I haven’t written a post for my weekly News Worthy feature since the beginning of September, but I’d like to try and get back into it – a semi New Year’s resolution, if you will. I had a pretty busy semester in the fall, and while there are definitely more gaps in my schedule this semester (my last of college – uhh…), I feel like they’ll fill up quickly, so committing to News Worthy is a good way to write at least one post every week. Let’s see how this goes!

Essays 

I finished reading Sarah McCoy’s The Baker’s Daughter last week and checked out McCoy’s website afterwards. She has a page for all of the essays she’s written over the years and this one, “Author Epiphany: I Film-Track My Novels” was great. McCoy explains that, instead of listening to music when she writes, she’s often typing with old black-and-white movies playing in the background.

She shared a few movies she associated with her other book The Mapmaker’s Children, and also gave this resonating explanation of why she gravitates to these kinds of films:

“This is why I yawn through Will Ferrell movies, despite liking him as an actor. And why I smuggle Venti Starbucks cups into the theater to make it through the latest Marvel Comics action-adventure. I need art to work a little harder than that for me to truly enjoy the experience. I know, I’m an awful demanding patron.”

I’m an old soul. If I had the chance, I’ll gladly try out any and all movies that play on TCM and I had a phase of checking out the TCM Box Set DVDs my library has (by now I’ve seen all of the ones that interest me). I probably go to a movie theater only a handful of times a year, but those trips are either with college friends to see a visually beautiful, crowd-pleasing hit (Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) or with my grandma to see slow, thoughtful movies that most people my age probably won’t see (Manchester by the Sea and Ida, just to name a few). I’ve never had much interest in big superhero movies or raunchy comedies and I think Sarah McCoy just nailed down why.

Videos

The Christmas season is always a huge time for Broadway shows to end their runs, and my beloved Fiddler on the Roof was no exception, closing on New Year’s Eve. Video of the show’s last curtain call hit YouTube, and watching it just made me soar with even more love for this revival.

The nature of readers on London’s public transportation stuck out to me so much when I was studying abroad, and I still find it fascinating that the tube had a very distinct theme of people reading physical books while so many LIRR commuters seem glued to their phones. The YouTuber Ariel Bissett, who recently moved to London from Canada, posted a gorgeous video called “People Reading on the Tube,” consisting of just that.

I got very emotional while watching this. It captures what was unquestionably one of my favorite elements of London life and shows people that I was when living there. I relied so much on my Kindle throughout my semester abroad and chugged through so many books just because of my internship commute and city explorations alone. I was a rare case when abroad in that I never bought an international phone plan and instead just relied on WiFi when at home, work, or school. Not having my phone as a distraction once I was on the train just got me more invested in reading whatever was on my Kindle at the time.

So, this wasn’t exactly like my News Worthy posts of the past, which shared current news that released over the course of the week. Since I haven’t been updating the series regularly, I thought I’d just share some things that made me smile recently!

What about you? Has any kind of special news or announcements stuck out to you this week?