1. Heirs. I haven’t watched a Korean drama in a straight two years, but when I heard that my favorites Lee Min Ho, of the charisma and the bushels of talent, and Park Shin Hye, of the adorableness and expressive face, were being paired together, I knew I had to get on that. Heirs has made me fall madly for it; the romance is wistful and delicate and achingly addicting – it’s the small moments that get me, like him watching her sleep, or the two sitting on opposite sides of a winecellar wall, both lost in thought, the wall a visual symbol of how two people can be physically close yet find each other so hard to reach. You can watch all aired episodes so far on Dramafever.
2. The Thin Man. I picked up a vintage copy of Dashiell Hammett’s famous hardboiler (yes I just coined this, why should “potboiler” exist and not “hardboiler”?) at a book sale this weekend, and a fourth of the way in am highly enjoying it. Nick and Nora Charles are a wealthy socialite couple in New York for Christmas. Nick, a former ace detective, left that life behind when he married Nora and devoted himself to running the various businesses she was left heir to by her family. The couple are blithely in love and live in a breezy flurry of cocktail parties and social events, but are left ever so slightly bored by it. So when a murder turns up practically on their doorstep Nora pushes Nick to get involved, and in between throwing back a drink every other page, he manages to do some able detecting. Some people find this book hilarious, but I find it more endearing than anything. Also, best opening line of all time surely – “I was leaning against the bar in a speakeasy on Fifty-second Street, waiting for Nora to finish her Christmas shopping, when a girl got up from a table where she had been sitting with three other people, and came over to me.”
3. Seattle Chocolates. This stuff is delicious, y’all, particularly the Rainier cherry – I generally don’t like either cherries or pecans but somehow the blend in this chocolate bar is just perfect, rich and fruity and chocolatey and wildly addicting.
Coffee and Irony 