I vowed not to bring new books into my home until I read all the ones I already have. I failed. Below, I’m sharing the things I’m watching, reading, listening to and thinking about that I love and think you might too.

Movie

Peter Hujar’s Day by Ira Sachs

On December 18, 1974, Linda Rosenkrantz asked her friend Peter Hujar to write down everything he did one day. Hujar met Rosenkrantz at her apartment on 94th street the following day where she asked him about it in detail. She tape-recorded their conversation. Those tapes were recently rediscovered and made into a movie by Ira Sachs and a book by Stephen Koch and the Peter Hujar Estate.

I am savoring this movie. I’m watching it in snatches—it’s that satisfying.

(Here’s a link to the book)

TV

Beef Season 2 on Netflix

A young Gen Z couple who work at the Monte Vista Point Country Club record an alarming fight between their millennial boss and his wife, and blackmail them for health insurance. A class war ensues. It’s delicious. I gulped it down.

The Dark Wizard by Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen

During the pandemic, I got addicted to climbing documentaries. There’s only one episode so far of this, but I’m loving it. It’s about Dean Potter, a climbing legend battling mental health conditions.

You can read about it here, but prepare for spoilers.

Just finished:

The Shame by Makenna Goodman

"Alma's reckless fantasy, of complete domestic abandonment, speaks volumes about the emotional and physical labor of homestead motherhood. Goodman's debut, an engrossing page-turner, is equal parts psychological case study and searing commentary of parenting and capitalism." Booklist

She’s such a great writer. I’m really excited to read Helen of Nowhere.

On the Calculation of Volume V.I by Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara J Haveland 

"What is a day? It is a cell of time that can be subdivided into smaller units: 24 hours; 1,440 minutes; 86,400 seconds. It is a human fiction, a means of imposing order on an unfathomable duration called life. It is an embodied experience that can feel long or short, interesting or boring, each a unique confluence of meteorological, physiological, and sociological variables. Billions of us go through one at a time. Afterward, we expect the next to come, punctually and without fail. But what if it doesn't? What would we do? Ask Tara Selter. The time-stuck protagonist of Solvej Balle's miraculous septology, who has been trapped in the same day with no end in sight. On the Calculation of Volume is a literary phenomenon nearly 40 years in the making. It's a speculative masterwork and the long-awaited comeback of a now-62-year-old writer."
—Cat Zhang, New York Magazine

I wasn’t sure whether I liked this book or not until I finished the first volume. When I couldn’t stop thinking about it, I hopped over to McNally Jackson and bought the next in the series.

Just Starting:

On the Calculation of Volume V.II by Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara J Haveland 

“Solvej Balle is a prodigious writer who, miraculously, finds the subtlest, most fascinating differences in repetition. You have never read anything like On the Calculation of Volume. This unforgettable novel is a profound meditation on the lonely, untranslatable ways in which each one of us inhabits time--and the tenuous yet indelible traces we leave in the world. Day after day.” — Hernan Diaz, author of Trust

So far, so good!

The Diary of Anais Nin V.I (apparently, I like a series!) 1931-1934

The first in a nine volume series in the influential artist and thinker's own words, covering the time when Nin is about to publish her first book and ends when she leaves Paris for New York.

"One of the most remarkable diaries in the history of letters."—Los Angeles Times

Friends, this is a banger.

Book:

Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife by Francesca Wade

"[A] masterpiece of biography...Wade shows a great sensitivity to the morality of biography writing...She’s an exceptional writer, able to draw out the legend, the contradictions and the reality in a fully coherent, dizzyingly comprehensive triptych... She cares as much about the work as she does the complex, brilliant and contradictory person who created it. Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife, exhaustively researched and beautifully written, will become the definitive biography."
—The Telegraph

I’ve been listening to this while I was Busy the dog. It’s such good company.

Songs:

Tití Me Preguntó by Bad Bunny

Tu Pun Pun by El General

Sound of the Sea by Stick Figure

Commonplace Books.

Especially the one I just started.

And how the attribution for a quote I love can’t be properly identified. Some people say Kundera wrote this. Others said Bukowski. Doesn’t feel like Bukowski to me, though. Do you know?

“When nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want…what do you call it, freedom or loneliness?”

What are you reading, watching and thinking about? Tell me in the comments!

Until next week, I will remain…

Cover image of Linda Rosenkrantz by Chuck Close