Weekly Entertainment Wrap Up #369 [CC]

Hi YouTube, it's Kathy, and this is my Weekly  Entertainment Wrap Up for January 21st - 27th. This week I read two books, I watched  one show, I watched one movie, I watched one staged reading,  and I listened to two books. [pages turning] If you were here for last week's  Weekly Entertainment Wrap Up, you know that I'm filming this one one day early. I usually film and upload on Sundays,  but I'm filming this on Saturday to upload on Sunday because on  Sunday I'm flying to France - so, you know

, I'll just be a wee bit busy. Chad and I are going on another  one of our 3 month trips and this one will include France, the  UK, and, as we found out the other day, we're going to spend a week in Italy. Last time we did this I had all the  intention of doing all of the travel vlogs and then kind of cut off pretty quickly once  we got sick for the first time in 3 years so I'm not going to make any promises, but I feel  like there will be at least some travel vlogs, but definitely not for the e

ntire time we're gone. First this week I read All the Violet  Tiaras by our very own Jean Menzies from Jean's Bookish Thoughts. I actually saw her last year while  I was in Scotland and we were talking about this volume, because she  had been accepted to do this volume but hadn't quite written it yet, and I knew  that it was coming out around December-ish because I had supported the Kickstarter, so I  told her then I was very excited to read it, and now I finally did. I actually thought  it was

going to arrive after we left so I'm really glad it showed up last  week, so I could read it this week, so it's done before I leave the continent again. This is from a company called 404 InK and  they do really really tiny little books on a given subject, and this one was  all about queer Greek myth retellings, which is just right up Jean's alley. If you're not familiar with her  work, she is actually Dr Jean because she has her doctorate in ancient  studies [PHd in Ancient History*] and honestl

y I can watch her  discuss Greek myths all day long, and I sometimes do on over on her YouTube channel, but it was very fun to go through this very  brief collection of essays on the topic and now I have so many more books that  I want to read, so thanks for that Jean. The other book I finished this  week is The Writing Retreat. The main premise of this one is our  main character had a friendship break up about a year ago and still doesn't  really know why the friendship broke up, kind of has an

inkling of it, and we learn a  little bit more of the story as it goes on, so you get a little bit more of  an insight into what happened. But when they first became friends, they  were also part of a small writing group and ever since that breakup our  main character can't write anymore. She has the worst writers’ block. While they were still friends, they applied  to do this writing retreat with their mutual favourite author but it took so long for  selection that they actually kind of aged o

ut of the eligibility, because it was supposed to  be for a writer's retreat for women under 30, and they just recently passed 30, so they  were like, “well I guess we don't get to go.” However, one of their mutual friends’  publicist actually knows Rose's publicist and she submitted a couple of their short  stories and both of them are now going to this retreat. It's a very small retreat.  It was only supposed to be four candidates and now it's five candidates  because both of them got in, and

they're going to have to float  around each other in this situation as well as trying to impress the person  whose writing they've loved for years. And then, of course, because this retreat  is at a mansion in the middle of nowhere, things go sideways. This one had some fun elements. Obviously I can't really tell you too  many of the things that happened kind of after that introduction, because I  don't want to wreck anything for you, but obviously these characters  are all trying to write stori

es, people are there who have alternative motives, and we also get to see a little bit of the  story that our main character starts writing interspersed into this text, which has to  do with the house that they're at itself because every single old  mansion has a story to tell. I can't say that I’m 100% behind  everything that happened in this book but it kept me guessing  and it kept me entertained. Onto what I watched this week, drum roll  please for the one show I watched this week- of course

it was Taskmaster. We finished the 11th season and we watched the  first couple of episodes of the 12th season. It's coming to the point where we're  very soon going to run out of Taskmaster which is going to be very sad  because it's very entertaining. However, I'm pretty sure that they are currently  filming or still casting for the 17th series so there will be more eventually.  It's not like it just ends. But we’ll run up to what's out at some point. I'll say what I usually say: this  is del

ightful, it's entertaining, it's so easy to just sit down and watch and  laugh at different things, and I adore it. The one movie I watch this week,  although we might watch something tonight and if we do I'll just tell  you about it next week, is Ava. I had never heard of this movie before  but my roommate recently found a list of femme fatal movies and has  just been going through them, which is badass and wonderful, and that's what this is. This is about a character who is paid to kill  peopl

e and sometimes she likes to talk them to try to figure out what they probably  did to get to the point in their life where somebody is hired to kill them,  and she doesn't always get an answer. Throughout this we also get to  learn a lot of her backstory and how she ended up in a job like this and of course there are tons of amazing  action sequences when things go sideways and she just needs to beat up a bunch of  people so she can get out of a situation. I can't remember the name of the main 

actress, mostly because I don't think I've seen any of her work before,  or if I have I didn't know her name, but this movie also has John Malkovich  and Common and somebody else… Colin Farrell in it. And yes it seems  very weird that I can name the men but I can't name the women in this  movie and that kind of makes me feel bad but again I've seen things from these people  before and I haven't seen things from her before to my knowledge. However, she was great.  She brought a lot of depth to t

his character and seeing the backstory - oh! And this also  had Geena Davis in it, who plays her mother, which was great to see because I haven't  seen her in anything for a while. Definitely entertaining, and  just the way it ends, I'm like, “are we going to get a sequel?” Because I would be okay with that. I'm also  okay with it just ending where it ended and us using our imaginations to figure  out what's next for this character. Onto a category that I don't think I've ever  included it in a

