What to Watch May 2021

Spring is in the air and lots of new and returning shows are on the airwaves (or wi-fi waves?) Whatever, more good stuff to watch is on the way! Mythic Quest returns for season two (a show we've grown to dearly love at my house), Black Monday is back with season 3, Shrill says farewell with its third and final season, and my favorite housewives are ready to rock in New York.

As always, I've compiled a list of shows I'd like to see that will be available soon, and I'm sharing it here along with links to everything coming to streaming services so you can go through and pick your own must-watch viewing. And away we go!

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Larry McMurtry tells a story like few can. He creates a palpable sense of time and place for his settings, while deftly building characters and plots that feel incredibly real and intricate.

I picked up Lonesome Dove shortly after McMurtry passed away. Fans were expressing their love and feeling of loss for him online, and quite a few mentioned this book as particularly beloved. So I read it. Given that I don't enjoy westerns and I typically would rather read two or three shorter books than one big 'un weighing in at nearly 1,000 pages, the fact that I finished and enjoyed it says a lot about how good this novel is. 

Heartburn by Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron’s writing sparkles at times with witty, smart, insightful passages. But Heartburn is like a lawn strewn with divots that trip you up and knock you flat, making you want to call it a day and go on home.

She drops quips throughout the text, always shooting for the funny. And I like funny, I’m a fan of the funny. Ephron manages to fold humor into a fictional book based on her very real split from journalist Carl Bernstein, a decidedly unfunny situation. The story features a main character discovering her husband is cheating at a time when she's got a 2-year-old and is 7 months pregnant. That either comes spilling out of your pen as tragedy, or you take it on the chin and spit it back out wrapped in humor. This works fantastically when done well; some of the best comedy is actually tragedy told with a humorous bent. (Don’t believe me? Watch Muriel’s Wedding and get back to me.) 

French Exit by Patrick deWitt

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“Oh, to be youngish and in love–ish.”

The above is my favorite line from the book. It's funny and flip while being something I could honestly imagine someone feeling. It embodies the best of French Exit.

The worst, well, the worst for me was turning the final page and thinking, what the hell did I just read?!

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ain't no party like a late to the party, amiright? Yes, no, maybe? Hey, that could be a book title! Hell, it probably is!

So, I finally read Eat, Pray, Love. Fifteen years after publication, but so what? (People still read Moby Dick and that came out in the 1800s and is boring AF.) I fully admit I only picked it up for a zoom book club (which proceeded to be cancelled the day of the meeting, which is just one of the reasons why you rarely catch me messing with book clubs anymore).

I actually gave this a whirl shortly after it came out and quickly lost interest. The reason why escapes me, but maybe it was early on when our protagonist fell to the bathroom floor and began to pray. At that point I probably wondered if the "pray" part of the title was more key than I first imagined, and if this was going to be heavily religious, which isn't my bag, baby. I may have wondered that back then because I wondered this time around, too. Only this time I plunged onward because it was for a soon-to-be nonexistent book club meeting that I wanted to attend so I don't become a full-on hermit.