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Media Round-Up: August 8, 2019

Image of pink, green, and light purple umbrellas suspended in the air between two buildings.

Hello!

Even with posting on my blog every day this month, I still spend significantly more time consuming content than I do creating it. With that in mind, here is a little roundup of some of the content I have been enjoying in this post-camp-pre-semester portion of my life.

TV Show

Superstore is a character-driven series about the employees of Cloud 9 (a thinly-concealed stand-in for Walmart). After watching America Ferrera in Ugly Betty and Ben Feldman in Drop Dead Diva, it is interesting to watch them in entirely different roles. Watching this show makes going to Walmart feel like a visit to a fully-immersive Superstore theme park. The between-scene cuts to bizarre antics happening at the store are one of my favorite little touches.

Music

I have been almost exclusively listening to Heathers. Somehow, I have become thoroughly desensitized to the fact that I am listening to a musical about deception and murder. Still, I sometimes wonder why/how this musical got made in the school-shooting era. (Please send music recommendations. I don't think it's healthy to listen to Heathers this many times consecutively.)

Podcasts

One of my longtime favorite podcasts is By the Book. Hosts Jolenta Greenberg and Kristen Meinzer live by a self-help book for two weeks, and then judge whether the book worked for them. There is a vibrant Facebook community of By the Book fans, and Jolenta and Kristen address listener feedback in biweekly "Epilogue" episodes.

A new favorite podcast has been Wildly Tarot. I generally have a difficult time listening to tarot podcasts, which often feature hosts using soft voices and New Age language that puts me on edge. Wildly Tarot, however, is just two friends reading tarot, and reviewing tarot books and decks. I love this podcast's fun and casual vibes.

Books

I have been having a pretty lazy and slow reading week. I finished Shortest Way Home by Pete Buttigieg a few days ago. As I read, it occurred to me that, with his Harvard background and military experience, Buttigieg is a much more traditional presidential candidate than I initially thought. I enjoyed learning more about his life, but his tendency to dump bits of information about his present life while narrating the past sometimes took me out of the story.

Currently, I am reading An Unlikely Story by Julián Castro. I don't feel as though I have gotten far enough along in this book to give a proper review, but I have been enjoying learning more about Castro's experiences and background.


What media have you been consuming? I hope that you have an amazing evening/night/day. Until next time, I wish you all the best.

Sincerely,
Lydia
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