Weekly Entertainment Wrap Up: I went to a stage reading a friend  of mine from university wrote a play. I did the front of house, basically  letting people into the theatre space, so we could watch this staged reading,  and it was called Four Children. It's based around Passover and it's  all about this family coming together for a reason that not all of  them know about ahead of time and then just seeing the generational  trauma of things, things that are happening, and different dynamics withi

n the family. I'm mostly telling you about this so  I can have bragging rights and say, “look, look, look, I saw it the  first time it was performed!” when it becomes really, really famous,  because it is an outstanding piece of theatre. It was also very interesting to be watching  it because I could tell certain things about a particular character that I was like, “oh I've seen my friend Elysia  be exactly like that before” and I could see my friend in certain  characters and I could see other

people I know that we both know in certain characters. She is also potentially working  on changing it into a miniseries so if that ever gets picked up I  will definitely tell you about it because I will be so proud of her. But regardless, I am so proud  of this thing that she created. As for the books I listened to this  week, one of them was This Winter. This takes place over pretty much just  one calendar day in the Spring household which happens to be Christmas Day. In this we get three diff

erent perspectives: first we get the perspective of Victoria,  or Tori, Springs. She's the elder sibling. Then we get the perspective of  her younger brother, Charlie, and then right at the very end we  also get the perspective of Oliver, which is their much younger sibling. I think  he's 6 [8*] years younger than Charlie is. This novel is part of the Heartstopper  universe, so if you were to intersperse it with the graphic novels, I believe  it's number 4.5, so it takes place between the fourth

and the fifth volume. Or, additionally,  you could think of it as the 0.5 novella for the Solitaire “series”? It's not really  a series because there's only one book in it and it's Solitaire but this takes place  just before Solitaire happens, as well, and it's just part of the wider Alice  Oseman universe, or Osemanverse. However somebody has portmanteau’d that. This is basically just an excuse  to see these characters again and just get a really  in-depth look at this one day. It's only about

an hour long as an  audiobook and there is one other novella that I will eventually be reading, but I'm  waiting for my library hold to come in, and I'll be reading that as a digital  print copy as opposed to an audiobook because that's what my library has. The other book that I listened to this  week, which I was actually listening to before I downloaded This Winter and  then decided to read This Winter just in case I didn't get through this  one in time to talk about it this week is called Ti

me Shelter. This one is actually translated from  Bulgarian and this one is one of those books where I would probably have to consume  it a few more times to really get the bulk of the interesting thought out of it. Essentially, this character meets a very  strange character in about the 1980s and they have some discussions  about time and memory and then they kind of meet  up over the course of time, and he becomes kind of this literary  figure that our main character writes. And this guy that

he's occasionally  writing, or meeting up with, or both depending on how you look at the book, because it can be interpreted  in many different ways, decides to make these clinics where  they can bring people into the past. So the entire floor might be the 1960s or  the 1970s and it's completely decked out in things from that era, so people who are  losing their memory be from Alzheimer's or other conditions can go there  and kind of live in a time frame where they might be more comfortable. But

then this idea explodes outwards and  suddenly there's towns that are doing this and then the whole European Union is  trying to have a referendum to figure out exactly when they should be living and what  year they should go back to and move on from. Like I mentioned, this one is complex  but also at the same time meanders in quite the same way that memory does,  so if you're looking at this for plot and that's what your brain really hooks  on to, if you're listening to this you're looking for

a plot, you're not  necessarily going to be hooked into it, and your mind is going to wander,  much like memory sometimes wanders, and then you'll come back to things and be like,  “that line was written really beautifully,” and then you'll be moving on to  something completely different. And that's why I feel like if I  wanted to get the most out of this I would have to consume it more than  once, which is interesting given we're talking about people who are living  their lives back in a past

time frame. I thought while I was listening to this it would  be too easy to discount this as something that I just wasn't getting as much as  the author would have intended, and maybe I'm not going to really  get all that much out of it, and I'm just not that intelligent,  and it's going over my head, but the more I think about it, the more I see  little connections here, there, and everywhere to do with memory and the past and memory  loss and whether or not this character is in fact losing hi

s memory  as he's writing this novel, which is also a part of  the timeline of this novel. So even though I am convinced I didn't  understand everything I listened to, this is still brilliant. That's it for this week! If you've read, watched, or  listened to any of these, let me know about it down in the comments below. On the way down to the comments,  if you hit that Subscribe button that would be very nice of you. If you don't feel like leaving a comment but  want to make sure that I know you

were here just leave me an emoji or smiley face  if you happen to be on your keyboard. Some people have asked if there's a  way to financially support this channel so I set up a Ko-fi account, which  is a digital tipping service. The link for that, as always, is down below. The next time I talk to you will  probably be for my Monthly Wrap Up and I'll be recording that  in Paris, so that's cool! I've never been there before. I'm very excited. You can like and share this as you see fit, and I'll

see you very soon. Bye! [outro music]