November 2020 reading round-up

Beckett in frost
Beckett enjoyed her first frosty morning.

November was a tough month. I didn’t think I would mind a second lockdown but it’s actually been hard, particularly in combination with the short days and bad weather. At least Beckett doesn’t seem to mind the cold.

On the plus side, I have continued to find excellent films to watch on streaming. Highlights include Animals, Sorry to Bother You and Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse (which we’d seen and loved at the cinema; still love it second time around).

TV-wise, I watched the BBC drama of Normal People immediately after reading the book, and it was excellent. I’ve also been thoroughly enjoying season two of His Dark Materials. And because I have spent a lot of evenings too tired/in a funk to concentrate on something new, I have also been rewatching Gilmore Girls for the thousandth time. It’s really comforting.

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I have to make do with a hollow heart full of holes

The Memory PoliceThe Memory Police
by Yoko Ogawa
translated from Japanese by Stephen Snyder

This was chosen by my work book club and I would have loved to join that discussion, but sadly I was in a reading slump and didn’t finish the book in time. It’s a high-concept dystopia but it’s still very readable.

On the island, things disappear. En masse. And their disappearance is policed. Residents wake up knowing that something has to go that day – hats or bells or stamps, for instance. They destroy the items under the watchful eye of the Memory Police and their memory of the thing quickly fades, so that if the word is spoken it no longer has any meaning.

So far so strange, eerie even, but the scary part is that some people remember – and the Memory Police are hunting them down, taking them away.

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October 2020 reading round-up

Reading Lowborn at lunchtimeI don’t know if it’s the onset of winter weather or the prospect of a second lockdown, but I am struggling a little again with reading. I am finding it a little easier to read and reflect on non-fiction at the moment but I have only written one book review all month and even the synopses below took me a few days to put together.

Most of our film-watching this month has been of the super cheesy variety (though I will admit I had forgotten the high calibre of cameos in Blues Brothers) so I will instead recommend two TV shows that I have very much enjoyed, both on BBC iplayer: I May Destroy You – a powerful piece about friendship and sexual assault – and Ghosts, which is silly and funny and I am grateful to the multiple friends who recommended it.

Walking Beckett has been really lovely as autumn deepens into winter. She’s the best.

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K-drama review: Two Cops

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In Two Cops, Jo Jung-suk (left), Lee Hye-ri and Kim Seon-ho form a love triangle with a difference.

The last few K-dramas I watched didn’t really hold my attention, but this one was a big success. Two Cops (MBC 2017–2018) is a crime-solving, body-swapping (sort of) action romantic comedy drama with supernatural elements thrown in for good measure.

Cha Dong-tak (Jo Jong-suk, probably my favourite Korean actor, who I loved in Don’t Dare to Dream and Oh My Ghost) is a Seoul detective in the violent crimes unit. He’s a little rough around the edges, a skilled martial artist and hyper-focused on solving the murder of his former partner, despite attempts from his superiors to get him to concentrate on current cases instead.

One suspect in this case is Gong Su-chang (Kim Seon-ho), a smooth-talking small-time crook. When circumstances conspire to land Su-chang in a coma, his spirit is left roaming the world and has the ability to possess Detective Cha’s body. But a medium tells him he has to find a way to resolve his unfinished business within 49 days or he will die. He has to find a way to work with the detective despite their very different personalities and careers.

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She had once been threadbare, with seven lives to weave from darkness

Betty Shabazz book coverBetty Shabazz: a Remarkable Story of Survival and Faith Before and After Malcolm X
by Russell J Rickford

A late-night read on my Kindle while trying to get the dog to sleep, I was starting to feel bad about how long it was taking me to read this autobiography until I saw on Goodreads that it’s over 600 pages. In fairness Dr Betty Shabazz lived a full and fascinating life that deserves every one of those pages. She was so much more than Mrs Malcolm X, though of course that marriage made her famous and opened the door for her to be an activist and ambassador.

Rickford says in his introduction that he will concentrate on Betty’s life before and after Malcolm, but inevitably their seven years of marriage form a lot of the narrative and at times this veers into being yet another Malcolm X or Nation of Islam biography. He also refers to her as “the widow” a lot, which somewhat undermines his stated mission to depict her as more than that role. Not that it was easy role to hold.

