This book, that movie, this song.
I don't obsess in half-measures.
As always, check out the audio version of this post to hear me read this post out loud. Listen on your commute, while doing chores, on a walk, etc. This isn’t quite hanging out together IRL, but it’s the closest I can mange. I think today’s is a particularly good listen as it contains a fun deep dive, recommendations, and a good dose of nostalgia.
In today’s newsletter: Five music/movie/TV/book pairings that I can’t stop thinking about, including a deep dive into a musical mystery, a nostalgic favorite movie, and more.
I like to create little worlds. Some may call this romanticization. That works. In the past, I’ve called it dressing up my life. I love to build out days and moments and experiences, even if said experience is deciding to go see a movie at 5:45 on an ice-cold February Friday, then going to Chili’s after, and wearing the perfect oversized fisherman’s sweater for the whole event. It’s not about fanciness or novelty or perfection. It’s about designing moments I want to live inside of. Sometimes this moment happens to be ordering a Triple Dipper with my husband and discussing the pros and cons of the movie we just watched in detail. What can I say? I don’t need much.
A simpler way to describe this is that I love thinking of how things go together. A certain activity makes me conjure images of a particular outfit, or a specific type of weather fits with a type of music, so I make sure to put them together. My husband and I watched the latest episode of Severance the morning after a snowstorm and I have to say that the experience really was heightened by the snowy scenes of the show mirroring those outside. I get a real kick out of things like this in a way that seems outsized compared to most people’s reactions. Or maybe it’s more like, to most people, this kind of thing is just called, you know, living life. To me, though, it really does sometimes feel like daydreaming in real time. I still remember when I would fantasize about being in my 20s or 30s, picturing how I’d look when I ran errands or sat at my desk and worked. In those daydreams, I had whole scenes planned, detailed worlds of color and wardrobe and music. So why give it up now? I set the scene whenever I can.
One of the ways that I love to do this is through pairing to movies/TV, books, and music. I love the experience of falling in love with a book, then finding a song that sounds like it should be on its soundtrack, then making a whole playlist. I love doing this for books I’m writing (just started this one), too, of course. I love watching a television show or movie and identifying a specific feeling that I got from it, then finding a book that made me feel the same way. In other words, I love taking a thing I love and amplifying it in other ways, multiplying its pleasure as much as possible. I’m sure we all do this in our own ways.
So today I wanted to give you some pairings. They are all a little different. In some cases, the media is directly linked in terms of theme or content. In others, the vibes are similar. In some, I just feel strongly if you love one, then you will love the other. It’s not complicated. But it is fun. I hope it will help you discover a new favorite movie, book, or song, too.
Daisy Jones & The Six / The Civil Wars
Gather round, kids, and join me down my favorite rabbit hole of 2023. Like most people, I loved the television adaptation of Daisy Jones & The Six. It was fun, sexy, and jam-packed with excellent outfits. Admittedly, I have not read the book, but I really enjoyed the show and most of the accompanying, months-long press coverage that surrounded it. A lot of this boiled down to a slew of TikToks about Stevie Nicks and her relationship with fellow Fleetwood Mac band member Lindsey Buckingham, and of course their famous Silver Springs performance. This is also a nice little media pairing with Daisy Jones.
The connection that I was most interested in, though, was something else. I read an interview with Taylor Jenkins Reid where she mentioned that the band The Civil Wars1 (and their breakup) also inspired a lot of the book. This caught my attention immediately, as I loved The Civil Wars but hadn’t thought of them in a while. Immediately, I remembered going to their concert in college and how, shortly after, I had become obsessed with the story behind their mysterious, sudden dissolution. Honestly, the simple fact that someone else out there has thought about this in-depth thrilled me. The fact that it was a famous author thrilled me even more!
