Introducing Offline Recs, our monthly culture digest

A compendium of movies, music, books, meals, and other cultural ephemera that we can’t stop thinking about

Welcome to Offline Recs, The Culture Journalist’s monthly digest of the movies, music, books, meals, and other cultural ephemera we can’t stop thinking about — regardless of where they fit in the news cycle. We’re making the March edition available to everyone, but you can sign up for a paid subscription to receive this round-up every month, along with full pod episodes and other goodies.

Books

Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

The cover design for this book is so disarmingly cool and strange that I had dismissed it for years as the kind of release that well-heeled young people with artistic ambitions will leave sitting out on their coffee table to seem, well, disarmingly cool and strange. Turns out, it’s a story about a young woman in the early ’00s who is actually so disarmingly cool and strange that she decides to sleep for an entire year, armed with a bathroom cabinet full of pharmaceuticals, miscellaneous bodega snacks, and the soporific stream-of-consciousness rambli…