Recommendations #15: The best content of 2019
I know we’re already more than a week into 2020, but I wanted to spend this edition highlighting some of my favourite content of 2019.
Book: The Girl He Used To Know by Tracey Garvis Graves
I cried all the way through this incredibly underrated romance novel. It’s a wonderfully sweet story about a socially awkward woman, Annika, who reignites with her ex-boyfriend Jonathan 10 years later. The book is structured with dual timeline. so we read about Annika and Jonathan’s relationship back in college, interspersed with their life a decade later after they re-meet.
Annika is written with such depth, revealing her heartbreaking vulnerabilities and struggles, making this such a touching read. 4.75/5
Book: Fake by Stephanie Wood
One of my favourite non-fiction reads this year was Fake: A startling true story of love in a world of liars, cheats, narcissists, fantasists and phonies. Wood, a journalist, tells the story of her year-plus relationship with ‘Joe’, who she eventually learns lied about everything in his life. Following this revelation, Wood uses her journalistic skills to investigate who this man really is.
This book is like an episode of Catfish, made more incredible by the fact Wood was in a face-to-face relationship with this man.
Wood previously wrote another great piece about this relationship for former workplace, Good Weekend. You can read an extract of Fake here. 4.75/5
Book: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb
This was my second favourite non-fiction read of the year. The book follows Gottlieb in her former life as therapist, during a period when her own life was in turmoil. As a result, we see Gottlieb attending therapy herself, along with the interactions she has with her own clients. The non-linear structure of this book and multiple dimensional characters makes this non-fiction book read like a novel.
Gottlieb writes with such empathy that you end up falling for all the characters, even those initially painted as intolerable. Each chapter offers up a new emotion leaving you crying, laughing or genuinely moved. 4.5/5
Podcast: Unravel season four: Snowball
This was definitely my favourite true crime podcast series of the year. If you missed it, the standalone season follows Triple J content director Ollie Wards, who endeavours to find out what happened to the woman who married his brother and scammed his family 10 years ago.
Snowball is a rare instance of an actual victim being involved in the storytelling process, which gives this story some real heart not often present in true crime podcasts.
I only recently learned there’s an actual video of the peak of this podcast, so be sure to watch that when you’re finished.
Podcast: The Cut on Tuesdays
It would be remiss of me not to mention The Cut on Tuesdays, having recommended several of their episodes in this year’s newsletters. Sadly, host Molly Fischer has announced the end of this podcast, but we’ll always have their episodes on a Lyft ride gone seriously wrong, sperm donor families, and phone calls from your mum.
TV: Unbelievable
If you haven’t watched Unbelievable yet, go and do it right now. This Netflix series about the real life story of Marie Adler and a serial rapist is both devastating and empowering. It’s a must watch for learning about the incredible shortcomings of rape case investigations, and the people working to overcome the system.
Unbelievable is based on the article and book by T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong who originally reported Marie Adler’s story.
Film: Booksmart
This funny, smart, layered and thoroughly entertaining coming-of-age story was my favourite movie of 2019.
Article: The Coast of Utopia by Carina Chocano
I am still screaming at this Vanity Fair article profiling the ‘Byron Bay murfers’, particularly influencer Courtney Adamo. Writer Carina Chocano writes so cleverly about the portrayal of these women’s lifestyle via Instagram and their lives as witnessed behind the scenes.
Article: Don’t Put All Your (Frozen) Eggs in One Basket by Ruthie Ackerman
This New York Times piece about the potentially false hope freezing your eggs offers is both heartbreaking and illuminating. While companies like Facebook and Apple have been offering this procedure to their staff, Ackerman’s story reveals how egg freezing isn’t the quick-fix fertility solution so many women have been led to believe.
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