal
What’s it about?
After his boyfriend dies in an accident, Benton moves back to Houston where his former best friend, T.J., reluctantly comes back into his life. Benton was orphaned after a car accident, and he lived with T.J.’s family. In the time that Benton lived in L.A., T.J.’s dad, the owner of the bakery they all worked in growing up, has also died.
Both Benton and T.J. navigate being openly gay as adults, their sex lives, their grief, and their appreciation of good food. As friends, they have trouble trusting each other and opening up, but the story jumps between Benton, T.J., and Kai, Benton’s deceased boyfriend.
What’s my take?
Bryan Washington is a contemporary Hemingway. I’ve mentioned his debut novel Memorial before because it shook up my world.
His writing style clean, which has been something I’ve thought as I’m reading. What do I mean by “clean” writing?
I would put it on the literary opposite end of “flowery”; think Joyce Carol Oates with a pearl string of adjectives, intentionally crafted run-on sentences with lots of commas to produce a consciousness and dreamy pace. The worlds are lyrical and lush, often with a third-person omniscient point of view.
A clean writing style has simple syntax, one specific and perfectly chosen noun or verb with limited descriptors, and a focus on the concretely physical as exposition. Instead of stepping into the character’s minds, the author writes action (the twitch of a hand) or setting descriptions (a stroller pushed through a crosswalk). Bryan Washington is one of the best examples of a writer today who does it so seamlessly. (Sally Rooney was another author this month who made me think of this!)
Family Meal steps into the sensory world through food, Houston, and sex. Don’t let me mislead you, there’s a lot of sex written in this book, but because of the limited POV, the purpose isn’t to arouse the readers as much as let them in on a cycle or behavior in the characters we care about. Sex and food are the ways that these characters express themselves when they deliberately wall out the rest of the world. They don’t know how to talk to each other, and as readers we also are out in the cold on what has happened before we meet these characters. (We don’t discover how Kai died until the apex of Benton’s arc, but we do know the guilt and see some hints in his behavior.)
This makes this “clean” writing style reflect the character development. The characters don’t even want to exist inside their own minds or want anyone else to join them. As the reader, we’re as distant and invested as Benton and T.J. are to each other, but we can’t read anyone’s mind outside of what they tell us.
When we switch perspectives to see what Benton, T.J., and Kai face that they never showed to each other, we see the other characters literally through new eyes.
Against the backdrop of a rapidly gentrifying Houston, the reverent setting of all Washington’s work including his short story collection Lot, these small moments teach our protagonists and the readers how to break through to understand someone who traumatically blocks others out. How do we connect with each other when we’ve experienced a life-changing pain?
TLDR? The last section of this book made me weepy. Whatever I read after will compete with Family Meal as my favorite read of 2024.
Worth your time? Yes, please.
Rebecca Yarros’s first Emperyean novel, Fourth Wing.
What’s it about?
Hogwarts meets Divergent meets Eragon in this romantasy series about a frail, forced dragon rider named Violet Sorrengail. Though she imagined she was destined for a life of books in her kingdom’s library, her mother, the general, without explanation forces her to become a dragon rider, the most vicious fighter of the kingdom’s military. Most students die on a challenge to enroll—and if they cross this thin bridge and enter the academy, there are still multiple ways to die in classrooms, tournaments, and challenge.
When Violet discovers that Xaden Riorson, the son of the rebellion leader her mother killed, she fears he will kill her. But she surprises herself by passing challenges and winning the low-simmering hatred from Xaden at bay, at least enough to stay alive.
The more time she spends in the academy, the more she wonders about the rebellion and if there’s something the kingdom authorities, including her mother, isn’t tell her.
And Xaden Riorson might not be the villain than even Violet wants to admit. In fact, he could be something else… you guessed it, a smoldering hate-to-love pipeline love interest.
What’s my take?
Let me start by saying I’m a prude most of the time, but I wandered upon a lot of books that incorporated sex scenes as plot or character development (or romance escapism). Just the way January went.
Now that is out of the way.
In contrast to the artistic tasteful nature of Bryan Washington’s sex, this is a romance book set in a dystopian fantasy world. So it gets pretty sexy, and it does want the readers to feel emotionally invested in Violet and Xaden’s budding enemies-to-lovers arc. Trust me, you will!
This book has burnt up BookTok putting it and its sequel Iron Flame on the New York Times bestseller list. But why is it so popular? What makes this different from a different romance series?
First, we learn about the world by moving through the challenges and classes of a school setting the way that a lot of these zillennial women were introduced to Harry Potter. Who doesn’t love being in a school? But we also see that this world Violet lives in is cruel. Death is accepted, dragons can incinerate you for looking them in the eyes, and the common grieving practice is to burn all the possessions of any loved ones to avoid dwelling in the past. Tough. We also get the sense that there’s something going on: some smaller and larger secrets, some private discussions among professors, that suggest to Violet early on that there might be more happening in this kingdom than the higher-ups are admitting.
