Never Be Bored
15 October 2021
This Place Hates You
Ninth House book by Leigh Bardugo. Dark tv show; Lovecraft Country tv show; Reservation Dogs tv show.
This place has secrets, this place has monsters, and this place hates you. Too bad you can't just leave.
There's some old magic in New Haven, Connecticut that makes it the perfect spot for the secret societies of Yale to play their dangerous games. In Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, Alex Stern arrives on campus as a very unusual member of the new freshmen class (coincidentally, I did a summer program at Yale one summer in high school, and going off descriptions, I'm pretty sure there's like a 50/50 chance I lived in the exact same room Alex does in this book). Haunted by her past and also by ghosts, she is the newest member of Lethe, who oversee the other eight houses' arcane activities.
Bardugo's worldbuilding is incredible, with a thousand tiny, gorgeous details woven in, and the writing style will keep you hooked. It's just something about this place, you know? None else like it. You can love it, or you can stay forever, but it won't love you back.
From the outside, Winden might seem like just a small German town where nothing ever happens—but things have happened, are happening, will happen. In Winden, the question isn't where—it's when? German language Netflix original Dark is a masterpiece with impeccable casting. In 2019, a child goes missing; in 1986, a woman is starts her new job at the nuclear power plant; in 1953, a strange man arrives in town. I do recommend taking notes or drawing out the family tree as you watch, this show will melt your brain, and I mean that in the best possible way.
For African Americans in the 1950s, much of the US is a dangerous place to be. Lovecraft Country, streaming on HBO, follows Atticus Freeman, his friend Leti Lewis, and his uncle George Freeman—who writes a guide for Black travelers, recommending friendly places and warning against sundown towns. Inspired by monsters from the work of H. P. Lovecraft, I found the horror stories intertwining the lives of the characters to be absolutely terrifying, check it out for good writing and scary times.
Okay, so this place doesn't hate you, but you definitely have a love/hate relationship with this place. Reservation Dogs on Hulu, a tv show written and directed by an all Indigenous team, tells the stories of Elora, Bear, Cheese, and Willie Jack, four teenagers on a reservation in Oklahoma who dream of leaving their problems and griefs behind and moving away to California. The best show I've watched in a while, it's an excellently written comedy drawing on Native myths and the creator Sterlin Harjo's childhood experiences as a member of the Seminole Nation.