Rain, rain, so much rain. I can’t remember a previous February that was so wet. So we have largely hibernated this month. I read a lot. We watched a lot of films. We even squeezed in some art, courtesy of Bristol Light Festival.

I ended the month celebrating Chinese New Year at Bristol City Museum; going out for a delicious meal with Tim at Box-E; and hearing the news that the US, Israel and Iran are at war.

Books-wise, a couple of these I picked because February is LGBT+ History Month in the UK. And three were for book clubs. Most were good reads, but a couple were truly excellent: We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson and After the Fire, a Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld.

Anyway: happy St David’s Day!

Books read

Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale
This was chosen by my work book club. It features time travel but I wouldn’t really call this sci-fi. It’s a sweet, easy-to-read novel but with a cover that screams chick lit so hard I probably wouldn’t have picked this up. I did enjoy it though. Cassie is in her early 30s, lives in the spare room of a couple who are always fighting and is struggling with some neuro spiciness she doesn’t have a name for. She’s having a really bad day: her boyfriend dumps her, she’s fired, the cafe is out of her favourite muffins. When she curls up in a panic attack and finds herself repeating the day from the start again can she do it better this time? What about if she takes a few dozen runs at it?

Christopher and His Kind: a Memoir 1929-1939 by Christopher Isherwood
I love Christopher Isherwood. This is his 1970s memoir written just after he’d publicly come out, in which he revisits a period of his life he had fictionalised in several novels – most famously Goodbye to Berlin. It’s a fascinating story packed with famous intellectuals – most of them gay, several of them partners of Isherwood at some point. Isherwood explains as he goes along the difference between fact and fiction in his life. I was surprised how many people knew he was gay. I was not surprised that this was a fact that caused him endless trouble.

A Snowball in Hell by Chris Brookmyre
This is part 3 of a crime trilogy I started back in 2006 or so. Scottish detective Angelique de Xavia has moved to France to work in counter-terrorism. But a bad guy from her past has resurfaced in London in spectacular style. British celebrities are being abducted and murdered very publicly and gruesomely. De Xavia is going to need some help – perhaps from her ex, a wanted thief whose expert sleight of hand has long been wasted on cruise ship cabarets. Brookmyre is acerbically comedic and here he takes aim at early 2000s celebrity culture, particularly reality TV. I honestly found him a little too vicious and unforgiving, and De Xavia is a little Islamophobic – which is totally believable of someone in her line of work but made her hard to like.

I Have More Souls Than One by Fernando Passoa
Translated from Portuguese by Jonathan Griffin
This mini volume collects examples of Passoa’s poetry written under four alter egos. Covering nature, love and other grand feelings, I found these a little hit and miss.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
I have a new book club and this was our first read. It’s a classic for a reason – a deliciously creepy southern gothic tale packed full of mystery. Sisters Constance and Merricat live in a big house on the outskirts of a village with their very ill uncle. Outcasts and subjects of gossip since the rest if their family died eight years earlier, their lives are shrinking and filled with superstition. Yet they are, in a way, happy. I loved this and it crammed with great conversation topics.

bell hooks: the Last Interview and Other Conversations
This series of interviews over decades from 1989 to 2017 explore hooks’ thoughts on topics from race and feminism to popular culture to religion. It’s fascinating to see her evolution in some areas – including her own identity. I especially enjoyed her thoughtful discourse on misogyny in rap and how objections to that tend to be exaggerated disguises for racism and/or classism.

After the Fire, a Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld
This is a really thoughtful novel. It alternates the stories of Frank and Leon. In the current day, Frank has left Canberra and moved to a tiny shack on the Australian coast bought by his grandparents. He’s in a bad place and wants to be alone but he can’t avoid people altogether. Back in the 1950s, Leon’s father goes off to the Korean war and everything in his life changes. Wyld beautifully examines male violence, intergenerational trauma and parent-child relationships.

The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
This was a reread, yet again for a book club. I had remembered the main plot points but little of the detail. Tom Ripley is such a fascinating character. He’s generally disliked by people when they first meet, but he is clever and manipulative enough to turn that around. In fact he has a desperate need to be liked, even though he rarely likes other people. He should be thoroughly detestable and yet by halfway through the book I can’t help rooting for him to get away with murder. It’s remarkably skilful writing.