Once a month, I share the best of what I’ve been reading, watching, and exploring. Enjoy!
Books
Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliott. There’s a Carl Jung quote that I love: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” This book picks up that thread and runs with it. It’s about the hidden parts of you that quietly run the show—especially the ones behind the things you claim to hate. Like when you say you hate working too much… but deep down, a part of you loves being the overachiever, the burned-out martyr, the one who holds it all together. Once you see that clearly, things start to shift. The book is weird, smart, and game-changing. (I just wish it had been edited more tightly—it circles the same ideas a few too many times.)
Shows
The Bear Season 4. [Hulu] This show has quietly become one of my all-time favorites. Most series give you the polished, Hollywood version of life—the big moments, the clean arcs. The Bear does the opposite. It lives in the pressure, the awkwardness, the misfires. It captures what it feels like to chase something you care about while barely holding it together. And somehow, across four seasons, it keeps getting better.
Films
The Life of Chuck (2024). [Amazon Prime | Apple TV+] Based on a Stephen King short story, but not the kind of King story you’d expect. No horror, no jump scares. Told in three acts—in reverse—it’s less about plot and more about what it means to live, love, and let go. It’s the closest thing to a warm hug from the universe.
Pulp Fiction (1994). [Amazon Prime | Apple TV+] One of my all-time top five films. I first saw it in a theater in Istanbul when I was 14—back when age restrictions were more of a suggestion. I didn’t get it at the time. Now I can’t stop coming back to it. What makes the film brilliant isn’t just the structure or the dialogue—it’s what it chooses to focus on. Most movies would cut straight to the shootout. Pulp Fiction lingers in the car ride before—the casual conversation about foot massages and fast food in Europe. It zooms in on all those in-between moments most movies skip. But that’s where the real story lives.
Before Sunset (2004). [Amazon Prime | Apple TV+] The second installment of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy. The entire film unfolds in real time over an afternoon in Paris—just two people walking and talking, nine years after they first met. Nothing big happens, and that’s the magic. It’s about the stuff between the milestones: the things unsaid, the what-ifs, the lives we almost lived.
Clueless (1995). [Netflix] I finally watched it, decades late—and I get why it’s a classic. On the surface, it’s a teen rom-com full of knee socks and one-liners, but there’s a lot more happening underneath. The writing is sharp, the jokes still land, and Paul Rudd looks like he filmed it last week.
Related
Bold