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She is only a human being for a tiny moment across the eternity of her servitude

Underground Railroad book coverThe Underground Railroad
by Colson Whitehead

Not that I ever doubted it, but this book is excellent. It depicts many details of the awfulness of slavery while also being a highly readable adventure narrative. Please forgive the short review – this book deserves more analysis but it’s now a while since I read it and I just want to share my praise for it before I forget even more.

Cora is a slave in Georgia. She is an outcast of sorts among the slaves on the plantation, tarred by her mother’s reputation of madness and her own fierce protection of the tiny garden her mother left her. On the verge of adulthood, new threats raise their ugly head and an offer is made: does she want to attempt an escape with recently arrived slave Caesar? Her journey across America, making use of an underground railroad that is an actual railway underground, is astonishing, terrifying, entertaining and upsetting.

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Recent(ish) reads in brief

Since mid-June, when we made the decision to reserve a dog from a litter that had just been born, that decision has pretty much dominated our lives. We dug out the dog training books we’d bought 10 years ago just after we moved into this house – which we chose in part for its doggy-suitable garden and layout – and bought a few more books on the subject, just to be safe. While my non-doggy-reading didn’t dry up completely, my ability to write thoughtful, detailed reviews of books afterward certainly did.

That said, I have continued to make some notes and highlight/bookmark some passages as I read, so I do have a little more to say about most of the books I’ve read than the single-paragraph synopses I write for my monthly reading round-ups. And I even found that trying to write brief reviews of a handful of recent reads led me to write full-sized reviews of a few of them, so look out for those in the coming week.

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Space itself: a straight line from every point to every other point

Measuring the World book coverMeasuring the World
by Daniel Kehlmann
translated from German by Carol Brown Janeway

This is my Austria book for my EU Reading Challenge. It’s the fictionalised story of two real German scientists whose lives and work intersected, despite their very different backgrounds and temperaments.

Carl Friedrich Gauss and Alexander von Humboldt are unlikely stars for a comedy, but Kehlmann’s style leans towards the comedic. He also shows a fascination with facts and scientific process, which makes these two men a great choice for him.

Humboldt and Gauss both did work mapping and measuring the physical landscape – distances and heights primarily. For Gauss this was unwelcome, unpleasant work that forced him to be outdoors and interact with people in return for food and shelter. He much preferred to be at home with his beloved wife observing the stars and calculating the maths that governed their movements.

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September 2020 reading round-up

Beckett in the woods
Beckett is a whirlwind when she gets outside and frequently tangled in her lead. Until she stops and lies down because she’s so tired suddenly.

Just as I was starting to feel comfortable with the idea of venturing out into the world more, it looks like we are on the verge of another lockdown. Having a dog gets us out of the house twice a day, but we won’t get to introduce her to most of our family and friends this year. Not in person, anyway. Beckett is still both awesome and exhausting, but a little less exhausting than she was.

Which is probably why this has been a better month on the reading front – six books! – and I even wrote one whole book review. I plan to write some mini reviews (more than the synopses below) so that I can finally put away the growing stack of read books on the arm of the sofa. I’m going to need to get them out of Beckett’s reach soon as she is expanding the list of things she tries to eat every day.

Historically, I am a fan of October. It’s the pretty leaves, blue skies end of autumn. For some reason I associate it with Daphne du Maurier, and I do have a few of her books still to read (she was prolific). But I am anxious about the COVID-19 situation getting worse as the days get shorter, colder and wetter.

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I should have known that someone would come along and spoil it

Queenie book coverQueenie
by Candice Carty-Williams

I loved this novel. It starts out riotously funny and gradually introduces its themes until it becomes clear that it’s talking about some very serious shit. But it remains extremely enjoyably readable to the end. Which is saying something right now, as having a puppy is very distracting.

We meet Queenie texting her boyfriend Tom from the stirrups of a gynaecologist’s table, while she waits for a series of nurses and doctors to come and take a look. Through the rest of the day, between her aunt Maggie’s ceaseless chatter and her quiet evening at home, we learn that all is not rosy between Queenie and Tom. But the reasons for that take a while to emerge because they are filtered through Queenie blaming herself and idolising Tom for “putting up with” her. While she is frank about some things in her life (sex, mostly) she is less open on other matters.

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