Category: Blog

June 2020 reading round-up

Glastonbury

June sped by, didn’t it? And it’s been eventful. I made a good start on my anti-racism reading list, but I’m determined for this not to be a temporary detour from my usual reads. I’ve bought a fair few titles and added a lot more to my future reads list, so you should see them dotted into my reviews here. And more fool me that I haven’t previously covered these books.

I also watched the documentary I Am Not Your Negro, based on James Baldwin’s proposal for a book looking at his own life through the lens of the deaths of three of his friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. Samuel L Jackson reads Baldwin’s unpublished words, cut together with footage of Baldwin speaking at universities, events and on TV. It’s a really impressive – though of course upsetting – piece that draws a clear line to today’s Black Lives Matter movement.

The last weekend of June would have been Glastonbury. This year rather than listening to new live sets from Worthy Farm on the radio, I watched many hours of old Glastonbury footage that the BBC made available on iPlayer. Inevitably, my favourites so far are Janelle Monáe’s 2011 set and the 2019 performance of Christine and the Queens. But I was also surprised to find myself spellbound by Dolly Parton. Who knew?

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Musical interlude: Hell You Talmbout

This protest song written by Janelle Monáe, performed by members of the Wondaland collective, is incredibly powerful, and this seems like the right time to be resurfacing it. Say her name: Breonna Taylor.

May 2020 reading round-up

Showcase cinema Avonmeads
“We are pressing pause for now” – the cinema nearest our house last week. That empty carpark felt really eerie.

Oh dear. I read a decent amount this month but only managed to write one review. And with all those bank holidays too! I really do want to write more about all of this month’s books, but I am in danger of forgetting any interesting critical thoughts I had about them. Ah well. There have been things on my mind.

Speaking of things on my mind, racism is – rightly – a major point of discussion right now. As a white woman, I need to educate myself as well as call it out when I see it. My school education was sorely lacking in this department. In history (which I studied up to A-level) the coverage of slavery was limited to the trade triangle and maybe one or two accounts of slave ships. Colonialism was an even briefer footnote, limited to a few maps of the world showing the extent of different empires, but no examination of how they came to be, how they operated, the long-lasting effect they had on all countries involved. Even when studying Othello at university, we didn’t really look at historical race issues, which I now see as a shocking omission.

So I have switched up my June reading plans from finishing my EU list to some titles that address race and racism head-on. I’m starting with Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, and I plan to follow it up with Superior: the Return of Race Science by Angela Saini. After that, I’m thinking maybe The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, perhaps Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination.

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April 2020 reading round-up

In our local park someone has left a series of these flags with positive messages to keep spirits up.

How do I summarise this month? Aside from the garden, I left the house four times – for two walks and two bike rides. I’m a home body anyway, so most of the time I don’t mind that. But every so often I feel a massive urge to get out and I have so much sympathy for people who can’t go outside easily or even at all right now. It’s hard.

The four-day Easter weekend gave me the chance to kick-start my reading again. I haven’t maintained that intensity of reading, but I am still reading actual books, which is an improvement on most of March.

If you’re not already aware, the National Theatre has been putting some recordings of its shows on YouTube, a different one each week. I’ve so far watched the Sally Cookson production of Jane Eyre and the Simon Godwin production of Twelfth Night, and I fully plan to catch Frankenstein before it disappears next Thursday. I am also really grateful that the BBC and Channel 4 have made a bunch of old TV shows available on their streaming services. We’ve watched a lot of Scrubs. I’ve watched even more films than usual as well. I highly recommend the Ghibli film Nausicaa (Netflix) and the Taika Waititi film Boy (Amazon Prime).

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Easter weekend readathon

Every Easter for more than a decade now (16 years?) Tim has got together with a group of friends to play computer games for the bank holiday weekend. Usually they come to our house and I either go to visit my family or I hole up in the bedroom reading books. This year we of course could not have several house guests, but they still gamed together remotely while I enjoyed the freedom to read all over the house!

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March 2020 reading round-up

My current office space.

Well, the world sure changed over the course of this month. I cannot believe just over two weeks ago we were going to work, to the pub, hanging out with friends. The Great Isolation has barely started and looks set to last for months, so we’re going to have to figure out new ways to be sociable.

