Tell me I’m not the only person whose least favourite months are January and February. My BFF hates November, and I kinda get it, but at the same time, November at least has the anticipation-of-Christmas (and Thanksgiving, for the American contingent) going for it. January and February are basically one extra long, extra cold, and extra dreary month. Jabruary, if you will. Jabruary is the worst.

All of this is to say that it takes a lot of extra effort to keep me out of the doldrums during the first 59 days of the year. I do what I can, in terms of self-care, but it’s honestly a struggle. Reading is one of my go-to modes of escape, but I get particularly picky when I’m in a funk. This, by the way, explains why I haven’t bothered with any new shows; I tend to just re-watch old favourites and sulk about their untimely cancellation (cough * Hannibal * cough). Anyway, I did manage to find a couple of books I enjoyed so let’s talk about that.

For fans of The Crown, I recommend Snowdon by Anne De Courcy – a biography of Tony Armstrong-Jones, Princess Margaret’s first (ex? former? what’s the correct terminology here, someone plz halp!) husband. Armstrong-Jones was an interesting character but, although clearly charismatic and dedicated to various charitable causes, was also kind of an asshole to people in his personal life. This does not necessarily make for a bad biographical subject, in my opinion, unless the biographer is a little too in love with said subject; De Courcy mostly skirts that line, and is actually very sympathetic to Princess Margaret, who was also (though not exclusively) kind of an asshole. The marriage of the princess and the commoner yielded a ton of juicy press in its day, and makes for a fun read for gossip-loving, nosy people like me. With that said, I found the book a bit slow-going in parts; good chunks of it read like “lather, rinse, repeat”, particularly the descriptions of the Snowdons’ daily lives. But, as I said above, I was probably being unreasonably picky.

On a lighter, but not unrelated note, I also read The Royal We. The authors are the bloggers behind Go Fug Yourself, a site I used to read religiously before the weird formatting drove me to distraction. The premise of the book is a fictionalized version of Prince William & Princess Kate’s story. You know the broad strokes: spunky commoner meets handsome prince at university, they fall in love, he proposes, plot twist, plot twist, plot twist, the (happy) end. It was pretty good for the genre; I’d put it in the same category as the Crazy, Rich Asians series, though I prefer the latter (especially the first book).

Of course, as I was reading the book, I couldn’t help but think about the newest iteration of this story – Megan Markle and Prince Harry. She is an American divorcee, which would have (and did) cause a scandal not all that long ago. I think I’ve aged out of the “marrying a prince” fantasy, because I can’t help thinking that, in her shoes, I might have just stuck to the acting career. Being a modern day princess seems less like a fairytale and more like a not-all-that-fun job (any job that requires a lot of polite smiling is not much fun in my books). But that’s just me. And I did tell you I was grumpy.

That’s it – tell me what you’ve been reading lately.

Next time, I’ll tell you about some of my current favourite Internet places to visit.

It’s been a while since I did one of these posts and, to be honest, I can’t remember everything I’ve read and watched during that time. Mostly, I read; with a few exceptions, lately, I haven’t felt the desire to sit down and commit to a show. The exceptions? I’ve watched almost the full 2 seasons of The Crown, and parts of My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. I adore the latter, and the only reason why I haven’t gobbled up every episode is that I don’t have access to it except when I’m visiting my girlfriends; we’ve had a few watch-a-thons, but I’m not fully caught up on all 3 seasons. I know all the songs though – they’re definitely my favourite part.

As for The Crown, it is eminently enjoyable but not binge-watching material for me. I will go ahead and confess that I enjoy the gossipy bits the most, and could do with less politics. I will definitely finish season 2 at some point, though, and look forward to future seasons; I hope they follow through to the Diana/Sarah Ferguson years at the very least.

I would also love for a similar treatment of Queen Victoria and her offspring; since PBS’ Victoria already covered the early years of her reign and marriage to Albert, we could skip ahead to, say, the 1860s when most of her children were starting to marry and multiply dynasties across Europe. There is SO MUCH material to be mined there! Scandals, love stories, wars, revolutions … you name it.

Moving on … much of what I read recently consisted of Anne Perry mystery novels. Perry is one of those writers, like Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, and PD James, whose work I re-read once every 3-4 years. I’m actually not a huge fan of historical detective writing (i.e. set in pre-1900s times), but there is something about her writing that strikes the right chord with me. I prefer the Thomas Pitt series over the William Monk one, though I also like the earlier novels better because they focused more on the upper classes and less on things like treason and espionage. I am HERE for all the Victorian scandal, is what I’m saying. If anyone has recc’s for similar work in this narrow genre, let me have them.

Sidenote: during this most recent reading marathon, I belatedly realized that Anne Perry is the pseudonym of one of the women who, as teenagers, were involved in the infamous murder which inspired the movie Heavenly Creatures. She went to jail and served her time, and then emerged (or disappeared) into an incredible “second act” as a famous mystery/crime writer. The mind, it boggles. I also can’t believe that I had not heard of this before.

Other books I have read & enjoyed lately (round-up style):

– Sicily by John Julius Norwich. I generally enjoy Norwich’s non-fiction, and this was no exception. Excellent writing and a interesting, fast-paced read. Sicily gets overlooked a lot in history books, but it was at the centre of conflagrations and political machinations for millennia.

– Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh. Brosh is a co-writer of My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. I had heard of this book before (and, in fact, I’m pretty sure I read the blog at some point years ago), but I decided to buy it and read it over the holidays because I love the show so damn much. I loved the book as well, and my only complaint is that it didn’t keep going. It felt much too short.

– We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby. My BFF introduced me to this book, and I was hooked about half a chapter in, and rushed to buy my own copy. Needless to say, LOVED it. I am one of those people who is perpetually convinced that her carefully constructed cover of normalcy might be blown at any moment, leaving the “gross” weirdness inside completely exposed. Reading Irby’s book made me feel a little bit better about the possibility that there is weirdness that we all keep hidden away.

Your turn: tell me everything you’ve read and watched (and loved or didn’t) recently.

I can’t remember now why or how I decided to start watching Hannibal. I do know I mentioned my plan to my bestie, who endorsed it enthusiastically. Our tastes in entertainment don’t always line up (Exhibit A: she has seen IT four times, and I intend to see it precisely zero times), so it’s a nice bonus when we can talk about our current obsessions. I also don’t know why I didn’t watch Hannibal before. I think it aired after I stopped watching prime time TV. (That is not a value judgment, by the way, as much as a mom-life confession. GoT is my only weekly standing appointment, and luckily, it’s got a short run every year.) But it’s all good, because I was able to binge-watch all 3 seasons at double warp speed.

Needless to say, I loved it … but there is a lot to unpack in that verdict.

First of all, and this requires no caveats, the performances are – one and all – top notch. I mean, this is a show where Laurence Fishburne and Gillian Anderson both play what are, technically, secondary characters. I have been a Mads Mikkelsen fan girl for a long time, and yes, this is one instance where I’m gonna pull the “I saw him first” card. Because I saw him in movies like Pusher and After the Wedding back in the days when Edmonton cinephiles still got DVDs from the Movie Studio off Whyte. He is a phenomenal Hannibal Lecter … though, to be fair, he is never not phenomenal, and that includes the ultimate cheesefest that is King Arthur. More on that later. Now, if we go back far enough in time, I also used to have a Hugh Dancy problem at one time. He’s a cute, dark-haired Brit: it’s kind of a given. I have not thought about Hugh Dancy in years, but I was very impressed by his Will Graham, arguably the second banana/straight man on the show, which is never an easy role to pull off, I imagine. I may, ahem, possibly have a Hugh Dancy problem again.

Second, and maybe this does require a caveat … this is an intellectually challenging show. Yes, it is a lot of other things as well – Grand Guignol gets thrown around a lot by critics – but it is, fundamentally, a show about people talking to each other about things that are happening inside their own heads. It is not a “monster of the week” series in the vein of Criminal Minds (which I used to watch and love), especially not after the first few episodes. Initially, I thought that’s what I was getting, and it took some adjustment on my part to accept that the show was marching to the beat of its own, incredibly peculiar, drum. I have never seen a show like this one, ever, and I think it defies easy categorization.

I can confirm what all the reviews have typically said about it. It’s gory, but the violence is highly stylized, which lends itself to a certain amount of detachment on the part of the viewer; it is a world removed from, say, Game of Thrones. (On that note, there is also a distinct lack of sexual violence/brutality on the show.) The plot lines become more and more outlandish as the show goes on; the show frequently doesn’t have a firm grip on linear narrative – or, looking at it another way, is largely free from it. As someone who is a very linear thinker, I found this frustrating at times, until I gave up on trying to impose my expectations on the show, and just … well, accepted it as a sort of fever dream. A beautiful fever dream meditation on things like the self, self-perception and deceit, love, good and evil, the list goes on.

For me, this worked – and I loved it. It got me thinking and self-analyzing, often by what I call “tangential inspiration”; a bit of dialogue or scene would get me thinking about one thing, and from there my mind would hopscotch to a bunch of other things. It was, oddly enough, therapeutic in a way.

I have a lot of thoughts on the Will-Hannibal relationship, which is the heart (or blood?) of the series, but I will spare you the longer dissertation. Trust that it’s another reason to watch the show. Mads and Hugh have mad (zing!) chemistry together, and I was kinda embarrassed to realize really late in the game that Hannibal was not their first project together. I say embarrassed because King Arthur was my TOTAL CHEESEFEST MOVIE JAM BACK IN THE DAY AND I CAN’T BELIEVE I FORGOT ABOUT IT. Ahem, sorry about the shouting, I just got excited there for a moment reliving my memories. I have watched it way more times than any adult probably should, and having recently re-watched it a few more times still, I can confirm that it is way cheesier than I remembered it. It also features a metric tonne of attractive people, which is a very important metric in my books.

That includes Mads and his preternatural cheekbones …

… and Hugh, who apparently shares the Paul Rudd Aging Gene:

On that note, which is probably the high one of this post, let’s move on to a couple of quick articles. A new study says that people can guess whether someone is rich or poor from the way they look. I am skeptical, but okay.

I was a huge fan of Alain de Botton’s Essays in Love back in my early 20s, and was delighted to discover (somewhat belatedly) his more recent writings on marriage. This article, titled “Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person”, along with this podcast transcript on similar topics, are both fantastic reads.

Happy Friday!