Our Favourite Media of August 2019

[helloladies]

Each month, we look back over the media we loved in the previous month, from books to film to video games and more.

Jodie

Six the Musical — Six is super fun musical about Henry VIII's wives, styled (initially) as the ultimate singing contest to discover once and for all who will be crowned 'best wife'. The queens decide the winner will be the wife who had to put up with the biggest load of rubbish, and so they all begin to unload their relationship baggage in a series of wildly entertaining, historically informative, songs explaining how they were done wrong by Henry. All of the songs are super catchy and smart, and the opening number is HUGE. My personal favourites are the up tempo numbers from Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, which are absolute bangers, and Katherine Howard's song which contains a feminist switch-up similar to the one in Les Miserables "Lovely Ladies". I came out inspired to learn more about women in history, particularly the Tudor queens, and of course humming all the lyrics.

KJ

Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch — I've followed McCulloch's blog, All Things Linguistic, for awhile now, so I was very excited to see her expanding her ideas and research into a full-length book. It gave me a lot to think about regarding the ways in which the Internet has changed the way we communicate, especially the chapter on how differently people who came online at different times related to the Internet and to each other. And the emoji chapter alone is worth the price of admission.

Jade War by Fonda Lee — It's almost cliche that the second volume in a trilogy will hit a bit of slump, caught in a place where it has to move the overall story forward without resolving too much, which can make it feel unsatisfying on its own. Not Jade War. This second book is every bit as gripping, heart-wrenching, and exciting as the first, and the final line feels both inevitable and as though it's opening the story up into a whole new world. This is hands-down my favorite story in progress right now, and the third volume cannot come soon enough.