Category: Blog

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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January 2020 reading round-up

Kinderdijk
New Year’s Day excursion to Kinderdijk.

Today is not a good day. I’d quite like to pretend Brexit isn’t happening, even though I know that the better approach is to reaffirm my love for Europe and the EU. I love the EU so much and will greatly miss being part of it.

This month started strong, with our holiday in the Netherlands, and ended terribly. Maybe February could average out a little? That would be nice. (There is a chance I am also suffering a little from late-winter blues, so as the days get longer I’ll hopefully cheer up, whatever politicians gets up to.)

As well as the Dutch loveliness, this month we also had a very nice weekend with friends in Leicestershire and we saw the excellent JoJo Rabbit at the cinema. If you’re a Taika Waititi fan (and why wouldn’t you be?) you will not be disappointed.

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2019 reading round-up and favourites

fireworks in Rotterdam
New Year fireworks on the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam.

Well I don’t know if it was a lucky guess or if I know myself well, but this year I read exactly the number of books I set as my 2019 Goodreads challenge: 70. I’ve had a few dry spells so a lot of those have been mini books, but I have enjoyed sampling several famous authors that way.

Of those 70 books, 37 were written by women and two were by multiple men and women, so that’s pretty close to even. 27 were translated from other languages, which is much higher than I have achieved in previous years and is probably the result of my EU Reading Challenge.

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