☀️ Sunday Sharies: September 2023

dark fantasy books to read this fall, a yummy pasta recipe, and the world's best tank-top

A belated adieu to September. 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

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Jess: I recently tried to read Hell Bent, the sequel to the dark academia / dark fantasy novel Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, and I realized that I recalled absolutely nothing from the first book. So I made my book club (specifically the “Fantasy Club” spin-off to my main book club) read Ninth House so that I could re-read it. It holds up! (4/5 then and 4/5 now).

Having seen a lot of early praise for I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai, my hopes were high. Too high. The premise is intriguing and right up my alley: a podcaster returns to her high school to teach a course and begins investigating the decades-old murder of her former roommate. But while it’s marketed as a thriller, it really wasn’t one. And it seems to be trying very hard to say something deep about societal issues, but the commentary is hackneyed and shallow. (2/5)

As you might have noticed, I get annoyed when a book is marketed as a thriller but it isn’t one, and lucky me! I read two of those this month. The other, The Quiet Tenant by Clémence Michallon, is described as a “pulse-pounding psychological thriller”, but was a painfully slow drama with absolutely no suspense. It’s also ridiculously far-fetched, and is purportedly sympathetic to women but includes some of the most dense and one-dimensional characterizations of women that I’ve ever read. (2/5)

Jenni: At the start of September I finished the popular work of speculative fiction by R.F. Kuang: Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution (3.5/5 stars). A few friends had warned me going in that they loved the start of the book but weren’t crazy about the ending, and I have to agree. I was pulled in immediately by the premise and the prose, but the final third of the book had me wishing for more consistent character development and a better-paced conclusion.

To further put myself in a fall mood, I doubled down on dark academia and read The Secret History by Donna Tartt next (4/5 stars). This did not disappoint in the slightest. A modern greek tragedy set in an idyllic small liberal arts college town, this book cast a spell on me for all three days it took me to devour it. (Sorry I said devour, that’s gross. But the book was good).

I rounded out the month on a lighter note with Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld (3/5 stars). It was cute enough, and I liked the obvious references to Saturday Night Live and the culture of its writing staff, but I don’t know that the “celebrity and normie fall in love despite all odds” trope is really for me.

Jess: Sorry to only ever talk about the same few musical artists, but Olivia Rodrigo released her sophomore album this month, GUTS, and it’s everything I could have ever wanted. It’s the pop-rock album of my dreams. It’s Avril Lavigne meets Alanis Morissette and it sounds like my childhood.

In other news from my go-to artists, Zach Bryan released MORE new music between last month’s Sunday Sharies and this month’s. The man never sleeps, I guess! His newest release, a 5-song EP called Boys of Faith, includes a song featuring Noah Kahan, another of my faves.