We have an unlikely success story in Violet, who is visibly frail and has issues with her joints (Yarros in her acknowledgements writes about living with a similar rare joint condition). Her bones break and her joints dislocate easily, and that plus her mother’s reputation puts a target on her back. But she succeeds because of her cleverness. Unlike the clean writing style mentioned before, we are 100% in Violet’s head. Every stray thought she has is explicitly written out. We can see her small crush on the uber muscular Xaden almost before she does.
This is not the most well-written book you’ll ever read. Sometimes I find myself re-reading a sentence to make sure I understand the setting or the takeaway, and it’s written to be accessible to readers of all levels.
But this isn’t about winning the Nobel Prize. It’s about having a really fun read.
What Yarros does incredibly that I admire is structure story. Her outline for these novels must be insane. Each chapter has a great cliffhanger, there’s something new to discover about the other characters and the censorship that becomes more apparent, and there’s a great finale in this first book. It’s roughly 500 pages, but I crushed it in a week, because the pacing is incredibly quick, the ensemble of characters are endearing, and the tropes of a good fantasy in a world on the brink of revolution are all there (threat on the horizon, loyal sidekick, the temptation, the gigantic hurdle that the hero has to cleverly overcome).
Sometimes, it’s just nice to read something fun. Not everything can be Tolstoy, and this is a blast and a wonder in hooking readers in with every page.
Worth your time? If you’re looking for something somewhat spicy…yes.
HONORABLE BOOK MENTIONS: Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You (as an audiobook with an Irish narrator), Elena Ferrante’s Neopolitan Novel finale The Story of the Lost Child (with a gut-dropping ending to the series, Walter White level!)
THE BEST TV SHOW I WATCHED: Showtime’s The Curse.
What’s it about?
Whitney and Asher Siegal (Emma Stone & Nathan Fielder) have a deal for an HGTV pilot about their work to build fully sustainable, spage-age homes while working to support the community facing gentrification in Espagñola where they build the homes. Their producer Dougie Schecter (Benny Safdie), whose last project involved a dating show about a masked burn victim, spices up the show by catching footage of Whitney and Asher without their knowledge.
Without Whitney’s knowledge, Asher gives a small Black girl a $100 bill while Dougie films, and when the cameras stop, Asher asks the girl for the bill back for him to break it into twenties. She curses him, and the rest of the show tracks cringe interactions, awful conversations, and wildly unfortunate events that follow Asher and infect his marriage to Whitney.
What’s my take?
In a TV market where everyone wants to sell their version of Succession or White Lotus to guarantee a hit, this show fits into a larger trend of blurred dramedy lines but stands as one of the most original premises in the last year. It moves between cringe comedy, Fielder’s speciality from Nathan for You and The Rehearsal, and tense drama, Safdie’s Uncut Gems and Good Times trademark. We dive into the behind the scenes of reality TV and the emptiness of its promises for change, and we watch a marriage crumble from incredible camera angles—outside a window, from a wide pan slowly zooming in—that makes us feel like the desperate spectators in the car-crash of their lives.
While Killers of the Flower Moon focuses on white men slyly taking over a community that isn’t theirs a century ago, The Curse looks at the seemingly unintentional ways that white people (primarily women) wield cultural awareness and feigned politeness to influence this Indigenous community to support their own goals, in this case fame and applause from other white people. Whitney and Asher offer jobs to the Espagñola residents whose houses they buy, but those shops have a temporary lease that ends after shooting.
Are we supposed to believe that Asher, surrounded by the selfish Dougie and trapped in an unhappy marriage to Whitney, is cursed because of his surroundings? Or is there a rot in his core that makes this curse and these terrible relationships a cosmic karma? At points, when he’s outed for having a micropenis in a corporate comedy class or when Whitney in an OB/GYN appointment hints that she might have had recent abortions while married to Asher, we feel terrible for him. But is he worth our pity? Or is he just as bad as the rest of them, and his flaw is his willingness to hand over his agency, even to hurt other people?
Emma Stone, while scooping Oscar nominations for producing and starring in Poor Things, gives an insane performance in her TV debut. Whitney, the daughter of rich “slumlords” who finance her insanely expensive and impractical home designs, sees herself as morally superior. Fielder’s vision on this feels like a perfect companion to The Rehearsal (a show about the manipulation of reality, choices, and hollow TV magic), and I am excited to see how he continues with these themes now that he’s mastered a traditionally scripted show.
If you end up watching and get to the end, reach out to me. The finale of this series, for something so tense and cringe, has some of the unintentionally best physical comedy I’ve seen in any dramedy. If I was furrowing my brow or wincing as I laughed before, I laughed out loud by the finale.
Worth your time? Yes, if you can handle incredibly cringe interactions and white people.