June was an…odd month. We thought the dog needed surgery, so we cancelled plans, got all ready to hunker down for her long, slow recovery. And then after scans and specialists, it turns out she doesn’t need surgery. Which is of course a massive relief and I am hugely grateful. But also it took my brain a bit of time to adapt to “oh, we do get to have a fun summer after all”.

The crazy heatwave coincided with the above, so we were more than happy to stay indoors with closed blinds, a fan and plenty of chilled water. It is a little scary to experience 39 degree heat as early as June though.

We’ve been working our way through a DVD box set of M*A*S*H, which is just as brilliant as I remembered from the odd episode I watched reruns of as a kid. It’s so wonderfully humane considering it’s set during a war and is from the 1970s. Almost every episode has moments touching enough to provoke tears as well as genuine laughter.

All the books I read this month were great, but I think my favourite was Contact by Carl Sagan. Which I’ve intended to read for years and kinda knew I’d love. But I really did love it.

Happy July folks!

Books read

Contact by Carl Sagan
After watching the film multiple times, I finally read the book. It’s based on the film script Sagan co-wrote with Ann Druyan (his wife and fellow science communicator), which languished for years in production purgatory. Contact is the story of astronomer Ellie Arroway whose team discovers a signal from an alien civilisation. She is catapulted into the public eye, meeting with the US president, making huge decisions that affect all humanity. I love the way Sagan clearly explains the science while still keeping it a gripping story with a fantastic central character. He also includes the sexism that a scientist like Holloway would have faced throughout her career, the choices someone like her would have had to make that a male scientist wouldn’t. The plot – especially towards the end – isn’t exactly the same as the film so you can enjoy the suspense of both, whichever way round you encounter them.

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
This featured on the Weirdos Book Club podcast and sounded fun, plus it heavily features a dog. It’s a love story but it’s not sweet or even romantic. It’s kinda creepy, but also very funny. Greta works from home transcribing audio from the local sex therapist. It’s all supposedly anonymised but in their small community she often recognises the voices of patients. So when she encounters the woman she has nicknamed Big Swiss at the local dog park she really should walk away. Instead, Greta becomes infatuated and tangles herself up in lies and half-truths. Both women are kinda fucked up and not particularly likeable, and there were definitely some comments from Greta I found abhorrent. But I still enjoyed the ride.

Tokyo Express by Seicho Matsumoto
Translated from Japanese by Jesse Kirkwood
I like trains. And Japan. And murder mysteries that aren’t too graphic. This book delivered all those things. It’s a slim volume but manages to comprise a compelling mystery, a dogged young detective whose progress is satisfying to follow, and some interesting nuggets about life in Japan. And with its focus on train timetables, plus sketches of train stations, this might just be the nerdiest murder mystery I’ve read. Which I fully support.

A Room with a View by E M Forster
I didn’t love my first Forster novel, A Passage to India, but this one worked much better for me. It probably helps that, being set in Edwardian Florence and rural England, Forster didn’t have any opportunity for racism. Lucy Honeychurch is being chaperoned through Italy by her fussy older cousin. In their Florence pension they are disappointed by their rooms, and gratefully accept when Mr Emerson and his son George offer to swap as they have views of the river Arno. But this puts Lucy in an awkward position, as socially the Emersons are not “the right kind” for her to socialise with. Forster brilliantly skewers these social mores while still sympathetically depicting Lucy’s thoughts and position. The romance is predictable but enjoyable all the same.

The Pain Tree by Olive Senior
These short stories are set in Jamaica from the 1940s through to the 1990s. So we move from having World War Two in the background to AIDS. But these feel like very specifically Jamaican tales. Their focus is class and sometimes race divides, family, friendship and above all, change. Several stories refer to communities uprooted by big industry, traditional ways of life destroyed or otherwise left behind. I really enjoyed these.

Cold Toast by Kathryn Aldridge-Morris
I’m not usually a fan of flash fiction but I loved this collection so perhaps I need to rethink that. In stories ranging from half a page to at most four pages, Aldridge-Morris depicts the lives of working-class British women in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Despite their brevity, most of them feel like complete narratives, not just quick scenes. The scenarios are often dark but there is also humour. And so much very specific detail that I felt like I was right there. Really impressive.

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
Continuing my deepdive into the Durrell family, this is the first volume of Gerald Durrell’s Corfu trilogy. It’s a memoir, but not entirely sticking to the facts. In fairness Gerald was only 10 when his family moved to Corfu and he wrote this over 20 years later. But it does seem a little petty to entirely omit his sister-in-law Nancy. It entirely makes sense that the book focuses so much on nature. As both a child and an adult Durrell was intensely interested in every type of fauna. He spent every minute he could observing wildlife, collecting specimens, making notes in his field diary and transferring all the creatures he could to the villa his family rented – alive and dead. He clearly had great love for Corfu. His family bear the brunt of much teasing here, but that feels like love too. What I find a little uncomfortable is the way Durrell talks about the majority of the islanders as peasants. There’s more than a hint of snobbery, and a certain cluelessness about his family’s position as guests/visitors there.