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Reading Week? – Once In A Blue Moon Edition

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It’s been awhile.

In my mind, I know that I haven’t really written anything longer than a caption, in my own voice, for public consumption, in quite some time. But I still get a shock when I look at my wee blog and realise it’s been well over a year since I wrote on this corner of the internet that I pay, and occasionally log in, to maintain.

The internet has become a fraught place, particularly since I moved to California in mid-2016. I kept up my YouTube/BookTube channel until the end of 2017 but it took it out of me. I rekindled my newsletter in 2018, which I did enjoy but for that whole period I always felt like I had been running a weekly 10k and was suddenly tasked with a monthly marathon instead.

Meantime, I’ve maintained a series of gigs and jobs which have involved writing and, as Austin Kleon says, “typing into boxes,” to earn my keep. Lately I’ve been trying to write again, mostly for myself, but I miss the chat. I miss reflecting on the books I’ve been reading and receiving recommendations in return. So here’s another punt at it.
 

WHAT YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

Here’s what’s up with me: I’m still in central California; I recently became a US citizen; I am, like many millions of Americans (yep, still sounds weird) currently furloughed from my job; and I still read quite a lot of books.

Does that about cover it?

It has become abundantly clear that We’re Living In A Failed State.

Fortunately there are some ways to Stay Sane.

Anyway, shall we move on to some other topics?

 

TOTALLY NORMAL PEOPLE

I’m keeping this subheading as I write over my last blog post to keep the format. Last time I wrote, I’d just read Normal People by Sally Rooney. Last week I watched the TV show. Sorry, I know folk have been boring on about it for an entire fortnight now – decades in internet years – but I really enjoyed it.

I had my reservations about the novel and I think the show was more successful in presenting the characters sympathetically and making sense of their annoying behaviour. Last time I wrote that I wished Marianne and Connell could fix each other. This version still made me want to bang their heads together but it was artfully done. Plus there’s a pandemic and we’re all very emotionally fragile and any portrayal of a “should we long distance or should we break up” conversation is absolutely going to wreck me.

If you haven’t read the novel, you can get a sense of its characters through this short story called At The Clinic.

On an unrelated note, but from the same journal, here’s an exceptional piece from Alice Hattrick: Ill Feelings. I’m looking forward to reading her book when it’s published.

 

ON MY NIGHTSTAND

Here’s the thing: I’ve read like a hundred and ten books since I last wrote. Now there’s a more effective measure than time! If you’re still hanging off that cliff from my last missive, The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt ended up being one of my favourite books of 2018.

Right now I have an author who I’m cultivating a little literary affection for: Alejandro Zambra.

I should have listened to my colleague and former editor Jane Graham who has sung his praises consistently since about 2015. But I didn’t. But then Fitzcarraldo had an ebook sale and I finally stumped up a few quid for Zambra’s short story collection, My Documents, and a selection of his criticism, Not To Read. My Documents is easily one of the best short story collections I’ve read –– his observations and casual details really sing. He’ll make you forgive some really shit men for doing awful things by sneaking all their baggage in the back door. I also really enjoy the ways he plays with form. There’s a quiet confidence and a real charisma in his writing.

I usually wait a while between books by the same author but it was only a few days before I began Not To Read. The first three articles are available to read online. The next morning, I woke up and ordered all four of his other books in English (from my fav Chaucer’s Bookshop in Santa Barbara). I don’t think I’ve ever done that before.

I’m also currently reading The Topeka School by Ben Lerner, which was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It’s dense at the start as it lays its foundations of Topeka in mid-1990, following Adam (a stand-in for Lerner and the main character of his first book, Leaving the Atocha Station) and his parents. Jeff from Book Riot described Lerner’s approach as, “centring his own experience without centring his worldview,” which I find to be true and refreshing. I’ve read a lot about auto-fiction and quite a few books described as auto-fiction and it still sounds like a designation that’s intended to minimise the author’s invention. But I do think that might be the element that separates what Lerner is doing from some other authors’ work, especially those who are lumped into the same category.
 

TIL NEXT TIME..?

Your turn! What are you reading? Are you reading? Leave a reply or go ahead and tweet me.

Have a lovely weekend,
Nicola x

Reading Week – The Titular Role

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Happy Friday!

I write to you from Midtown Sacramento, from a coffee shop that is right on the knife-edge of Scandi-chic and fart-sniffing coffee-snob central. I like it, though.