For those who aren’t familiar, some background: The Civil Wars was a band started in 2009 consisting of singer-songwriters Joy Williams and John Paul White. They were (and still are) both married to other people. However, their chemistry led fans and critics to assume there was something more between them. You can see the Daisy Jones parallels already. In 2011, they released a massively successful, Grammy-nominated first album, then went on tour extensively. In November 2012, smack dab in the middle of the tour, they canceled the rest of their shows abruptly and, according to some accounts, have not spoken since. This is their last performance ever, though no one knew it at the time (again: incredibly DJ coded… or I guess DJ is, technically, TCW coded?). Any remaining recording they had to do for their second album (released June 2013) was done separately. They officially announced their breakup in August 2014, though the writing was on the wall far before then.
Given all of this and that the few things they have said about the breakup have been vague at best (cryptic at worst), it’s tempting to piece together what, exactly, happened between them via song lyrics. They’ve denied both a romantic relationship and that any of their lyrics are wholly autobiographical. Joy said in an August 2013 interview with NPR that the romantic relationship between her and John Paul was a “myth,” but also acknowledged that the tension and presence of that myth had real-life effects that, while musically beneficial, were personally challenging. Read a quote from the interview below.
Looking back, there was so much power in that, and that's where a lot of the inspiration for the music came from, within that tension. But you do have to treat that with a great deal of respect; if you don't, then other things start falling by the wayside. Family has always mattered so much to me, and my relationship with my husband has always mattered so much to me, and while I can't speak for John Paul, I know his family matters so much to him. He's at home with them right now, and that's where he wants to be. But I do think that that was something that could be confusing, both for the audience and for me at times.
Naturally, once I knew of the connection, I became obsessed with spotting the parallels between the band and Daisy Jones. I re-listened to The Civil Wars’ eponymous second album non-stop. I started noticing lyrics that literally matched up beat-by-beat with book/TV show. It all started to meld into this literary/musical universe that made perfect sense to me. Of course, I think what’s tricky here is that Taylor Jenkins Reid took their lyrics and then reverse-engineered them into a fictional story (genius, honestly). Those lyrics, as they’ve said, may not align with their reality, or not in the way that fans assume. That overlap is confusing and blurs what is true and what is fiction. But the fact that it was all possibly tied to real-life emotion made it feel that much more intense.
The above performance was recorded five weeks before their last-ever show and breakup. It’s really hard not to analyze the body language and lyrics. “I want to leave you, I want to lose us…” Watch this show from 2011 compared to the above, or their last performance.
I don’t claim to know anything about what really happened with The Civil Wars, and I certainly don’t wish for any marriage to experience infidelity. But if you listen to the songs… well, I mean. It was clearly a powerful, deeply meaningful partnership that blew up spectacularly. It’s sad and mysterious. I’m certain that no one will ever know the full truth but them. That’s part of what makes the music that much more haunting, and Daisy Jones that much more interesting to watch. If we’re ranking them against one another, The Civl Wars are always going to win out over the Daisy Jones adaptation in my book. No competition. But this isn’t a ranking! It’s a pairing! And the combination is very enjoyable.
Note: There is *a lot* more to all this, which I get into in the audio version of this post. You can also peruse this absurdly detailed Reddit thread which covers basically everything chronologically (and then some).
Companion / Annie Bot
Switching gears (hehe), let’s talk about some robots. One thing about me: Man, do I love dystopia. I am as far from a “person who is interested in tech” as you can imagine, but I do like media that comments on current societal phenomenons in a way that feels distant, yet familiar. Think Black Mirror. I think it allows us to see things much more clearly than we would otherwise.
Last weekend, Jake and I went to see Companion in theaters after I listened to a great Pop Culture Happy Hour review (spoiler-free!) of the film. The basics: It’s a humor-filled thriller about a sex robot. Ex Machina is one of my favorite movies of all time, and this is like… a much, much lighter version of that. I enjoyed the movie a lot, but the whole time I just kept thinking of a book I read last year.
Annie Bot is also about, you guessed it, a sex robot. It’s a short, literary read, and I enjoyed it a lot. The plot has such direct comparisons to Companion that I honestly wondered if the screenplay was based on the novel. From my research, all signs point to no. I’m sure if I re-read the book now (I read it about a year ago) that the differences would be obvious. Still, they pair well!
