The March Wrap-Up

Straight Outta the Dumpster

Hey, all. Jen here.

Okay, let’s start this off by acknowledging the elephant in the room that it feels more than a little trite for me to talk about cake when Karyn has had the worst month of her life. But as she’d like for things to start feeling normal again, it’s almost like I have a moral obligation to speak of cake and the like.

So let’s slap a bow on the dumpster fire otherwise known as March and get into it.

What We’re Reading

Jen: I finished the Michael Wolff’s All or Nothing book and segued right into another light, frothy read called White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman. The book dives into the simmering discontent of white, rural Americans and argues that their anger isn’t just about economics or being left behind—it’s about power, racism, and a deep-rooted sense of grievance. And these folks are taking their big feelings and using said fury to shape our politics, fuel extremism, and create an existential threat democracy itself… even though it’s against their own self-interests.

Basically, this book is like if your trashy, chronically unemployed uncle got a megaphone, a Truth Social account, and a political platform—but instead of just yelling at the TV, he’s now trying to burn the whole system down because he’s mad that the world changed and didn’t ask his permission first. And P.S., thanks to gerrymandering, our political system is more and more at the mercy of the raging rural whites and it’s not going to get better. Good times.

I feel like I should mention the cheerier books I’ve either bought or got early copies of, just to balance out the sheer bummer-y nature of what I’ve read since 11/5. I was super psyched to receive Paige Harbison’s The Other Side of Now, out on 6/3. I also have on deck The Wedding People by Allison Espach, Careless People by Sarah Wynn Williams, Worst Case Scenario by T.J. Newman, Burn by Peter Heller, The Magnolia League by Katie Crouch, All the Other Mothers Hate Me by Sarah Harman, but I will most likely read the The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West by Alexander C. Karp, which is about how the tech industry abandoned its history of helping America and its allies. Woo!

With summer reading season coming up, I imagine I’ll gravitate to lighter material, but I won’t know until I get there.

Karyn: Wow, that’s a lot of books! I read directions for how to take Paxlovid, and I fucked it up because I was supposed to take it twice a day and I only took it once. It’s not a book, but I feel like it counts.

What We’re Watching

Jen: White Lotus, obviously, and I would like for someone to explain to me why this season was great, because I didn’t feel it. If Mike White was going for something super character-driven, mission accomplished. Yet I need someone to explain what I missed. I mean, I dug so deeply into the symbolism and fan theories and how it all related to Buddhist beliefs that there were almost no surprises in the end. The whole thing left me vaguely unsatisfied. That said, I loved that it was “appointment TV,” and that the whole world was talking about it at the same time.

We are also catching up on Severance, which I like but I do not love. I think it’s possible that we’re living in such trying times that it’s hard to legitimately and fully enjoy anything. That said, last week’s episode of Survivor with Eva and Joe made me (and Jeff Probst) legitimately cry.