Wednesday Recs — Jan. 3rd, 2024

Weekly recommendations on what to read, watch, listen to, and think about

Jan 03, 2024

This is the first revamped Wednesday Recs post ever, so I’m making it available free for all subscribers! As my 5-year-old says: Perfectorama!

(Note: He is kind of a nerd.)

(Another note: It’s entirely my fault.)

If you’re a free subscriber and enjoy this post, consider upgrading to a paid subscription for just $5/mo. to get a post like this every week with new recommendations on great things to read, watch, and experience — plus a short personal ramble from me about a wide range of stuff.

In case you missed it, in the last week I sent out my official announcement of a new paid subscription option.

I also kicked off Year 2 of Still Human with an essay about electrocuting dead bodies. Okay, not just about electrocuting dead bodies — it’s really about seeking out art and experiences that take us out of our comfort zone.

This Friday, watch for an essay on Jean Meslier: the atheist priest.

I recently came across Still Human subscriber
Maura McHugh
and her wonderful newsletter
Splinister
. I instantly felt it would be a perfect match for a lot of Still Human readers. Here’s one of her recent posts about everyday wonder. It talks about NASA and infrared lasers a lot, so you know I’m in.
As someone who thinks and writes a lot about what it means to be happy, and why we’re often so bad at it, I instantly connected with this post on
All Parts
by
Eliza Butler
about the ways we choose the things that are worst for us
I’m currently visiting America with my family for the first time as a resident of another country. It’s…weird. And wonderful. But weird. I came across this beautiful cover of Paul Simon’s “America” by First Aid Kit while driving through my old neighborhoods and it got me feeling some kind of way
Speaking of music and place and feeling some kind of way, returning to America in winter means opening up the virtual storage crate and dusting off the winter songs — the ones that I love but just don’t quite feel right in our new coastal setting. I’m speaking, of course, of Fleet Foxes.
Foo Fighters and H.E.R. have no business collaborating to make something as beautiful as this song
One of my students this past semester is Austrian and sent me a playlist of European music, including this song that’s (I think?) about cigarettes. Maybe? I have no idea, but it’s stuck in my head.
My brother Nate is my source of all dark-and-heavy-but-incredible TV and movie recommendations. This month, on his advice, I watched the six-part miniseries Black Bird with Taron Egerton and Paul Walter Hauser and was blown away by it. But just a heads-up — it’s very heavy.
Like history? How about a history of the transmission of knowledge — from cave walls to Wikipedia — from the OG history king Simon Winchester? Read it and become a Winchesterian like me.
Johann Hari wrote one of my favorite books on escaping screens, and now he’s written one of the most intriguing books on depression. Do I agree with everything in it? I don’t think I do. But it will absolutely get you thinking.
Anything I know about social media trends I know because my wife rushes into whatever room I’m in and shows me them on her phone. The most recent one is really, really funny and really, really juvenile.

I love everything about books, except maybe just this one thing:

There’s something about a person reading a book that seems so…uninterruptible. Imposing. Serious.

I wish that it was possible to casually pull out a book for a few moments, the way you might pull out a phone, and rattle off a couple pages while folks are just hanging around and not give the impression that you’re doing some Serious and Intellectual Reading and Shall Not Be Disturbed.

As someone with a partner and two children — and someone who’s currently visiting family and spending lots of time surrounded by loved ones in a big, wonderfully crowded house in the U.S. — I spend a lot of time with other people around. People I love, much more than I love reading. I never want to give those people the impression that I’ve “chosen” reading over conversation with them. I want to be interrupted! Please, interrupt me! I swear I’m not Having Reading Time, I’m just hanging out and reading a few pages the way someone might casually check Instagram!

All this rambling to say that finally, after years of resistance, despite it going against all of my instincts, despite it feeling so damn icky…

I’ve started reading books on my phone.

I dry-heaved just writing that.

Okay, I’m being dramatic. And yes, I see the irony of writing about not wanting to read on digital screens in a newsletter that exclusively exists on digital screens.

But I have genuinely resisted doing any reading of actual books on my phone for years. It just always felt like a wasted opportunity — like watching Oppenheimer on a small home TV, or eating sugar-free ice cream. I could never help but miss the real thing. I want the flupflup sound of pages turning, that otherworldly smell of paper and binding.

But, it turns out, I want the words more.

So I’m finally giving in. I’ve downloaded an e-reader app and started getting ebooks in addition to whatever physical book I happen to be reading at the moment.

It’s…fine. Hopefully it will grow on me.

Am I just dramatic? Or am I not dramatic enough?

Let me know in the comments.

-T

What have you been reading, watching, listening to, or doing? Let us all know!

Wednesday Recs — Jan. 3rd, 2024

Weekly recommendations on what to read, watch, listen to, and think about

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