Want to feel good?
Tuck into some of my favourites
The theme of stories that make you feel-good is one I am likely to return to regularly, because let’s be honest: it’s what we all need quite a lot right now. Any time you look at the headlines, there are more & more reasons to start (/continue) tearing your hair out. If you want some news that focuses on the wins in the world, may I recommend Positive News? Their weekly round-up of what has gone right is a useful reminder to not get completely lost in the whirlwind of negativity that feels like it’s doing its damnedest to envelop us each day and that there are good people out there doing good things.
TL;DR
Read Still Life and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo; watch The West Wing and The Good Place; listen to Something Large & Wild; and watch Amelie and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
READ
The title that really started me off on this theme is one that I only read recently but many, many people have discovered long before me. Hopefully, however, some of you may not yet have had the pleasure of inhaling Still Life by Sarah Winman as I did just a few weeks ago.
I have been lucky enough to read a lot of books lately that I really enjoyed but with Still Life, I had to ration myself with it as I could see myself racing through it too quickly & could see Future Me bereft without it there on my bedside table with a few pages to savour each night. In a further ringing endorsement, I forced it upon my “I don’t have the energy to read after I’ve finished work” husband as soon as I finished it and he loved it too. So often interest in books can be split along gender lines wholly unnecessarily and I suspect at the outset that himself was slightly of the opinion that this was a ‘girly book’ but he was soon disabused of this silly notion.
The story follows the life of the excellently-named Ulysses Temper (my son should heave a sigh of relief that I read this well after his birth certificate was printed - but to be honest, could you imagine the absolute notions of naming a child Ulysses?!) who at the outset is a serving soldier in Italy during World War Two. He meets an older woman called Evelyn Skinner and, together with an officer friend of Temper’s, they share an evening together which affects Ulysses for the rest of his life and, indeed, impacts the way he chooses to live his life. To think about this story and its characters now, my breath catches in my chest and I feel a little tingle at just how joyous and excellently crafted Winman’s tale is. One I know I will definitely revisit when my spirits need a lift. Go on, give your soul some succour.
Another book that makes me smile whenever I think of it is The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I’d say there are few people left who have yet to enjoy this but in case you’re one of them: this is a bandwagon you very much need to jump on.
Jenkins Reid described Evelyn Hugo’s story as a loose amalgamation of Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth’s lives. Hugo is an ageing Hollywood star who chooses a rather unknown journalist, Monique Grant, to write her life story. Each of the seven sections of the book tells the story of a different one of her husbands who range in temperament from clever to gullible, agreeable to disappointing. And then there’s the plot twist.
WATCH
As I’ve mentioned before, this newsletter will oftentimes be a fanzine for Aaron Sorkin and his magnum opus The West Wing was my gateway drug. All seven seasons are available in full on All4 so what are you waiting for?
This is one I have watched and rewatched. And right now, frankly, I feel like it’s worthy of consideration for doctors to prescribe for treatment of the general malaise and constant, low-level nausea lots of us are experiencing thanks to “He Who Has Been Tangoed” and the guy who “Accidentally Cancelled Ebola Prevention”. I may need to get stuck back into it again. Anything to escape reality…
If you have never taken the time, Martin Sheen plays Democratic President Josiah (Jed) Bartlett who in the first season has just been elected to the White House. A lot of the rest of the cast you will recognise as they are household names now: Press Secretary CJ Cregg is played by Allison Janney of The Diplomat, I, Tonya and Palm Royale (to name but a recent few), Bartlett’s daughter Zoey is played by Elisabeth Moss from Mad Men, Top of the Lake and The Handmaid’s Tale and ‘80s heartthrob Brat Pack star of St Elmo’s Fire Rob Lowe plays Sam Seaborn the deputy White House Communications Director.
The show makes me feel like I’m clever; like I have the slightest clue about what goes on at the highest level of politics in the United States (I don’t obviously - & even less so since November 2024.) But the characters and the writing manage to make many an obtuse topic comprehensible without feeling patronising as well as wildly engaging as opposed to becoming a huge snoozefest. And the signature Sorkin fast-paced walk & talk delivery from Bradley Whitford’s Joshua Lyman along with some of President Bartlett’s incredible monologues (& at times soliloquies) are something to behold.
