I’ll keep this shorter than usual this month. I didn’t finish many books and I’ve been a bit unwell so my brain isn’t the clearest. Those two things are possibly related.

Highlights from July include Bristol Pride – which was excellent though burning hot – and a couple of great day trips to Reading and Weston-super-Mare.

We have kept up our Friday-night habit of martinis and film night. Highlights this month were The China Syndrome and K-pop: Demon Hunters. Keeping it varied! We’ve been on a Jack Lemmon streak but after China Syndrome we might pivot to a Jane Fonda season. She is awesome.

Oh, one more exciting thing. Tim and I booked ourselves a holiday for September. There will be hire bikes, beaches, museums and at least one castle. It should be a good mix of culture and relaxation.

Books read

The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara
A brilliant but disturbing novel about a terrible person. I’m glad I have read it but it is definitely upsetting – especially so when I learned it’s loosely based on a true story.

I Feel Bad About My Neck, and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron
Ephron’s essays are always entertaining. A bit like the Ig Nobel Prize, they “make people laugh, and then make them think”. This was her final collection and ageing is the subject of a few essays.

Iraq + 100 edited by Hassan Blasim
Short stories by Iraqi writers set in Iraq 100 years after the invasion – i.e. in 2103. The introduction by author Hassan Blasim says that sci-fi isn’t a genre much explored by Iraqi writers and most of the examples here are outside that author’s usual oeuvre. I hate to say it, but it kinda shows. There were maybe three really solidly good stories. But a lot of interesting insights and ideas.

Bikes In Space edited by Elly Blue
After I thoroughly enjoyed one of the volumes in the Bikes in Space series last month, I bought the whole series as ebooks from Portland-based Microcosm Publishing. As the title suggests, this is the first volume and I learned from the introduction that it actually started life as a special issue of a zine. It’s a set of feminist sci-fi short stories heavily featuring bikes. The tone is for the most part hopeful and alternative – very Portland.