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Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained.

Today’s special guest is Maya Chung, an associate editor on the Books team and a frequent contributor to our Books Briefing newsletter. Lately, Maya has been enjoying the style and ambience of the French novelist Maylis de Kerangal, is still thinking about a recent exhibition of work by the surrealist 20th-century artist Meret Oppenheim, and is enjoying post-hype-cycle prestige TV, which includes the fourth and final season of Succession.

First, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic:

A star reporter’s break with reality The instant pot failed because it was a good product. The fake poor bride

The Culture Survey: Maya Chung

The upcoming event I’m most looking forward to: I really hope to see the Shakespeare in the Park production of Hamlet in New York’s Central Park this summer. The early pandemic made me realize how much I’d taken for granted living in a city with such incredible theater, so I’ve been cherishing the experience of seeing live theater this past year. And there’s nothing like Shakespeare in the Park—whatever the play, it’s a totally enchanting experience. This year it’s a contemporary Hamlet directed by the celebrated Kenny Leon, who also did this season’s Tony-winning revival of Topdog/Underdog on Broadway. Setting Shakespeare in the modern day can sometimes be gimmicky, but when it’s done right, it captures the magic of his work, and how enduring it remains. [Related: All of Shakespeare’s plays are about race.]

The television show I’m most enjoying right now: I don’t love watching shows when they’re at the height of their popularity, because when there’s a ton of chatter, I have a hard time figuring out what my actual, original thoughts are (and if I have any!). So I just finally started watching the fourth season of Succession. Avoiding spoilers while working on the Culture desk here has been nearly impossible, and some of the big bombshells did slip through. But I’m still savoring all of the delicious drama and insult-hurling. [Related: The Succession plot that explained the whole series]

I’m even more behind on The Handmaid’s Tale, which I also just started watching a couple weekends ago. The show came out in 2017, which wasn’t that long ago, but it has been really fascinating to watch it with a little bit of distance, especially given the political climate in which it premiered. Also, the performances are spectacular, and it’s visually gorgeous. [Related: The visceral, woman-centric horror of The Handmaid’s Tale]

Best novel I’ve recently read, and the best work of nonfiction: I read Maylis de Kerangal’s short novella Eastbound earlier this year, which is about a young Russian conscript who, once aboard the Trans-Siberian rail, decides to desert and meets a French woman who helps him. I haven’t stopped thinking about it. I then read de Kerangal’s book The Heart, a similarly tense novel about the events and characters involved in a heart transplant—including the young man who dies in an accident, the woman who receives his heart, and the doctors and bureaucrats who make the transplant possible. In recent years I’ve sought out books for style and ambience rather than plot, perhaps because of my fickle attention span or perhaps after reading one too many plodding books. But de Kerangal reminded me how transportive it is when an author successfully creates that itching desire to know what happens next—without forgoing an ounce of style.

As for nonfiction, I’ve loved Christina Sharpe’s Ordinary Notes, a book of fragmentary “notes”—which include memoir, theory, photos, and poetic musings—about Black life in America. I’ve been reading the book in blips and spurts over the past couple of months, which in some ways has felt like the best way to read it, because it’s meant I’ve been carrying Sharpe’s intelligent, lyrical voice around with me.

An author I will read anything by: For a long time I didn’t have an answer to this, but as a books editor, you get asked this, or a version of this question, a lot. Though my answer will likely change, right now, it’s Rachel Cusk and Rachel Ingalls. Two very different writers, both completely enrapturing and honest and intricate. [Related: Rachel Cusk won’t stay still.]

The last museum or gallery show that I loved: I loved seeing Meret Oppenheim’s work at the Museum of Modern Art earlier this year. I was previously uninitiated in her work but came away from the show entranced by her bleakness and her whimsy. My favorite part came near the end, where, across opposite walls on large sheets of paper, Oppenheim had made a blueprint for a retrospective of her work in Bern. For this, she drew tiny reproductions of her works so that the curators could see what order they should be displayed in. It made me strangely sad to see the artist’s career captured two-dimensionally, in such miniature. But that’s probably the wrong way to look at it; it’s likely that Oppenheim was proudly looking back at her life’s work, taking control of how exactly it should be consumed.

The last thing that made me snort with laughter: Even the title of Nicole Holofcener’s new movie, You Hurt My Feelings, made me snort—I love a literal title. (When I encountered the similarly prosaic book title Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, by the biologist Rupert Sheldrake, in this lovely profile of his son, the mycologist Merlin Sheldrake, I knew I had to get my hands on a copy.) In the movie, a woman falls apart when she overhears her husband admitting that he doesn’t like her new book. I’m an editor, not a writer, so I was able to laugh heartily at this premise. But I could imagine that for my writer colleagues, this one might hit a little too close to home. [Related: You Hurt My Feelings is a hilarious anxiety spiral.]

The Week Ahead

Season 2 of The Bear (all episodes streaming on Hulu on Thursday) I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home, Lorrie Moore’s strange new novel, full of death but also the author’s trademark humor (on sale Tuesday) Asteroid City, Wes Anderson’s new film that shows the director at his best, according to our critic (in theaters everywhere Friday)

More in Culture

Long live the delightfully dumb comedy. Paul McCartney: I saw you standing there. Killer Mike’s critique of wokeness Asteroid City is Wes Anderson at his best. What to read when you’re feeling ambitious What’s so funny about dying?

Catch up on The Atlantic

Jack Smith’s backup option Why Trump might just roll to the presidential nomination The pregnancy risk that doctor’s won’t mention

Photo Album

Stunning Cephalopod: Aquatic Life Finalist. The iridescent symmetry of this blanket octopus plays a key role in the cephalopod’s success as a predator. Four species of blanket octopuses roam tropical and subtropical seas—including the Gulf of Mexico, the Indian Ocean, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Mediterranean—searching for fish and crustaceans to eat.

Scroll through winners of the 2023 BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition.

Isabel Fattal contributed to this newsletter.

Some 4,000 protesters, according to organisers, and 3,000, according to police, turned out for the protests close to the village of Saint Remy-de-Maurienne in southeastern France in defiance of an official ban on the gathering