This week’s round-up includes getting through various literature, enjoying Justin Bieber’s Coachella performance, getting back into journaling, and much more.

Literature

I’ve been reading a lot lately. It helps when you have good, or at least immersive, books to read. I came to the end of Alan Moore‘s run on Swamp Thing, and it really was quite a ride. Some stories were better and more engaging than others, but on the whole there is so much more to this character than you might believe. He’s certainly become one of my favourite comic book characters, and it’s made me that much more excited for the upcoming DCU movie.

I have also read Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, The Firelight Apprentice by Bree Paulsen after reading her Garlic duology, and Terri White‘s raw and unfiltered memoir Coming Undone, a book I’ve been meaning to read for a while but needed to be in the right headspace for. All extremely good literature and for very different reasons. Coming up in my reading is continuing to get through Gone with the Wind (which is turning out to be a lot better and easier to read than I’d anticipated), more iterations of Swamp Thing, and the comic book tie-ins of the Life is Strange video games.

Television

I’ve just about come to the end of Lucifer, and I’ve quite enjoyed it as an easy-to-watch show. It was quite unlike the comic books (that I’m a big fan of), but it had its own vibe. Tom Ellis, a far cry from his role in Miranda that I initially knew him from, clearly impressed the Americans with his British devil, but I think I wasn’t as entranced. I didn’t fully understand Lucifer’s relationship with Chloe Decker – the chemistry seemed to be missing. But, the ensemble worked well and the show had some fun moments.

I’m now rewatching Euphoria and making my way up to the new third season. I remember binging seasons one and two a few years ago and really enjoiying them, and nothing has changed this second time around. I’m hoping the third season will be just as explosive!

Music

I suffer from migraines from time to time, and a couple of nights ago I had a pretty bad one – about a 6.5 on the pain scale – that lasted most of the night, with my usual medicine not really doing much to help. I also sometimes fall asleep to ASMR TikTok videos, and one particular video introduced me to an incredibly soothing piece: Brave Spirit by Dy Kamylle. I had it on repeat while trying to get some sleep during the migraine attack, and it really helped. Now I’ll be using it to help me fall asleep like taking melatonin.

I don’t really follow what goes on at Coachella all that much, but I was quite taken with Justin Bieber‘s set, especially sitting with his laptop and singing along with his younger self on his old tunes. There was something very intimate about it – how often do we sit at home doing something on computers whilst listening/singing along to music? We could almost have been a fly-on-the-wall while he takes a trip down what I imagine to be a bittersweet memory lane. Sometimes it’s refreshing to just hear the music rather than watch a huge production. I applaud him for risking something different (and Justice is still one of my favourite albums of all time, and I wasn’t exactly a Belieber before that).

Film

My latest Dawn of the Tapes review is Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, a horror in the vein of other Mummy films, in which an ancient Egyptian demon enters a human body and wreaks fatal havoc. I enjoyed it as a standard horror but didn’t feel it really stood out or offered anything new to the genre.

This coming week I’m looking forward to seeing The Devil Wears Prada 2. I remember being a big fan of the first film when it first came out and enjoying the books, too. I’m most looking forward to seeing Emily Blunt‘s character Emily, as she was somehow the funniest and most relatable to me, more so than Anne Hathaway‘s Andie.

Life

I used to keep diaries from the age of 12 up until around 18 but struggled to do so as an adult. It started to feel silly and I never liked going back to read them. But now, with so many changes on the horizon (once again) and going through a few things in the past few years, I’ve decided to pick up journaling. I’m looking forward to spilling some thoughts (in the same journal pictured right), and I also splashed out a little on a mini photo printer for my phone so I can add pictures to the journal. I don’t expect to write in it every day, but at least once a week most likely. It’s also given me an excuse to use my sticker collection! No more hoarding stickers (I don’t know why we all still do that). I find this blog, particularly the Dawn Summary, to be something of a journal, too. A place to spew thoughts, whether people see them or not.

A Random Thing I Learned This Week

This is less something I learned than something I read that grabbed me. This morning, during my allotted hour of reading articles through Apple News, I came across an article entitled On Losing a Daughter, taken from the memoir Dispatches From Grief: A Mother’s Journey Through the Unthinkable by Danielle Crittendon. Of course, I have never lost a child, but my mum did, and I a sister (and eventually my mum, too), so I felt compelled to read it. It made me think a lot about grief, the platitudes people offer, those who are yet to experience loss and my own mother’s experience. She was very stoic my mum, and although I have no doubt that losing a child altered her, you wouldn’t really know it. She kept everything in, or at least never really showed much to us, her other kids. On reflection, I think I have taken on this dangerous level of stoicism and am trying not to keep everything in. I think there’s a possibility it may have had a more physical detrimental effect on her body, but I’m just speculating. Anyway, whether you have lost a loved one, specifically a child, or not, it’s a good read (if you can get past the paywall or opt for a free trial) and can help if you have, or ever have, someone in a similar situation to Danielle.