Weekend Whats

What to Book: “In the fall of 1980, when I was fourteen, a friend of my parents named Naomi Shah fell in love with me. She was thirty-six, a mother of two, and married to a wealthy man. Like so many things that happened to me that year, it didn’t seem strange at the time.” Playworld by Adam Ross is an epic coming of age story about a teen actor set in NYC in the 80s that more than lives up to its stellar reviews. It’s so great.

+ What to Doc: I really didn’t have much interest in Jayne Mansfield. And I haven’t watched that many episodes of Law and Order SVU with Mariska Hargitay. So I’m not sure why I found myself watching Hargitay’s doc My Mom Jayne on HBO Max. But I’m sure glad I did. In many ways, it’s the story of one of America’s first social influencers. And it’s also a consistently jaw-dropping uncovering of Hargitay’s broader family history.