• Lovely Things to Watch: Rita

    Supremely intelligent, funny, powerful women who are totally likable. Great acting. And the side effect of learning a brand-new Scandinavian language (at least by osmosis). These are all the benefits of obsessing over Danish television… and I would know, because I am currently obsessing over Danish television. Yep, it’s early summer and for the second year in a row,  I have fallen hard for a Danish series. You know, the kind of falling hard that involves watching 3-4 episodes nonstop, tearing through an entire season in only a day or two, frantic Googling to see when (if) another season is on the way. (And I tend to find great Danish…

  • Lovely Things to Watch: Outlander

    Whenever I pick up an “Outlander” book, it is, to me, like falling back into my own bed after a long trip. This 8-book-long series is familiar: the characters seem like friends, and the settings, as foreign as they may be to those of us stuck in the 21st century, oddly familiar. I first read the book series when I was embarking upon a really strange, busy and stressful phase of my life, and these books felt like a safe place that I could return to, day after day, page after page, chapter after chapter, one book after the next of the staggering (then)7-book series. I began reading the series…