Just be warned: there’s a very real likelihood that this has the opposite effect and you wind up feeling much worse when you come back into the real world and are reminded of what’s actually happening right now in the real West Wing…
On a completely different, but equally uplifting, note The Good Place on Netflix is a bit of fun that should raise your spirits.
Kristen Bell’s character is Eleanor Shellstrop and at the very start of series one, episode one, she dies. Eleanor winds up in what is known as "The Good Place” (aka Heaven) and quickly realises that she is a mismatch as she was no saint whilst alive. But she doesn’t want to wind up in the Bad Place so hilarity ensues as she attempts to cover up just how not good she is. Ted Danson is also in it as the thoroughly wholesome architect of the afterlife. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not the greatest aficionado of anything that involves fantasy or alternate realities but the world that the team create here is at once recognisable whilst also unfamiliar and the characters are brilliant.
My particular favourite memory of the show is when Danson’s character is tortured by being locked in a room and having to read a stack of New Yorkers cover to cover. And they Just. Keep. Coming. (This is my life; they appear every week. We have enough to wallpaper our entire house twice now. It’s a fire hazard. My husband hates me)
LISTEN
This is Love is an anthology podcast series not entirely dissimilar to This American Life or Radiolab. It will not surprise you to hear that the stories all focus around the theme of love - and not just romantic love; rather love in all its form.
The whole series is often a delight but may I point towards one episode in particular: Something Large and Wild is a wonderful surprise of a tale. Lynne Cox is an open-water swimmer who holds all sorts of records (and tends to do it all without a wetsuit!) At the age of seventeen whilst out training for a big swim, Cox encounters a whale calf.
She quickly realises the whale is following her and that, despite her own need to rest, if she heads back to land, the baby whale would follow her onshore and die. And if Cox doesn’t find the young calf’s mother, it will succumb to starvation without its mother’s milk. What follows is extraordinary and will leave you feeling all warm & fuzzy inside and grinning from ear to ear.
WATCH
And now for two titles I’ve no doubt the whole world and his mother have come across - but I don’t even care. First up, French modern classic Amelie.
Amelie Poulain is a waitress in Paris; she leads a quiet life with little in the way of fireworks or even real human connection. Raised and home-educated by insular and incredibly anxious parents, Amelie grows up a lonely child but with a mischievous and creative imagination. As an adult, she is expert in finding joy in the little things and following a discovery in her apartment, she decides to set about creating little vignettes of joy in the lives of those around her. Her little mission leads her to meet a boy and thus begins a truly unique and Amelie-esque courtship. The music will transport you to the streets of Paris and the innocence and imagination of Amelie’s quest could never fail to crack a smile on even the most hard-hearted of cynics.
And finally, one of my favourite movies ever and a true cinematic classic: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Again, if you haven’t heard of or watched this, do you live under a rock?
Ferris Bueller is a high school student who doesn’t want to go to school; so he hatches a plot to save himself, his best friend Cameron and his girlfriend Sloane the hassle. Matthew Broderick is the eponymous hero; he’s married to Sarah Jessica Parker for those who don’t know. Alan Ruck is his sidekick; yes, he is Conor from Succession and Mia Sara, who plays Bueller’s girlfriend, seems to have had a consistent but less high profile career. Though her ex-husband is Jason Connery, son of Sean, and her current husband is Brian Henson, son of Jim who created The Muppets. They are two very cool fathers-in-law.
The kids cut school, nick Cameron’s father's classic Ferrari and head off into Chicago to spend their day off wisely - i.e. doing anything other than be in school. However, their school principal is having absolutely none of it as this is about Bueller’s 147th day off in a year and Bueller’s sister - played by none other than Dirty Dancing’s Jennifer Grey, who ruined her career by getting a nose job - is also dead set on ending her brother’s infuriating run of good luck in getting away with absolutely everything. It’s absolute John Hughes, 1980’s fun. And the downtown parade dance scene to The Beatles is one of the best you’ll see in the movies.