Welcome. Last week I asked you to send your favorite cover songs. We received a fantastic assortment of tracks, some classic covers (Billy Stewart’s “Summertime”), some recent renditions (Laura Marling’s “Blues Run the Game”). We’ve compiled the submissions in a Spotify playlist where you can spend a few hours in audio bliss.
Listening to so many covers reminded me to visit an old favorite, Sandie Shaw’s version of The Smiths’s “Jeane.” In this case, I prefer the cover to the original, Ms. Shaw’s simpler guitar and vocals to The Smiths’s drum-heavy take.
Ms. Shaw rose to fame in the United Kingdom with another cover, 1964’s “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me,” by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. That version wasn’t as well known in the United States as those by Dionne Warwick (who recorded the original demo), Lou Johnson or Naked Eyes. Perhaps even less known to U.S. audiences is Ms. Shaw’s cover of the song in French, “Toujours un coin qui me rappelle,” which I like more than her English version. That’s the thrill of cover songs in the digital age: investigating their provenance takes you to unexpected corners, small discoveries.
Have a listen to the cover songs that other At Home readers love and, if you’re so inclined, check out the originals. If you’re looking for another good playlist, I recommend the soundtrack from the HBO series “I May Destroy You.” “Wandaland,” about the reclusive creator of a theme park, is six beautiful minutes of animation worth a look. And in case you missed it, the drum battle between Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters and 10-year-old Nandi Bushell is truly something else.
Tell us
What are you watching that you wish you could send a bulletin about to the whole world? What TV shows, films, YouTube videos, Instagram series and other streaming curiosities have you discovered that are making your days a little (or a lot) better? Write to us: athome@nytimes.com. We’re continuing to revel in your log book entries, so please keep sending. And if you find anything interesting in your cover song research, pass it along as well! We’re At Home. We’ll read every letter sent. And you’ll find more ideas for living a good life at home or near it below. See you next week.
How to pass the time
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Martha Stewart is so into cannabidiol that she’s started a line of CBD pâtes de fruit, and she said she once got so high before going to the movies that she couldn’t walk down the theater’s aisle. Those are two facts you’ll glean from this wonderful profile of “America’s foremost domestic goddess,” along with details on her quarantine routine. (e.g., She never drinks alone.)
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When a Hungarian architecture professor named Erno Rubik invented the Rubik’s Cube in 1974, he wasn’t sure it could be solved and took a month to unscramble it himself. Now he has a new book, “Cubed,” that’s “partly his memoir, partly an intellectual treatise and, in large part, a love story about his evolving relationship with the invention that bears his name and the global community of cubers fixated on it.”
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And our music critic Jon Pareles recommends “Alicia,” the seventh studio album from Alicia Keys.
What to watch
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Much of this year’s New York Film Festival, which runs from Sept. 17 through Oct. 11, is being presented online. A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis have selected 10 movies you shouldn’t miss, like Steve McQueen’s “Lovers Rock,” part of a series on the lives of West Indian immigrants living in Britain, and a documentary about the F.B.I.’s surveillance of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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In “Don’t Forget the Driver,” a new BBC comedy on BritBox, Toby Jones plays a tour-bus driver on England’s southern coast. Mike Hale has selected it as a Critic’s Pick, writing that it “doesn’t make the sort of self-conscious claims to relevance that characterize a lot of television comedies right now, but in its distinct evocation of a place and one small but ornery man, it couldn’t be more timely.”
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And if you’ve been watching the documentary series “The Vow,” about the self-help organization NXIVM, you won’t want to miss Amanda Hess’s assessment of the group as “a cult for the age of the corporate internet, mass surveillance and the nerd kings.”
How to deal
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If you’re planning to go apple picking, visit a pumpkin patch or wander a corn maze, be prepared for timed entries, mask requirements and hand-washing stations. The mazes will have wider paths and passing lanes to facilitate social distancing.
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Wondering which plants you should bring indoors for the winter and which are lost causes? The columnist Margaret Roach spoke with a “veteran plant-stasher” who told her “which to overwinter as seed, cuttings or houseplants, and which to keep dormant in the equivalent of a root cellar, and at what temperature and humidity.”
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And if you’ve relocated during the pandemic, we have information on where and how you can vote.
Like what you see?
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