I’m pretty taken with the state capital, which I’m visiting for little over 24 hours while Evan makes a business trip. Midtown has a relaxed, leafy-neighbourhood NorCal feel while Downtown feels big, like things are happening, but not too busy. It’s refreshing to be in a walkable city that doesn’t feel overwhelming. Plus, one of the first things we saw when we drove into town was a mural celebrating Lady Bird, the film that was already serving as our touchstone for the look and feel of the city.

I felt differently about Scottsdale, which I visited a couple of weekends ago with my in-laws. No doubt the desert has its charms – the sunsets are stunning and the palm trees and hills are lovely to look at. Old Town Scottsdale was walkable but pretty overrun with Wild West gift shop tat. Aside from that, we mostly saw were strip-malls and freshly poured tarmac. Not unlike Central California, to be sure, but I do love California for its shabbiness. It gives the place character.

Oh yeah, I also turned 30 this month. I feel pretty good about it.

How’s about some links?

OTHER THINGS CAN BE SAID

‘Rage Blackouts,’ a Short Essay on Losing Your Temper by Sadie Stein. My hope for you is that you’ll read this and think, “And I thought I was bad!”.

The web can be weaponised – and we can’t count on big tech to stop it. When Tim Berners-Lee is worried about the internet, we probably should be, too.

Similarly, this writer has concerns about YouTube, The Great Radicalizer.

File this under Things We Know But Are Still Upsetting to Read: Racial Blindness outlines the ways in which American’s founding principles enshrine inequality and white supremacy, and some immediately recognisable ways in which those ideas are expressed in news and media.

In related, former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens urges protestors to call for gun control and demand that the government Repeal the Second Amendment. I’m glad someone finally said it.

IT WAS GIVEN TO ME, BY ME

Appropriately, my good friend Rosie wrote about how Lady Bird dares to tackle the mother-daughter relationship that so many films shy away from

Annihilation was a great cinematic, and post-cinematic, experience. I left wondering, just a little bit, why critics had made such a fuss. Then I was doing the dishes and suddenly came up with a whole host of theories. It’s been a fun one to discuss with friends. There are plenty of theories online, but the piece that struck me the most was Anjelica Jade Bastien’s personal and critical essay on How Annihilation Nails the Complex Reality of Depression.

Inkoo Kang asks, ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ Isn’t a Great Film, But Why Does It Have to Be? I look forward to a time when women and people from under-represented communities can make an ok-to-bad film and the critical response can be like, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . But if we have to keep talking about it, I think this article makes for a great blueprint.

Meanwhile, Angie Han asks, Why is Wes Anderson’s ‘Isle of Dogs’ set in Japan? We’re not sure either. I haven’t any strong feelings about Wes Anderson, but I think it’s fair to say that film critics (and perhaps audiences) are getting tired of his shtick. As I was about to publish, I found this other point of view that seeks to answer one of Angie’s questions and tell us What It’s Like to Watch ‘Isle of Dogs’ As a Japanese Speaker.

(P.S. I’ve seen neither A Wrinkle in Time nor Isle of Dogs. I might, I might not.)

ON MY SHELF

This month I absolutely devoured Departures by Anna Hart, whom I’ve followed on social media for many years. You may recognise her work from any number of magazines – she’s often the one writing about coworking spaces on tropical islands and what-not. The book is laid out in chapters, each from a different country that has made her: from her childhood in Singapore and teens in Belfast, through student years in Glasgow, to her first forays into solo travel and notable trips that defined her life and career. The book also contains some of her best advice for world travel and many life lessons gained along the way. She writes with an ease and self-deprecating humour that feels warm and generous. She manages to allow you to join her on her journeys while reflecting upon everything from the privileges to the challenges of a life of travel. I highly recommend it.

It seems that the winter of my (fiction) reading discontent isn’t over after all. White Oleander was a delight (by which I mean a great, tough read), but I haven’t picked up much else. Today I finished Women by Chloe Caldwell, which was similar in style and voice to her personal essays. It’s an episodic novella about a woman’s first lesbian relationship. It reads like a memoir and moved along pleasantly enough, but it never really built to anything. It felt like a stone skimming across the surface of a great lake – complete with a sad little plop at the end.

What’s on your nightstand? Hit reply and let me know!

TIL NEXT MONTH…

Your turn! Read anything good lately? Hit reply or tweet me, won’t you?

Have a lovely weekend,
Nicola x

Reading Week – The Return

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Happy Friday!

