normal Halloween reviews š»
A Castle for Christmas, Fixer Upper, Homegrown, The Sentence. Also, I finally downloaded TikTok.
Happy Halloween! A few nights ago, whilst high and delirious with cramps, I watched A Castle for Christmas. Brooke Shields stars as a successful author who gets ācancelledā for killing off a beloved character. She eats, prays, and loves it off by visiting Scotland, specifically the castle where her grandfather worked as a groundskeeper under the thumb of an abusive duke. The current duke is not abusive, heās just cranky. Heās also broke and his castle is in arrears, so Brooke simply buys it out from under him with her book money. You can cut the sexual tension with a butter knife.
Brooke befriends a zany cast of townspeople, including a gay knitter who hasnāt spoken since his husband died (spoiler alert: he breaks his silence when Brooke wonders aloud if loving the duke is a mistake. āLoving someone is never a mistake!ā)The townspeople all live in an honest-to-god fiefdom. When Brooke buys the castle, she unwittingly becomes their lord. This was so funny to my high self, I frightened the dogs with my laughter. Ditto the the lines: āCastles are meant to have walls around them, people arenātā and āHereās to women buying castles!ā
In other castle-centric TV, I watched the first few episodes of Fixer Upper: The Castleāa show where Chip and Joanna Gaines from Target renovate a castle-ass house from the 1920s. The house is really ugly and all the renovations are what youād expect, which is not to undermine that Magnolia renovations are boring because they are incredibly influential and set the standard for whatās sold in big box stores. Also if we met irl and you told me that you follow Fixer Upper or any aspect of the Magnolia Home empire, I would immediately text you this satisfyingly thorough interview between Anne Helen Petersen and Rebecca Lee Potts on the subject.
I also watched Homegrownāa show where a beautiful and competent woman shows Atlanta-area families how to garden and produce food in their own backyards. The renovation aspect mostly reuses what the family already owns and emphasizes process over results. While this sets Homegrown apart from more extreme home shows, it is slightly boring to watch. I was distracted by the liberal use of the word āfarmerāānot from the host, who is an actual farmer, but for homeowners who are growing like, two carrots and a tree.
BIG NEWS FOR LESBIANS! The most recent episode of Normal Gossip features friend of the newsletter, Tuck Woodstock. This podcast tells a wild tale, perfect for Scorpio season, about lesbians meeting online and a guy who fakes his own death to avoid conflict with an online pocket watch community. I relished this normal gossip!!
As far as cool articles, I loved these investigations into a hot pink bitch named Breakfast and whether or not Emily Dickinson spoke and wrote poetry with a Boston accent. I also wrote a story for Gloria about women who realized they were queer because of TikTok videos. I downloaded TikTok for research purposes and wow, itās a really fun app! I was so proud of my holdout status and now I am having a genuinely great time. The algorithm is, um, precise.
See also: a Zillow listing that my girlfriend liked and I did not.
I read a lot of good books this month, including The Ice Storm and Revolutionary Road. I was very into The Sentence by Louise Erdrich. It was weird (in a good way!) to read about March 2020, the early pandemic, and the 2021 George Floyd uprisings in a novel. In my mind, these things just happened.
And thatās it for this edition of normal life reviews. Thanks so much for reading and subscribing to my newsletter. As always, let me know in the comments if you have any thoughts or feelings about books, TV, movies, etc. If you have a cool fact about castles, I would love to hear it.
xoxo,
Maddy
P.S. I bought a little chiminea to burn incense at my desk. I found mine at an antique mall, but there are lots of similar options on Etsy. Itās so cute with the smoke coming out. It gives me cottagecore feelings.
Iām so pleased you watched and loved A Castle For Christmas, I watched it last year and became so obsessed I watched it twice. I also love the fact that it was directed by the woman who made the original Pet Cemetery.
Re home shows: the best home show Iāve watched in ages in this HBO Max show called For The Love of Kitchens which is about this company that makes gorgeous, bespoke kitchens mostly in like the the English countryside or whatever. The people who run the company are so cooky and wholesome and Iām obsessed.