Books about freshman year of college

Marlee Matlin in What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? Photo: Samuel Goldwyn Films In the season (I know ) finale of The Vow , Mark Vicente and Bonnie Piesse wind their way back to the Albany area to sort through all the belongings they left behind when they fled NXIVM, the reported cult in which they’d spent years. It’s a trip meant to serve as closure for the couple as well as for the series, which serves up images of the pair standing reflectively at night in front of their former house, murmuring about how they’re probably being surveilled at that very moment. While rummaging through the contents of their storage unit later, Vicente pauses to hold up a copy of What the Bleep Do We Know!?: Discovering the Endless Possibilities for Altering Your Everyday Reality , which was published to accompany the 2004 movie of the same name he directed. “I wrote this book,” he sighs to the camera. “Another life.” His tone is rueful, that of a man marveling at how much time has passed since … [Read more...] about Before NXIVM and

The VH1 reality series Couples Therapy , left, and the Showtime docuseries Couples Therapy. Illustration: Richard A. Chance There’s a scene in HBO’s NXIVM-cult docuseries, The Vow , that turned my initial idle curiosity into absurd, all-consuming obsession. At the end of the first episode, a former cult member named Mark Vicente gets emotional in the middle of a talking-head interview as he describes how NXIVM destroyed the early, tender part of his marriage. “I feel like my life with Bonnie was stolen,” Vicente says. “Bonnie got there first.” He’s referring to her realization that the organization they had devoted their lives to was a cult. Then, without any warning, the show skips back in time to an earlier moment of rupture between the couple, when Bonnie laid out her concerns about NXIVM to Mark. “There’s a lot of things I’m starting to see about the organization,” she tells him, while Mark tries to talk her off the ledge: “C’mon, boo. C’mon, c’mon.” “I think some … [Read more...] about Reality TV Glows Up

We suddenly have the urge to vape in a decadent tie-dye sweatsuit, but we digress. Jason Sudeikis, a man who’s been very publicly going through it over the past few months, finally got himself a win at the Golden Globes when he took home the Best Television Actor, Musical or Comedy Series Award for Ted Lasso. ( It’s a perfect show .) And after rewatching his speech one too many times, Vulture would also like to bestow Sudeikis with the Best 120 Seconds of the Night, which pretty much translated to the last time you were drunk at a party at 2 a.m. and attempted to start some serious discourse about … literature? We’ve all been there. (If we were at Dunder Mifflin , this would be an easy win for the Doobie Doobie Pothead Stoner of the Year.) “That’s the coolest thing. That’s nuts. That’s crazy. Okay. Well, I’ll say this. I want to thank everybody that works on this show,” Sudeikis explained. “I read this book to my son, Otis, called The Three Questions by Leo Tolstoy. It … [Read more...] about That Feeling When Jason Sudeikis’s Edibles Hit Just Before His Golden Globes Speech

Photo: RMV/Shutterstock Noname had originally intended for her third album, Factory Baby , to come out in 2020, but the pandemic and last summer’s protests for racial justice set the stage for a higher-stakes mission. Already known for marrying her work with social justice, the Chicago rapper had started a book club in August 2019, and as 2020 went on, her focus shifted to expanding the organization. At the same time, she’d been doing reading of her own — on everything from anti-capitalism to Israel and Palestine — and working through her thoughts on Twitter. When J. Cole dropped a song accusing her of using a “queen tone” in tweeting about big-time rappers’ support of Black Lives Matter, she brushed him off with a 70-second response: “Song 33,” her only track of 2020. But shortly after, she disavowed the song, calling it a “distraction.” “I tried to use it as a moment to draw attention back to the issues I care about but I didn’t have to respond,” she tweeted. “My … [Read more...] about Noname’s Voice Remains Singular on ‘Rainforest’