great(ish) pt 49: rom-coms, Andor, charity shops
Feel-good content only today! A film about a young woman who doesn’t know what she’s doing with her life, a novel about a middle-aged woman who also doesn’t know what she’s doing with her life, a TV show about people in space who know exactly what they’re doing… and an article about why charity shops exist.
Article: Slim for Britain by Susan Pedersen, published in the London Review of Books in January 2025
This is an article about two major interests of mine: historiography and how capitalism works. But mostly it’s about how ‘international aid organisations – influenced by a long tradition of voluntary service, a desire to find a role after empire and a dislike of the supposed soullessness and impersonality of postwar state-led development and planning – devised programmes and campaigns that relied on and promoted entrepreneurialism, consumerism, individualism and anti-statism.‘ An interesting companion piece to Just Beans (as recommended in great(ish) pt 45), but also a really good, detailed book review from which I learned a lot.
Film: Picture This, directed by Prarthana Mohan (2025)
My partner likes to say that I ‘honk like a goose’ when I laugh, and there certainly was a lot of honking when we watched this very British, very silly, very charming romcom after a truly depressing day. Simone Ashley plays a photographer who agrees to go on various dates, all arranged by her family, after an astrologer prophesizes that her life partner will be one of the next five persons she meets. So far, so non-sensical. Is this film ‘good’? Eh. Did it cheer me up? Definitely. Be warned: you’re not going to watch this for the romance, but for the family dynamics (and because Simone Ashley is just so charismatic).
Book: The Wedding People by Alison Espach (2024)
This is the perfect novel for when you’re in an in-between stage between ‘I can only consume romantasy because my brain is melting’ and ‘It’s time to read the other six parts of À la recherche du temps perdu’: a sad comedy about a suicidal academic who is the only non-wedding guest at a luxury hotel. Of course she gets immediately roped into a multi-day American wedding. Of course shenanigans ensue. Don’t be fooled by the breezy plot summary and the rom-commy covers: I thought this was a very smart novel about grief and how complicated relationships are. I loved it.
Other: Andor
So many thoroughly mainstream recommendations in today’s email, and yet I feel duty-bound to recommend this Star Wars TV show which is less about Star and more about Wars, about resistance and the cost of building and sustaining a movement. Andor does what I love about fiction: it takes a vaguely silly proposition (Star Wars) seriously and uses it to interrogate what we’re doing.
Bonus points for being really smart about work too – not surprising since it’s created by Tony Gilroy, who wrote and directed the perfect legal drama Michael Clayton (possibly George Clooney’s best performance?).
That’s it! As always, you can find all past recommendations in this spreadsheet and you can read past newsletters in the archive. Let me know what you’ve been reading, listening, or where you’ve taken the train to.