just things that stayed with me
Good Stuff. Issue—(#1)
You’re reading “Good Stuff”—an occasional column at “The Epiphany” where I throw things your way. Things that made me think, laugh, or sit in quiet emotional distress. Maybe they’ll do the same for you.
Alright, let’s try this again.
My old readers might remember I used to do a similar column called “Weekend Highlights.” This is basically the same thing, but it won’t be weekly anymore.
It was just too much; I couldn’t focus on my main essays because of it.
and that’s how “Weekend Highlights” died.
but I liked writing them. I liked sharing my favorite books and articles and movies and songs so more people could discover them.
And that’s how “Good Stuff” was born.
This time I don’t want to stick to a particular Candance, whenever I feel I have something to share, you’ll find another issue of this column in your inbox.
So there you have it, the first issue of Good Stuff.
#1— The Queen’s Gambit.
There’s this scene in Episode 3—Beth Harmon is staring at the chessboard, when Mr. Shaibel places a coin on the board and says,
“You’ve got your gift.” Then he flips the coin over. “…and you’ve got what it costs. Hard to say for you what that will be.”
That line hit me. Hard.
It’s exactly what I wrote about in my essay on the shadow self—“Why It’s So Hard to” Change”—the idea that strengths and weaknesses are just two sides of the same coin. Beth was a chess prodigy, but that brilliance came at a cost—alcoholism and drugs, and winning often felt more like survival.
The show sends you to the 1960s and 70s, and every detail—the fashion, the cars, the lighting, the music—feels flawlessly accurate to its era. One of a kind. A masterpiece.
So much so that the producers of the show refused to make a sequel, not to ruin what they already have just for the sake of money.
The way the show visualizes chess—the tension of each match—you could feel it in the background music. They have purposefully made the music that way, so much for the details.
Believe me, you don’t have to be a chess fan to love this show.
#2— The Summer I Turned Pretty.
The kind of title that makes you think, yeah, I’m probably gonna love this.
And God knows I did.
It’s about Belly—a girl caught between two brothers, Conrad and Jeremiah. A messy, aching, coming-of-age story. First love, heartbreak, complicated people making complicated choices.
What got me was the way everything falls apart.
It’s not sudden. No big explosion, no out-of-nowhere twist. It builds. You feel it creeping in, getting closer, pressing down. And when it finally happens, it doesn’t hit all at once.
Piece by piece.
Bit by bit.
Like it’s dragging out the hurt just to make sure you feel every second of it.
That’s when a story really gets to you.
Note: It has already been adapted into a series for Prime Video, with season 3 coming this July, in case you’d prefer it that way. It’s one of the best book adaptations I have seen, though I definitely recommend reading the books first.
#3— My Next Breath by Jeremy Renner.
Thank God I died, and thank God I get to really live.
~ Jeremy Renner.
If you get crushed by a 14,000-pound PistenBully Snowcat on New Year’s Day, break over 35 bones, and somehow survive, you have to write a book about it.
That’s exactly what Jeremy Renner did.
This isn’t about Hawkeye. It’s not about Hollywood. It’s about what it means to survive.
Renner’s book My Next Breath goes deep. Five out of eleven chapters focus on the accident, three of which describe the 40 minutes he lay in the snow, waiting for medics, unsure if he would make it.
And you feel it.
The panic, the pain, his family watching, the uncertainty of survival. And then, you stay with him through the healing. You see how it changed him.
I’ve read plenty of memoirs. Never Enough by Andrew Wilkinson, The Third Door by Alex Banayan. But I wouldn’t compare them to this.
This is different.
And most importantly, it’s good.
* * *
That’s it.
No neat lesson, no tidy ending. Just things that sat with me longer than I expected.
Some things stay with you because they demand to be remembered. Others—because they slip into the spaces between big moments, because they remind you of something you can’t quite name, because they made you feel something even if you don’t know why.
I don’t know if these will do that for you. Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t.
But if they do, if one of them lingers, if one of them pulls at you in a way you didn’t see coming, then maybe it was meant to.
Your Friend,
Abd Sid. xx
19th May, 2025.