November 2024: What All the Badass Women are Reading, Watching and Listening To
So last week wasn’t all bad news. Jo Piazza, one of our favorite Badass Women’s Book Club authors, has just had her tradwife murder mystery picked up for publication! If you follow Jo online, you know she has spent a lot of time diving deep into the rise and influence of tradwives. About this book, she said: “After spending a ridiculous amount of time in the world of tradwives, this book baked as easily as a delicious loaf of sourdough bread. This murder mystery is exactly what we need right now.” You can read all about it here. Publication is scheduled for July 2025.
Need a quick education on tradwives? You can listen to this episode of Jo’s Under the Influence podcast.
Now on to what all the Badass Women are reading, watching, and listening to this month!
Her signature phrase may be “How easy is that?” but her life was anything but. Her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices, and exquisite attention to detail. In her unmistakable voice (no one tells a story like Ina), she brings her past and her process to life in a high-spirited and no-holds-barred memoir that chronicles decades of personal challenges, adventures (and misadventures) and unexpected career twists.
Looking for a great chaser to Ina’s book? Well there’s lots of drama around the recently released Martha Stewart documentary on Netflix. She definitely comes across as both the interesting and complicated person that she is. And I mean that in both a positive and negative way. You can watch the trailer here.
Am I desperately searching for some escapist reads? Yes! Here are two I recommend!
Frankie Lane knows what’s best for just about everyone but herself. Her divorced sister, Stef, who is too young to give up on love; her shy employee, Elinor; and her daughter, Natalie, who works in Frankie’s shop, Holiday Happiness, and really needs to start her own business selling the delectable chocolates she makes at home; even her best friend, Viola, who is trying to renovate her old Victorian. Frankie knows she could help all of them, if they’d just let her. Inspired by Jane Austen’s Emma, this joyful Christmas romp tells the story of a woman who can’t stop trying to help everyone around her find their happily-ever-after—even when her help leads to disaster.
Columnist Anna Appleby has left her love life behind after a painful divorce. Who needs a man when she has two kids, a cat, and uncontested control of the TV remote? Besides, she’d rather be single than subject herself to the hell of online dating. But her office rival is vying for her column, and no column means no stable source of income. In a desperate attempt to keep her job, Anna finds herself pitching a unique angle: seven dates, all found offline, chosen by her children.
From awkward encounters to unexpected connections, Anna gamely begins to put herself out there, asking out waiters, the mailman, and even her celebrity crush. But when a romantic connection appears where she least expected it, will she be brave enough to take another chance on love?
And this must be celebrity memoir season! Here are two more worth checking out!
With her trademark honesty and humor, Cher: The Memoir traces how this diamond in the rough succeeded with no plan and little confidence to become the trailblazing superstar the world has been unable to ignore for more than half a century.
From actor, comedian, co-creator of Marcel the Shell, and New York Times bestselling author of Little Weirds, Jenny Slate, a wild, soulful, hilarious collection of essays depicting the journey into motherhood as you’ve never seen it before. Told in five phases—Single, True Love, Pregnancy, Baby, and Ongoing—through laugh-out-loud funny, unclassifiable essays that take the form of letters to a doctor, dreams of a stork, fantasy therapy sessions, gossip between racoons, excerpts from an imaginary olden timey play, obituaries, theories about post-partum hair loss, graduation speeches, and more.
This next one is a beautiful book about the power of books…
Growing up in Virginia to Nigerian immigrant parents, books were where Glory Edim, founder of Well Read Black Girl, discovered community. Reading wherever and whenever she could, be it in her dorm room or when traveling by subway or plane, she found the Black writers whose words would forever change her life: Nikki Giovanni, through children’s poetry cassettes; Maya Angelou, through a critical high school English teacher; Toni Morrison, while attending Morrison’s alma mater, Howard University; Audre Lorde, on a flight to Nigeria. In prose full of both joy and heartbreak, Edim recounts how these writers and so many others taught her how to value herself by helping her to find her own voice.
Since her debut (The Girl on the Train), Paula Hawkins is one of my must-reads…
Welcome to Eris: an island with only one house, one inhabitant, one way out. Unreachable from the Scottish mainland for twelve hours each day. Once home to Vanessa: A famous artist whose notoriously unfaithful husband disappeared twenty years ago. Now home to Grace: A solitary creature of the tides, content in her own isolation. But when a shocking discovery is made in an art gallery far away in London, a visitor comes calling and the secrets of Eris threaten to emerge.
So many new shows to explore!
Woman of the Hour In 1970s Los Angeles, as a wave of murders makes headlines, a young woman aspiring to become an actress and a serial killer cross paths during an episode of a dating show. Directed by and starring Anna Kendrick, this show is based on a true story. You can watch the trailer here.
It was revealed last week that Anna Kendrick donated all proceeds from 'Woman of the Hour' to anti-sexual violence charities. You can read more about this and the organizations she supported here.
Bad Sisters is back! Two years after the “accidental death” of Grace's abusive husband, the close-knit Garvey sisters may have moved on, but when past truths resurface, the ladies are thrust back into the spotlight, suspicions are at an all-time high, lies are told, secrets revealed. Season 2 started last week - you can watch the trailer here.
I was talking to a friend last week and we remarked on the increasing number of page-to-screen adaptations! You can check out a big list of them here. I’m excited about what’s coming up!
Until next time…keep living your best badass life!