No F*cks Given® Newsletter | 3.18.24
Breakfast sandwiches, book recs, and Sexy Beast(s)
Here we are again, my fabulous fucklings: the monthly(-ish) NFG Newsletter roundup is upon us! Per usual, it contains great deals, fun links, book recs, and random AF musings from me to you.
HOUSEKEEPING:
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We have fun.
What’s up?
Well. I started writing a story for you about what happened after I accidentally burned a hole in my couch, and it turned into a 1500-word musing on perfectionism and patience and remembering what’s really important in life, so I’m going to save that for a regular post.
Instead, today you’ll get the usual grab-bag of updates and my hot take on the Sexy Beast TV series vs. the original movie.
Since we last spoke, my husband Judd has put out yet another new song, “Bacon, Egg & Cheese,” which he calls “a playful ode to the curative power and simple joy of a breakfast sandwich.” It is super fun, as is the little dancing bacon animated video he posted on release day.
And for the music buffs out there: this track features the jazz guitar stylings of Vilray Blair Bolles from Rachael & Vilray—the Rachael in question being the one and only lead singer of Lake Street Dive—which makes for an especially apt “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” link between Judd and one of his favorite bands.
In sum: stream “Bacon, Egg & Cheese” on Spotify, or wherever you get your music!
In contrast to the prolific creative output by my other half, I have been in “Spring Cleaning” mode, maniacally organizing and decluttering the house, doing little DIY repairs, killing ants, learning what kind of paint not to use on a shower floor, weeding my garden, and trying not to be angry at the neighbor who is in month three of her banging, slamming, yelling, crowbar-ing, metal-cutting roof replacement.
I am also deep into planning our upcoming trip to New York, where you have to sell your firstborn child to the developers of the Resy app to get a reasonable dinner slot at any of the places we want to try. This is extra problematic for me, as I have no children to sell.
(I’m also doing secret creative things that I’m not ready to talk about yet, but believe me, my favorite fucklings will be the first to know!)
NFG DEALS
My third book, You Do You, is on sale in hardcover from Amazon US for the bargain price of $7.69! I have no idea why they’re offering a 65% discount on this, my personal favorite of the series, nor how long the deal will last. Mysterious!
What else?
It’s whale season here on the north coast of the Dominican Republic, and we got to see a few of them frolicking at a distance when we were out on a [non-official whale watch] boat trip a couple weeks ago. I wish the whales had seen fit to come a little closer, but probably me jumping up and down screaming “Ballenas! BALLENAS!” like Captain Ahab after a few too many rum cocktails was not helping our cause.
As for the promised hot take on Sexy Beast: as mentioned in the last NFGN, we were watching the TV series, which is a prequel to the [apparently] much-loved 2000 feature film starring Sir Ben Kingsley, which I had never seen.
I gobbled up the TV series! Exceptional performances all around, complex heists, many twists, great action, tension, the whole bit. But when I looked up the reviews, there were a lot of people middle-aged men out there saying versions of “How dare they try to hitch their wagon to this perfect movie and the show is terrible and a fucking disgrace and an insult to the original.”
Hmm.
I proceeded to watch the original movie, and it was good (if predictable), but I respectfully suggest that anybody who thinks it was “too perfect” to be prequel-ized or that the new TV series did not do it justice—let alone surpass it in pretty much every way, creating a rich and emotionally gripping backstory for these characters; first and foremost Sarah Greene’s Dee Dee, who went from eye candy with near-zero dialogue in the film to being the breakout star of the show—is living in some kind of nostalgia bubble and does not actually remember the original movie, in the same way that I did not remember how absolutely, face-palming-ly awful the plot/dialogue was on my beloved Magnum P.I. until I tried re-watching it thirty years later. I regret to inform you that apart from Tom Selleck’s undeniable mustachioed magnetism and ability to pull off short-shorts, it does not hold up.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on Sexy Beast vs. Sexy Beast.
Related: has anyone watched and loved Beef with Ali Wong, or Griselda with Sofia Vergara? I’m choosing between those two for my next binge.
Book recommendations
As longtime subscribers know, I was a book editor myself for fifteen years and I like to use this newsletter to shout-out my recent favorite reads. I don’t take requests or PR trades or anything like that; whatever I recommend is because I truly enjoyed it and think other people will too.
Fiction:
Everyone on This Train is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson. The sequel to Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, which I quite enjoyed last year—and I thought this one was even better! Benjamin Stevenson is a master of the meta novel, using a writer main character to walk you through a locked-room (er, train) mystery that is anything but as predictable as it should be when the narrator is feeding you all the clues up front. And he’s funny, too. Loved it.
The Hunter by Tana French. I mean, whomst among us HASN’T been waiting with bated breath to get their hot little hands on the new novel by the Queen of Irish crime fiction? It turns out that The Hunter is a sequel to her prior “standalone” novel, The Searcher, which I read when it came out during the pandemic. It’s a credit to her (and, perhaps, to her editors) that I never felt like I needed to go back and re-read that one before I dipped into the new installment; that’s hard to do with any series fiction, and especially with several years between books. Excellent, as always.
Nonfiction:
You Only Die Once: How to Make It to the End with No Regrets by Jodi Wellman. I love the admittedly morbid idea behind this book, which posits that you only have so many Mondays left, so why not make them count? Weaving behavioral science and psychology into her prompts and exercises, by the end Wellman makes the concept of dying happy [almost] as alluring as not dying at all—and definitely WAY BETTER than dying bored, joyless, or unfulfilled. It’s a neat trick. (Note: I read an advance copy; if you’re looking for it, the finished book pubs in May 2024.)
LINKS & LIKES
“This Debut Life” is a really cool idea for a column chronicling the highs & lows and nuts & bolts of the year leading up to her first novel being published, by
.More for aspiring & existing authors: a REALLY helpful edition of Publishing Confidential by
.The always on-fucking-point
on being nice.And for a regular stream of great stuff that’ll scratch that mid-life itch, check out the “What’s got my attention this week” section of The Shift with
.
Alrighty folks, that’ll do it for today’s NFG roundup.
Thanks for reading, and until next time: I see you, I appreciate you, and I hope you’re out there giving fewer, better fucks and living your best life!
Sarah
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Happy weekend! Don’t burn it down.
Thank you!