The best of what we read, watched, listened to this year
A quick look at what Moonshot dug in 2023
Whether we had our noses in books, pods in our ears, or eyes glued to the screen, here is a roundup of some of the best content we consumed last year.
Lauren
📚 Book: Lessons in Chemistry
Author: Bonnie Garmus
Why: It’s lovely, hilarious, and heartbreaking. Elizabeth Zott is a scientist, but she's also a woman in the 1950s and women just don't do science. Well actually, women really aren't taken seriously for anything except baby rearing and homemaking. But Zott takes everything seriously. She's also the smartest person at the Hastings Research Institute where the infamous Calvin Evans resides in his own lab. It's pure chemistry when they collide, starting with microbiome gut chemistry and ending in the true love, soulmate kind of chemistry. Her fearlessness and tenacity as she navigates tectonic life changes ultimately lands her as the star of her own cooking show. She educates and inspires a whole generation of women, in a narrative that would seem to ignite the feminist movement. Oh, and the Apple TV adaption is tip top.
📚 Book: Reaching for the Moon
Author: Katherine Johnson
Why: A young adult autobiography written by the great Black, female mathematician is the deeply inspiring chronicle of not just her life but the era she grew up in. A central character in the Hidden Figures movie, Johnson is beyond just a smart and lovely person. She’s someone who suffered under great injustices while also witnessing and leading profound changes. She was instrumental in getting John Glenn into orbit and safely back home. In fact, he wouldn't step in the capsule before she, the human computer, hand-checked all the machine computer's work. After 1969 when she helped put our men on the moon, her career continued with her being one of the first people to set their sights on Mars. Her contributions to our space explorations have now, finally, been widely heralded, but her life was lived by her daddy's mantra that you are no better than anybody else and nor is anybody else better than you.
Ryan
📚 Book: The Longest Silence: A Life of Fishing
Author: Thomas McGuane
Why: It's a collection of short stories about Thomas's life, packed with fishing tales from the salty Florida Keys to the fresh spring creeks of Montana. There's a lot of western trout fishing stuff in there, covering things that have blown up on social media in recent years. But back in the 70s and 80s, he was just living that lifestyle, fishing with guys like Yvon Chouinard and Jimmy Buffett, all living like dirtbag, super successful, later-in-life kind of guys who were fanatical about fishing.
He paints a poignant picture about every experience that each short story captures, whether they’re in Iceland, Patagonia, Montana, or the Keys fishing for tarpon. I'd say the one downfall of this book was a somewhat depressing ending as he asks his buddies how aging has affected their fishing and what it’s like to stumble around the rivers as old guys. Other than that, it's a very enjoyable read with each chapter a portal into other times and places where fishing was all that mattered.
🎧 Album Recs:
Joel
📚 Book: Blood Meridian
Author: Cormac McCarthy
Why: I’m going to cheat a bit on this one and recommend something I read a few years back. But hear me out. First, this is our initial read/watch list. Second, the author passed away this year and I’d like to highlight them.
Cormac McCarthy was a literary giant whose name belongs on the shortlist for the best American novelist ever. His 1985 epic, Blood Meridian, is a dystopian masterpiece set in the U.S. borderlands during the mid-19th century. The novel follows a teenage runaway who falls in with a group of vigilante opportunists exploiting the confusing, genocidal zeitgeist that ruled the borderlands during the period. McCarthy’s supreme command of language and declarative style bring every written word vividly to life, which given the subject matter, is difficult at times.
It’s not a glaze-over-it page turner that will warm your heart. It's violent, heartbreaking, and will likely leave you shattered. But you can’t look away, even if you want to. It has earned critical acclaim for the past four decades for a reason.
Nick
📺 TV Series: Severance (Apple TV)
Producer: Ben Stiller
Why: Severance revolves around a mysterious company called Lumon Enterprises. The company developed an operation that separates work memories from non-work memories, leaving employees unable to remember anything about their lives outside of work (while they’re at work) and vice versa. The show explores the consequences of this extreme separation and the impact that might have on our identities and relationships. At times, it draws subtle but eerie parallels to the current work/life culture that exists in many corporate business environments.
Aside from being directed and produced by Ben Stiller, the show is incredibly thought-provoking, suspenseful, and engaging. It’s a psychological sci-fi thriller, but you quickly realize that the concepts in the narrative are much closer to our current reality than meets the eye.
Yorckh
📚 Book: So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed
Author: Jon Ronson
Why: This book made me understand more about the cancellation culture that has dominated much of our public discourse. It also made me a little bit more paranoid about social media. There are some cases in the book that are really insane that detail the extreme extent of public shaming in our society. This was my first book by Jon Ronson and I liked his writing so well, I’m on to his next one.
📺 TV Series: The New Once
Producer: Mike Birbiglia
Why: He is a hilarious comedian and as a new parent myself, I could really identify with his jokes. This one man standup show is also something anyone can relate to—we all have kids in our lives—and can crack up over the physical, mental, and emotional challenges (and blessings) children bring with them into the world.
Sandy
📚 Book: Yellowface
Author: R.F. Kuang
Why: I attempted to get out of my true crime hole and try something else. I couldn’t give up ALL the thrill and saw a review of this book and thought I’d give it a try. I listened to this one on Audible and the first-person account immersed me into the story from the very beginning.
June Hayward and Athena Liu were meant to be twin rising stars, but Athena became a literary darling while June remains relatively unknown. Athena has the cultural background to become a figure for marginalized writers, while June dismisses stories about ordinary white girls because the industry just isn’t interested.
June's perception shifts when she witnesses Athena's sudden death. Seizing the opportunity, June steals Athena's just-completed masterpiece—a novel highlighting the overlooked contributions of Chinese laborers in World War I.
Undeterred by ethical concerns, June edits Athena's work and submits it to her agent under her own name. Embracing a new, white-washed identity as Juniper Song, complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo, June believes the historical narrative deserves recognition, regardless of the storyteller. As Juniper Song climbs the New York Times bestseller list, June Hayward struggles to escape Athena's lingering shadow. However, mounting evidence—and an Instagram stalker—threaten to unravel June's stolen success.
Yellowface explores themes of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation. Set against the backdrop of social media's alienating influence, this timely work poses thought-provoking questions while maintaining an eminently readable quality.
