☀️ Sunday Sharies: July 2023
It’s the last Sunday of the month, and you know what that means. There’s a lot of stuff we’d like to share that won’t fit in our usual Thursday TV newsletter. Some of that stuff is here. Read on for a special monthly peek into what your trusty Double Take duo has been watching, reading, listening to, and more.
— Jess Spoll and Jenni Cullen
First time reading? Subscribe to receive Double Take weekly.
An ~Announcement~ from your Double Take writers: We decided to delay the release of our paid tier for the newsletter due to the ongoing strikes. We’ll revisit this in the future, but you can continue to enjoy all of our content for free, including our Sunday Sharies. If you do want to support us, please send us to a friend!
Jess: It took me a long time to get through my book club pick for this month, The Measure by Nikki Erlick. I liked the concept a lot, but it was hard to get into and much of the middle felt rather tedious (3/5).
Grady Hendrix, king of the campy horror novel, released a new book called How to Sell a Haunted House that I was really looking forward to, but it let me down. It was very heavy on the action and gory descriptions, and felt cornier than his other stories (2/5).
In my quest to read all of the books that Taylor Jenkins Reid has published, I just finished One True Loves. It had an intriguing premise — a woman who lost her husband years ago and is newly engaged to someone else finds out that her husband is still alive — but it fell apart towards the end (3/5).
The Inheritance Games trilogy continues to entertain me; I finished the 2nd book in about 2 days. It’s pretty silly, and this one definitely didn’t live up to the first, but it’s just so easily consumable (4/5).
Jenni: I’ve been reading more in July thanks to a lot of travel this month. I started off with Emily Henry’s contentious(?) new novel Happy Place (I liked it well enough - 3.5/5 stars), then moved onto an interesting fantasy/sci-fi that sort of reminded me of Ender’s Game, called Gideon the Ninth (3/5 stars). While at the beach with family, I finished Violet Made of Thorns (2.5/5 stars), a retelling of a couple of famous fairy tales, and Eligible (3/5 stars), a retelling of Pride and Prejudice. Rounding out the month by starting more Colum McCann, I’m currently reading Apeirogon and so far it’s many thumbs up.
Jess: It’s been too hot to run outside for the most part, but when I do get out I’ve been listening to a new thriller audiobook: The Soulmate by Sally Hepworth. It follows a woman who lives on a tall drop-off point near the ocean in coastal Australia; her husband has prevented a handful of people from jumping to their deaths, but when he fails to keep one woman from jumping, it turns out there’s more to the story than it seems. My only criteria for audiobooks that I run to is that they be suspenseful, and it is, but it’s mostly unremarkable thus far.
Jenni: The road trip soundtrack for this month has been mostly Weezer and the Beatles and the Strokes in rotation. Bops abound & all are great for singing along in the car with the windows open.
Jess: Shockingly, I actually made things this month! I made “Blueberry Boy Bait” as a breakfast snack cake and it was delish. Apparently it’s named that way because the original creator said that teenage boys couldn’t get enough of it. Just call me a teenage boy! I also made peanut butter-toffee-pretzel cookies using a modified version of this recipe. I would recommend using a tad less flour than it calls for, though.
Jenni: My aunt and uncle had a bounty of cherries from their backyard tree this year so July has been a month of much baking! We made a buckwheat cherry galette, a cherry tart, and dry ice cherry chocolate ice cream. Unfortunately I don’t have any recipes for these because we used a “wing it/YouTube it” combo technique for everything, but highly recommend some cherry bakes this summer.
Jess: I simply can not stop watching Psych. Somehow I managed to have never seen a single episode until about a week or so ago, and now I’m halfway through Season 2. I’m also enjoying the second season of The Afterparty on Apple TV+.
Like everyone else in the country, I went to see the Barbie movie last week, and it was a lot of fun. I’ve read valid criticisms of it, but I had a good time watching it, so I’ll leave you with that. “I’m Just Ken” has been stuck in my head for days.
Jenni: This month, the prince of long-form YouTube content, Mike’s Mic, returned with an “Appropriately Unhinged Recap of Lost Season 1”. It is a whopping 2 and a half hours, and I ate it up. As someone who has only seen a few seasons of Damon Lindelof’s most famous show and has always wanted to know what happened (but not enough to watch it all), I am so excited for the rest of this series.
Jess: I’m always a little late to trends; I’ve been seeing everyone in cute athletic dresses, so I finally purchased this one from Abercrombie. It’s perfect for when you want to look put together but you don’t want to sweat in your fancy clothing. I’m also truly obsessed with these athletic shorts from Abercrombie. I have them in 6 different colors, and they’re great for running because they don’t ride up, and the double lining prevents chafing.
Jenni: As mentioned, I had a few trips this month - most recently, a wedding in Hawaii! - so my purchases have been mostly summer trip essentials like face SPF and new Sunski sunglasses.
First time reading? Subscribe to receive Double Take weekly.