Culture

I have been wary of The Handmaid’s Tale for at least 5 years, if not more. The book had been on my to-read list for what seems like forever, but for some reason I had imagined the story to be a horrific display of violence that I would find too hard to get through.

It turns out that in this case, fear is worse than the danger itself. However, that is far from being the case in Gilead, the fictional state in The Handmaid’s Tale is set and where a Christian totalitarian regime has replaced the U.S government. Margaret Atwood’s novel was a gripping read that I am very excited to finally tell you about!

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I have added many a feminist book to my to-read list on Goodreads and I have been making my way through them slowly but surely over the past few years. Some, like Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay, shook me to my core (and I am not exaggerating), while others were quieter contributors to the new ideas flying around in my head. I read How to be a woman by Caitlin Moran a few months ago and decided to give you my thoughts on the book here!

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I’m not quite sure how I stumbled upon Restaurant of love regained… The novel’s title made me think of those feel-good books that have overtaken book stores of late, where a young woman goes through a breakup with her boyfriend who she comes to realise was never « the one », moves to a new city or country or changes jobs, opens up a sweet shop or a restaurant or a bakery and then finds new love. These clichés I had in mind prevented me from reading Restaurant of love regained earlier, as I don’t really enjoy that kind of literature that doesn’t challenge me intellectually at all.

However, if I had followed my instincts and avoided the book entirely, I would have missed out on a refreshing and poetic piece of writing! The saying says that you mustn’t judge a book by its cover, but I think it would be useful to remember that you shouldn’t make a snap judgement based on a title either.

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I sat down to watch The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants a few days ago, not expecting much of it and fully intending to work on blog stuff while the film played. But it turned out to be a nice surprise… that even has a 91% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes! In the end, I forgot all about working on other things and concentrated fully on the film. Here’s what I thought.

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I don’t often review French novels, as 90% of the books I read are English or American. But I am half French after all, so it’s time I gave French literature a little love too! I am happy to present Le journal intime d’un arbre (or Secret Diary of a Tree), a 200 page novel I first heard about on the French blog Friendly Beauty. If you speak a little French, I hope you’ll give this novel a try!

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I had not heard of Moonlight before it won the 2017 Oscar for Best Picture. At first, I was mostly just pleased that La La Land didn’t get the award — I really didn’t like that film — but then ended up watching the winning picture in a tiny independant cinema near my work. Afterwards, as I stepped out of the dark cinema and back into the beautiful streets of Paris, I realised that Moonlight very much deserved the Oscar — and, secondarily, a full review on my part.

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For those who may not know, Futurama is an animated sitcom that aired from 1999 to 2013. It tells the story of Philip J. Fry, a pizza delivery boy, who becomes cryogenically frozen, and wakes up in the 30th century. Lost in the retro-futuristic New New York, he is eventually given a job as a delivery boy by his distant descendant, Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth. Farnsworth is a mad scientist who runs an intergalactic delivery company to finance his experiments. Fry is soon joined by a team of goofy co-workers: Leela the cyclop, Bender the robot, Zoidberg the decapodian (an alien crab), Amy, Hermes, and Scruffy (the other three humans). Over the course of seven seasons, the crew goes on either dangerous or absurd adventures, making them stumble into the most improbable situations. A pet project of Matt Groening’s invention, Futurama had a tough time hitting the mainstream, Fox executive deeming it too strange and complicated for a cartoon. The show was cancelled from 2003 to 2010 (!), because it failed to gather the hype The Simpsons had. Of course, the show can seem a bit off-putting at first (I know I didn’t love it right away), but re-watching it after a few years, I realize few cartoons could have got away with such a high brow concept, and still be so entertaining. Today, I think Futurama has since been accepted in the very select club constituted by The Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park. This is why I am giving you a shiny new list of 10 favorite episodes of mine.

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