Good Luck!

Carly Martin

04 Apr 2025 — 3 min read

Hey folks. Hope your Friday is off to an excellent start. This installment features some people, places and things. Enjoy!

April Ins and Outs

Happy April! The structures of society are crumbling around us but there will always be monthly ins and outs.

ins

Entering my running era
Ringing in honeycrisp apples as red delicious at the self checkout
Double cleansing
Informing my financial advisor that I'm participating in the "take all my money out of the bank challenge"

outs

"Spring"
Smoothies
Not having all the answers

The Reading Nook

It took me like 5 days to finish the new Hunger Games book and let me tell you - that shit was devastating! For those not keeping up with all of Suzanne Collin's latest releases, this book follows Haymitch - Katniss and Peeta's mentor in the original trilogy - in his experience winning the 50th Hunger Games.

First and Foremost: I don't want to say this was fun, because objectively, the subject matter at hand and the real life parallels are not. But, the connections built between characters from different points in the series was a fun thing to follow. Getting to see several characters who are late into adulthood in the original books and movies as children/teens/early adults in this prequel was nice to get a fully rounded look at the character and justification for their actions in Catching Fire and Mockingjay. The epilogue I felt was a nice way to wrap everything up too.

My Fav Part: Leaning into the body horror of it all. The plot of these books is disturbing and gross and I feel like the writing about the fighting and the arena is finally matching the level of horrifying that the premise suggests. This was gnarly! The books are much more graphic than the movies generally, but even this book felt much more intense than the others in the series for me. Maybe it was because we got to spend a lot more time with all of the tributes as individuals in this one? Or maybe Ms. Collins is just getting better at writing horror. Whatever plot devices were used, I was having to pick my jaw up off the floor several times getting through the book. Without spoilers, the Lou Lou reveal, the squirrels, Wellie versus Silka, and Lenore Dove's gumdrops were the some of the most horrifying moments I think in any of the 5 total books.

One Thing I Didn't Love: Honestly, nothing is coming to mind for me. I really enjoyed this.

Overall: 5/5. I think Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes stays on top for me but Sunrise on the Reaping was so so good, highly recommend.

Last Name, Dog

As an extension of last episode's Paddy collage and as a wrap up to Nat's family dog, Scout, staying at our apartment for a week, here are some Scoot pics for the chat. Love her dearly but she is maybe one of the weirdest dogs I have ever interacted with.

TTFN

Another set of recs for your coming week:

a song i'm loving:

Never - MUNA (Live at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles)

a movie i watched:

Nat and I went to Mickey 17 at the Coolidge. The Coolidge is great, Mickey 17 not so much. Nat says that it was a career worst for Mark Ruffalo, who they also say was doing a bad impression of Alec Baldwin doing an SNL Trump impression and I would dare to agree.

a book i'm reading: