New year, new books
As always, Christmas and my birthday brought me a smorgasbord of new books. Which is awesome. I love books, and I love my family who know I will always be happy with them as a present.
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Category: Blog
2018 end-of-year round-up
It feels like 5 minutes ago that I was writing my end-of-2017 post. How does time pass so quickly now? We’re not in a far-flung locale this holiday period, but instead at home in Bristol, repeatedly looking at photos from last year’s dream holiday in Japan and eating rather a lot of Japanese food to aid and abet the reminiscing.
This year I have read 67 books (I am halfway through one right now, so maybe that will be 68 by midnight) of which 25 were by men, 38 by women and the rest by multiple authors. I think this was one of my more modern reading years, by which I mean that I read 51 books from the 21st century, 15 from the 20th century and just one book from the 19th century – nothing older than that. Should I try to read more older books again? I’m not sure. I’ve liked my reading this year, even if I haven’t done as much of it as in previous years (in 2011, the first year I tracked my reading, I managed 100 books – life was quieter back then). I read 20 books in translation, of which 9 were from Japanese, again showing the influence of last year’s holiday.
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December 2018 reading round-up
I love Christmas and New Year, but I really don’t enjoy the long build-up and the pressure that comes with it. Which is why running away to Japan last year was both perfect and a little bit sad.
This year we spent just a few days at my Dad’s and didn’t do any of the country walks we usually would. We’ll have to go back for another visit soon to remedy that.
I did, as always, get lots of books for Christmas, which I’ll blog about soon. I want to read them all right away.
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Discovering Hallyu
I have just finished watching The Heirs (2013), and for the first time with a K-drama I don’t want to give it a proper review, even though there is a LOT that I could say about it. It just has so many problems and I fear a review would only encourage other people to watch it. Which has got me thinking more generally about my K-drama fixation.
It can’t have escaped anyone’s notice that this past few months I have immersed myself in K-drama, and generally become super-interested in Korean life and culture. The Korean Wave (Hallyu) has most definitely found me. But why would a feminist like me swoon over these shows that are not only repetitive and cliched, but commonly outright misogynist and selling dangerous ideas to the Korean youth they are aimed at?
First, let me back up the second part of that question with some examples. K-dramas are all about romance, but that romance usually begins with a man who is in a position of power over the woman (in almost every case I’ve seen the man is super-rich while the woman is poor) repeatedly grabbing her wrist and dragging her around; claiming ownership of her when she has not expressed any interest; and forcibly backing her into kisses that she does not want or respond to. Even more worryingly, said woman then always falls for the man in question and looks back on those forced kisses as beautiful moments.
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Reading round-up November 2018
How are we this far through the year already? Time has flown and I have done very little of anything. But after October’s abysmal attempts, I did do better on the reading front. I decided to kickstart my reading brain by starting with some comics. Not that all comics are easy reading – Sandman definitely isn’t – but some of them are, and they were just what I needed. Tim started me off with some old Avengers comics in the Marvel app, and then I picked some trade paperbacks off my TBR. It was a good strategy.
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Book subscriptions
I’m not generally on top of the latest trends, but I couldn’t help but notice that book subscriptions are in right now. There are suddenly hundreds to choose between, from local, national and international sources. I think the first one I ever heard of was from Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights in Bath, probably my favourite bookshop. Over the last few years I have seen lots of online-only offerings, often specialising in a certain genre or also acting as a form of book club. And then in the last two weeks a new bookshop called Storysmith Books opened right here in South Bristol and almost immediately launched its own range of subscriptions.
Book subscriptions work in different ways – some are personalised, some come with book-related merchandise, some tell you in advance what books you’re getting – but the basic premise is the same. You pay upfront for a certain number and frequency of book parcels.
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October 2018 reading round-up
I ended last month swimming in the Med, reading in beautiful gardens, eating Neapolitan pizza and drinking Ischian wine. I ended this month eating delicious Michelin-starred food right here in Bristol (if you click on the pic above and go to my Flickr page, you can read what all the courses were at the very excellent Bulrush). And the wine might not have been made two miles from where I drank it, but it was pretty damn good. So being back home isn’t so bad (but I still miss holiday).
I have started three or four books since coming back from holiday, but finished none of them. Maybe I need to set aside a day for nothing but reading sometime soon – a good old-fashioned read-a-thon. That would be nice.
Lack of reading aside, this month I watched a couple more K-dramas – Love in the Moonlight and Strong Woman Do Bong Soon – and I also went to the cinema for the first time in ages, to watch the excellent biopic First Man.
Here’s to a happy November.
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Long time, no blog
I know, I have been horribly absent. Tim and have been on holiday, and I know I usually blog when we go away, but this time I needed to fully switch off from the world – which I did. We went to Reading (university reunion), Paris, Milan (briefly), Naples, Ischia and Pompeii. Which sounds packed for two weeks, but eight days of that were spent on a resort on Ischia doing very little indeed and it was pretty nearly perfect.
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September 2018 reading round-up
Ah, September was definitely a better month. Work continued to be hectic but my health has greatly improved and we ended the month by going on an awesome holiday. See above for highlight number one – I finally made it to Shakespeare & Co! I was surprised to find myself emotionally affected by walking through its upstairs rooms, seeing the old photos of previous residents and the camp beds made up for current occupants.
While we were in Italy the transition from summer to autumn happened in earnest. I love autumn. Happy October, folks!
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August 2018 reading round-up
It’s going to be a short list this month. Mostly because I have been too tired to read, partly because I have been wolfing down soapy high-school TV dramas on Netflix instead of reading. But that does use far less brain. I’m also most of the way through the final part of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, so maybe the September book list will be longer than two. Maybe.
Most notable this month was mine and Tim’s 16-year anniversary. We went for a delicious meal at Root in Bristol, which I highly recommend (see pic above). It started life as a chicken shack but they couldn’t get a supply of free-range chicken that they were happy with so they switched to a mostly vegetarian menu. It’s a brave move and I think it’s paid off. I hope they manage to stick around.
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