It’s been awhile. I thought about reviving Reading Week a few times last year, but you know how it is. So we’re back, and we’re taking this baby monthly. But we’re keeping the name Reading Week, because who doesn’t love a little anachronism?

As before, I’ll be sharing articles I’ve enjoyed or found thought-provoking, a little bit of my reading life, and any other snippets and tid-bits that took my fancy this month.

Expect me to be sliding into your DMs (er, email inboxes) on the list Friday of every month.

EMPTY YOUR POCKETS

I’m a prolific Pocket user. In fact, I’ve often felt like Corinne Purtill who said that she wishes she were the person her Pocket reading list suggests she is. “There will be things left on the list until my own end, when I have to reckon with all the selves I never was and everything I never understood.” Like her, I took some time to cull stories that I’m not realistically going to read, and to devote some time to the ones I’ve abandoned there for months – so some of these were published some time ago. I’m sure you don’t mind.

I loved Jessica Furseth On Synchronicity, how the sensation of stars aligning is often an illusion and how sometimes, the pleasure of coincidence is enough.

Eula Biss is characteristically excellent on the pleasure and challenges of writing non-fiction. I think I had forgotten that she began her writing life as a poet, which made me want to seek out even more poet-turned-essayists. (After her, I also discovered and loved Maggie Nelson and Sarah Manguso. If you can recommend any others, let me know.)

Austin Kleon began the new year with A few notes on daily blogging, which is giving me the itch. I was heartened to read, here and in a few other places, that some people still have the good sense to prize the platforms they own and control. I hope it becomes more of a trend in 2018 as the rise of algorithmic feeds continues to fail us.

Opioids and American exceptionalism is a necessary, unnerving read.

PAINT IT SILVER

It’s Oscar season and I have a new cinema buddy so I’ve been getting back into that cinema-going life. I used to work as a film critic, but I’ve been on the outs with the movies since a little while before moving to California. It’s been lovely to reconnect with the big screen and watch some thoughtful films.

Last weekend, Evan and I watched Phantom Thread, which is nominated for Best Picture and Best Director. I didn’t love it, but as ever, there is always lots to discuss in Paul Thomas Anderson’s films. I did think it was an interesting deconstruction of the Great Man Theory, and I also thought that my former university tutor could have written a dissertation on its use of food. So I very much agreed with Helen Rosman’s essay in which she purports that, Phantom Thread Is the Best Food Movie in Ages.

I also watched Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri this week. Much of its praise is well-deserved; it’s a tight screenplay and despite McDonagh’s impenetrable nihilism, the black comedic moments tended to work and some of the performances were excellent. Though McDormand is getting all the praise for her gives-no-fucks portrayal, it was Sam Rockwell who really stood out for me. The second act is almost breathtakingly violent, often in ways that felt unnecessary, and it butts heads with but never really tackles racism; but I liked how it played with power dynamics and how no-one is immune from making mistakes and the interest lay in how the characters dealt with them. Woody Harrelson was super charming, and McDonagh got a do-over by including Peter Dinklage, who was absolutely heartbreaking in his small role as a harmlessly hapless local loser.

ON MY SHELF

I have missed telling you about my reading.

In case you missed it, I did a quick round-up of my Favourite Books of 2017, which included a couple of surprise entrants, and two new favourite authors.

I began the new year with the final Elena Ferrante novel on my to-read list, The Lost Daughter, which was filled with deceit and simmering righteous anger in the surprisingly mild mind of a middle-aged academic. It was a nice little revisit to some of Ferrante’s best ideas, and it reminded me of some of my favourite parts of the Neapolitan Novels. Alas, now I must lay in wait for her next novel. Fortunately, in the meantime, she has started a weekly column for the Guardian.

This week I completed Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan, which is being adapted to film as we speak. It’s a soap opera in a novel. While I didn’t care for many of the details of the wealthy characters’ extravagances, I did find myself pleasantly diverted by it, and I enjoyed reading about Singaporean food culture. It was long, and I won’t be rushing into the sequel (China Rich Girlfriend), but it was entertaining enough.

Next? Next, I don’t know. I’m tempted to begin Riverine by Angela Palm, and I’ve been hopping between essay collections on my bookshelf. I also purchased The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick (partly thanks to this review, but also because it seemed to follow me everywhere for a month). Time will tell!

What’s on your nightstand? Hit reply and let me know!

TIL NEXT MONTH…

Your turn! Read anything good lately? Hit reply or tweet me, won’t you?

Have a lovely weekend,
Nicola x