Tim and I are luckier than most right now – we’re healthy, still working, safe at home – but it’s hard not to be a ball of anxiety. Which is taking a toll on my reading. For most of the month I’ve only read comics, plus the news. I’m putting what spare energy I do have into trying to make sure I get enough exercise. But reading is still the best means I know to get to sleep. And my work-from-home set-up is in our dining room/library so I’m surrounded by my books all day, and that’s comforting.

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Book blogging, 10 years on

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When books are opened, you discover you have wings

It was 10 years (and 2 weeks) ago, after a few months of deliberation and speed-learning WordPress, that I published this website and my first book review. A lot has changed since then, not least the amount of time I dedicate to blogging, but some things thankfully remain.

Books are still a source of comfort both to read and to discuss. I find online book communities are still a kind, gentle place to be, even if very few interactions happen on the blogs themselves now. I still buy books faster than I read them and I still want to know about all the latest releases even though I can’t possibly keep up with them all.

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February 2020 reading round-up

Frame Perspective

February dragged on forever and then was suddenly over. We’ve had endless rain and wind, but the month ended on a high note for me. On Friday, Greta Thunberg came to Bristol to lead the Youth Strike 4 Climate. I went along to hear the speeches and join the first part of the march and it was amazing.

This weekend is also Bristol Light Festival, with a series of light-based sculptures around the city. It’s currently quite small, but I’m hoping it’s proved enough of a success to become an annual event, like the one in Amsterdam.

This month we went to see Parasite, which we not only loved but are continuing to analyse every detail of two weeks later. It is such a good film. And I went to see a screening of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari with live improvised musical accompaniment. Those 1920 film sets are gorgeous!

On the reading front, I seem to have continued my slowed-down pace of one book per week. I know for most people that would be plenty, but for me it seems very little. Thankfully, the books I did read this month were all great.

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Greta Thunberg comes to Bristol

Today, Greta Thunberg came to Bristol to lead the Youth Strike 4 Climate (which has been held monthly for almost a year in Bristol now). I went along to College Green to hear the speeches and join the first part of the march and it was amazing. So inspirational and hopeful.

In the non-stop rain, I did my best to take some photos and scribble down some quotes, though I realised later I had a better time during the bits where I just stood back as part of the crowd (estimated at 30,000 people). It was all very friendly and supportive (unless you got too close to the national press jostling for the best photo of Thunberg).

Bristol-based climate activist Mya Rose-Craig spoke passionately about how the approach to the climate crisis must be global, and in particular must not make life better for the West at the cost of less advantaged parts of the world. As she says, “The solution to climate change cannot rely on the exploitation of human beings.”

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K-drama reviews in brief

Reply 1994
In Reply 1994, Sung Na-jung (centre) winds up marrying one of the five men in her life – but which one?

I have been trying to learn a little Korean on Duolingo. I enjoy learning new languages and I figured this was one I might actually make use of semi-regularly – to understand more of the K-dramas I watch. Not that I expect to be able to do away with using the subtitles, but I had already learned enough to notice some differences between original and translation. (That isn’t necessarily a failure of the translation – a literal translation is often not the best solution.)

Which is to say, no I have not stopped watched K-dramas, I just haven’t been reviewing all of them because I have less to say about some than others. I’m not going to stop reviewing them altogether, but I thought this might be a good time to reflect on some more briefly.

Toward the end of last year I watched Reply 1994 (tvN 2013),which is the second of three series with the same basic set-up. In modern-day Seoul, a group of friends are gathered together and reminiscing about the year when they all met: 1994. The action switches between 1994 and 2013 and the concept is that the female lead Sung Na-jung (Go Ara) has ended up marrying one of the five men who co-star – but which one? They all shared the same house during university and have stayed in touch, but the husband is not revealed until the final episode.

It’s a really cheesy concept and I found the contrivance immensely annoying, but other than that this was an enjoyable show. Most of the annoying K-drama tropes were mercifully absent, the relationships felt more realistic than many I’ve seen, and there were details of the recent-historical setting that added interest for me. The other two Reply series are also on Netflix so I might check them out.

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