Both the movie and the book explore misogyny and tech in such a poignant, effective ways. They also both, satisfyingly, feature shades of pink. If you like one, I’m pretty certain you’ll like the other just as much or more, depending on what you’re into.
One Day / Talking At Night
Both of these are love stories. One is a literary novel (one of my favorites of 2023), and the other is a show on Netflix (and also a 2011 movie starring Anne Hathaway, but we are not discussing that, OK???). What makes them simpatico, if you ask me, is that both of them contain the ability to make the reader/viewer feel uniquely and totally swept up. Buoyant with emotion. In love with love! In love with life! Both contain the kind of romance that hurts so good, if you know what I mean.
While reading Talking at Night, I had various points where I just wanted to put my hand to my chest. I was overwhelmed by how deeply I felt every emotion. It felt like I was personally experience each point of the plot — the love, the loss, the pain, the beauty. I was in it.
This is also how I felt about One Day, which I binged in its entirety one day last year when I was sick in bed with a cold. I honestly think the show may have been concocted in a lab, specifically designed to bring me total and complete emotional devastation. The music. The lighting. The scenery. The longing. I enjoyed every second, even when I was crying so hard that my contacts fell out of my eyeballs.
For me, it is very tough to find love stories that don’t feel cheesy but somehow these two managed to do it for me. I loved them completely and I hope you do, too.
Isola / Ever After
Originally, this post was titled something like: “Why don’t we talk about how good 1998’s Ever After is more often?” A little clunky, I’ll admit. But my question remains. I can’t for the life of me figure out why Ever After isn’t discussed as a classic more often, or even occasionally. You never see it on anyone’s Letterboxd Top 4. And sure, Drew Barrymore’s strange quasi-European accent is a little distracting. It’s a movie based on Cinderella. Leonardo DaVinci is, inexplicably, a supporting character throughout the whole thing. And sure, it isn’t particularly groundbreaking in terms of script or acting or direction. But there is also Anjelica Houston. And Melanie Lynskey (the best character of the bunch, arguably). There is some of the most gorgeous wardrobe I’ve ever seen. Dougray Scott’s impossibly good hair (as I get older, I appreciate this more and more). Face glitter. As I write this, I am fighting the urge to break into spontaneous recital of some scenes of the movie that I have had memorized for decades now. That counts for something, doesn’t it?
(Nothing has ever made me feel older than the production choices made in this trailer. The music? Straight to jail.)
I also think that part of the appeal of the movie is that though it is over-the-top in some ways (see: Leonardo DaVinci), it is understated in others. It is deeply romantic and, at times, sexy without even a lick of nudity. It is beautiful without being particularly artsy or high-brow. And though it contains a familiar fairy tale, it ultimately subverts the narrative by having the princess save herself in the end. In 2025, sure, that’s not exactly a groundbreaking idea, but almost 30 years ago (yes, I had to triple-check that figure), it probably was. At least a little more than we give it credit for, anyway. I love that I love Ever After today just like I loved it when I was 5.
I felt similarly swept up by a book lately that immediately made me think of Ever After, though it leans more literary, whereas EA is a bit more commercial. The book is Isola by Allegra Gooodman. It’s our Bad on Paper book club pick for February 2025. I read it cover-to-cover in one day, while curled in front of the fire. This is surprising because the book is a slow, slow burn, with the heart of the plot not really taking off full-steam until half-way through the book. It is deeply romantic at parts (there is one scene on a deck of a ship at dawn that I still think about), but it doesn’t hit you over the head with the romance. It’s subtle. It’s very clear that the story is about the main character’s epic journey, and how she manages to survive in a world that really, really doesn’t seem to want her to succeed. It feels like a fairy tale in its own way (though, shockingly, it’s based on a true story). There are other similarities, thematically, with Ever After, but I’ll leave those unspoiled for now.
Since this one is a chunky post, for this week’s bonus content, we have something simple and fun:
One more movie + book pairing that I happen to think also pairs well with forthcoming my second novel!