Watch The Chicken Sisters! Or read a slump-busting book

and DO NOT add homework before enjoying James…

I should start with the big thing: you a watch the first two episodes of The Chicken Sisters this week! IF (sadly it’s a kind of big if) you have Hallmark Movies, soon to be Hallmark Plus. OR if you want to do a free week trial and see if maybe you’re in enough to go for streaming the next six episodes… plus a real reality TV show (as opposed to Kitchen Clash, which is the fictional competition). Plus a super fun sounding set of interconnected holiday movies, all the Hallmark movie fun you could want… you get the idea.

First episode is Tuesday, September 10, the second is on Thursday, September 12, and then off they go weekly. It’s REALLY GOOD and absolutely surreal to have these four amazing actors play Mae, Amanda, Nancy and Barb/Gus. Not to mention all the others. Is it different enough to be fun if you’ve read the book? Oh 100%. To start with, Frank Jr. is alive and very much kicking. And yet it’s still my book.

Ok, more on that in my next missive… because right now I’m here to tell you that it was very much a slow reading summer for me. All I did this summer, really, was revise the book I’m working on (it was a LOT), do ALL the family and friends stuff (so much joyful activity, seriously, it was wonderful and also I need to lie down now) and stress-shop in intervals of reading fashion substack. (If you love clothes, both new and vintage, and miss the style and fashion coverage we used to get from magazines, I’ll pop a list of some of my faves below).

I seriously read like, a book. Some of that might also be that I’d been on a romance run and then couldn’t read them while revising mine because they made all the voices in my head shout “you will never ever be able to get your book this good” and that… was even less fun than it sounds. But anyway. Very little was read and then…

I finished. And boom, there was reading.

Let’s start at the top: don’t miss James, by Percival Everett, because some English teacher made you read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and it was yet ANOTHER book about a BOY and jeez could we catch a break here. Or because someone told you you had to reread Huck Finn first. Hell to the No! This book is a joy and a romp while at the same time being about hard things, yes, can’t argue with that, but trust me. Did I ever tell you to read something that would feel like homework? Or that would make you cry without warning you that it would first? I have not. I mean, maybe you didn’t like something I recommended but it was not because reading it felt like slogging through jello when you would way rather be reading something you enjoyed.

You’ll enjoy this. I read it in one sitting (ok on a plane, but I had a whole Kindle of alternatives right there and also there is always napping). I turned pages wildly. And I did not let anyone tell me I had to drag myself through yet another book that I didn’t even ever want to read in the first place, because you know what I don’t do anymore? Homework, baby. And I could absolutely tell where Everett veered in and out of the original story without even reading the Wikipedia entry (although I did after) first and that only made it more fun.

Ok everyone says to read this, I know. And you know what? They’re right. So do.

And while you’re at it, how about House of Kwa, by Mimi Kwa. It’s a memoir like I’d never read before, half a family history of life in Hong Kong under Japanese rule in WWII (not a good time but a good read) and half a bonkers family story of growing up with a dad who never recovered from that occupation and who eventually tears his whole family apart with his desire for—who even knows? He didn’t know. He just wanted something, I guess. He eventually sues his daughter, the writer, over his sister’s estate and…not being loyal enough? And yet she still loves him. I don’t think I’m selling this very well. Check it out, I liked it, how’s that?

Claudia Gray is back with a new installment in her amazing Austen-ite mystery series. This time it’s The Perils of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and once again, so much fun to be had. I love how Gray really SEES those Austen characters, how she keeps them firmly planted in their own time. I do love a wildly improbable feminist Regency romance but I appreciate how Gray does not insist that her characters abandon their era for ours, but also lets them begin to glimpse how things might evolve.

What else? Oh, I was whipping through things. (I’m gonna get that revision back for more work any day now, I know it, so I made the most of my reading time). Annabel Monaghan’s, Summer Romance: a blast. If you have one more gasp of summer left in you or just want one, make it that one.

I’ll Be You, Janelle Brown. Ooh, she had me at “former child star identical twins” even before the responsible one disappeared and the word “cult” was uttered… I had a really good time with this.

Good Taste. I keep forgetting to tell you about this delight, which probably slipped under your radar. If you like WWI/WWII quiet Brit fic in the realm of Angela Thirkell or Natalie Jenner or, say, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society book (yes, I had to reach some for comps here) go seek out this story of a British food writer trying to break out of her assigned roles both professionally and personally. Very slight Lessons in Chemistry vibe, too.

The Paradise Problem, Christina Lauren. What if Donald Trump (different name, different mega-millionaire history but fundamentally him) had a nice-guy son and you accidentally married him? (Trust me, you’ll want to buy the backstory, go with me here.) And then he manipulated all his kids to a remote tropical island for a wildly extravagant wedding and fireworks and bikinis ensue but also you got all the designer clothes to wear to it? That’s this book. I ate it with a fork and knife.

Ok that’s what I’ve got! More to come, and especially more stories of The Chicken Sisters adaptation—I’m off to the screening of the first episode in LA even as we speak because I’m living a glam life this week!! It’s cool, because three days ago I was unpacking a kid into a dorm room. I’m very much all the mes in all the places this month.

Read anything glorious? I want to know!

PS: What’s that you say? You have never read The Chicken Sisters? You should! And In Her Boots and Playing the WItch Card are fun and fab as well. You need all three and so does your bff, your mom and your sister.